Players in Eve Echoes manufacture everything. Every ship, every module, even player owned stations have players manufacturing them. Sure, some ships get provided by the game. For example there is no way to make Civilian equipment. The racial basic ships like Minmatar's Reaper have no blueprints to manufacture them. But for everything else there is a blueprint for Industrialists to manufacture. This is where Eve Echoes trumps every other game of its kind. And this is what we will look at in this article.
Mining
Mining is the most basic act of industrialism in the game. In theory you can mine in any ship that can fit a mining laser. Even that crappy racial basic ship can fit a mining laser. I don't recommend it though because its cargohold can only fit 240m3. Considering the smallest amount of ore than you can reprocess is 100m3 you'd be mining and dumping at station for ages.
The good news is there is a faction called ORE. They manufacture little mining frigates called Venture. These little ships are my favourite ships in the whole game. They have a mining bonus which increases your yield. There are much bigger ships, though, called mining barges. These mine ore quicker and hold more but they are slow and tend to be easy prey for bang bangers. It's not recommended to mine in low sec or null sec without backup in mining barges. But Ventures are small, agile miners. Sure the Mining Laser mines less per cycle than a Strip Miner but their cycles are faster. These little ships are great for low and null sec.
So how does mining work? The basic principle of a Venture is the same as a bang bang ship. Lock onto an asteroid then fire your Mining Laser. Wait until the asteroid gets depleted or your ore hold gets filled. Then return to station and unload.
Ore holds are also another reason why mining frigates or mining barges are the best ships for mining. Ore holds are a special storaged dedicated to storing ore mined from asteroids. The most basic mining frigate - Training Venture - has an ore hold of 2,500m3. To put that into perspective, a frigate like the Imicus which has a large cargo hold is only 1000m3. Most are around 800m3. The Venture also has a cargo hold but only 100m3.
So let me introduce you to the Venture. The Venture has five variants. These are:
- Venture Trainer - Tech Level 4 - 2,500m3
- Venture - Tech Level 4 - 4,000m3
- Venture II - Tech Level 5 - 6,000m3
- Venture III - Tech Level 6 - 9,000m3
- Venture IV - Tech Level 10 - 30,000m3
I know the names aren't brilliant but it's the same ship with different levels. While the biggest differences are the ore hold size there are other differences. Warp stability means it's harder for bang bangers to use warp disrupters. Yield bonuses increase. Capacitor usage drops.
There are four mining barges to choose from. For expediency I'll list their Tech Levels and ore hold sizes in this list:
- Retriever - Tech Level 7 - 24,000m3
- Procurer - Tech Level 9 - 42,000m3
- Covetor - Tech Level 10 - 54,000m3
- Covetor II - Tech Level 10 - 70,000m3
Mining barges mine a little different. Whereas a mining frigate needs to lock on, a mining barge only needs to have its strip miners activated. They will mine everything in the belt each cycle. They do mine three times a cycle though. They can strip an entire asteroid belt in about 30 minutes.
An important module to fit to your ship is a Warp Core Stabiliser. The most common tactic shooters have against industrial ships is warp scrambling them. This prevents the ship from warping out and thus unable to escape. You're a sitting duck when this happens. Luckily all mining ships from mining frigates to the mining barges have a role bonus for this. Each of these ships have either +1 or +2 warp core stability. This is the same as having an extra warp core stabiliser fitted. So say you have a Venture II. It has a +2 Warp Core Stability role bonus. It also has 3 Low Slots where you can fit Warp Core Stabilisers to. So 3 WCS fitted +2 for role bonus is the same as fitting 5 WCS. This means anyone trying to prevent you from warping out needs to have a ship with 5 mid-slots. They would have to fill these slots with Warp Scramblers. This means they will not be able to fit any other modules in those slots. Very few ships have 5 Mid slots though so you can escape a lot more easy.
Reprocessing
Reprocessing is the act of taking the ore you mined then extracting the minerals from it. Veldspar for example will give you only Tritanium. Scordite will give you Tritanium and Pyerite.
Your skill level affects how much you get from reprocessing. There are a batch of skills you need to get the best. These skills are:
- Common Ore Reprocessing - Veldspar, Scordite, Plagioclase
- Uncommon Ore Reprocessing - Pyroxeres, Omber, Kernite, Dark Ochre
- Special Ore Reprocessing - Hemorphite, Spodumain, Gneiss
- Rare Ore Reprocessing - Jaspet, Hedbergite, Crokite
- Precious Ore Reprocessing - Bistot, Arkonor, Mercoxit
Each of these skills have 5 levels like every other skill. Like all other skills there are also Advanced and Expert levels giving a total of 15 levels.
Scrap Metal Reprocessing
There is also one other way to get minerals. This is scrap metal reprocessing. This takes modules and scrap metal pieces and pulls them apart to get the minerals. The higher the skill training the more minerals you receive.
Planetary Interaction
Asteroids provide the main minerals for use in blueprints but you can also mine planets.
Using the Planetary Interaction screen you lay down a mining array on a planet. Then you choose which minerals to mine.
This interaction is pretty much activate for 24 hours then leave. The higher your skills the more arrays you can lay and the more planets you can mine. So you can mine different planets for different materials all at the same time.
Once the holds are full you eject a container into space, warp to it, then you loot it. Be careful though because once it's in space anyone can steal it from you.
Blueprints
You can find blueprints in the market but you can also find them at Inquisitor sites. These blueprints have a materials list that you can either mine and reprocess or buy in the market.
It's pretty simple to make stuff. Set how many you want to build, make sure you have the materials to build, then build. If you get a BP from an Inquisitor site you will find that they have limited amounts of build, around 10. If you buy a BP from the market then you will have unlimited builds from that BP.
Your manufacturing skill levels affect how much materials you need to build. The better your skill level the lower the amount of materials.
You can also train skills to reverse engineer those BPs. These lead to better versions of ships. For example (although not actually in game yet) you can reverse engineer a Venture BP and get a Venture II BP. That sort of thing. This is more complex and not guaranteed to work. Better skill levels equals higher chance of success.
All in all I find Industry to be the most work for the least profit but the highest satisfaction. There is nothing better than building a ship then flying it or selling it in market. Thus I find it to be the most rewarding endeavour in the game and why I wrote about it first. The next post will be about the market.