I wanted to research my BPO, and flew to two corp-owned facilities in my system. Both showed in the manufacturing/research search tool as supporting BPO research, and they qualified under the filter for “public”. However, when I got to each of them, it said material and time efficiency research was not supported. So, like, for anyone, or just for me, because I’m not part of the corp?
Is there a way to tell, from the manufacturing search tool, to tell which facilities will let me start a job, without having to fly to each and every one?
Open the Industry tool and select the Facilities tab. Set the filters for the service and range you want range. It will show you which public structures support ME and/or TE research. Hover over the icon and it will tell you the facility bonuses, tax rate and system cost index.
I did all that, and both facilities I visited passed all of those filters.
The player stations HAVE the BPO research facilities. I was able to install the job, see the time and cost estimates, but it wouldn’t let me start it, and hovering over one of the icons (sorry, not in game right now, don’t remember any more clearly) said that process wasn’t available. So, that’s my question, does it just mean it’s only available to corp members, because the basic functionality IS available.
Or, could it be that the station is out of fuel? If so, then my question is, how do I use the search tool to see which ones are out of fuel?
When I played several years ago, I remember going through one patch where I had the same job halted three times in a row, in three separate stations, because they ran out of fuel. Certainly makes the BPO research process not very much fun. The alternative (using NPC stations) at that time was a non-starter, because they were always queued up such that any job I wanted to run wouldn’t even start for several weeks (they were THAT far backed up!). Maybe that’s changed, and I should look into that again.
Ahh it’s going to depend on why it wasn’t available… depending on the BPO in question you may require skills to start the ME research… but hovering over the ‘start job’ button should tell you why it can’t be started.
If it was out of fuel iirc the Industry ‘button’ wouldn’t be available, as the service would be offline.
It has, NPC stations are no longer limited to a number of ‘job slots’.
Do Little responded well, I thought. I just wanted to add… I wouldn’t dare put my BPO’s anywhere but a HS NPC station. Pay the dues and make your copies. But then mine aren’t just ammo and frigate blueprints either. And if they were I wouldn’t be so concerned about the extra 2 isk that NPC charged me.
I concur with Harley Softail, don’t use someone else’s station. It sucks to get a week into a job and have the station run out of fuel. And, can’t contact the owner.
Well, it’s a mystery then, because hovering over the start button didn’t say why, and it wasn’t because of skill, because I’d worked on this one before (unless the skill required changed since a couple years back).
Good to hear about the NPC stations, though. That’s the obvious way to go about it now
You don’t have to put your BPOs in the player station. Mine have always been perfectly safe in my NPC station base camp. You can install them from there.
When I played before, there wasn’t really an alternative to using a player station, due to the ridiculous queues at the NPC stations. Since I know those are gone now, then I don’t have to deal with this issue any more!
Logged back in, “This activity is not supported at this facility”
And, upon closer inspection, the three research activities (time, materials, copies) where you select them, have the diagonal hashed lines over them, meaning they’re out of fuel.
It would be nice if the search tool didn’t show locations which are down due to no fuel.
