Science & Industry

Hi,

As people ask about feasibility of POSes quite often and then receive partial information, I've decided to list ALL benefits of owning the POS from industrialist point of view. If you find it helpful just send me your Likes :)

Firstly note that SMALL POS uses less then 4mil of fuel per day, MEDIUM uses less then 8mil and LARGE uses less then 16mil. Also note that High-sec ore compression, elements of T3 production, moon mat. reactions, drug reactions can only be done in POS, just to name the few. For everything else that can be done in station as well as in POS, there are 4 benefits (forum people mention mostly 2 of those 4). In order from very important to least important:

1.System cost index
POS allows you to do industry closer to market hub while still keeping your job installation cost down OR you can install POS in perma low index system. Volume of production/research in system raises indexes from 1-2% to 10%, Jita system cost index is above 10% (10.29% as of writing this). And this index directly translates to the installation cost of a job. If for example my base item cost is 100mil for a ship, I will pay 10.29mil to put that ship in production in Jita. Now you could move to station in system far away from Jita where index is lower (0,5-2%) OR you could put a POS to system closer to Jita that doesn't have production capable stations. Now as only POS owners can raise this index because stations can NOT do research/manufacture (no slots), system index will remain quite low AND THIS IS THE MAIN BENEFIT OF A POS.

2. 2% less material usage for manufacturing.
It is enough to manufacture one ship or batch of items that are worth 200mil+ and only from this material saving you payed off fuel usage of small POS for that day. (2% of 200mil is 4mil). This is the second most important benefit as one character with 10 lines will easily produce in one day more then 200mil worth of goods.

3. Speed benefits of POS
+33% more products per day (-25% manufacturing time reduction) give you pure additional profit that covers the fuels quickly
+50% faster ME/TE research,
+66% faster BPO copy time
+100% faster invention (yea, you can get 2 BPCs instead of one in same time frame).

4. There is station tax of 10%.
This 10% is based on system index tax so if system index is 10.29% like in Jita then station tax will be additional 1,029% on top so install cost will be 11.32% . If system index is 2% then station tax will be 0,2% on top of that so install cost will be 2.2% of base item price.


How that translates to you?

Let us use production of one Armageddon as an example:
Base item cost 158mil (its average value across all EVE).
Location for production is New Caldari which is 1 jumps from Jita - system cost index 4.59% (average).
Cost of minerals to build one ship using buy orders in Jita is 177mil.

If we use Station in New Caldari then:
We pay 7.96mil in installation cost (4,59% of 158mil + 10% station tax on those 4,59% which is additional 0,459%).
We pay 177mil in materials
We wait 2h and 43min to get ship (max skills no implants).

If we use POS in New Caldari then:
We pay 7.24mil in installation cost (only 4.59% of 158mil)
We pay 173,46mil in material cost (2% saved from assembly array)
We wait for 2h and 2min to get the ship.

So moving from Station to POS in same system we saved 4.26mil on one ship which covered small POS fuel for that day Now if we include biggest saving and that is actually deploying POS in perma low index system (one without industry capable station) we can move from 4-10% cost index system to 1-4% index system while still being same distance from market hub.

In total you can quickly cover POS fuel.

Hope this helps,
Aluka 7th

It should be noted, the 2% material saving depends on what you're making

For a bunch of T2 production, for example, the saving is far less than 2%, due to the way the rounding works for materials. That's not to say you shouldn't use a POS. Just that you should keep an eye on the materials.

QFT. Multiple runs per job will allow a manufacturer to come much closer to that ideal 2% material savings.

This thread is POS VS STATION comparison.

Compression and other things that CAN'T be done in station are mentioned at beginning of my post but in a context of POS vs Station comparison those are unimportant.
Reprocessing also is not listed as benefit of a POS because POSes have base refining of 52% and 54% while stations have base refining of 50%, 52%, 53%, 54%, 57% and 60% (fully upgraded Minmatar outpost) so there is no clear benefit of a POS for all readers.
Simple management of storage and materials is "nice to have" feature but doesn't provide clear ISK benefit.

A7

Yes, high-sec reprocessing has 50% base in station (72.4% skills + implant) and 52% in POS (75.3% skills+implant).
BUT if we talk high-sec then note that it is not ISK beneficial to refine in highsec (pos or station). To borrow Shoogies table:
Facility................................Base Rate.....Skills + Implant........Extra Minerals Over NPC
NPC Station............................50%.................72.4%...............................-
High Sec POS.........................52%.................75.3%.............................4%
Low Sec POS..........................54%.................78.1%.............................8%
Upgr Minm Outpost.................60%.................86.8%............................20%
So currently the profitable way for industrialist is to sell at market hub compressed ore which will be moved to null and yield 20% more materials there and rather buy refined minerals that someone else refined in high-sec and build from that.

Another even greater factor is that Supercapital production has one of the highest demands of low end minerals (namely: trit). Because compression via modules is a thing of the past, SC/Titan producers can only import tritanium via compressed ore. That is why you see the trit prices falling, but the ore prices rising. Trit itself is too expensive to move, so those 0.0 producers now have zero demand for trit but are hungry for compressed ore.

That is the complete reason why I don't stand behind reprocessing as POS benefit because it is not in practice. It is just more convenient for "lazy" people in specific area of EVE universe
Compression is very profitable tho but can't be done in station.

It depends on global work done in EVE but rule of thumb is that solo player wont be able to go past 1% and you need 5-10 characters working around the clock for index to raise up to ~2% and stay there etc. So if its 4% and suddenly all people are gone and you are left alone, then it will decay toward 1% again. I had POS in system with 20 onlined POSes but I guess people didn't work all the time because index was around 1.8-2.2%.

Yes.

So even compression is not profitable with current prices, "excellent".
That is why people should stick to those benefits I've listed which are clear and always exist.

Add to that new CCP's proposal regarding no more AI for turrets, they need to be manually controlled to defend the POS or it will be getting blown with no defense if the attackers managed to get your Corp activity trend. I don't know how people in WH or lowsec can live with new CCP proposal.

As some of the others have eluded to, the downsides to POS ownership have definitely been missed off, primarily the "other people can and will attack it" thing. Consider your Armageddon, you may save a little in the build, but you need to either work from a BPC or risk sticking your 1.5B+ BPO in a POS. From a station you can chuck it in for a 7 day build and worry about it next week, in a POS you'd have to do it day by day if you want to be able to safely evac it. You've then got the big pain of having to ship large volumes of materials to the POS and the products back to the station before you can call out couriers, that's a big one for me as I tend to move my chars about a fair bit so am rarely in the system where my production is being done.

All in all, a POS will pay for itself and some, but it will increase the amount of effort you have to put into industry and it will add more exposure to risks. You have to decide if that's for you. Personally I can't be bothered, so the only POSes I keep are offline ones with a refinery and compression array so I can turn it on for an hour here and there when I want to work with ore.