One of the quite unique features of Eve is that almost all items you use in your Eve career have been produced by other players. Each ship, each round of ammo or cap booster you use was once manufactured by a busy industrialist, who gathered the different raw materials to produce it.
To produce an item in Eve, you will first need a blueprint for the item, secondly the raw materials to build it from, and lastly a location to build it, which can either be an NPC station or player owned structure that has a factory module included.
In this first post of my industry series, I will only explain how the blueprint part to produce an item and the mechanics to improve these blueprints work. The actual process of building the item will be covered in a later post.
So how do you get these blueprints? Most blueprints can be found on the public market. You can find them in the market window under the Blueprints & Reactions folder:
Some special blueprints are given out as rewards from mission agents or can be found in NPC wrecks or exploration sites. All blueprints that you can find on the market are originally sold by NPC corporation at a fixed price and unlimited volume. However, players can resell these at different locations for higher prices, since not all blueprints can be found in a all regions of New Eden.
Bueprint Originals vs Blueprint Copies
There are two different kinds of blueprints that can both be used to produce a particular item. Firstly, there are blueprint originals (BPOs), which can produce an unlimited amount of an item. The second type are blueprint copies (BPCs), which can only produce a limited number of the item. The amount is specified by the number of runs on the blueprint copy. For many BPOs and BPCs a single run will also produce a single module or ship. However, for some items, usually the ones which are used in large quantities, e.g. ammunition or drones, a single run of the blueprint will produce several units. If all the runs on a BPC are used, it is destroyed.
BPCs can be created by a process called copying the BPO. BPCs themselves can not be copied again . You will always need the original to create a copy. Eve has a very strict copyright laws!
There are two metrics on a blueprint that specify the quality of the BPO or BPC. There is the Material Efficiency (ME) value between 1 % and 10 %, which reduces the amount of input materials required when an item is produced from the blueprint. The second metric is the Time Efficiency (TE) value between 2 % and 20 %, which reduces the time that is needed to use a single run from the blueprint.
The ME and TE value of a BPO can be increased by researching the blueprint. Both values must be researched separately by ME and TE research jobs.
You cannot improve the ME and TE of a BPC. If a BPO is copied from an BPO, the BPC inherits the ME and TE values of the original. So if you have a perfect BPO (ME 10% and TE 20% bonus) , you can also make perfect copies from it. When you buy a BPO from the market, the ME and TE values will initially be zero. BPCs that you sometimes get as mission rewards or from exploration mostly have some level of research on them, which also cannot be improved as with regular player made BPCs.
Once a BPO has been researched it cannot be sold on the market anymore. The only way to sell a researched BPO is to set up an Item Exchange Contract by the not very user friendly contract system.
Most blueprints can be researched with a couple of hours invested in skill training. Many only require various levels of the Science, Research and Metallurgy skills and some very basic skills that are related to the item, e.g. Rigging skills to research the Medium Core Defence Field Extender blueprint shown below. Some even require no skills at all to research them .
Industry Window
In game, all research related activities are done in the industry window. This window will show all your BPOs and BPCs in the lower part of the window. By selecting one, you now have the options to either build the item, increase ME or TE values, or make one or more copies of it. To pick one of these options, simply select the corresponding icons just below the blueprint in the center of the window.
Each activity will take a certain amount of time and costs some money. Both values are based on the number of runs you pick for the research job, which you can configure by the Job Runs field below the blueprint. One run for ME research will improve the BPO by 1% ME value. One run for TE research will increase the TE value by 2%.
To start the job use the Start-Button in the lower right side of the window.
If you select to copy the blueprint, you can specify the resulting number of runs on the blueprint copy and the number of copies to create.
Jobs can only be started if the total research duration of all selected runs is below 30 days, with the exception that you can always start a job if a single run already takes longer than 30 days, which is the case for some very time intensive BPOs like capital ships or capital ship parts. How long a single run takes can be viewed outside the industry window by the details of the blueprint.
If you want to know how the cost and time for your job is calculated, just hover the mouse over the price or duration, which will display a summary of the calculation with all skills and other effects that affect the job duration or price listed.
As a rule of thumb, the cost of a research job per run is proportional to the cost of the actual item that is produced by it, not the cost of the blueprint. The same is true for the duration. The longer it takes to produce the item, the longer the research time required per job run.
Science skills
There are several skills that will reduce the required time for a ME/TE research jobs and increase the number of jobs you can run at the same time.
- The Metallurgy skill reduces the time required for ME research by 5% per skill level.
- The Research skill reduces the time required for TE research by 5% per skill level.
- The Science skill reduces the time to copy BPO by 5% per skill level.
By default, you can only start one job at the same time. By training into the skills Laboratory Operation and Advanced Laboratory Operation you can start one additional job per level of each skill up to 11 research jobs at the same time.
Lastly, the skill Scientific Networking allows you to start and deliver research jobs remotely. Each level increases the range by 5 jumps to the station the BPO is located. This one is handy, if you don’t keep your research character always in the station it researches in.
Implants and Structure Bonuses
There are also the three types of implants that further decrease the job run duration similar to the related skills. Each of them decreases the time needed by either 1%, 3% or 5%. All three use different implant slots, so you can use one of each type at the same time.
Another option to decrease the time required for your research is to use a publicly accessible Engineering Complex (EC) or buy your own EC for your corporation to research in. Research can also be done in NPC stations, but since Engineering Complexes provide bonuses to reduce the required job duration, this is almost never the best way to do it.
Engineering Complexes come in three sizes: The Raitaru (medium), Azbel (large) and Sotiyo (extra large)
Each EC provides a fixed reduction bonus for all research job (ME / TE and copy) depending on the size, which are 15% for th Raitaru, 20% for the Azbel and 30% for the Sotiyo. They also reduce the job cost by 3% (M), 4% (L) and 5% (XL).
These bonuses can be further increased by fitting research related rigs on the EC. Rigs come again in three sizes. However, there are different rigs for the three EC sizes that give time and cost reduction bonuses.
There are alot of T1/T2 medium sized rigs, which decrease either cost or time of an ME, TE or copy job, with each bonus having a different rig.
The large rigs always decrease both cost and time of an ME, TE or copy job, with each type of job having a different rig.
Lastly, the XL rigs decrease both for any type of research job in one rig.
The final point to get some more bonuses for your research is, if the EC is located on high sec, low sec or null sec/wormhole space. The effect of each rig is increased by a factor of 1.9 for low sec and 2.1 for null sec and wormhole space.
So that’s pretty much all there is to say about research jobs and blueprints and cost/time calculations.
In the next part of this guide, I will give you some advice how you can turn all this theory into some serious profit with minimal effort. Sounds good, eh?