Requiel
PVC Love God
A few people have been talking about this in the CUK channel recently and it's a bit complex to explain in chat but pretty easy to get your head around if it's explained properly.
I'll deal with each bit separately first to keep it simple.
Production
You need the Industry skill to make things. Each level of Industry reduces the time spent per job.
Other skills you will want are:
Production of T1 items only requires the Industry skill, T2 production requires various advanced skills depending on the item.
To make something you will need a Blueprint for the item you want to build. Blueprints for T1 items are available from the market, blueprints for T2 and faction items are available via contracts.
There are two kinds of Blueprints; Blueprint Originals (BPOs) and Blueprint Copies (BPCs). Any blueprint you buy from the market will be a BPO. If you buy it from contracts it may be a BPC so check before you accept.
The difference is that BPCs cannot be researched to make them more efficient, cannot be copied and have a limit on the number of times they can be used. BPOs can be used unlimited times, can be researched and can be copied. Obviously for production you will generally want to get yourself a BPO if possible. Blueprints can only be used for one job at a time, you can't run multiple manufacturing jobs simultaneously from the same BP nor can you be researching a BP while copying it.
If you right click on a BP and show info you will see in the 'Attributes' tab the general info for the blueprint. Here it will say whether it's an original or a copy, it will tell you the Material Level and Productivity Level as well as how many runs are left on it. The 'Bill of Materials' tab will tell you what you need to build one run of the BP. It will also tell you what you need to copy it, invent from it or research it but ignore these for now.
If you don't yet have Production Efficiency to V, you will see that the Bill of Materials will have two numbers next to each item: Perfect and You. Perfect is the amount of materials that someone with PE V would need and You is obviously the amount that you would use for one run.
Research
You can research BPOs to make them more efficient. There are two different areas that you can research: Material Efficiency which increases the Material Level (ML) of the BPO and Productivity Efficiency which increases the Productivity Level (PL). The higher the ML, the fewer materials it needs to build while a higher PL reduces the time per run. In practice the PL doesn't matter that much. ML though is pretty important. You need the Science skill to do research and the Laboratory Operation/Advanced Laboratory Operation skills will allow you do do more research jobs at once.
How to build something
So you have your BP and you have at least one level in Industry. Now it's time to make something. Firstly you need to be in a station that has a manufacturing line. You can check this from the services, click on Science and Industry and then look under the 'Installations' tab. Most stations that have Science and Industry services will have manufacturing capacity.
Make sure your BP is in your hangar and not in a container. All of your materials must also be in your hangar at the same station and not in containers either. Right click on the BP and choose 'Manufacturing'. A small window will appear asking you to choose a location and the number of runs. Click on the 'Pick Installation' button and choose a manufacturing line from the list. Order the list by next available and use one that says 'now' or has the shortest amount of time left on it. Click on 'Use Assembly Line' when you've selected the line and you'll be back at the small window again. Enter the number of runs you want to make at the bottom. Note that some BPs make more than one item per run - ammunition for example is usually 100 units per run. Once you've set that click on OK and you'll get a confirmation window showing you the final list of materials you'll be using for the job along with the line costs and the time it will take. If you don't have enough materials you'll see that the items you are missing will be marked with a red X. You can click on Close to go back a step and choose a smaller number of runs or you can cancel it, buy more materials and set it up again.
Assuming everything is fine, click on OK and the job will be installed. Congratulations you are now building something. You can check on the progress of your job by opening the Science and Industry window (either from the left menu bar or from Station Services) and checking under the 'Jobs' tab for 'All Active Jobs'. You'll see a list there of everything you're working on and how long it has to go before it's completed. When a job is completed you need to deliver it, just click on the Deliver button at the bottom of this screen and the BP and items you made will be placed in your hangar. If you were using a BPC and it has no more runs left after your job then you will only get the items delivered to you.
Researching Blueprints
This works in almost exactly the same way as for building something except that you don't usually need any materials. You can only research a BPO and not a BPC, also Material Research lines are a lot less common in stations than Manufacturing lines are so you may need to hunt around for one that doesn't have long queues. When you find a place to do your research (hint: ask Taaii or I to do it at our POS), the steps are almost identical to installing a manufacturing job. You will need to choose the amount of ML you want to improve it by instead of the number of runs and this will vary according to the BP. There is a cap for each BP beyond which additional ML makes no difference, you also can't install any job that would take more than 30 days. There are some tools that work out the perfect ML for different BPs for you although it's not usually worth getting a perfect ML on most BPs. Nobody will care that it takes you two extra tritanium to build something, just make sure you aren't wasting any of the more valuable minerals.
I'll deal with each bit separately first to keep it simple.
Production
You need the Industry skill to make things. Each level of Industry reduces the time spent per job.
Other skills you will want are:
- Mass Production/Advanced Mass Production (1 extra manufacturing job per level)
- Production Efficiency (reduces waste in every job. You want this at V).
Production of T1 items only requires the Industry skill, T2 production requires various advanced skills depending on the item.
To make something you will need a Blueprint for the item you want to build. Blueprints for T1 items are available from the market, blueprints for T2 and faction items are available via contracts.
There are two kinds of Blueprints; Blueprint Originals (BPOs) and Blueprint Copies (BPCs). Any blueprint you buy from the market will be a BPO. If you buy it from contracts it may be a BPC so check before you accept.
The difference is that BPCs cannot be researched to make them more efficient, cannot be copied and have a limit on the number of times they can be used. BPOs can be used unlimited times, can be researched and can be copied. Obviously for production you will generally want to get yourself a BPO if possible. Blueprints can only be used for one job at a time, you can't run multiple manufacturing jobs simultaneously from the same BP nor can you be researching a BP while copying it.
If you right click on a BP and show info you will see in the 'Attributes' tab the general info for the blueprint. Here it will say whether it's an original or a copy, it will tell you the Material Level and Productivity Level as well as how many runs are left on it. The 'Bill of Materials' tab will tell you what you need to build one run of the BP. It will also tell you what you need to copy it, invent from it or research it but ignore these for now.
If you don't yet have Production Efficiency to V, you will see that the Bill of Materials will have two numbers next to each item: Perfect and You. Perfect is the amount of materials that someone with PE V would need and You is obviously the amount that you would use for one run.
Research
You can research BPOs to make them more efficient. There are two different areas that you can research: Material Efficiency which increases the Material Level (ML) of the BPO and Productivity Efficiency which increases the Productivity Level (PL). The higher the ML, the fewer materials it needs to build while a higher PL reduces the time per run. In practice the PL doesn't matter that much. ML though is pretty important. You need the Science skill to do research and the Laboratory Operation/Advanced Laboratory Operation skills will allow you do do more research jobs at once.
How to build something
So you have your BP and you have at least one level in Industry. Now it's time to make something. Firstly you need to be in a station that has a manufacturing line. You can check this from the services, click on Science and Industry and then look under the 'Installations' tab. Most stations that have Science and Industry services will have manufacturing capacity.
Make sure your BP is in your hangar and not in a container. All of your materials must also be in your hangar at the same station and not in containers either. Right click on the BP and choose 'Manufacturing'. A small window will appear asking you to choose a location and the number of runs. Click on the 'Pick Installation' button and choose a manufacturing line from the list. Order the list by next available and use one that says 'now' or has the shortest amount of time left on it. Click on 'Use Assembly Line' when you've selected the line and you'll be back at the small window again. Enter the number of runs you want to make at the bottom. Note that some BPs make more than one item per run - ammunition for example is usually 100 units per run. Once you've set that click on OK and you'll get a confirmation window showing you the final list of materials you'll be using for the job along with the line costs and the time it will take. If you don't have enough materials you'll see that the items you are missing will be marked with a red X. You can click on Close to go back a step and choose a smaller number of runs or you can cancel it, buy more materials and set it up again.
Assuming everything is fine, click on OK and the job will be installed. Congratulations you are now building something. You can check on the progress of your job by opening the Science and Industry window (either from the left menu bar or from Station Services) and checking under the 'Jobs' tab for 'All Active Jobs'. You'll see a list there of everything you're working on and how long it has to go before it's completed. When a job is completed you need to deliver it, just click on the Deliver button at the bottom of this screen and the BP and items you made will be placed in your hangar. If you were using a BPC and it has no more runs left after your job then you will only get the items delivered to you.
Researching Blueprints
This works in almost exactly the same way as for building something except that you don't usually need any materials. You can only research a BPO and not a BPC, also Material Research lines are a lot less common in stations than Manufacturing lines are so you may need to hunt around for one that doesn't have long queues. When you find a place to do your research (hint: ask Taaii or I to do it at our POS), the steps are almost identical to installing a manufacturing job. You will need to choose the amount of ML you want to improve it by instead of the number of runs and this will vary according to the BP. There is a cap for each BP beyond which additional ML makes no difference, you also can't install any job that would take more than 30 days. There are some tools that work out the perfect ML for different BPs for you although it's not usually worth getting a perfect ML on most BPs. Nobody will care that it takes you two extra tritanium to build something, just make sure you aren't wasting any of the more valuable minerals.
