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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

What's Up With Torpedo Manufacturing?

Those of you following the blog know about my determination (some might claim stubbornness) to not let the changes coming with EVE Online's Odyssey expansion drive me out of low sec.  Part of that is securing my ammunition supply.  One of my quirks when I play MMORPGs is that I like to make my own ammunition and EVE is no different.  My habit in low sec up until know is to go to the asteroid belts when I have a few minutes and mine.  That way whenever I am getting low I can just pop a blueprint into a production line and 13 hours later I have plenty of ammunition.

With the upcoming changes I foresee using a lot more ammunition.  That's not so bad except CCP at the same time is theoretically making belt mining more dangerous with the addition of the Tags4Sec feature.  If everything works as intended a lot more PvPers will hang around low-sec belts.  I figure I'll see more than my fair share of action as I only like mining in 0.1 and 0.2 security systems unless the mechanic doesn't tie into system security.  So on the assumption that I'll need to mine smarter in order to maintain my chosen way of life I began to catalog what ore I need to mine in order to produces various types of ammunition.  I started small, only researching the close range projectile ammunition and missiles used by sub-capital class ships.

I received a surprise when I got to torpedoes.  Except for Nova torpedoes, all torpedoes require megacyte to manufacture.  That doesn't really affect me since I fly Hounds and I prefer Novas because of the explosive damage bonus I receive.  Also, explosion damage is the preferred damage to deal to Angel Cartel rats, the ones that inhabit the systems I fly in. 

But why do the other three require megacyte?  Megacyte is only found in Arkonor, Bistot, and Spodumain.  Except for the rare occasions that Spodumain appears in a grav site in low, the mineral is only available in null security space.  Are torpedoes considered too powerful to use in Empire space so this was a mechanism to control their use?  Is their a role-play reason related to the Minmatar uprising against the Amarr that resulted in the Matari coming up with a new method of manufacturing torps?  Did someone at CCP make a mistake and forget to put the megacyte build component into the Nova blueprint?  Or did a game designer just flub the materials many years ago and broke with what seems a design decision to make all standard sub-capital ammunition manufacturable using ore mined in Empire?  I'll probably never find out, but I can ask.

9 comments:

  1. You should create a new character named 'Les Stroud' and instead of the NoizyGamer you should rename the blog 'Surivor Man.'

    If you do this, I will create a character named 'Bear Grylls.' We can war dec each other and see who can live the longest in the bad lands of Molden Heath.

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    1. Might be the best comment I have seen on a blog ever. Too bad it is anonymous.

      Delete
    2. It's not the best, but it's pretty damn good.

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    3. I have met a hardcore world of warcraft player whos character was named Bear Grylls only he miss-spelled it as Grills.
      Still funny though!
      Whatever.

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  2. Megacyte is also available by reprocessing modules. Even though T1 module drops were removed from NPCs, there are still buttloads of low meta modules being dropped, which can be reprocessed for megacyte. This is where I get all of the megacyte I use for manufacturing, as well as a good percentage of other minerals.

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  3. CCP stated on many occasions that they are against people shutting up in their own little corner of the universe and doing everything they do without interaction with the rest of the game.

    Therefore, if you need some Megacyte, just go and buy some from other players :)

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    1. Oh, you definitely have to for things like tech 2 ammo, modules, and ships. But basic ammunition is one of those bulk items that should just be like running out to the store.

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  4. Megacyte isn't needed for Novas because, as a primarily Minmatar ammo, duct tape is used instead?

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  5. There are all sorts of quirks like this. Compare Brutix vs other BC production: the Brutix does not need isogen to make, yet almost all the rest of Gallente ships require isogen.

    To relieve boredom, I currently mine in lowsec. Not because it is worth more than high sec, but because we recently moved from null and I was the miner there. Unlike nullsec, my sad little drones can handle virtually any of the belt rats, although for some odd reason gurista ferox rats have a crazy mad shield regen rate. Roamers show up in frigates (it is a FW system) and bug out when they see my silly little mining barge taking on moa and raven rats - doubly so when I'm tackling them with a mining barge. As Admiral Ackbar says "Its a trap!" Or is it?

    If high sec industrialists are as risk adverse as most wags claim they (we?) are, they have not observed the risk-adverse behaviors I've seen in FW systems among militia members. Perhaps the LP farmers are a small portion of the actual inhabitants of low, but from what I've seen in the past 2-3 months, what I'm observing is so different from blogs that sometimes I wonder if we're playing the same game at all.

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