I am an industrial pilot who likes to mine and build primarily I don’t engage in PVP to often though I do enjoy PVE to gather resources and isk to further invest in my industrial abilities. However, as far as I have seen despite all the benefits it is not worthwhile to invest in an engineering structure or a refinery in high-sec. True it offers a host of advantages such as ore compression and industrial advantages. What I have seen and read through makes me less inclined to invest in such a structure. It is more cost-effective and time-saving to mine and haul the ore or ice through multiple jumps to reach a trade hub or a neutral structure that offers the compression and refining capabilities at a cost-effective price.
As I have stated above I am not a primary PVP pilot I know how to fight to defend myself or my fleet and I will go down fighting but again it is not my main focus. If I was to invest several billion isk into a structure to make it easier to mine and build within high-sec I am opening myself up to war deckers who are looking to force my corporation into a war we are not interested in. I have had to sit through multiple wardecks docked in a station doing nothing because some corp or alliance is looking for an easy kill rather than actually fighting others who do want to fight.
So yes a structure offers many advantages to a primarily industrial small corp but is it worth it to try and anchor one in high-sec? or am I just missing some important information? really don’t want to invest a lot of money in one only to lose it or get constant wardecks on my corp.
I have been offline for a year due to RL drama and so I have been trying to catch back up on changes and I am just looking for some good advice and maybe some good answers.
Not really worth it for a solo player. There are NPC stations that have manufacturing, research, copy, and invention capabilities. The refining percentage for most NPC stations is only a few percent less than what you get at a Citadel in high sec. The only thing you can’t do at an NPC station is compress ore. Get your standing up to at least 7.0 with whatever NPC corp you decide to make your home station, and you won’t have to pay any fees or taxes to refine either.
Just watch out for the three different types of NPC stations. Most have a base 50% refine, which can be brought up to 70% with skills. But some have a base 30% refine. Any NPC station that contains all research and manufacturing capabilities, along with a clone bay, will only have a base 30% refine. So, use the 30% station to manufacture, research, and store your medical clone, and use the 50% station to store your ore and refine. You can, however, find a station that has both a 50% base refine and all manufacturing and research capabilities, but it won’t have a clone bay.
Also across new Eden are a plethora of public structures you can use, just have to be careful as some don’t get refuled and building can be risky, bpo research is safe you should just be able to cancel the job and get your bp back.
The service you want to use will be offline if the structure is out of fuel. For ore compression/reprocessing this is a minor issue since the process is immediate. For manufacturing/research/invention it can be a major pain.
There are a lot of considerations when deciding whether to setup your own structure. Fuel cost, system cost index and the number of jobs you expect to have running at a time. A private structure in a backwater system isn’t an attractive target and you can setup a holding corp for the structure so your operating corp remains war ineligible.
That said, if the risk of losing it is something you would worry about, rent offices in a public structure.
also if you want to research bpos for structure, do it in a NPC station. The cost (in isk) and the time required for the research will outweight the cost of the structure you lose if you start the research in it, by several times.
As far as I have seen it should say if it’s online or not when you looking at it in space.
Very true which is why I keep all my BPO’s in a NPC station and only pull them out when I need to.
A lot of information here and it will be very useful. I was unaware of the NPC variations. I guess I just never truly paid attention to them sadly. I will have to pay closer attention to that particular detail from now on.
The thing is, you can never be sure when a structure is going to shut the module down. Sometimes people will just forget to put fuel, sometimes they will get wardecced. The last one is quite easy to check as long as the structure is public : you can resolve it’s corporation, then alliance, and find if a war is declared against it. The issue is, when it gets wardecced and thus shuts down the structure - or just add people to block list, it makes the structure non-public.
Very true I lost two BPO’s to such an incident. Nothing too bad or too costly to replace. Not sure on the details since I had to go offline for a short time and we were living in WH space and well when they unanchored and left I lost them or someone took them. So yeah I would probably do like you suggest but the majority of my BPO’s would be kept in an NPC station just on the off chance that way I don’t lose them in such a event like you describe.
As you have rightly reasoned, for a small corp owning a structure can be a headache. Ignoring threats, you still have to be sure that the savings you will get owning your structure outweigh the costs. Added to that is turnover of corp members so that you might have enough active ones now to make it viable, but what about 3 months time?
As CEO you would be better off putting on your Diplo Cap on and talking to miners & industrialists in your area, maybe start a channel? You can negotiate deals for cheap refining or manufacturing, trade on contracts etc. For eg, I did a favour for a CEO 3 years ago and got max refining for free ever since.
For manufacturing, tax isn’t everything, System Cost Index can be significant and some factories are rigged to give savings for certain product groups, for eg Fuel Blocks, Barges, Cruisers, etc. Look on the facilities tab of Industry.
That is a hell of an idea and one I had not considered either. I really do appreciate all the advice and suggestions. I am not new to being a corp leader but my corps have always been small. All the advice I have been getting will go far to help me become better than what I am right now. Thank you so much!!
I would even say that cost index is everything. Depending on the volume of manufacturing you do, you will however quickly increase a cost index from 0 to 3.
What works somehow for me is that the minimum cost index you will produce is ± sqrt(job slots used)/2 , eg if 10 toons with 10 slots each, your cost index will eventually reach sqrt(10×10)/2 = 10/2 = 5 . It will be reached within a month.