Crius - Increasing costs of T2 manufacturing

Listed in part of the patch notes, it states that:

Most Tech I materials have been removed from Tech II blueprints

• More precisely, minerals that are not morphite and components that are not Advanced Components or Advanced Capital Components have been removed


• This does not apply to Tech I items required for Tech II manufacturing, those are staying and still have exceptions to the Material Efficiency and skill bonuses so that, for example:In some cases blueprint requirements have been modified to make sure price is not fluctuating too much

This innocuous statement has not necessarily translated brilliantly if you’re doing Tech II manufacturing.  As an example, I compared the manufacture of a ME -4, PE -4 Cruise Missile Launcher II blueprint on Tranquillity now to it’s post-patch equivalent ME -7%, TE -14%.  Look below for the results:

Firstly the Tranquillity version.  This BPC takes 1 day 7 hours to produce it’s 10 runs.  Next, let’s look at the Sisi version:

With what was the same BPC, you can see that the manufacture time for 10 runs has reduced to only 8 hours 55 minutes 18 seconds, and the new ISK sink mechanic has resulted in us “donating” 184,931 ISK to Concord or some other anonymous bureau to the privilege of using our own BPC in our own Outpost in our own sovereign space.

What is striking, however, is that this shows us two things about the new manufacturing system.  Firstly, to make 1 run of this on Sisi uses 2 R.A.M. Weapon Tech, 1 T1 Module, 11 Quantum Microprocessors, 11 Morphite and 9 Robotics, so 1 Morphite less than the current TQ version shown above, but 3 more Microprocessors and 1 more unit of Robotics.  Also, put aside the R.A.M. usage as that has been covered in the Dev Blog about x100.

Now look at the Sisi screenshot above for 10 runs.  Notice that the R.A.M. and Robotics haven’t multiplied up.  This shows that by manufacturing a multiple of the unit, instead of just 1, the BPC didn’t require 2 complete R.A.M. or 9 complete units of Robotics, so by producing in one lot of 10 instead of 10 individual runs, we’ve enjoyed a cost saving.

However, the main thing to recognise here is that the cost of manufacturing is going to be less straight-forward to calculate.  To build a Quantum Microprocessor currently costs 15 Titanium Carbide, 5 Phenolic Composites, 2 Nonlinear Metamaterials and 2 Nanotransistors, regardless of the run length.  On Sisi, the same BPO (which shows -10%, so is “perfect”), uses 17 Titanium Carbide and 6 Phenolic Composites, with the other two items remaining the same for 1 run, but if I put in 1,000 runs that scales up to 14,996 Titanium Carbide, 5,293 Phenolic Composites, 1,765 Nonlinear Metamaterials and 1,765 Nanotransistors.

Life for the industrialist is going to be significantly less straight-forward.  Do you just make what you need for that run (as I do at the moment), or do you keep a stockpile of components and top them up when you get to a minimum level?

It will come down to ISK available for working capital, and if anything will make it even more difficult for the smaller operator to compete with a larger operation who will be more likely to have a greater level of working capital and therefore be able to keep larger stock levels of materials and components, reducing their unit cost.

All I know is that my spreadsheets for manufacturing will be essentially useless post patch, as all the manufacturing costs will have changed in some way or another.  Looks like I have some work to do!

Crius - Increasing costs of T2 manufacturing