The SP gap between newer players and 15 year veterans is being brought down via improved alpha clones and skill injectors but a very important gap still exists and i believe it is time for it to also see some improvement.
Currently veterans can have a considerable amount of fully researched blueprint originals that would take a new player years upon years of research time to fully research blueprints to be cost competitive with veteran players via current game mechanics. This gap makes it hard for newer players to effectively compete in high-end production. The game is old enough now that I believe the concept of âResearch Injectorsâ should be added to the game.
A research injector would trim a certain number of days off the time it takes to research a blueprint for either material efficiency or time efficiency.
Example: You want to fully material and time research a capital component blueprint original this takes 120 days for full Material Efficiency (ME) and and additional 120 days for full Time Efficiency (TE).
You can go to the NES store and buy research injectors either singly or in packs. Each research injector would trim 10 days off the total research time so buying 12 of them would make the 120 day ME research instant but it would cost you a considerable amount of real world money or you could buy them off the market for a substantial amount of ISK (since research injectors would be an item one could buy and sell on the market like skill extractors).
It would likewise take another 12 research injectors to research the 120 day TE research time to instant.
Just as skill injectors have a fairly high price to protect the Skill Point value of veteran players to some degree, these research injectors would be fairly pricey as well. The exact cost / benefit would have to be worked out with considerable effort so i will not give any numbers here but the cost would have to be low enough to be helpful to newer players but high enough to provide some measure of protection for the research investments of veteran players.
(NOTE: it might be advisable to have two types of research injectors one type for ME research and a different type for TE research since ME research tends to be much more valuable).
The blueprints are NOT what makes long time players hard to beat in industry. Just buy researched copies. What makes expert indu players good is their knowledge and infrastructure. The magic is in the buyback programs, jump freighter alts, knowing the market cycles and spreadsheets. And for T2 production no researched blueprints are needed anyway. ME and TE do not carry over when inventing.
Someone nice donated me a couple of good selling fully researched blueprint originals. Turned out it wasnât such a gracious thing than I thought because to get that 10%-15% return on investment those BPOs can generate a huge amount of 0,1ISKing buyorders, hauling to a system with a good production index, hauling stuff back and 0,1ISKing sellorders was needed. That was in highsec.
Nullsec turned out to be totally different. Materials and ore come from alliance buyback, tons of BPCs from BPOs researched a loooong time ago where on stockpile and a 10-20% markup to Jita prices are fine.
-.- ccp should just go back to the old system where i didnât need to spend 2 years to get max ME but if i wanted to spend that time i could get like 1 trit off
âŚand this is where I zoned out. Little does our nooblet know that CCP peed all over the âVeteransâ by making all blueprints equal. You put original into research mode for 7-32 days and has ME 10, repeat for TE 20.
What CCP didnât do is compensate me for waiting 3 months for ONE free research slot in a station, waiting ONE YEAR for ONE original to be ME 100 or better.
I am still waiting for my 100 billion isk deposit for losing my time.
Can anyone else independently verify this statement, when i used a rorqual blueprint ME 10 and TE 20 did not take just 32 days for ME 10 and and additional 32 days for TE 20.
With my current skills in an NPC station the research time for ME 10 on a rorqual BPO was 790 days (i have very low skills and no implants and as i mentioned i was in an NPC station).
What i did find that took 32 days was the time to manufacture a rorqual, not the time to research the blueprint ME and TE times.
As i mentioned in the OP, you do not have to put in the time to skill up a pilot anymore if you have enough real world money or enough in-game ISK you can (and i understand someone actually did) skill into all possible skills to maximum value. My idea is an extension of this same concept but for Blueprint research times.
Iâll state here that it is not my desire that everyone interested in production have a 10/20 BPO for every BPO in the game. While this would technically be possible the cost would keep almost everyone from actually doing it, just as the cost of skill injectors while useful has not lead to everyone having every possible skill maxed out.
If i must pay an intermediary ISK for a blueprint copy they are going to want a profit, this inherently puts me at a disadvantage with regards to veterans that have researched up a BPO. The problem becomes even worse if i want to manufacture a capital and all of its sub-components as i need to buy BPCs for all the sub-components and the capital BPC as well.
I know that building capitals and all of its sub-components was not the basis for my argument and state this here only to emphasize the problem with your suggestion.
1st Paragraph: I predicted this response. youâre wrong, itâs not the same. Thereâs an actual in game advantage you buy with this. A researched blueprint is worth far more than an untouched one. The time and effort are a balancing factor, deterring people from doing it. When you can buy your way into this, you inevitably kill the economy. Within a month youâll have destroyed the market for researched blueprints, and less than a month later all items will become worth so less, itâll be ruining the relative income of pretty much everyone.
You donât quite understand that there are enough people rich enough, both isk- and cash-wise, to buy quite a â â â â â â â many of them.
2nd Paragraph: ISK isnât a factor for balance. Ask CCP.
I never suggested you buy copies, especially not long-term. There are plenty of BPOs on contract, often at lower than cost. Itâs actually more isk and time efficient, in your example, to purchase the capital component prints either from the sell orders forum or contracts than it is to spend the time/money researching them up yourself.
So I repeat: just buy the researched prints yourself.
zoned out when you say veterans have stockpiles of these bpos.
and these veterans, provided your in the right corp, can allow players to access these bpos to make copies to your hearts desire, and no one can make off with the originals accept the higher-ups. ask your corp if you do that, i know mine does, so everyone has the potential to do it. the only real downside is remembering to make sure the copy ends up in the right corp hangar.
interesting that you used the term âzoned outâ just like elitatwo. I guess when you are 100% wrong about research times you come back on an alt to avoid the embarrassment of posting this little gemâŚ
Next time be more careful of your wording so i dont know its you posting on an alt.
1st paragraph: The time people put into raising characters to 200mil SP before skill injectors had an investment as well but skill injectors were still put into the game.
Your doom and gloom predictions might impress you and perhaps even other posters but doom and gloom predictions were made when CCP announced the introduction of alpha clones and guess what, it hardly impacted the game at all, so little in fact that CCP is now going to add even more SP to alphas.
I in fact know someone that is a trillionare several times over but he is not a newer player but a player beyond a decade old, so while fully researching a lot of BPOs might be within his reach it isnt for most players even those a decade old or older.
2nd Paragraph: CCP says a lot of things that arenât true. CCP has a considerable amount of influence over the cost of things in game and believing they dont use this power to help balance game play is naive.
Example: CCP changes the materials to make an brutix to 1 tritanium, the price drops out completely because everyone has 1000 of them. CCP can change many factors in EVE this way, it doesnt directly use ISK but the cost in ISK would drop dramatically if CCP did this and so even though the connection isnt direct the price of a brutix in ISK is being controlled by CCP and hence ISK is a balancing factor.
If you get them cheaper than this method congratulations i dont really know what else to say other than, I dont want to wait around hoping that someone will put up a fully researched BPO on the market of the type i want, when i want it, that was sold below what it would cost to fully research it using this new method.
Ideally, yes CCP would straighten out the mess they made with their current research model where some BPOs are pointless to research past a certain point. Im a bit obsessive-compulsive and not finishing a research to 100% bothers me.
But the bigger issue is the one you brought up that research times for some things are beyond ridiculous. Personally, I dont think any research should take longer than 6 months.