EVE New Citizens Q&A

So, I've done the tutorial, I've done the Career Agent missions and I'm just a little lost still. I know how to make something from a BPO or BPC, what I don't understand is research.

If I was to go through the process, as I know it, I would buy a BPO or BPC from the market (I don't know where they come from before that), get the mats and make it. Where does researching come in and how do I actually do it in game. What is the servise I need and where do I find it?

So what is the station service I need to use?

Or patiently wait for a long time - research slots can be queued for. If you put something into a slot that has a queue, it just means that BPO is first stuck for X days/hours waiting for the slot to open and then whatever time it takes to do the research.

For tech 1 production I would recommend looking at buying a pre-researched BPO. In most cases the extra cost is trivially small over an unresearched BPO. For small time ship production (where BPOs cost hundreds of millions), BPCs off contracts are also a valid option. Just make sure you figure out in advance that whatever you plan on doing is profitable.

Main differences between a BPO and and BPC:
A BPO can be researched for higher efficiency. A BPO does not have a limit on how many times it can be used.
A BPC cannot be further researched. A BPC has a limited number of runs.

A BPO is an asset, as they have a resale value that doesn't really change, no matter how often you use it.
A BPC is a resource as it drops in value, the more you use it.

So, a BPC has a fixed cost per run. (cost to buy divided by number of runs). A BPO has no cost per run (Though you'll have to look at how much profit you're willing to set aside to 'repay' the asset's purchase)


Notes
All BPOs and BPCs have a material Efficiency level. On a BPO, this can be increased with research. A BPC can't be changed. Blue prints, with ME 0, have a percentage waste of materials. This is normally 10%. Increasing the ME decreases the waste. the Formula is something like
base percentage * 1/(1 + ME)
So an ME 1 Blueprint has half the waste of a ME 0. ME 3 has a quarter. ME 7 has an eighth. It's pretty much, double the ME, half the waste. When you reduce the waste on a material to less than half a unit per run, it's removed completely.

Production Efficiency makes a far larger difference.

If you want to play with the numbers, to see how they work, there's a blueprint calculator on my site, where you can adjust the ME by using a slider. While it's possible to completely remove waste from blueprints, for many, it's not something to do. As you'd spend millions of isk and years of time on research, and save yourself 1000isk per run. Not worth it. You'll get a feel for what makes sense.



There's also the PE level of a blueprint, which is to do with waste time. it's really rarely worth taking this above 6 or so, as you'll only save a couple of seconds per run. (again, run the numbers or use a blueprint calculator)

T1 BPOs come from market (all blueprints on market are T1 BPOs). There are no BPOs for faction items so for them you only have copies. As for T2 BPOs, there used to be a way to get those but not anymore. Some players have T2 BPOs and might occasionally sell them but otherwise you can't get T2 BPOs.

T1 BPO are sold on the market by NPC (all NPC orders are >364 days in duration, reset to 365 every downtime, and players can only make max 90 day duration orders). Only BPO that are packaged (never had a manufacturing or research quote) can be sold on the market. Some BPO are only sold by NPC in limited regions (example: ORE ship BPO are only sold in 2 systems located in ORE sovereign space way out in nulsec, Gallente ships and drone BPO tend to be sold in Gallente sovereign regions, etc.).

T2 BPO come from the pre-invention lottery system, which no longer exists, so you can only buy them from players.

T2 BPC come from Invention of T1 BPC.

T3 BPC come from Reverse Engineering relics only found in Sleeper sites (and nearly all the materials for manufacturing) in wormhole space (unknown space, or more commonly called w-space).

Faction BPC come from loyalty points stores, elite NPC drops, and one-time COSMOS missions.

Booster BPC come from drug lab drops (found in drug gas cloud sites).

Some exploration sites in known space (k-space) have rig BPC and Data Interface BPC (used in invention) drops.

All of the above can be found on contracts. There is also an in-game blueprint chat channel.

Blue Prints are listed in the Market at the top of the screen, up by Ammunition. These are BPO's.

The 364.x day offers are from NPC Corporations - and these have the base price for the item. Certain NPC corporations carry them and if you fly over to one of their facilities you can buy one there. Doing a show info on an NPC Corporation will show you what things they sell and where they sell them. If there's a way to do the reverse - which is what you want - I don't know what it is.

The 90 day or less ones are from players who went out and bought BPO's from an NPC facility and then hauled them over to where you see them listed on the market but they of course have done this to make a profit.


If the blue print is cheap - you can just buy two of them - then put one in the queue to get your research done on it while you use the other one.

If you right click on the blue print in your items hangar you will see choices for researching it. Clicking on one of these will bring up the industry service and let you see where facilities are in your region that have the function that you want. Note how you can change what is displayed, including All. Note that facilities that have the shorter waiting times are likely to be in Lo Sec. Doing a show info on the system will tell you where it is. You can use these if you want but it's a pain in the ass to run the gauntlet to get your blue prints over to them and THEN run it again to bring them back (not to mention the empty trips there and back for your ship ...). Now you can do that ... at one point in time I was running through Rancer to research my blue prints ... and never got blown up ... but ... as I said - it's a pain in the ass. The more expensive the blue print and the better researched it is (on return trips back) - the greater the loss to you if you if you get popped.

There are any number of ways to enhance your chances of running the gauntlet, Covert Ops ships being one of the best but if you don't have the money for T2 ships you can try just using a shuttle. That's what I did. Just don't think that you can't get caught - because you can. Blue Prints are very small in size so cargo capacity isn't an issue.

Time of day helps too. If you log in immediately after down time ends - then you might beat some of the guys camping the gates back to their positions (see how this is becoming a pain in the ass?) but then again you might not as they know about that too.

A POS is pretty much out of the question for a newer player - but - if you get rich enough or belong to a corporation that has one or wants to put one up they're a nice alternative. Here you can actually research the blue prints from the POS while they sit safely in a station but there's a skill needed for that. If you want to play with a POS you could go over to the test server and see. Things cost much less there - though the skill requirements are the same - and you have less of a chance of getting popped. Understand that building it and arming it are not the big problems with having a POS - keeping it fueled is, as that never ends unless you tear it down (which you can do).





If you're in a corporation - and you execute the job from a corporate hangar - anyone with the access in your corporation can fetch the job when it's done.


If you're interested in getting into Industry - buy a few cheap BPO's off the market and just play around with them, seeing how they work. As long as you don't try large scale production runs with them you're not going to be losing out on much. Ammunition and shuttles are two that are cheap and you can use them to make stuff for yourself - which can be handy. For example - if you're moving a ship from one place to another and it's cargo hold is to small to hold a shuttle to fly back in - the BP & Trit to make one take up less room. Just bring that with you and you can make one at your destination and fly back in that.

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NPC corporations sell them.

Notice that the available BPOs vary from region to region; For example Fuel Block BPOs are sold ONLY by Thukker Mix who has some stations at the far end of Minmatar space ONLY.

So basically figure out the BPO you want, then figure out which NPC corp sells it, then check where they have stations and fly there.

Jita has most BPOs on the market but they obviously have a markup compared to what the NPCs sell them for...

Market can only have completely untouched BPOs. As soon as any research is done, it can no longer be sold on the market -> researched BPOs can only be found on the contracts.