Those of you following the blog know about my determination (some might claim stubbornness) to not let the changes coming with EVE Online's Odyssey expansion drive me out of low sec. Part of that is securing my ammunition supply. One of my quirks when I play MMORPGs is that I like to make my own ammunition and EVE is no different. My habit in low sec up until know is to go to the asteroid belts when I have a few minutes and mine. That way whenever I am getting low I can just pop a blueprint into a production line and 13 hours later I have plenty of ammunition.
With the upcoming changes I foresee using a lot more ammunition. That's not so bad except CCP at the same time is theoretically making belt mining more dangerous with the addition of the Tags4Sec feature. If everything works as intended a lot more PvPers will hang around low-sec belts. I figure I'll see more than my fair share of action as I only like mining in 0.1 and 0.2 security systems unless the mechanic doesn't tie into system security. So on the assumption that I'll need to mine smarter in order to maintain my chosen way of life I began to catalog what ore I need to mine in order to produces various types of ammunition. I started small, only researching the close range projectile ammunition and missiles used by sub-capital class ships.
I received a surprise when I got to torpedoes. Except for Nova torpedoes, all torpedoes require megacyte to manufacture. That doesn't really affect me since I fly Hounds and I prefer Novas because of the explosive damage bonus I receive. Also, explosion damage is the preferred damage to deal to Angel Cartel rats, the ones that inhabit the systems I fly in.
But why do the other three require megacyte? Megacyte is only found in Arkonor, Bistot, and Spodumain. Except for the rare occasions that Spodumain appears in a grav site in low, the mineral is only available in null security space. Are torpedoes considered too powerful to use in Empire space so this was a mechanism to control their use? Is their a role-play reason related to the Minmatar uprising against the Amarr that resulted in the Matari coming up with a new method of manufacturing torps? Did someone at CCP make a mistake and forget to put the megacyte build component into the Nova blueprint? Or did a game designer just flub the materials many years ago and broke with what seems a design decision to make all standard sub-capital ammunition manufacturable using ore mined in Empire? I'll probably never find out, but I can ask.
