EVE Online September 2024 Patch Notes: Industry Changes

By now two EVE Online patches in a week should no longer surprise me. Today's patch is huge, affecting both the Equinox sovereignty system and industry. While the road to the winter expansion has begun, the developers still have unfinished business concerning the Equinox expansion. I'm not a null sec resident, but today's patch plus the activity I've tracked over the summer leads me to believe players are not adapting to the new sov system with the speed CCP wishes.

I have a practice of combining dev blogs with patch notes to try to provide a comprehensive look at the latest changes. I'll do so again with today's dev blog but I have to do so in three posts. This second post covers the industry changes.

I have the feeling these changes indicate more of the CSM telling those in charge of the in-game economy, "I told you so."

Today also sees updates aimed at refining capital ship production, balancing smartbombs, and expanding the range of available modules. These changes are designed to provide capsuleers with more streamlined processes, new strategic opportunities, and diverse options for outfitting their fleets.

Capital ship manufacturing has been optimized to simplify the process for constructing capital and supercapital ships. By adjusting the material requirements and workflows, capsuleers can now build these powerful vessels more efficiently. This update is expected to make capital ship production more accessible, allowing smaller builders to specialize in making certain capital sub-components with less concern about resource requirements. Additionally, the costs for Tech I battleships have been significantly reduced by halving the Isogen requirements, which have been replaced with Nocxium. This adjustment eases some of the mineral dependencies and lowers the overall cost of Tech I battleships, providing more opportunities for capsuleers to build and field these ships in greater numbers.

First, the changes to capital ship manufacturing.

Several adjustments have been made to Capital Ship Manufacturing. The goal of these changes are streamlining capital manufacturing so that it’s easier for smaller producers to get involved as well as a slight reduction to the cost of building capital ships.

• Fulleroferrocene, PPD Fullerene Fibers, Fullerene Intercalated Graphite, Methanofullerene, Lanthanum Metallofullerene and Scandium Metallofullerene have been removed from Capital Construction Components.
  
  
• The amounts of Isogen and Mexallon required for construction of Capital Clone Vat Bay, Capital Doomsday Weapon Mount and Capital Jump Bridge Array have been reduced by 10%.
  
  
• The amounts of Fulleroferrocene, PPD Fullerene Fibers, Fullerene Intercalated Graphite, Methanofullerene, Lanthanum Metallofullerene and Scandium Metallofullerene required for the manufacture of FTL Interlinks have been significantly increased.
  
  
• Reinforced Carbon Fibre, Megacyte, Zydrine, Fullerides, Noxium, Isogen, Tritanium, Mexallon, Pyerite, Phenolic Composites and Racial Carbides have been removed from the manufacture of FTL Interlinks.
  
  
• The amount of Auto-Integrity Preservation Seals and Life Support Backup Units needed to manufacture Titans are increased by 100%.
  
  
• The amount of Trigger Neurolink Conduits needed to manufacture Titans are increased by 50%.
  
  
• The amount of Capital Core Regulators needed to manufacture Titans is increased by 25%.
  
  
• Genetic Lock Preserver Blueprints, Genetic Structure Repairer Blueprints, Genetic Mutation Inhibitor Blueprints and Genetic Safeguard Filter Blueprints have had their input materials reduced to 5 and output reduced to 1 (reduced by a factor of 20 for both) to make it easier to create them in smaller batches.

Next come changes to producing Tech 1 Battleships. No changes for pirate and navy ships. One of the nice parts of the patch notes are the goals of the change is described in greater detail.

A small amount of tweaks has been made to Tech 1 Battleship Blueprints to bring down their current costs to make them more affordable, reduce the current Isogen bottleneck (which currently makes up almost 50% of their cost), and also make them more cost efficient than Navy Battleships which currently cost only 20-25% more than Tech 1 Battleships.

• Adjustments made to Tech 1 Battleships (does not include Navy or Pirate blueprints)
• The amount of Isogen required is reduced from 400,000 to 200,000.
• The amount of Nocxium required is increased from 12,000 to 24,000.
• This represents, at the time of writing, an approximate 75 million ISK reduction to the cost of producing a Tech 1 Battleship from a ME:0 blueprint in an NPC station.
  
  
• Adjustments made to the Scorpion
• The amount of Isogen required is reduced from 300,000 to 150,000.
• The amount of Nocxium required is increased from 9,000 to 18,000.

The dev blog didn't mention Marauders and Black Ops, but the Tech 2 Battleships also received some attention.

We have also made some adjustments to the cost to produce Marauders and Black Ops. The main intention here is to keep their current price mostly the same or slightly higher, since both Black Ops and Marauders are incredibly strong right now and we don't want to unintentionally make them even more powerful by lowering their price. We are, therefore, increasing the amount of Reactor Units used in their blueprints, to make it so that they use primarily more R64 moon materials. This means that controlling valuable moons is more important for the production of Tech 2 Battleships.

• Adjustments made to Marauder Blueprints
• The amount of Reactor Units required is increased from 225 to 675.
• This represents a cost increase of approximately 60 million ISK at the time of writing these patch notes.
  
  
• Adjustments made to Black Ops Blueprints
• The amount of Reactor Units required is increased from 150 to 450.
• This represents a cost increase of approximately 40 million ISK at the time of writing these patch notes. Note that because the cost reduction of the Tech 1 Battleships used for production, the cost should remain roughly the same. It is possible that higher demand or market speculation for R64 materials may increase the costs in the future.

The final industry item concerns a new source of blue print copies for Navy ships.

LP Stores:

• New LP Store Offers have been added for military corporation LP stores - offering Navy Ship BPCs in exchange for LP and Nexus Chips, rather than LP and ISK.