Mommas Boy
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Posted - 2008.10.27 22:01:00 -
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The 20 times slower to produce is the kicker part, to be honest. My corp is doing reactions to make fermionics, to make a steady income. We now have 4 towers up and running and we are using promo and dispro in the reaction chain we now have. Considering that we could cut the amount we produce in half and save one tower, we would still need an additional 7 towers to produce half the amount we are currently producing. In other words, we would need 12 towers to eliminate the promo and dispro, and only produce half the fermionics we now produce.
Those 7 additional towers are what, 2.5 billion in additional fuel each month, since we buy all the fuel and donĘt mine it ourselves.
We only make less than 3 billion a month in profits now. Cut that in half, and we would make less than 1.5 billion. In other words, we would actually start to loose isk if we switched to this system, as opposed to making isk, by about 1 bil a month, due to the increased fuel requirements.
It would also increase our manpower requirement by almost 4 or 5 times, due to additional silo management and fueling demands.
Also, considering that the new mid levels are likely to go up in price, and the existing high ends are going to go down.... maybeą. perhapsą well, possibly slightly down, it will make a lot of reactions more, not less, expensive.
What CCP should have done is made it so that you use 2 low ends and 1 mid end, mix them together and get the high end substitute, without the silly 5% production time. Even a 25 or 33% production time might be reasonable, but the 5% kills with the necessary additional POS fuel and effort requirements.
The low end moons are very rarely mined, unless you have a very specific use for them, because they are so low end and don't get you anything worth wild to just market the material. It cost more in fuel than you get for the moon min, unless you are using the POS for research or something, and have the space (which isn't likely) to fit on a free miner and silo. The mid ends are currently mined because they are break even or slightly profitable. Instead of attempting to degrade the high ends, they really should have upgraded the low ends as well, so that there is more value to them. This is supposed to be a game after all, and as such, it should be fun.
So, if it were me, you mix 100 units of low end A, 100 units of low end B, and 100 units of mid grade C, and get Substitute high end D, 100 units. You now need 4 silos, one reactor, and if you toss a moon miner on there, you basically have filled up a large POS. You can even apply the same process to the mid ends, so that you mix 2 low ends and end up with a mid end. This assumes you are equating one moon mineral with another, placing them into the reaction chain will change the semantics of what I am saying, but I felt this was a bit clearer of a way to express the concept.
With their system, you now need 3 silos and a reactor to make a substitute high end. Then, you need to have 3 more silos and a reactor to make that into the actual high end, but you only get 10% of what you normally would have, with a lot of recyclable waste product as well (very similar to how they do drug manufacturing for anybody that has watched that). That may, or may not, just fit on a large POS. Borderline, to be honest, but provably would. BUT, you now need 10 of those POS's to equal 1 high end moon with a miner on it.
This is the Fail on CCP's part due to not looking into the entire economic chain. Nor does this resolve any of the problems with the neodymium and thulium rare minerals not being nearly as useful. You donĘt address any of the demand issues you created by making the dyspro in particular a necessary reactant to such a huge amount of T2 products.
Unless you are a small entity, too far from empire to easily do the import / export, and are trying to be self sufficient and need this for some ungodly reason, I don't see it happening. Sad really, as they are really just making the large 0.0 with 8 titan entities more entrenched.
Thinking more about this, I see the promo and dispro only have very small impacts, like less than 20%, where the mid ends will become supposedly more valuable, and go up probably 50% or more. Our reaction chains, which currently rely on cadmium as well as promo and dispro, may become significantly less profitable as a result of this. Way to go CCP. Fail. Way to boost the huge entities with massive space (the potential logistical headaches will be offset by the additional revenue they will undoubtedly see to holding a significant number of the mid end moons already that they may start to mine now) and mess with the little guy that doesnĘt want to deal with those politics.
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