Builders Must Play With Others

On Friday CCP published a dev blog concerning industry changes. I'm not quite sure how to characterize the changes, so I'll include the dev blog's explanation below...

The path for aspiring builders in New Eden will be clearer than ever – so if you have ever thought about getting into industrial production, this is a good time to start! In addition, experienced builders will have a new set of challenges to rise to in their field of expertise.

Requirements for a given ship will be determined by a variety of factors, including tech level, ship category, hull type, size, and purpose, among other things. Based on these factors, each ship will be given a tier, and their material costs updated accordingly.

These changes will:

• Create more robust and interesting manufacturing progression
• Allow for better compartmentalization in the manufacturing process between subcapitals, capitals, and supercapital ships
• Revitalize the importance of R4 moons
• Normalize the value proposition between different activities in EVE
• Increase the importance of wormholes and allow wormholers to be a catalyst in New Eden's environment
• Positively impact capital proliferation without a significant impact on subcap markets
• Impact the whole economy of New Eden, such as the pricing of a variety of items
• Lay the foundations for future resource distribution

In addition, new industry components will be required for battleships, capitals, and supercapitals. These new components will be available via reactions, blueprints, and loot drops from exploration content.

The new reactions and blueprints for component construction will be available via NPC markets. What’s more, reprocessing material values will be updated for subcapital ships as well as for existing capital components.

This update will be split into two different phases in April. The first update will distribute the necessary blueprints, reactions, and components that will become a requirement in ship manufacturing. This will allow for a transitional period before the second update goes live a few weeks later, when these components will become required materials in ship production.

According to the spreadsheet linked in the dev blog, only 5 ship classes will only be manufactured with minerals after the changes go live...

• Tech 1 frigates
• Tech 1 destroyers
• Tech 1 cruisers
• Tech 1 battle cruisers
• Tech 1 industrial ships

Tech 1 of the ship classes refers to the standard type of hull. Faction pirate and faction navy ships require the new components mentioned in the blog. Also using the new components are all tech 1 battleships. I do not include the Praxis, as it is a promotional ship designed for use by new players.

Current mineral distribution as of 29 March 2021

Even before the latest changes, industrialists couldn't just remain in high sec if they wished to harvest all the materials themselves. But the new reactions require infrastructure set up outside of high sec to process. Also, all of the gas required for the reactions is only found outside high sec. Some of the R4 moon minerals required for the new builds are found in 0.5 systems in high sec need to be transported to low sec, null sec, or a wormhole. My understanding is that players cannot compress either the moon minerals or gas for transport, making locally gathered materials much preferable to use.

From what I can tell, the days of building a ship by gathering all the raw materials, other than the basic tech 1 variety, solo are about to end. A pity, because I enjoyed the challenge of building my Nestor. One can still build the ship by purchasing the harder to obtain parts off the in-game market, and I probably will take that route in the future. I just wonder how the whole change will work out.