Industry Changes and Effects on Lowsec Capital Production

Industry isn't my strong suit in Eve. I have some skills in it, and used to do some Tech 2 production out of a highsec POS about 3 1/2 years ago. I ended up giving it up because my heart was into looking for pew, and my POS wasted many hours in fuel between jobs. It just wasn't as efficient as it could have been.

With the new changes announced for manufacturing, BNANA's Logistics/Industrial chief (Gothie) mentioned to myself and some of the directors on comms yesterday that our capital production line is likely going to be grinding to a halt this summer. Of course, we're like "What the hell? We just got it up and running a couple months ago!"

I've got some handle on production, as I mentioned, I've done a little of it, but I can't really wrap my head around the numbers. When my own expertise falls a bit short, I do what any sane head of an alliance does, and I drag the guy who knows his shit into a conversation and have him explain it to me.

Military experts are saying lowsec capital manufacturers
should start investing in lubricants instead.

First up, getting into the capital game as a startup manufacturer requires an initial investment of around 14 Billion ISK for the BPOs involved in components and ships. Those BPOs need between 5 and 6 weeks of research each before the manufacturer can even think about building anything with them. As it stands now, this research can be done at a POS while the 14 billion ISK investment stays locked in a station. After the change, these BPOs will need to be actually inside the POS. In highsec, an industrial will have a 24 hour warning before someone can attack and RF his POS. Plenty of time to cancel jobs and get your stuff out.

I shouldn't need to tell you what happens in lowsec when someone finds out your POS is holding several billion ISK in loot, but even this is manageable. With slots going away, BPOs can be researched in a station, likely for a premium, but at least safe, transit aside.

That brings us to the core of the problem. Not even the guys that rode the short yellow bus to school would dare hold a mining op in lowsec. There are relatively safe places to do it in null sec, but where we live? Guaranteed hot drop in 30 minutes or less, MAYBE 60 if you can keep a low enough profile. Every single one of the 101 systems in our war zone is within a single jump from the 3 main Gal Mil capital staging systems, to say nothing of the threats posed by BALEX, Snuffbox, Stealth Wear, Scum, or any other group in the area with a titan and a t3 gang. The other war zone is considerably smaller than ours, and the people living there have bridging titans too.

With no local source of ore and minerals, any materials used in lowsec production need to be shipped in. With the life expectancy of a standard freighter in lowsec measured at about the 5 minute mark, that means jump freighters and fuel. The average dread takes about 1.5 million m3 of minerals to construct. Shipping efficiency is obtained right now through ore compression in modules. Our industrial arm uses 425 mm Railgun I modules mostly, which offer about 30x mineral compression allowing a single JF run to haul in enough materiel for about 5 dreads with some filler minerals to compensate for ratios.

With module reprocessing changes coming, modules can only be reprocessed for 55% of their minerals, which will sound the death knell for module compression when the expansion hits this summer. The good news in this is that ore will then hold a similar compression ratio, so we won't need to worry about making 5 jump freighter runs to build a single dread. The bad news for lowsec is in the new REFINING changes.

This ship is about as vertical as the predicted drop in
lowsec capital manufacturing is likely to be this summer.

Gothie was kind enough to link me a chart explaining the differences in reprocessing. Considering that we can't build caps in highsec, we can ignore any small advantage lowsec may have over highsec in refining, and instead look to null sec as our competition in this market... a place that really isn't any more risky than where we call home, yet will see an 11% advantage in ore processing yield.

An 11% advantage on small ships is really no big deal. On a 2 billion ISK capital hull, 11% is a deal breaker. We're already locked out on Supercap production, but to this point we've at least been able to remain competitive on dreads and carriers. At an 11% disadvantage, lowsec capital manufacturers are just about fucked, GG.

So an upgraded outpost in null will have minerals available 19.9% cheaper than someone that refines in a NPC station, and 11% cheaper than a POS module in Low sec. Which means costs for building capitals that are that much cheaper....
Some say "Yes but upgrading an outpost is expensive!!! It's many billions!!!". To which I call bullshit, when a player with 4 indy toons (something that is at the low end of any half-serious indy guy - I myself have 7) can crank out 60 moros or Naglfar per month, worth 130 billion at today's prices. An 11% cost advantage will simply kill out all low sec capital manufacturers, when frankly the risk of building in low (particularly FW low) is not exactly lower than null... -Gothie Maulerant, BNANA Logistics/Manufacturing Division

This is exactly the sort of stuff I was talking about during the CSM campaign season. It appears that without lowsec representation on the CSM, no one either on the CSM, or at CCP either realized this would be an issue, or cared, and once again lowsec is getting bent over and shafted while a severe financial advantage is being handed out to sov holding null sec entities. Call me a crazy bitter asshole, but the risk/reward is not computing for me in this scenario.