Making Boosters in Low Sec

Industry Gameplay Center Science & Industry
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My group has had a lot of people using Improved Exile, Improved Frentix, and Improved Crash boosters. I have no idea why anyone uses these for one vs one site PVP or 3 vs 3 gate PVP when you can suddenly lose Armor hitpoints because you took exile, but apparently the side effects are worth the risk.

What about just making these near home? Instead of buying boosters and things like Megacyte, pure improved exile booster, pure improved frentix booster, and pure imoved crash booster, just make it all from scratch? We already have people huffing gas in empire space to get cytoserocin and they sell them to Jita, but they can actually save jumps if we bought the gas and they can plop their gas where we are? The farthest guy still saves 7 jumps if we did vertical integration. Although someone pointed out by the mining ledgers that we’ll likely only be able to actually use 1/8 of the gas.

So how about a Tarata? It can do reactions, and it has a bigger bonus than the Athanor. I don’t actually know how boosters are made since I don’t do reactions, but I know they are done at refineries. There is a good place just 7 jumps away from high sec one of us had his eyes on.

The biggest problem is defending that thing, but let’s assume we got that taken care of for the sake of the through experiment. This isn’t a trivial problem, and in fact is probably a bigger issue that might just make the whole thing not worth it, but let’s assume diplomacy worked out a deal not just with the locals, but a certain group that isn’t local but who can easily blow it up if we got on their bad side.

There are only 7 of us actually doing reactions to make boosters. Not only is this not going to use all the gas harvested, but they can’t even make all the boosters we’re consuming. Then after reactions, I guess we just make the boosters normally.

So with 7 people doing reactions, how does the economics of a Tarata even work? We could sell the reaction products… and then buy the boosters at a higher price than what it takes to make them from the reaction products. That doesn’t sound good.

We could just make the boosters for ourselves since we chug them, one less thing to bring back from Jita.

So there is the fuel costs to run a structure. Can 7 people doing reactions make us ISK after fuel costs? Assuming the price of fuel remains constant (not a given, but let’s simplify) can we break even after 38 months? I don’t think we can break even within that time frame without more people doing reactions.

The problem is that we use the boosters, limiting the ability to turn a profit off the reactiosn to pay for the fuel. If we didn’t, then we could sell the reaction products or sell boosters for a profit. Since we use the boosters, the reactions on the gas would need to be vertically integrated. Well, I mean there is technically the option of making the reaction products, taking them to Jita with DSTs (since we already have mostly empty DSTs holding roughly 5Kmm of stuff each trip picking up a full fleet hanger of stuff from high sec) and selling them, but selling the very thing we’re buying is just eating broker’s fees.

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You don’t make boosters via reactions. Reactions are just for required materials for boosters. While boosters itself are normal blueprint. So on top of reactions, you need another industry structure.

What you are missing is acquiring boosters BPC’s. They drop from PvE sites. For 3 mentioned boosters, you need 3 different types of gas from 3 different areas of space.

Either do boosters you have available in your space or don’t bother. Opportunity cost is not worth it.

tl;dr I think you simply need to spent 5 minutes in google/uni-wiki and actually understand how booster production works.

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Yeah I know that. Sorry I wasn’t completely clear. I suppose one interpretation of what I was saying was tht I was trying to make boosters directly from the refineries.

What we’ve already been doing was buying boosters and buying the stuff to make the boosters. Either we chug the boosters we buy, or we make the boosters with the last step in normal manufacting.

We have BPCs from chemical sites, although I don’t think we’re buying them so we should be using them up a lot faster than we’re getting them from the sites.

Most of us are concentrated in our area of space, but some are elsewhere in new eden doing… something. I guess they get along with the locals. And sometimes they huff gas, which they normally sell off.

I know three guys who just use Retrievers on both asteroid belts and gas sites so that a 4th guy can get a drop when someone tries to solo the “lone” barges. They warp away when they think it’s too hot to handle and I honestly think they’re disappointed when a T3C comes into the system and decides not to go after them. I’d suggest Skiffs, but they like what they’re doing.

As for everyone else who is scattered around new eden’s low sec, they seem to be enjoying whatever they’re doing and they get gas while there.

So talking about opportunity costs, it doesn’t make sense to jump all over the new eden just to get ingredients and then journey back.

However, aside from a large core group which spends most of its time in a certain place, there is a minority that is already going around (I’d almost say “exploring” but that has a specific meaning in this game and while they do scan, they’re doing a lot more than that) having fun doing something, and they do harvest some gas time to time. The gas starts adding up and they do sell it. Even the one farthest away from us could save 7 jumps if he dropped it off with the main group instead of Jita. So the idea isn’t “stop buying and start going around to collect stuff” but “some of us already are getting the stuff anyways, can we use it?”

So that explains your three concerns. First, I do know boosters are made with manufacturing, and in fact we’re already doing that with the purchased pure improved exile booster, pure improved frentix booster, and pure imoved crash booster as well as buying finished boosters. Second, vertical integration requries BPCs, which we are getting… although I’m not sure why we haven’t run out. Third, we’re already collecting the gas (from the huffers who wander around for weeks at a time before coming home) and the BPCs (from… I don’t know actually, I’ve only got 3 in 22 days and exptraolating this to the rest of the group = not enough) so the opportunity cost doesn’t involve that much more jumping through gates since a small subgroup is already doing all the jumps ant touched all the places. The opportunity cost would be higher for a group that doesn’t already have people collecting this stuff and selling them or if the people huffing coming to the proposed refinery site makes them jump more jumps than to Jita.

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It looks like you have supply figured out. Which is hardest part. What’s left is pulling calculator out, open Jita alt and figuring out how much profit you might make. I mean, how much of end product you can sell without crashing market. Or if you at lest can supply your group needs. Who knows, maybe it will be start of new gas cartel in New Eden?

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A gas Cartel that controls booster production and gas galaxy wide you say…

Sounds like it’s time for some emergent gameplay.

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