I'm sure what I'm about to type has been stated multiple times through out the process of this structure rework in EVE.

The Medium Engineering Complex will require 9 hours of vulnerability weekly, with 18 hours and 36 hours for the Large and XL Engineering Complexes respectively

... is a stupid mechanic. Give them an extra timer for reinforce or destruction but making something in space invulnerable for all but 9/18/36 hours a week is lame. The most common argument is 'this is the way it worked before technically' and while I agree to some extent with POS's and outposts being easy to change when the timers came out, think of it from a hostile FC standpoint... I want to make a name for myself in my new alliance by going out and reinforcing stuff, picking fights, poking beehives, flying spaceships. With a POS or outpost I can go do that, it's floating in space and I can shoot it to provoke a response. You've made all these structures literally invulnerable for all but a tiny window. It's a giant **** mechanic in a game that used be HTFU or GTFO.

As a solo and casual industrialist in high sec, i conclude that i'm pushed back to NPC station.
With my current POS set-up i was able to unanchor everything before a wardec kicks in.

these structures sit in space at risk, can't be pulled down to avoid a wardec like a POS could

Also... 104 rigs? Is it me or are they just too many?

You are actually making sarcasm, but nullsec is overall safer than some high density zones of high sec.

Yes, big fights happen daily in null, but high sec is continous grind

It's nothing about 'too dangerous' in high sec.
It's about investing the same isk, in the same structure giving the same reward.
For comparison, imagine if a ship only gave 3% per skill level to damage in high sec, but 5% in null. That is the same as what CCP are doing with these structures.

The differences made sense with POS because a POS could be pulled down in 30 minutes utterly avoiding any wardec risk, they don't make sense with these structures that are locked in space.
All it does is make the point that CCP themselves are breaking their rule of treating all areas of space as important, and are busy turning EVE into a theme park.

tl;dr; I need tons of isk to run multiple engineering complexes (EC) to have something hardly any better than my current POS

Hey folks, thanks for all the replies so far. I'm going through everything and I'll be making a big Q&A post with answers at some point soon.

Anyway, I can see saving a lot of fuel costs by simply leaving everything offline until I need it. On the other hand, that would mean others couldn't use the structure even if I allowed this.

I've seen people claiming public ECs with zero fees will be everywhere soon, but with the fuel cost...

People are discontent that they can't attack something 24x7 when there are no defenders to defend it

I wouldn't expect a lot of potential iteration on that. A major design goal of the structures were that the choice of when a structure gets attacked goes to the defender as there is no gameplay for the defender relative to the attacker having it shot in an off timezone scenario. While there is an aspect of "reduced gameplay" for the attacker, it is also gameplay where there is no defender in many, if not most cases. CCP stated they wanted increased interaction at the expense of this "gameplay" and made it so that the attacker has to be inconvenienced (potentially) in order to engage a defender when they likely will be present. The extended vulnerable hours on the EC and other potential future structures makes interaction with them more likely compared to a citadel which is designed to be the home base of a defender.

Sounds like you should make friends with some Russians to strike at them while you sleep :)

No, the table saw needs 15. The table saw, MIG welder, drill press, router, power washer, sand blaster, and bandsaw, in aggregate, cost 45, and the guy in question could actually get by with a hand saw and a tape measure...

...but he WANTS the toys.

Yes, the new structures do give you choices, unfortunately almost all of them are complete shite. The only wining move is not to use the new structures, becasue they are either to granular, too expensive or to costly to fuel. No good options.a

the more people you expel as "not fit for Eve", the less people you get to play with

I consider myself a small, bordering on medium sized producer. I have about 4b in production, with about 2b used for assets (bpos, pos) and 2b in materials. There's absolutely no way in hell I can cycle through that 2b enough times to reach anywhere close to 16-17b throughput. Anyone without 6+ billion in mats will never come anywhere close.

Here's a serious question I have for the "small scale industrialist":

Why did you choose this path?
Why do you want to remain on it?

My feeling is that you are a product of a broken game mechanic that is now being fixed. Lets follow the logic here.

I want to mass produce stuff for the market, because i like making things and it's profitable.
I want to maximize my profits, therefore I need to put up my own tower.
I need to put up my own tower. Corp roles and security suck, therefore i need my own corp to get the roles for using it and control access to ensure my safety.
I'm in my own corp with just my alts, therefore I am a small scale solo industrialist.

Does that sound about right?

These statements are currently TRUE. Once poses are removed, all but the first one will be false. You are back to step one of figuring out what the most profitable arrangement will be for your particular operation. Remaining a solo industrialist will not be a foregone conclusion.

So why are you drawing conclusions based on FALSE statements like
"I need my personal corp to control access to the facility so my stuff doesn't get stolen"
"I need my own building facility, so i need to pay to fuel it, so I need x production volume to cover MY fuel cost"
"I need my own building facility, therefore I need to be able to defend it"

Why do you not want to play a multiplayer game with others, now that you will finally be able to?

(wall of text)
a new structure that is not dynamic at all. Once you decide where to put your EC you will likely never change place.

- Rorqual and EC... well...
you changed the Rorq and most of mechanics related to it... made it THE industrial ship, but made it impossible for it to interact with most of the Industrial structures... kinda weird :)

The future of Industry for anyone not in a bog bloc is pretty obvious. NPC Stations.

There are two reasons :

1) Access to T3 production
2) Access to low index manufactering system which has no NPC station.

You folks go round in circles.
- I want to build stuff!
- Here is your EC
- But 104 rigs too difficult!
- Buy XL
- But I'm poor!
- Use public
- But my freedom!
- Use stations
- Inefficient!
- POS is your choice then
- Outdated!
- Go buy items in the market and deal with it
- But I want to build stuff!

There is limited interests for indys to group up in the same system because of manufacturing index that will skyrocket.

As already said many times on this thread, there are two options for entry level industrialist:
1) NPC station
2) Public ECs/Citadels

Both comes with serious disadvantages compared to current POS system in terms of profitability when operating in high sec space + the risk of wardec. Those are facts nothing to be discussed anymore (break even point is too high for casual indy...).

Most of the orders in the citaels are plex that can be redeemed there and never needs to leave. The rest of the activity is offshoring. now imagine how much they would be used if the broker fee went up based on the amount of activity in the system. Then you might have a similar situation to evaluate. Till then, apples meet oranges.

Nullsec outposts. Lowsec Thukker Arrays. Thank you Comae Again.

I don't intend to become "hardcore". The casual version is fine (and time consuming enough vs irl)
Don't get met wrong i'm not complaining.
I have digested numbers and I'll use NPC station. I'm fine with that.
Profits will go lower, but i can undertand that groups should get an edge.

So I just wonder now was it the goal of CCP ?

Strong words, you don't know me very well, do you?

Lets put it yet another way .
When the POS or just its bonuses "go away" The casual/solo indy will in no way shape or form be able to compete.

These comments aren't about my personal situation. I'm prefectly happy that EC's are underpowered, overvulnerable and largely unsuitable for the little guy, because I'm not that little guy. But I once was and when I was, I'd have thought that these new EC's stink. Fortunately, when I was that little guy, I had the fully functional version of the POS to support me and that was massively empowering compared to what EC's are planned to be.

A single or limited path progression system like that may be great in a game that wants to avoid detail and control the breadth of player choice in order to keep implementation costs to a minimum, I'd hate to see EVE become one of those games.

[rigs]
If you have a very specific market you only focus on then it's great.
But I prefer to be flexable and follow the markets in what to build, generates a more stable incomme.

People sell POSes all the time, both anchored and packaged, what are you talking about?

You sell them inside the corp or use a third party to secure the deal. You should probably see more of the EVE sandbox, it's not as restrictive as you seem to think.

I'll make use of whatever CCP ends up giving me, I will adapt and overcome as always. That acceptance of reality doesn't prevent me from desiring further improvement. Given that this feature is still in development I don't see why we should have to wait years for that improvement, rather than iterating this feature to a better state now.

Neither does an EC if you leave corp.

Raitaru 9h /week vulnerability and no fichter bays and just 1 launcher
Azbel 18h / week vulnerability
Sotiyo 36h / week vulerebility
is that we do not have other things to do in EVE and / or real life

You folks go round in circles.
- I want to build stuff!
- Here is your EC
- But 104 rigs too difficult!
- Buy XL
- But I'm poor!
- Use public
- But my freedom!
- Use stations
- Inefficient!
- POS is your choice then
- Outdated!
- Go buy items in the market and deal with it
- But I want to build stuff!

why would any industrialist band up with other industrialists and increase their own competition? This is not pvP where more is better this is a market place where more is worse.

Anyways, enough of this white knighting for CCP.

Aside from the fact Eve is supposed to be a sandbox - Meaning no-one should be forced to "co-operate" with anyone should they choose not to.

They laid out the goals in the very first devblog
https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/back-into-the-structure/

I think this is the biggest issue in this entire discussion.
This entire thread is basically heated debate about the implied design strategy of CCP, based on people's interpretation of the proposed features/tactics.
CCP - if you made the strategy clear, I belive it would be far more acceptable to people.

I just tend not to speak in threads like this