I believe that the rig bonuses are far too specialized. For instance, I manufacture T2 Amarr ships and t1 battleships from bottom up. With the current rigs though, I would have to buy multiple industrial arrays in order to maintain bonuses on my setup- Component bonuses, t2 small bonuses, t2 medium bonuses, t1 medium bonuses, t1 large bonuses, copying bonuses, invention bonuses, etc. Even with that setup I'm losing other more insignificant bonuses, and any benefit I could get to installing all of these is destroyed by the massive fuel costs coming from two or more arrays.
I realize that other people would probably be using the same arrays, and we could split fuel costs. However, multiple people will rarely ever be producing the same items. Half of the people would still be missing out on bonuses relevant to them, and they may as well manufacture in a station. With the way they are currently planned, it is un-economical for anything but the most massive corps with multiple people making the same things to set up arrays. Everybody else will be shafted into using arrays placed in highsec that others have put up, or in stations, limiting the variety of space in which industry can be accomplished. It is simply unfeasible for mediums and larges to be used by small corporations due to the limited variety of bonuses, and any large corp would be better off shelling 30b for the x-large to avoid prohibitive fuel costs.
I try, however, not to criticize without posting solutions. There are two ways of making things easier. Seperate the large and x-large rigs so that one is ME and one is TE, but then combine the groupings. For instance, instead of T1 small, t2 small, t1 medium, t2 medium, t1 large, and t2 large, there would be T1 ship ME, T1 ship TE, T2 ship ME, and T2 ship TE. This would allow people to choose what bonuses they wanted, but over a wider variety of items, making it easier to support medium sized groups by larges. I still believe in even my example that there would be too many different rigs and bonuses, but I think it would be a step in the right directions.
I also have a few misc. questions for CCP
- Since null and wormholes seem to get the same bonuses, will wormholes also get a way to reduce system cost index?
- Will rig costs also be decreased and by how much? What are they expected to cost?
- How much are the service modules expected to cost?
- What will happen to jobs in progress if the service modules become unfueld?