This is the first of what should be a series of posts. It is about the process I am following to build a Raitaru – the smallest (and cheapest) of the Engineering Complexes. While I hope it is of general interest, it is targeted more towards those who do not normally dabble in or understand the Industry side of EVE. It is by no means a guide towards the best way to build a Raitaru – just the way I happen to be stumbling along.
The very first step of the process is the spark of the idea. From memory this came from the blogger Kirith Kodachi and his posts about his Structure Assembly lines. He was building lots of structures Solo – so why not set myself a goal to build one? To take this further – I would follow the example of The Nosy Gamer and gather as much of the raw ingredients as I could myself.
Economically this is a horrible idea. With consideration of Opportunity Cost, I should concentrate on the tasks I can generate the most ISK per hour from and outsource the resource gathering and building of a Raitaru to those more skilled, better located and with optimised tools to do so. If you have followed this blog you would know I don’t think much of Structures for Solo play, so I am not likely to even use what I build. Instead my interest lies in the challenge of doing the largest and most complex build I will have done so far in my EVE Career.
My initial goal was to build an Astrahus on my Main Character. It soon became apparent however that it would require a lot of time and focus, which I didn’t want to tie my Main down with. The goal withered on the vine.
When I reestablished a separate Industry Alt months later, I quickly revisited the goal. To make it a bit easier for myself I decided to switch over to the cheaper (and I hoped easier) to build Raitaru.
The second step is to identify what you have to do to manufacture one. This is outlined in the Raitaru Blueprint – the details of which you can find using the client search function or looking it up via the Market.
Under the Manufacturing section of the Blueprint it tells you how long it takes to build, what skills you need to build it, and what ingredients it needs.
I needed the Outpost Construction skill to rank 1, and 9 structure components. My industry Alt did not have the required skill – but I had plenty of time before I would be ready to build, so I added it to her training queue. (As shown above, that is now complete).
The third step was to source the required Blueprints. Using a tool like https://evemarketer.com/ I found an Original Raitaru Blueprint cost 4B ISK, and the Structure Component Blueprints cost 200M each. That is a 5.8B ISK expense. I would then need to research most of them to make them more efficient. Given I don’t plan on building many of these, I decided to search through the in game Contracts looking for a Blueprint Copy Kit. This is where the owner of a set of original Blueprints made one or more run copies of them for sale (and profit).
The important factors in purchasing such a kit include price, location, completeness, and how well they were researched. By researched I mean if their Material Efficiency (ME) and Time Efficiency (TE) were better than 0%. This is shown on the top of the Blueprint (original or copy) information box (below is my Hammerhead I BPO):
Material Efficiency is shown next to the Diamond like symbol and Time Efficiency is shown next to the Hour Glass.
Material Efficiency reduces the required input materials needed during the manufacturing process. The maximum ME a Blueprint can have is 10%. That can save you a lot of ISK on big builds.
Time Efficiency decreases the time it takes to manufacture a Blueprint. The maximum TE a Blueprint can have is 20%. Given the Raitaru takes over 4 and a half days to build, a better TE would be nice (but not mandatory).
Once you start looking at these kits you will find they come at different prices and have different ME and TE amounts. Looking at the original BPO I could tell it wouldn’t matter what ME a one run Raitaru BPC had.
An ME of 1% would only have a positive impact on each individual ingredient where 100 or more were required. 1% of 100 is 1 less unit required.
An ME of 10% would only have a positive impact on each individual ingredient where 10 or more were required. 10% of 10 is 1 less unit required.
The Raitaru had 9 ingredients – of only 1 unit each. 10% less of 1 is rounded back up to 1.
I looked through the 9 Structure Components and they all required Minerals and P4 Planetary Materials. The P4 material were in low volume – at most 10. The Minerals were all at least 100 units – normally in the thousands of units. Any ME level would reduce the volume of Minerals required, but only an ME of 10% would reduce any of the P4 ingredients.
There were no additional Blueprints required for the ingredients of the structure components, so my kit would need just the 10 BPC – the Raitaru and its 9 required components to build.
If you are looking to maximise profits, you can use tools like Fuzzworks Blueprint Calculator to see the impact of the different researched levels. A link to a Raitaru Blueprint is shown below:
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/blueprint/?typeid=35825
The most reasonable kit I found at the time was one for 20M ISK for the Raitaru (ME4, TE12) and 9 components (ME7, TE14).
(At the time I did not find any ME10 Blueprints for the Structure Components.)
Below is one of the Component BPC’s in the kit:
It took me an EVE session or two to research, purchase and move the required Blueprints, and a number of weeks for my Alt to do her required skill training.
So when I had that all covered, the fourth step was to open up my EVE Spreadsheet and add a new Tab for my Raitaru build project. I listed out the 9 components I would need to build first, what minerals they required and what P4 Planetary ingredients I would have to make. These volumes were taken direct from the Blueprint Copies, taking into account their Material efficiencies.
I then set about mining and starting up Planetary Production. I put my Blueprint Copies and all the ingredients I was collecting into a Station container. As my screen capture shows above – I have now collected all the required minerals for the build, but I have not completed any of the P4 ingredients.
The Tritanium, Pyerite, Mexallon, Isogen and Nocxium were readily available in High Sec Asteroid Belts. I mined using three characters – mostly on my Main (who is very skilled) and my Industry Alt (who is not so skilled). I picked the Asteroids I mined based on what minerals I needed the most instead of what was most profitable.
Zydrine is not available in normal High Sec belts, but I was able to source most of it by hunting down Jaspect, Hedbergite and Hemorphite Anomaly sites in High Sec, and adding a bit from refining loot salvage.
I did not pay close attention to how long this process took. I think there was around a month of sporadic hour long mining sessions, including some semi-AFK time in a Retriever. Making use of every mining Anomaly site, and hauling minerals from the various locations I ended up mining all added to the effort. It didn’t seem too arduous however as it was spread out. It encouraged me to undock and look around.
Megacyte is also not available in normal High Sec belts, and can’t be found in any Anomaly belts in High Sec either. I could either have mined extra to be sold to cover the cost of buying it, or looked to Ninja mine in Low Sec Anomalies or Wormholes. Instead when I moved my Main’s Industry collection over to my Alt, I found he had enough of a Megacyte stockpile to cover what was needed.
So at this point I have the required blueprints and minerals, but I need to finish sourcing my PI ingredients. I have a collection of P1, P2 and P3 ingredients covered. By the end of this weekend I will have the last of the required P1’s extracted, and just need to process everything with some level of efficiency through factory planets. Here is my current P1 status:
More to come on the much more time consuming PI gathering in my next post.
(Post Version 1.1)
Evehermit 