Hi there. I’m trying to learn the ins and outs of the industry world, and today I found something that doesn’t work as I thought it should. I bought some simple BPO’s to try crafting and selling things, but I find my maths about the materials needed sometimes miss what I expect.
For example, I’m trying to build 20 x Standard S frequency crystals. They need 3 Tritanium, 1 Pyerite, 2 Mexallon and 10 Isogen. As I understand it, Material Efficiency and Material Consumption Modifier bonus from the structure where I build them affect the TOTAL number of materials needed multiplicatively. I have ME = 8 on that BPO and MCM = 1 in the structure where I am building.
Then, the mexallon needed is 2x20x0.92x0.99 (“Mexallon needed per run” x “number of runs” x “ME (1-0.08)” x “MCM (1-0.01)”. All this rounded up, so my number is 36.432 meallon, which rounds to 37. All ok here.
But then the calculation for Pyerite goes wrong. 1x20x0.92x0.99, should be 18.216, rounded up to 19. But the game tells me I need 20 Pyerite. When I run the job it effectively takes 20 pyerite, instead of the 19 it should take.
Its a rule in eve industry that you can’t use less of an input material than the total number of runs submitted. The exact formula for calculating materials requirements is:
The “max” part of the formula means that the number of runs replaces the required material amount it it would be less. This prevents situations like being able to build x Cheetahs using x-1 probes.
They don’t want you to be able to eliminate Pyerite from the minerals list, so you can’t reduce below 1 unit. With many more ME’s on that BPO you could reduce the Tritanium to 1, Mexallon to 1, and Isogen to 1 (and Pyerite to 1) (per run).
With minerals the reason isnt THAT obvious but when making T2 stuff, you need also one T1 version of the item you are making and for obvious reasons you dont want to end up rounding those single ships/modules down.