+Doyce Testerman posted up an expanded version of the "Creation v. Destruction" graphic featured at the EVE keynote, and I was inspired to write some more words on the subject:
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| Image source: CCP |
0.0 Industry Buff Has Arrived
This topic was pretty hot this fall. I wrote some words on the matter, again from my T2 perspective at the time. But as a brief TL;DR
The problems facing null industry are many faceted. Material supply and outpost limitations were two parts of that problem. There are more issues when it comes to bringing T2 production out to the warzone, leaving freight-from-HS as the more desired solution.The meat-and-potatoes, as I see it? This is an excellent first step. By improving low-end volumes locally, and vastly improving outpost hardware, this goes a very long way to improve the industrial picture. It's starting to look like a well-implemented plan to drop outposts strategically for carebear contingents could see some real successes.
The other part I see here is a great start toward farms-and-fields. By incentivizing people to utilize player-owned outposts as manufacturing hubs puts more carebear skin in the game and makes conquering that resource a painful (but avoidable) blow. I have yet to do any real number-crunching, but it's giving me hope to try whereas today I wouldn't even consider the proposition.
- BUT -
These improvements really make the T1/Capital picture juicy... but still leaves a lot to be desired for T2. And I'd argue that the T2 module stream is just as important as the T1 hull stream. Also, I'd argue that there will be an "unintened consequence" where traditional compression drops the price of low-ends in empire significantly... but that might be a good thing.
There are a lot of problems with the T2 paradigm that don't fit well into a null-bear strategy, and maybe that's "working as intended". The primary problem is that moon-goo is regional, and you won't be able to source more than a few advanced-materials locally. If you're stuck shipping anyway, why bother taking the extra risk of DIY when you can just ship in the final products? Also, Invention is centered around high-volume, low diversity. You'd still be stuck exporting the majority of finished products. Lastly, datacores are an empire product, once again requiring shipment. This leaves "ship it" three votes ahead of "build it". Especially when logistical effort is really tallied.
- But, BUT -
I don't want to pooh-pooh the whole picture. Odyssey gives us industrialists the first REAL chance to carve out a player-owned factory-fortress. By dropping a few outposts, strategically, deep inside your controlled territory, you could do some really interesting work. T2 would not be out of the picture, and might be a great way to leverage moon revenue and put the plebes to work. There's still a problem of POS being a little too squishy for my taste, but I think the tools are being rolled out to give a damned good roll of it.
This is just a first reaction, and no real number crunching has been put behind it. I am intrigued by the actual mechanical feasibility. More thoughts soon(tm)
4 comments:
You're basically right. The first problem with local Tech II was requiring the Tech I item, but the new facilities and new ores probably address that - you can build that all in house.
So moving past that, then, you need the Tech II materials, and since those are regional you have three choices.
1: Import them in component form and build the ship. This isn't HORRIBLE as once you subtract the ship hull itself components tend to be less volume than the ship.
2: Import the advanced moon goo, build the components, and build the ship. This is dumb, since the moon goo volume is higher than the component volume.
3: Import the raw moon goo and run reaction chains to produce the advanced moon goo, build the components, and build the ship. You'll burn out within a month from running all the reaction chains you need, although it will at least get you extra profit for doing so.
On top of that, something you didn't touch on, is the time issue. If I'm looking to replace a fleet of welped ahacs, I can stuff 30+ per run into a JF and have it replaced in a few hours (or by the next day when logistics makes its run, anyway). Or, I can jump the components up and spend (according to eve IPH) about two days per zealot inventing and building, provided I have enough slots at all.
Tech I manufacturing isn't quite as bad. If I have the minerals and blueprints on hand and welp a zealot fleet I can build sixty per day per character (more if my BPOs have PE research) so emergency local fleet replacement is actually feasible.
At the end of the day, I think it's fine. I think regional moon minerals, even if (as they should be) they're the lower end of the tier creates the potential for interesting dynamics and shouldn't ever go away, and I think that some reliance on empire by nullsec (and vice versa) is a good thing.
Followup thought: The solution to the burnout issue in #3, of course, is to work cooperatively with a corp or group of pilots within your corp to split the workload necessary for running the dozens of towers required to support that sort of vertically integrated operation.
Enhanced gameplay through group play. What a shocking thought, eh? ;)
The whole thought experiment was dropping 50 nullbear chars in an dead end with a couple outposts and a cache of POS towers. seems like a half-decent "bottom up" scheme.
still, just a thought. I haven't tried to figure out the realities yet.
I'll mirror mynna's comments. I would never do T2 construction in nullsec due to the amount of materials that I would need to import/react. The easiest items to make per time are T1 hulls, Capital, and Capital components. When I was keeping 50-75 B on the nullsec market, I bought all my T2 items in bulk from Jita/Amarr. It was far easier than making 500 Large Shield Extender II's myself.
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