Engineering Complexes: The conundrum

November 8th, the day when America will start to fall and crumble as the voting opens…. Oh wait, wrong topic! Let’s try this again … November 8th, the date set to change EVE Online as we know it; pretty literally if you ask me. From adding something that we have never imagined, a free-to-play model, to what I am going to be talking about in this article; new structures!

Industry is the backbone in EVE and no one can deny that. Without industrialists you have no pretty ships to shoot stuff with. This November we are getting a shakeup with the introduction of what we used to know as Industrial Arrays, renamed to Engineering Complexes as they are now officially called as of the release of this latest Dev Blog.

The Dev Blog was released a little over a week ago as of writing this and this is to be one of the steps into removing POS’s from the game. Don’t worry, they aren’t going anywhere just yet since they still do serve functions that won’t be available for a bit more time, but this is indeed the beginning. These will be changing and shaking up a lot of the industrial gameplay – that’s for sure.

In the Dev Blog we are introduced to the three types of complexes that will be coming out: Raitaru (medium sized sized complex), Azbel (large class sized complex), and Sotiyo (extra-large class sized complex). All of these new structures have special bonuses to industrial activities, like manufacturing and science-based operation times, as well as bonuses to the efficiency of engineering rigs. Now let’s take a look at all these new structures!

RAITARU

Role Bonus:
25% bonus to all structure engineering rig effects
5% reduction in manufacturing and science required time
25% reduction in Engineering Service Module fuel consumption
Slot Layout: 3H, 2M, 1L, 3 Service, 1 Launcher
Fittings: 1,200,000 PWG, 15,000 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull): 4,800,000 / 4,800,000 / 4,800,000
Resistances (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp): 20 / 20 / 20 / 20
DPS Cap: 5000
Fighter Slots: 0 Tubes
Weekly vulnerability hours: 9
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second): 100,000, 3600s, 27.8
Max Locked Targets: 8
Docking allowed for: all subcapital ships, freighters

The required materials for building a Raitaru are:
Structure Construction Parts   1
Structure Hangar Array   1
Structure Storage Bay   1
Structure Laboratory   1
Structure Factory   1
Structure Repair Facility   1
Structure Reprocessing Bay   1
Structure Docking Bay   1
Structure Office Center   1

At current market prices this represents a build cost of approximately 700 million ISK (price is subject to capsuleer market fluctuations).

AZBEL

Role Bonus:
25% bonus to all structure engineering rig effects
10% reduction in manufacturing and science required time
25% reduction in Engineering Service Module fuel consumption
Slot Layout: 4H, 3M, 2L, 5 Service, 2 Launcher
Fittings: 2,500,000 PWG, 30,000 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull): 14,400,000 / 14,400,000 / 14,400,000
Resistances (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp): 20 / 20 / 20 / 20
DPS Cap: 15,000
Fighter Slots: 3 Tubes, 3 Light, 2 Support
Weekly vulnerability hours: 18
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second): 200,000, 7200s, 27.8
Max Locked Targets: 8
Docking allowed for: all subcapital ships, freighters

The required materials for building an Azbel are:
Structure Construction Parts   6
Structure Hangar Array   4
Structure Storage Bay   4
Structure Laboratory   8
Structure Factory   8
Structure Repair Facility   4
Structure Reprocessing Plant   4
Structure Docking Bay   4
Structure Market Network   4
Structure Medical Center   4
Structure Office Center   4
Structure Advertisement Nexus   4

At current market prices this represents a build cost of approximately 5.2 billion ISK (price is subject to capsuleer market fluctuations).

SOTIYO

Role Bonus:
25% bonus to all structure engineering rig effects
15% reduction in manufacturing and science required time
25% reduction in Engineering Service Module fuel consumption
Slot Layout: 6H, 4M, 3L, 6 Service, 3 Launcher
Fittings: 4,000,000 PWG, 50,000 CPU
Defense (shields / armor / hull): 72,000,000 / 72,000,000 / 72,000,000
Resistances (EM/Therm/Kin/Exp): 20 / 20 / 20 / 20
DPS Cap: 75,000
Fighter Slots: 5 Tubes, 5 Light, 3 Support
Weekly vulnerability hours: 36
Capacitor (amount / recharge / cap per second): 400,000, 14,400s, 27.8
Max Locked Targets: 8
Docking allowed for: all subcapital ships, standard capital ships

The required materials for building a Sotiyo are:
Marines   250
Janitor   500
Structure Construction Parts   60
Structure Hangar Array   40
Structure Storage Bay   40
Structure Laboratory   80
Structure Factory   80
Structure Repair Facility   10
Structure Reprocessing Plant   10
Structure Docking Bay   10
Structure Market Network   10
Structure Medical Center   10
Structure Office Center   10
Structure Mission Network   1
Structure Electromagnetic Sensor   1
Structure Acceleration Coils   1
Structure Advertisement Nexus   8

At current market prices this represents a build cost of approximately 30 billion ISK (price is subject to capsuleer market fluctuations).

Personally, I feel these are indeed going to be very interesting and I am pretty excited, however one thing that I want to mention is their defenses. Putting these side-by-side with their citadel counterparts you can see that their defences are pretty poor – which is a given since there has to be a drawback. From first impressions on the medium alone, it will take less work to bring one down than it is to actually build and anchor it. The medium itself comes with no fighter bay to defend itself even, where it’s counterpart does have the fighter bay. Not only that but it also has a longer window of vulnerability compared to a citadel, something you’d think would be the other way around.

The blueprint prices weren’t stated, but if they are similar to the citadels, they will be nicely up there as well. The estimates for the blueprints have been ranging from the medium being around 7 Bil, the large 52 Bil, and the extra large clocking in at 500 Bil.

Another point that I want to mention is that while in the Dev Blog it mentions that only the extra-large will be able to dock capitals (like the Rorqual) it does seem to say differently on the test server – “The Azbel provides tethering technology and has docking capabilities for capital-size ships and below.” – so it looks like that it has been changed, now needing at least a large Engineering Complex in order to dock a Rorqual inside. Good change in my book!

With the new structures we will also have new rigs and modules as well. They will be listed below with the scaling of rigs based on where the EC is going to be anchored (again, much like the citadel counterparts):

Engineering Service Modules and Rigs

• Standup Manufacturing Plant I – allows manufacturing of items and ships. This does not include capital and supercapital class ships which have their own dedicated service modules
• Standup Capital Shipyard I – allows manufacturing of capital ships and can only be installed in large and XL citadels and Engineering Complexes in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space
• Standup Supercapital Shipyard I – allows manufacturing supercapital ships and is exclusive for the Sotiyo XL Engineering Complex. This service module also requires capsuleer alliance sovereignty and the “Supercapital Construction Facilities” Infrastructure Hub upgrade
• Standup Research Lab I – allows research and copying of blueprints
• Standup Invention Lab I – allows invention of Tech 2 and Tech 3 blueprints

Each Engineering Rig has three sets of bonuses:
One base value for highsec space, one for lowsec space that has a 50% higher bonus than the base value, one for nullsec and wormhole space that has a 67% higher bonus than the base value.

Tech 1 rigs that provide manufacturing material input benefits have the following bonuses:
Highsec: 2.4%, Lowsec: 3.6%, Nullsec: 4%
Tech 2 rigs that provide manufacturing material input have the following bonuses:
Highsec: 2.88%, Lowsec: 4.32%, Nullsec: 4.8%
Tech 1 rigs that provide manufacturing or science job speed benefits have the following bonuses:
Highsec: 24%, Lowsec: 36%, Nullsec: 40%
Tech 2 rigs that provide manufacturing or science job speed benefits have the following bonuses:
Highsec: 28.8%, Lowsec: 43.2%, Nullsec: 48%
Tech 1 rigs that provide science cost reduction benefits have the following bonuses:
Highsec: 12%, Lowsec: 18%, Nullsec: 20%
Tech 2 rigs that provide science cost reduction benefits have the following bonuses:
Highsec: 14.4%, Lowsec: 21.6%, Nullsec: 24%

So these are the new toys for us industrialists. We now have all this new information and the ability to play with the EC’s on the test server – and who doesn’t like to play with new shiny toys? But still, there are some concerns that linger.

It could be too early, but it seems that lowsec industrialists are losing the boost that the Thukker Component Assembly Array gives for producing capital components since there seems to be no counterpart for the complexes.

Solo industrialists seem to also be hit as well because of the cost of maintenance as well as poor defences leaving them powerless. Putting a structure that starts at 700mil, not including the costs of all the rigs and modules, doesn’t seem very appealing when it also has a long time to take the structure down if their solo corp gets wardec’d. So I can see this pushing (or forcing) solo industrialists to either joining a bigger corp/alliance or be pushed to NPC stations.

For the nullsec industrialists, a big concern that I couldn’t shove aside isn’t even in the text of the devblog but rather in a picture that was posted at the very end showing a physical image of a titan being built (confirmed that it was indeed a build animation; and not just a ‘final product’ animation of it coming out of the oven). As someone who actively participates in high end industry, this is not only a risk for the industrialists who work to building them, but also in alliance and coalition level logistics where free intel is basically given out where currently you have to work for that intel. Sure this will generate content, but it’s taking out the work involved in gathering intel on the production status of supers and titans in said EC’s. Why CCP?!

Edit (10/24): Looks like CCP Fozzie has stated on the EVE Online forums that the animation we saw is only a potential feature and not 100%, stating “To be clear, external display of supercap construction is a potential future feature that we can’t 100% promise at this time. It definitely won’t be in the initial Ascension launch.” which is refreshing that they are possibly rethinking/reworking this idea.

A lot of players can agree with me that the current POS system is horrible and this is a step in the right direction overall – however with that said, also looking at the costs with the information we currently have so far, these will for sure be more pricey to manage when you take into account the price of the hull being far more expensive alone than a simple POS, rigs, modules, and fuel needed to maintain it.

Running some math on the costs of buying/making and maintaining a small versus a medium EC, (basing that there is no small EC, so I will use the lowest structure in this comparison) we come up with this:

* =Taken into account fuel bonus for engineering service modules

Note that the service module costs were estimated based off the required materials of the BPO’s in an unresearched state where the POS modules and fuel were valued at current Jita market value as of writing this, and fuel values are based off everything running constantly.

The difference either way, even if values are slightly off, is that maintaining a small tower with basic functions versus a basic medium Raitaru structure is going to be a bit more expensive. This is for sure will be a pricey change for a basic structure when you do also take into account the value of everything together (hull/fuel/mods/services), plus (what’s not included in this), rigs – which are also expensive just on their own (with a basic full set starting at 300mil and upwards to over a bil depending on the type of rigs you want to use).  

This is something that, I think, will best be able to be fully utilized by a decent sized corp/alliance; not so much by the solo industrialists (as pointed out earlier) since you need to also be able to also defend it with so much ISK is on the line plus the increased maintenance costs.  You can offline modules if you don’t need them to save fuel costs; but it’s still a pricey investment to have sitting in space that you can’t just pack back up so easily.

Despite everything however, I am still pretty excited in general and with time will we see what the full effects will be. It will be a shake-up, but a much needed shake-up.

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