Hello everyone!

The purpose of this post is to explain the last element of the battleship rebalance: build costs. We found that even internally this was a very sensitive subject, one which people had very strong feelings about, and so we spent a lot of time making sure that we went ahead with a good plan. We feel confident that we have that plan, and while we do appreciate feedback (as always), this proposal is very likely the way we will be proceeding at release.

Let me give you the 'what' first, then the 'why':

The AVERAGE build cost of a battleship is going up by around 40mil

Former tier 3 prices will not change substantially, and so the majority of the change in cost is carried by the former tier 1 and 2s.

Prices will be differentiated slightly by role ('attack' and 'disruption' being a bit cheaper than 'combat')

The reasons for the change are as follows:

The primary goal of tiericide is to eliminate any explicit power difference between ships within a class. If the power within a class is more or less level across all ships (which it is after the rebalance), the price should also be level.

So then, if prices are to be more level, where should this new price line be set? The obvious answer would be to just average the cost of all battleships and then set the prices at that average - top tier prices would come down, and bottom would go up. Unfortunately, with battleships, this was not possible. Top tier battleships represent an enormous amount of mineral consumption in EVE at their current costs. That means that lowering the cost of tier 3 battleships would have a recessionary effect on EVE's economy as mineral prices suffered.

That means we are to have prices more equal, but also, we can't lower the prices of the top tier ships significantly. This felt a bit uncomfortable at first, causing certain Devs to say "OMGWTFZFBFBFBB!!" when they saw the proposal, but we looked into some metrics around player wealth and income and found that EVE players are making money faster and faster, and even new players should have no trouble enduring the bump in cost. On top of this, inflation provides room for cost increase as well.

The result is that we all agree that this price increase should not hurt demand substantially, and reflects a more healthy overall design philosophy than the old tier system.

Special Note: You will NOT be able to buy battleships now and then refine them for the increased cost after the changes go live. Like all previous tiericide changes we will use extra materials to implement this cost change.

We hope you agree, and look forward to your feedback.

CCP Rise