T3 Production Part II

In the previous post, we covered the invention process of T3 BPCs and the production of Hybrid Polymers, both required to build T3 cruisers, destroyers and their subsystems. Now it is time to use our BPCs to build the actual hulls and modules.

To build a T3 hull or subsystem, we need a bunch of components very similar to the ones needed for T2 production. All of the T3 cruiser hulls need exactly the same types and amount of components, so let’s have a look at Tengu cruiser hull as an example to see which ones we need:

Looking at the required building materials, we need eight different components, all of them specific to T3 production. Furthermore, we need a small amount of R.A.M – Starship Tech, which we also needed to build T2 ship hulls. There is no need for a T1 hull in case of T3 ship production. The hull fragments were already put into the BPC when we did the reverse engineering step to invent the BPC.

Most components are only used in small quantities, which means that raising your ME value during the BPC invention has only little impact on the build cost. It is therefore more efficient to invent for more runs instead of increasing your ME value.

Let’s have a look at one of the required components, in this case the Electromechanical Interface Nexus:

To build the component we need four different salvage types, which again can only be found in wormholes salvaging sleeper wrecks.

The second ingredient category required are three types of Hybrid Polymers. We covered the build process for these in the first part of this guide.

If we have a look at the other 7 components of the Tengu build, we can see that all build requirements follow the same general pattern. Each needs 2-4 different Hybrid Polymers and 2-6 different wormhole salvage types.

To get your hands on the component BPOs is quite simple, because they are sold by NPC corporations on the market. There are 16 different T3 components in the game and a full set of BPOs goes for 160 million ISK, a little more if you buy them in Jita 4/4. Research times on these are very short and you can get a perfect blueprint set in around 3-4 days depending on skills and location, although savings on ME are very little. In game the BPOs are under the Subsystem Components category, but these are also used to build the T3 hulls.

The 16 T3 components

The second type of T3 hull is the T3 destroyer, which have quite similar build requirements to the T3 cruisers:

The build also requires eight T3 specific components, with four of them used already in the Tengu build. Again all four of the T3 destroyers hulls need exactly the same input materials. I will skip a closer look on the 4 new components since these require the same input material types as the other T3 components, which is a bunch of sleeper salvage and various Hybrid Polymers.

Finally, you can build a total of 48 different T3 subsystems. You can divide these into four general categories, which are Offensive, Defensive, Propulsion and Core. Each category again contains three different subsystems for each of the T3 cruiser hulls. So e.g. there are 3 different Tengu Core modules or 3 different Proteus Propulsion modules.

Each T3 cruiser hull needs four of these subsystem modules (one from every category) to be assembled. Each subsystem works like a rig and changes certain attributes of the hull, but subsystems change the attributes much more compared to rigs. They can allow certain modules like a Covert Ops Cloak to be fitted, provide more fitting slots or give general hull bonuses.

Let’s have a look at the build requirements of a subsystem:

This time we need 6 different T3 components for the build. The first six components will be the same for all 48 subsystems.

The only component that differs for other subsystem categories is the one in the lower right of the screenshot, in this case the Reconfigured Subspace Calibrators. The sixths component is different for every subsystem category, so e.g. all 12 Propulsion subsystems have the same material costs and all 12 Core subsystems have the same requirements too.

That’s pretty much all there is to say about building T3 cruiser and destroyer hulls and T3 subsystems. You will nee the various Hybrid Polymers that we discussed in the last previous part of this guide, a large number of sleeper salvage parts to build the T3 components and an invented BPC. From the components you can build the actual hulls and subsystems with very similar material costs for most of them.

Final Thoughts on T3 Production

If you made it this far, you seem to be really interested in T3 production. Let’s have a look on the build cost compared to the market price by using the IPH build cost calculator. IPH (ISK per Hour) is a third party tool, that helps you calculated prices for all items in Eve by the public market data API that CCP provides. You can download the latest release from here.

There are a lot of variables that define the price of a completed hull or subsystem. Firstly, you can invent the BPC starting from three different ancient relic types for each hull or subsystem. Next, there are the different descriptors that increase the probability of the invention attempt and the number of runs of your BPCs. You also have the choice between building the T3 components yourself, buying the completed component from the market or a mix of both.

Putting all these parameters into IPH results on a massive list of different build option with different profitabilities. For the 48 subsystems, you will get hundreds of different build options and costs for each invention decryptor used. Considering the decriptors, you end up with 1000+ different build options. That’s why I highly recommend to calculate your costs in detail before building anything large scale on the T3 market.

Here are the most profitable subsystems I found for a specific decriptor at the time of writing with the corresponding profit and parameters I used:

T3 subsystem manufacturing prices

There are some subsystems that have a relatively high profit but there are also many that result in massive losses. For many builds buying components on the market is also cheaper than to build them yourself. So be careful what you build and never build too large quantities to not crash the market. If prices suddenly change, you might end up with massive losses if you build too much of one module. The same is true with updating orders too much. Keep in mind what your build costs where and just wait for prices to recover.

Next, let’s have a look at destroyer build costs:

T3 destroyer manufacturing prices

Again, some of the destroyer hulls or profitable to produce and some result in a loss. The build with only partial component build are usually better than building stuff from scratch. Also consider that the screenshot above is only for a specific decriptor. If you use a different one prices will change slightly. Just play around with IPH a bit to find an optimal one.

Finally, the T3 cruiser build costs:

T3 cruiser manufacturing prices

The cruiser build costs are quite surprising, since none of the cruiser builds will result in a profit. I am not sure why this is at the time of writing. Maybe the T3 cruisers are not used as much as in the past anymore and hence there is a bunch of stock from players selling their old unused ships.

Building T3 hulls and subsystems is quite the endgame of manufacturing complexity. There are many options to build your product counting the invention process into the price. On top of that, the market seems to be quite complex too, with big price spikes for certain items.

If you like this complexity, T3 production might be an activity that is challenging and will keep you busy figuring out for quite a bit.

T3 Production Part I

The most complex manufacturing mechanics in Eve might be the production of T3 strategic cruisers and destroyers and their related subsystems. Strategic cruisers were introduced more than a decade ago with the arrival of wormhole space. Very similar to triglavian ship production and space, you can only obtain the various materials to produce T3 ships and modules from killing sleeper NPCs and running exploration sites in wormhole space.

The actual process to get your T3 items is a mix of the mechanics we have already seen in previous parts of my industry guides and involves several research and build steps. Here is a high level overview of the step involved:

  • Firstly, you will need to produce T3 blueprint copies for your desired ships and subsystems by a process called reverse engineering, which is very similar to the T2 BPC invention process.
  • To build the T3 ships and subsystems you will need special T3 components, which are build quite similar to the normal components used for T2 production.
  • However, to produce these T3 components you will need a special intermediate product called Hybrid Polymers, which itself needs to be produced out of Fullerene Gases. Fullerene gases can only be found in gas clouds in wormhole space.

Since the entire process is quite complicated, I will break it down in two separate posts. In this first one, I will cover the invention process for the BPCs and the production of Hybrid Polymers. In the second part, I will show you how to build the T3 components out of Hybrid Polymers and the final production of T3 ships and subsystems.

Reverse Engineering

To get your hands on some T3 BPCs you will need to reverse engineer so called ancient relics that can only be found in relic sites in wormhole space. These relics come in various qualities, which represents how well they are still preserved.

There are 6 different ancient relic types that can be found. Two of them are used to invent the T3 cruiser and destroyer BPCs (called Hull Section and Small Hull Section). The remaining four are used to invent the BPCs of the four subsystem categories for T3 cruisers (Armor Nanobot, Power Cores, Thruster Sections and Weapon Subroutines). All 6 of them come in three qualities (Wrecked, Malfunctioning, Intact), which results in a total of 18 different artifacts.

The 18 ancient artifacts in the market window

To reverse engineer any of them simply right click them in a industry facility, which will open the industry window for the invention process. In contrast to normal T2 invention using T1 BPCs, you cannot build anything from the plain ancient relic. They need to be researched into T3 BPCs first. All 18 invention process need a total of six Data Cores of two different types. Which types changes with each ancient relic.

Reverse Engineering of a small intact hull section

The invention outcome and success probability can be modified by using the same decryptors used for T2 BPC invention. This is also when the quality of the artifact comes into play. Similar to T2 invention, each invention attempt has a success percentage to reverse engineer the T3 BPC. The better the quality of the artifact, the higher will be the unmodified success rate. Intact artifacts have a base rate of 26%, malfunctioning artifacts have a rate of 21% and wrecked artifacts only of 14%. This value can of course be modified by using Decryptors as with regular T2 invention.

Since there are a lot more T3 hulls and subsystems than artifacts, each artifact can be used to invent a number of different BPCs. Before the invention you have to pick the BPC you want to get if the attempt is successful.

The small hull section can result in one of the 4 T3 desstroyer BPCs

Hybrid Polymer Production

With our T3 BPCs freshly researched, we can now move to the next step of the build process: getting your hands on Hybrid Polymers.

The first raw material you will need for this is group of gases called Fullerenes, which can only be harvested in wormholes. Fullerene gas comes in several flavours, each of them used to produce a different Hybrid Polymer. All Fullerene gases are quite bulky, but you can compress them like regular ores to get them into your hauler of choice. Remember that they are quite pricey, so don’t haul too much at once to avoid getting ganked.

The different Fullerene types are number by the following schema:

Fullerite-CXXX where XXX is a number that does not really mean much. However each type can only be found in a certain wormhole class, with the cheaper ones found in lower class wormholes and the more expensive ones only found in C5-C6 wormholes.

The 9 different Fullerene types

Next on our shopping list for Hybrid Polymers are the corresponding BPOs to produce them. These BPOs are sold by NPC corporations on the market and are actually called Formulas but work the same as a regular BPOs. They cannot be researched, copied or invented and are not consumed when you build from them. Just buy a full set of 9 Formulas on the market for 135 mill if you want to get seriously into polymer production.

Full Set of Hybrid Polymer BPOs

Unfortunately, you cannot start a reaction formula from a regular industry facility. You will need a Refinery (Tatara or Athanor) in low sec, null sec or wormhole space with a Standup Hybrid Reactor installed.

Refinery service module required to do Hybrid Polymer production

The closest system to Jita for a publicly accessible Tatara is usually Tama, just four jumps out of Jita. But of course all major null sec power blocks will have their private alliance infrastructure you can use as a member.

Once you found a Refinery and hauled in all your gas and Formulas, you can start the build by right clicking the Formula and select “Use Formular”. Each Formula requires two different Fullerene gases, a small amount of one basic minerals and some fuel blocks to build. Which gases, fuel block and mineral exactly depends on the Formular, but all gases and fuel blocks are used in one of the Formulas.

Building Fulleroferrocene

From a price perspective the minerals and fuel blocks contribute very little to the total cost of the hybrid polymer, so it is not worth to build the fuel blocks yourself. Building one run of polymers takes about 1 hour 30 minutes and the only skill required to start it is Reactions to level 3, which is a rather cheap skill and quick train. You will end up with between 100 to 1000 units of the polymer again depending on which one you want to build. To run more jobs simultaneously you can train the skills Mass Reactions and Advanced Mass Reactions, which both give you one additional reaction job per level.

At the time of writing, Hybrid Polymer production was quite profitable with up to around 0,5 million ISK / hour for certain polymers. Considering that you can build huge quantities pretty much 24/7 out of the formulas, making these polymers alone can be quite a profitable activity. However, since the production facilities are in low, null or wormhole space, it is a bit tricky to get your raw materials to your production refinery. Without your own jump freighter or access to a cheap jump freighter service, you might simply not be able to get enough raw materials to your refinery to make large quantities. Also consider that the market for polymers is not huge, so dumping millions of each on the market might just crash the current prices and result in a loss.

Profit Calculation for Hybrid Polymers

That’s it for the first part of this T3 production guide. The next part will cover the production of T3 components and finally the actual T3 ship hulls and subsystems.

Triglavian Ship and Module Production

The next big topic to cover in my ongoing production guide series is the production of triglavian ships and modules.

The Triglavian faction was introduced a couple of years back with the arrival of triglavian PVE dead space pockets. In these pockets, you can fight various triglavian NPCs to earn good loot and blueprint copies to produce triglavian ships and modules. It was expanded a year later with the opening of Poshven a new region in space that was conquered by the Triglavian faction from the empire factions. The new area can only be visited by using special filaments, which will teleport you to a random system in Poshven. Both the PVE pockets and Poshven are the source for all items related to the triglavians faction.

Triglavian ships were quite popular for PVP every since the release, so there is always a big demand for and endless supply of ships and modules.

Triglavian BPCs

There are currently no blueprint originals in game to build triglavian equipment. The only way to get your hands on BPCs is to run triglavian PVE sites, buy them by public contract on the market or get them from triglavian LP stores in Poshven. The drop rate for these BPCs in the PVE sites is quite low and to get enough ship or module BPCs to produce large scale will be to buy them by public contracts. Even then the market for BPCs can be pretty thin and the cost will be a quite significant part of the total production costs.

There are some T2 variants of the triglavian ships and modules and these BPCs can be invented out of their T1 BPCs counterparts. You can find an explanation of invention in my corresponding T2 invention guide.

There are currently 12 different triglavian ship hulls ingame, with five T1 subcap hulls, four T2 subcap variants and one capital size hull. They come in the usual hull sizes reaching from frigate size to dreadnoughts.

Triglavian T1 + T2 subcapital BPCs

All triglavian ships use a special weapon type called Entropic Disintegrators. Each ship hull size (small, medium and large) has a corresponding size of Disintegrators which again come in several different variations for each size. There is always a compact, scoped and faction version additionally to the regular T1 version available. In contrast to the other weapon systems the scoped and compact Disintegrators do not drop as loot but have their own BPCs that can be found in triglavian PVE sites. Furthermore, there is one low slot damage increasing module called Entropic Radiation Sink, which comes in a T1 and T2 version.

Light Disintegrator BPCs + Radiation Sink Variants

The disintegrators use special ammunition, which also needs to be produced from BPCs that can be obtained the same way as all other trig BPCs. Each weapon size has three T1 ammo versions, which are Baryon (short range), Tetryon (medium range) and Meson (long range). The T2 weapons can also use two T2 ammo version for each size, which are Mystic (invented out of Meson BPCs, long range) and Occult (invented out of Tetryon BPCs, short range) .

All together there are currently 46 different triglavian ship, module and ammo BPCs in the game, which can keep your production lines quite busy.

T2 Invention

To get you hands on the T2 BPCs, the corresponding T1 BPCs needs to be transformed by invention. There two T1 cruisers (Vedmak and Rodiva) that can be invented to the T2 Ikitursa (HAC) and T2 Zamazd (Logi) BPCs. The Kikimora destroyer BPC is used to get the Draugur command destroyer BPC and the Damavik frigate BPC to get the Nergal assault frigate BPC.

You will need Triglavian Quantum Engineering Datacores for all ship BPC invention jobs and each T1 BPC needs additionally one type of faction datacore (Gallente, Minmatar, Amarr or Caldari). Since the BPCs for the invention attempt are relatively costly, it makes sense to use a Decryptor which increases the invention probability and number of runs like the Attainment-, Optimized Attainment- or Parity-Decryptor. You also get a small ME bonus on the T2 BPC if you use the Optimized Attainment or Parity Decryptor, which saves a couple of million on the build costs of the more expensive T2 ship hulls.

Ikitursa Invention Costs (click to enlarge)

Invention for the three T2 weapon BPCs works only with the simple T1 weapon BPC. You cannot invent from the compact or scoped BPC versions, which makes the T1 versions quite a bit more expensive on the market since they are used for the T1 and T2 version. Invention for the weapon BPCs requires High Energy Physics and Laser Physics Datacores.

Lastly, the Entropic Radiation Sink BPC needs Electronic Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Datacores to create the T2 version.

T1 Module Production

To build any triglavian module or ship requires two special materials found in triglavian PVE pockets or Poshven, which are Crystalline Isogen-10 and Zero Point Condensate. Since both are used for all triglavian equipment, prices are usually quite high and they make up a significant amount of the total build costs. Additionally, you will need some basic minerals to build them.

Build Costs for as Light Disintegrator I (click to enlarge)

The production time for all of them is quite low and not the limiting factor to produce them.

T1 Ship Production

The build requirements for T1 triglavien ships consist of three different material categories.

Firstly, you will need basic minerals like you need for all empire T1 ship hulls. The relative cost of the basic minerals becomes bigger the bigger the ship hull gets. So for frigates the required minerals are rather cheap, while for Leshak battleships the cost gets quite significant with over 75% of the total build costs.

Secondly, you will again need the triglavian specific items, which are Crystalline Isogen-10 and Zero Point Condensate. This time the relative cost of these is quite high for smaller hulls (e.g. 90% for the Damavik frigate) and getting lower the bigger the hull becomes.

Lastly, you will need some components that were also required to build T1 battleships and above. The contribution to the build costs of these is very low (<10%) for all hull sizes, so just buy these on the market.

Vedmak Build Costs (click to enlarge)

The build costs of triglavien T1 ships is quite high compared to the regular empire T1 hulls mostly because of the additional requirement for Crystalline Isogen-10 and Zero Point Condensate. There are no skill required to build any of the T1 hulls apart from Industry level 1.

T2 Ship Production

The T2 ship build requirements are similar to regular empire T2 build requirements. They fall into the usual three material categories, which are a T1 version of the hull, R.A.M. – Starship Tech, Morphite and eight different components.

Build Cost of an Ikitursa (click to enlarge)

However five of the required components cannot be build but can only be found in triglavian PVE sites or Poshven. The other three components are build out of regular component BPOs that are also used in other non-triglavian T2 ships. All T2 trig hull use the same eight components, just in different quantities.

The total build cost of T2 triglavien ships are very high, adding 100%-200% to the price of a similar sized empire T2 hull.

Is it any Profitable?

Calculating the profit for the ships with complicated build requirements is a rather tedious task. There is a very handy tool called ISK per Hour out there, that will calculate the production costs of every item in the game and check if it is profitable to build or not. Since many builders don’t use any tools to check profitability of their items, it happens that the market is full of items that are priced below the cost of the input materials.

The tool itself is quite complicated and I will probably write a separate post about how it is used. Nevertheless, I checked the triglavian hulls and weapons profitability and figured that most of the ships or modules were just hardly profitable at the time of writing. The Damavik for example made 2,6 million ISK profit after taxes and fees on a 26 million ISK hull, which is about 10% profit.

Damavik Profit Calculation

The Kikimora made a loss of 400K on a 30 million ISK hull, so was also not an option to build.

Finally, I checked the Ikitursa, which made a whooping 72 million ISK loss per hull, even with nicely researched component BPOs.

Ikitursa Build Cost Calculation

It might be the case that many triglavian hulls and modules are built by trig site PVE runners, who build them by what they get out of the sites they run. The competition on the market then might simply drive the price to levels that make it unprofitable to build them. Unfortunately, whatever the reason for this messed up markets are, for most hulls and items it is currently not worth to build them for a significant profit.