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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.