Project Vulcan - Citadels and Competition

I've been pondering Citadels a lot lately in regards to how to fit them into my small time industrial operation, or even if I should. Here's my train of thought.

A lot of people are going to purchase Medium Citadel BPOs on day one and start building them. That will drive prices for the components required to build them, while the excessive competition to build them will saturate the market and drive prices down, quickly eating up profit margins. And then assuming I can get about 15% profit on each unit (~100 million ISK let's say), I'm looking at having to sell about 60 of them to start to get a return on the investment into the BPO. And that's assuming I can get good prices on the structure components I need, or look into getting the eight Structure component BPOs I need, either unresearched at ~200 mil each or researched at around 350-400 mil each (if I'm lucky). In other words, it feels like a large investment for possibly small returns.

The other alternative is to simply buy the Medium Citadel BPO and put it into research for the next year to make copies of later on once its at ME10. I'd still be tying up ~6 billion ISK for a year but the returns on the copies are certain and I can resell at a profit if desired. Plus it gives me time to allow the market to settle and evaluate at that time if building Citadels is profitable enough.

But wait! There's more!

I've been alternating building Archons and Moros, but the new Force Auxiliaries are coming and with them will be new BPOs to consider buying. I figure I'll need to get at least the Amarr version, the Apostle, and I'll probably consider buying two so that I can stuff one into the year+ researching time to get it up to snuff.

Here's the Archon BPO that just finished researching from ME9 to ME10. Check the install date versus the end date; almost 10 months, and that does not include the time to get from ME0 to ME9.

TL;DR: I'm definitely adding a couple FAX BPOs to my library, still on the fence about the Medium Citadel BPO plan.

Force Auxiliaries - The Path Forward

We finally got a glimpse on how the transition from the current Jack-of-All-Trades carriers to combat carriers and support Force Auxiliaries (aka Force Aux) is going to go down. From a dev post  by CCP Larrikin: 

We're seeding the 4 Racial Force Auxiliary skills in February, along with skills for Light Fighter Squadrons and Support Fighter Squadrons. 

Any character with Tactical Logistics Reconfiguration, a Carrier and Force Auxiliary skill (of the same race) injected when the citadels expansion launches, will have the racial carrier skillpoints refunded as unallocated skillpoints. These skillpoints can be reallocated instantly as the player desires. 

If you start training the Force Auxiliary skill after the patch tomorrow, you can reallocate your refunded skillpoints right back into your racial carrier skill so you can fly both ships. Or spend them on anything you like! 

There'll be a dev-blog going into more details about our transition plans for Carriers, Force Auxiliaries and a bunch of other stuff, coming out later this week.

This tells us that players who have no interest in carriers going forward can switch their skills to the corresponding racial Force Aux skill just by buying the skill book and injecting it prior to Citadel. You won't get your money back for the carrier skill book if you plan to never train that again but hopefully you got your money out of it.

That answers the question of how will players quickly ramp up to the new triage platforms, but it does not answer the question of whether CCP plans to allow players to get an automatic upgrade (read: replacement) from the current carriers to the new Force Aux.

There are three obvious options for an automatic upgrade:
1) If you have the Force Aux skill injected and you are sitting in your carrier when the expansion comes, your carrier becomes a Force Aux.

2) Any carriers with triage module fitted become Force Aux.

3) Combination of 1 and 2: any carriers with triage module and owning character with Force Aux skill become Force Aux capitals.

I'm sure there are other ways to do an auto-upgrade, but the other option is to simply allow the market /industry to deal with the issue. After all, carriers can be reprocessed down to capital components which can then be used to build the new ships. The turn around for the first Force Aux would be a mere ~10 days. Surely that's a blink of the eye to any EVE player with a capital.

Of course, this leads to another line of questioning: is the build costs in terms of components going to change for carriers since they are losing a significant function in the Citadel expansion? And are the Force Aux going to be comparable to current carrier build costs or lower? If carriers drop in build price significantly, there could be a rush on reprocessing carriers prior to the patch to extract as much wealth from them and rebuild at the cheaper price point post patch.

Personally, for my capital building enterprise I plan to put on hold any further Archon builds after the current one in progress until after some of these questions are answered more fully.

The Capital Changes are On The Horizon

Check out the video from Uriel Anteovnuecci showing the new Force Auxiliary capitals from Duality test server.

Carriers to Force-Aux: What Will Be the Transition?

(Nov 13, 2015) UPDATE: Dev post FAQ states:

Q) Will we allow pilots to exchange their Carrier for Force Auxs? #1 A) Yes, but we havn’t determined the mechanic for this yet. One possibility that has been raised is that on patch day, any carrier with a triage module fitted will be turned in to a force aux. But this is still very much something we want to get your input on before we nail down the final plan. 

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After Monday's post talking about my thoughts on the pre- and post-Citadel capital battlefield, my friend Stalence of CalMil alliance Templis CALSF contacted me and mention that at EVE Vegas there was mention that CCP is looking into ways to convert Carriers to Force-Auxs as players desired. He wondered if the same process could apply to blueprints so that my spare Archon BPO could become an equivalent Amarr Force-Aux.

This is not the first time I've heard that it was suggested that current carrier pilots would have some way to choose to keep a carrier or get one of the new ships in exchange, but I really have a lot of trouble seeing how the heck that would work out. There are a lot of factors in play as this is not a straight up conversion of one class to another like the tiericide and ship balancing usually is.

For instance:

1) How would you pick one over the other? The presence of a Triage module was suggested, i.e. if one is fitted then it becomes a Force-Aux otherwise it stays a carrier. Seems clunky and might confuse returning players after the patch who go looking for their beloved Chimera and find some other ship instead.

2) If the ships have a disparity in price (i.e. raw price) will players get reimbursed the difference for switching/not switching?

I assume that if the slot layouts change on a carrier or are different on an exchanged Force Aux, the existing bad modules would be inactive until refitting. And all the drones would either go in the Fleet Hanger or to the player's home station (or put in redeemable items?).

Overall its doable, but it seems very clunky. Personally I think it would be better just to leave the current carriers alone (barring stat and layout changes) and let the market take care of the transition to the new Force Aux. Yes, that means there will be a couple weeks where no one has capital reps but I don't think that would be such a big deal. If it is a deal-breaker, just release the blueprints for the new ships 10 days or so before changing carriers.

Personally, I am going to want to have both ships on hand most likely so unless there is a strong financial reason to convert my Thanatos if CCP offers some sort of auto-exchange, I'll keep it and buy the new Force-Aux when it comes out.