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Duh. That's the whole point of my post.

IMHO the differences between sizes of EC should be:

• number of available activity lines
• number of types of activities available
• limits on maximum sizes of ships produced

A small EC should be able to handle 8 activity lines, and perhaps be limited to two activity types and frigate/cruiser ship manufacturing. Then a medium (the current planned smallest EC) could have double the lines, handling up to battleships and orca/freighter and capable of more 4 activity types (e.g.: research, manufacturing, reactions, reverse engineering), then a large capable of capital ships and 8 activity types and 8 times the base activity lines, and an XL capable of supercarriers (and having 16 times the base activity lines, able to handle all activities at once)

Activity lines include:

• ME research
• PE research
• BPO copying
• Invention
• Reverse engineering
• Moon goo reactions
• Drug manufacture
• Assembly/Manufacturing

From memory, a large POS was capable of running a dozen ME/PE/copy labs (but with no defences online).

Modules to attach to ECs to provide the activity lines could work like subsystems on a T3 cruiser, with size restrictions. So there might be four subsystem modules, with small, medium, large, XL variants containing activity lines in the same way that Mobile Labs, Advanced Mobile Labs and Hyasyoda Mobile Lab contain mixtures of lab types.

Thus a Small Lab Module might contain 1 ME lab and 1 PE lab, or copy lab and 1 invention lab. The medium variant would have double the number of labs, and so on to the XL variant with 16 labs (e.g.: 8 ME + 8 PE, or 8 copy and 8 invention). There could be specialist labs (dropped as BPCs, or offered as rewards from NPCs) with different mixes, such as a Hyasyoda XL Lab Module with 16 invention lines. Larger activity lines would then take up more "space" in an activity module, so one XL assembly module might contain 1 supercapital assembly line, 2 capital assembly lines, 8 large assembly lines, or 16 small assembly lines. One S assembly module might contain a single small assembly line.

Restricting the activity types could be accomplished by not mixing lab types in the modules. Thus a small can be limited to 4 activity lines by only providing activity modules with 1 activity type: 2 ME labs, 2 PE labs, 2 copy labs, 2 polymer reactors, etc. Then the XL modules could have sets of activities, such as "4 ME labs, 4 PE labs, 2 copy labs, 8 invention labs", or "2 ammunition RAM, 2 rig RAM, 2 small assembly lines, 8 ship assembly lines"). Some study of existing POS layouts should give you an idea as to what combinations will be useful to industrialists.

The small EC should be able to handle the work of 2 industrialist characters, 4 for the M, 8 for the L, 16 for the XL.

I know CCP was trying to move away from restrictions on available activity lines, but this is par for the course in POS life. It's part of what industrialists do: want more capacity, add more structures. An external observer should be able to estimate the manufacturing capacity of a system by looking at the number and size of structures in the system. One station should not provide infinite invention queues.

Differentiating sizes by efficiency is basically telling small industrial groups to quit the game.

Nothing about the refining ....
I think there are too much rigs …
Example: you need 2 xl for refine craft every thing and run research …
This is not normal the ultimate industrial structure have to craft , refine and research without making choices and which rig is the best
Just 1 for the refine , 1 for the production, 1for the research

so... i'm curious as to why / how the decision was made to double nerf the defenses of engineering complexes? i mean, i'm perfectly ok with lower hp and dmg output and all that, and i'm ok with increased vulnerability windows, but why on earth do we have to get both? cant you just pick one? and revert the other? like give them the increased vulnerability and nerfed dmg, but leave their hp alone.

any insight on this?

in an NPC station there is no vulnerability period, and in an outpost nothing drops.

This is a massive buff for people who like to blow up structures as the best in class structure for almost every item in every space apart from possibly hisec now drops stuff.

QUESTION: Are these structures meant to replace reaction arrays and Drug labs? The Gas Guys in the corp need to know if they'll need to fork up a small POS when we move the manufacturing over.




CCP hates industry.

Honestly, I always thought that the Eng Complexes should be entremely tough and robust, but have no actual dps.

These things should have a ton of interior generators and excessive armor plating.

No, they're not meant to replace reaction arrays.

Agreed.

Doesn't make sense to be able to manufacture them, but they can't dock in it.

I was really looking forward to this expansion, but not any more. Not very happy about most of this, but the fuel costs are especially egregious.

60 blocks / hour for just your basic manufacturing, research, and invention. That's more than 3 times as much as a faction medium tower, which also happens to do everything, not just a couple selective niches, with efficiency, while being much tougher to kill as well as portable and cheaper to put up!.

To put that in perspective, we're talking approximately 750,000,000 ISK / month for this thing (Medium EC) versus around 250,000,000 ISK for the vastly superior POS. Where's the risk vs reward? It's all increased risks and costs for less reward. How much more stuff do you need to make to just recoup the extra 1/2 bil ISK in fuel costs? I don't know about some, but I actually already have a full time job and don't need another.

If nothing else, at least cut the fuel cost in half or less and/or remove the onlining costs for the modules.

It still wouldn't be as good as a POS, due to being locked into certain niches and being much more vulnerable and non portable and more expensive for less functionality, but it might at least be better than going back to a station again. As is, they are all worthless for all but the largest corps, who can keep them running non stop to make up for the fuel costs and have large fleets to protect their paper thin assets!