In this third part of my industry series, I want to cover the first step to produce T2 modules and ships by getting your hands on T2 blueprint copies.
There are also still very few T2 blueprint originals in the game. These were given out by CCP in 2003, which resulted in the T2 market being monopolized by a few players that owned the BPOs and finally ended with CCP deciding not to give any more T2 original blueprints out. Instead they introduce the system I will explain in this post to create T2 blueprint copies. The old T2 BPOs are still in the game but usually cost tenths of billions of ISK and are not an option for the average industrialist.
The process of producing T2 BPCs is called Invention and you will need the following things to get it done:
- A structure with a Standup Invention Lab I installed
- Lots of science skills depending on the T2 item/ship you want to produce
- T1 BPCs of the item/ship you want to produce
- Some blueprint specific Data Cores
- Optionally a Decryptor to improve the quality of the T2 BPC and/or the invention process
I will explain each of these requirements in more detail later in this post. One important mechanics of the invention process which is worth mentioning from the start is that invention is chance based. It can and will fail frequently and you can end up empty handed after an invention attempt. The success chance of each invention attempt however can be improved by science skills or the above mentioned Decryptors.
Required Skills
The invention process requires you to train into quite a few new skills compared to simple ME or TE research. You can see the necessary skills to run an invention job in the item details of a blueprint copy that has one or more T2 variants available. Not all T1 items have a T2 counterpart, but if they have, you will be able to see the required skills under the invention tab:
You can actually see which skills are used for what T2 BPC if you look at the item details of the science skills:
Each T1 BPC needs one of the four racial science skills, which are either Gallente, Armar, Minmatar or Caldari Encryption Methods to at least level 1. Additionally, there are always two other science skills required to at least level one. Which one again depends on the BPC you want to invent. There are 18 secondary science skill in the game that you will all need to train to be able to invent all T2 BPC. All these skill are quite hard to train to level 5 (1.25 million SP each), so in practice you better focus on a subset of T2 BPCs you want to invent and only train the required skills for these on a high level.
Required Items
The BPC detail window also shows the materials required for the invention process. These are a couple of Data Cores, which are consumed by the invention attempt and have otherwise no effect. Then you will need a single T1 BPC of the item, that will also be consumed. The ME and TE values of the T1 BPC have no impact on the resulting T2 BPC. These will always have by default a 2% ME and 4% TE value. The number of runs of the T1 BPC also doesn’t change the runs on the T2 BPC. A ship T2 BPC will always have one run and a T2 module BPC will have 10.
Finally, you can optionally use a Decryptor on an invention attempt. Decryptors can change the success chance of an invention attempt by a positive or negative value. At the same time they can provide additional number of runs and/or increase/decrease the ME and TE values of the resulting T2 BPC. Sounds complicated? It absolutely is. If it is worth to use a Decryptor highly depends on its cost, the production cost of the resulting item and the cost of the input T1 BPC. If the costs for the invention attempt are high, increasing the success chance might be worth it, even if other properties decrease. If the build costs of an T2 ship are huge, e.g. a jump freighter, getting better ME values might be worth it.
This is a list of all available Decryptors and their effect on the invention attempt:
You should simply buy your required Data Cores and Decryptors on the market. There are plenty of ways to acquire them by different activities in the game, but you will not be able to get enough of the right ones to start literally hundreds of invention attempts, which you will need to get seriously into T2 production.
Invention Location
To find a proper location for your invention jobs, you can again use the Facilities Tab of your invention window and filter for facilities with Invention services. You will then get a list of all the structures that allow an invention job.
If you hover over the little invention symbol, you can see the bonuses you will get for your job in that structure. Raitarus, Azbels and Sotiyos have hull bonuses that shorten invention time and cost and there are also structure rigs, that can reduce time and cost.
Invention in the Industry Window
Starting an invention job in the industry window is a little tricky compared to other research activities like ME or TE research. Lets have a look at a practical example:
I bought Data Cores and Accelerant Decryptors for 10 invention attempts in Jita and hauled everything to my favourite research base in Tama. The BPCs I created myself from an unresearched Magnetic Field Stabilizer I BPO.
To get started you need to select the T1 BPC you want to use in the Blueprint Tab of the industry window. This will show the BPC in center. Below the BPC you need to press the invention button, which is the second one from the right. This will now set the UI to the invention mode.
Next you need to pick a Decryptor if you want to use one. You can select one by clicking on the Decryptor symbol which opens a drop down where you can select between the different types. Of course the Decryptor and the necessary Data Cores need to be in your hangar together with the BPC.
Last step is to choose which T2 BPC you want if there are several different T2 items build from one T1. An example would be the Rifter BPC which you can invent into either a Wolf or Jaguar T2 BPC. My Magnetic Field Stab has only one T2 version so this step is not required in this example.
You can see success chance of the attempt in the outcome window on the right. If you are interested in the exact calculation, you can hover over the percentage. The three required science skills give a bonus per level to the invention chance. I trained all to level 4 which is only around half a million skillpoints.
You can also check the time calculation by hovering over the job duration:
The last property of the invention attempt is of course the total cost a a run. You can see the cost by hovering over the left of the BPC in the invention window:
You can see that the material costs for each attempt are around 700K ISK. The job cost for the facility are very low with only 465 ISK per attempt.
Finally you can press the Start button and the job goes into your Jobs tab. Now you need to wait for the displayed amount of time after which you can deliver the job again from the Jobs Tab. Invention times for modules are quite short, ship invention takes a little longer.
Delivering the BPC is the exciting moment, because you will now either get a message that the attempt failed or succeeded.
As you can see my invention attempts were rather bad, with 3 out of 10 attempts being successful. The newly created BPCs will appear in my hangar and are ready to build 33 Magnetic Field Stabilizer IIs.
That’s it for this invention guide. You can now build the T2 item, which I will explain in the next post of this series.
Of course there is also the option of selling your T2 BPCs on the contract market. The market for module T2 BPCs is rather small but there is some need for T2 ship BPCs that are mostly traded in Jita or Amarr. To calculate the profit, just use the number that was displayed in the industry window before you started the job and compare it to the current contract price.