Science & Industry

Hi all

I noticed a huge discrepancy in costs in case of researching various BPOs for ME or TE.

So, If I try to get an Orca BPO from ME 9 to ME 10 or from TE 18 to TE 20 it says it will cost me 424 mil ISK (in a system with like 1.69% index). Totally surprised I hovered my cursor over the cost and discovered that estimated item cost is 21+ BILLIONS !!!??? Like 30 times more the cost of an Orca and 25 times more the cost of BPO @ NPC

Same happening for a Citadel Torpedo Launcher BPO - around 60 mil from TE18 to TE20 same system same char says 60 mil isk. Estimated base item cost: 1.4 billions !!!??? 20 times more than the cost of a such launcher, 25 times more than the cost of BPO @ NPC.

I tried with a Capital Construction Part BPO like ...from TE18 to TE 20....like 16 mil ISK ...estimated cost 1.1 billions.


I really don't get how this calculation are made! The third, a more expensive BPO, cost much to less to research to max than the second and third.

Can someone enlighten me please?

So what does this mean in practice? Only do ME/TE research to the point where the "estimated item cost" is still less than the market value? At what point (size of ship, size of module, tech level) does this become an issue?

Those amounts get larger, quite a lot larger, when the BPO is for bigger things than an orca.

At what point do the diminishing returns direct against further ME or TE improvement? That is very much an individual decision and will depend on the actual improvement that that additional step provides, balanced off against the cost.

By way of an example, using http://eve-industry.org/calc/ you will see that:
- Building a zero-tax Aeon from an ME8 BPC costs very-roughly 25.67 billion isk;
- Using an ME9 BPC reduces that to approximately 25.42 billion isk; and
- 25.10 billion isk if it’s an ME10 BP.
That site also allows you to explore the cost – time differential for the actual BPO improvement steps.

So, where do the benefits justify the huge cost and time of each improvement step?

For my part I take capital components to 10/20, capital modules to 10/20, and capital hulls (orcas, freighters, carriers, and dreadnoughts) to 10/18. I realise others are likely to view that as over-cooking, but reckon I will manage to cope with that. I also carve off a few BPCs before putting the BPOs into each of the last few improvement steps, because those step take so long.