Science & Industry

Ok I think I am getting an idea now of some of the real issues here. Thanks all of you. Now with all this going on how will it affect or be effected by the removal of all meta4s most notably the ones better than the T2 of the same class? These T2 mods are not getting buffed and will have no competition for a better dropped non player made mod? New opportunities for more profits or more of the same old problems? Will there be market glut if player made is the only option?

Actually, there is an existing example of the meta 4 change already in game. A few years back, the meta 4 armored plates far exceeded the performance of the t2 plates. It was to the point that no one bothered even to make t2 plates. Around the expansion that gave us the armor layering skill, ccp rebalance the plates making t2 plates viable. This is not to say everyone now equip the t2 plates, it's a matter of what you can fit.

Still, initially t2 plate producers made a huge profit as supply had not stabilised with demand. Now prices have stabilized and it is not as profitable. (Very small margin)

Look at the drone damage amp. At first t2 were very profitable, now not so much. So be prepared to be an early adopter and you can make a good profit. If you wait, you will become one of the masses making less.

As for the whole meta change, read the blog please. The variants being eliminated did not cover much. You go from having 3 useful versions plus a few crap ones to 3 useful ones, one that is easier to fit but low value, a storyline version and faction versions. It will have little impact. If new go t1. If a little more space rich or have fitting issues, go meta. If you have skills and no fitting issues, go t2. Use the others in select cases. Really, no change now, just less fluff stuff.

Also, you are forgetting that when metas where removed, the skills involved in invention changed too. Training all to 5 can balance out the loss of meta boosts. It sucks for training, but it is balanced.

As for those complaining, the big cost is still datacores. Help reduce your datacore cost by getting research agents or join faction warfare and buy datacores with lp. Every bit helps.

Yes, I used to invent and build them 1000 at a time (not constantly as the price fluctuated). It wasn't just the change that crashed the price though, there was also a big war going on which is always good for business.

If that were to be done then all it would achieve would be a raise in prices of items in general. The raise in price will cause the market to balance it out by a raise in demand. Within a month or two, price will go back to the way it is and market flooding would be back to the way it was.

"the minerals I mine are free issue." Can someone please explain this catch praise. I am not sure what it implies. TY

Thanks Zifrian. I got it.The minerals aren't free, they cost time.

The real question is, for x amount of time, what gets you the most ISK while having fun.

For some, that's mining, for others, it's mission running. Everything costs time and that is a limited resource that no one can purchase.

even if you really enjoy mining and manufacturing, that doesn't mean you should sell finished goods at a price that is lower than the mineral value

find an item that is actually profitable to build and build it.

Besides the new UI, Crius was IMO a completely mistake that has completely f***** all indutry and a lot of the market. I hope we won't have to wait another 10 years to see a new industry overhaul

As Gilbaron said, the minerals you mine not only have a time cost. They also have an actual ISK value.

As in Zifrians example. If you mine for an hour and gotten 1000 minerals worth 1000 ISK if you sell it on the market, your profit is 1000ISK/h.

If you then decide to build something with that 1000 minerals that only sells for 500 ISK you have not only lost 500 ISK, you also reduced your profit per hour to 500 ISK/h.

Bottom line, only build stuff that is profitable to build. No matter if you mine or buy the minerals. Because if you build unprofitable items you would be better off to just sell the minerals directly onto the market.

Always use the market price (max buy/min sell) as the value of your minerals. View manufacturing as a way to turn the hour of mining into a bigger profit by spending an extra 5min setting up a profitable manufacturing job.

A couple of things I can think up:

1) Industry slots were a limited resource. While factories have always been abundant, lab slots have been a rare commodity ever since Eve's inception. Back in the day (2004) labs were like offices that you'd rent and use. That got changed to the reasonably well working queuing system ages ago to the no-queue-but-extra-tax system we have now. It basically means that the playing field is leveled for everyone and that gaining an edge by flying your 1bil+ Capital BPO's to lowsec for lower or no queue times has disappeared. The new system also punishes you for producing a lot of stuff in one place. Which is obnoxious.

2) Inventing was very different. Today, you can just plug in a single-run drone BPC and get a 10-run copy out of an invention job. You can also queue up, say, 100 invention runs. Before Crius, you needed max-run BPCs to get 10-run copies. That meant more time your BPO's spent in labslots copying and less free queue time for inventions. Also, for ships it was even more complicated as the required BPC depended on which decryptor you used. You also couldn't queue jobs: 1 BPC, no matter how many runs, resulted in 1 t2-BPC with an amount of runs depending on how many runs the BPC had and which decryptor you used. Basically, you can now get a ton more t2-runs than before in the same amount of time.

3) As a result of #1 and #2, lab time and research slots were the bottleneck in t2 production. As the skill requirements for t2 invention were quite high, requiring multiple lvl 4's and 5's in high-ranked skills training a research-alt was a hefty skillpoint and thus monotary investment.

4) The skill requirements for t2 production have been signifcantly lowered. Where the removal of Production Efficiency destroyed the t1 market (which was already a niche industry), the reworking of the t2 related skills did that for the t2 market. Skills that were required to build stuff, merely got changed so that they make you build faster (which leads to more flooding). Before Crius, for example, you needed Advanced Frigate Construction lvl 5 to build an AF. Not only did they totally change the requirements to build, they also significantly lowered the impact of good skills on invention jobs. Before Crius, training the rank 5 Science Skills to lvl 5 gave you a not-insignificant edge when inventin, especially when you were using 7 million costing decryptors. Nowadays, the difference is so small that an 8 hour traintime lvl III can basically get the same profit a the lvl V.

5) Build times got significantly lowered, especially for modules and ammo. I'm not sure what the thought behind this was, as one character (yes one character not person) can reasonably supply the ENTIRE DAILY DEMAND in Jita on his own now. For example, I can, on one alt with 9 million skillpoints, invent and build enough Heavy Missile Launchers II to satisfy the Jita market. Alone. It's no surprise HML's sell at a loss.

6) System tax is a major factor in the production cost. System tax cannot be avoided, not be smarted around nor be reduced by skills. System tax punishes you for having a ton of production in one place and punishes you for having a streamlined and well organized factory. The only way to avoid said tax is by relocating your entire operation every ~10 days and for large producers that's just not going to happen. For example, I run my own little production line with 2 alts and moving their operation would mean moving about 12 freighters of goods. Now imagine what big production corps would have to move. System tax is a stupid idea and needs to be reworked asap.

That's just a few reasons.