Wednesday, August 19, 2009


Tomorrow small and medium rigs are coming to eve, the former for Frigate and Destroyer sized hulls and the later for cruiser and battlecruiser hulls. The mediums will be 1/5 the cost of a current rig and the smalls 1/5 the cost of the medium version (at least, that is what the devs are aiming for).

So, who's the big winner here in terms of ships?

Think about it for a second, I'll wait.


If you said Tech 1 frigates you're wrong. Rigs might make a couple of them tougher (punisher) but they are still relatively small and fragile. Its just that 30% more armour is not much when you only have 1000 points to begin with. Tech 2 frigates will benefit more but since they only have two rig slots it won't be earth-shattering.

Destroyers will get more benefit than frigates but still suffer from the fact that they are fragile and the rigs won't improve them dramatically. T2 destroyers again get more bang for buck but are still relatively fragile and again, only two slots.

With cruisers we are seeing more benefit as they have more hitpoints, weapons, and rig slots to take advantage of. A rig worth 2-3 million might not be a bad idea on a tech II outfitted cruiser. Most Tech II cruisers are rigged already by default so they will simply see it as a cheaper activity instead of a big boost.

No, while all those ships will see more rig usage they are not the big winners here. Battlecruisers are.

Think about it: many people rigged battlecruisers already but it was often a choice that cost more than the ship and fittings combined. Now it will be a small fraction of the overall cost. Plus, since most (all?) rigs are percentage bonus based and battlecruisers have the largest starting hitpoints, number of weapons, power grid they will get a larger bonus from the rigs. Command Ships, like Tech II cruisers, are probably already rigged by default now so again it will just be a price reduction for those pilots.

Yes, Battlcruisers are the big winners of this change.

As a collary to this post, I expect demand for the small and medium rigs to be very high, salvage will be drained from normal large salvage production to make smaller rigs, and as a result all rig prices will be starting high or going up until production can match demand.


  1. T2 frigates will get the same benefits as battlecruisers (for me anyway) as also tended to always rig my T2 frigates. An example is my stealth bomber. I always put warhead calafraction rigs which cost about 30 mill each. With small rigs this is going to greatly reduce the cost of a new stealth bomber for me.

  2. You're probably right about the prices being a bit whacked out initially... I just hope they settle down quickly. I can't wait to start throwing rigs on my frigs/cruisers/battkecruisers.

  3. Good news for my HAM drake.

  4. I just bought a new stealth bomber too. No big deal I guess.

    This will make my missioning Drake a lot cheaper. It'll give more options on frigates, but most of the good rigs will probably be too expensive for a tech 1 frigate. You'll see a shift in prices as people settle on what rigs are "good" and which aren't.

    CCC's will be used across the board, so the price will likely not be 1/5th of 1/5th even for the frigate version. It'll be interesting to see how the price of salvage changes too.

    Fun times in New Eden, and a great post.

  5. Someone ran some hypothetical numbers about this the other day that I saw -- went something like this:

    Currently let's say you have 50 frigs, 50 cruisers, and 50 BS's. Out of those you have say... 2 frigs, 30 cruisers, and 48 BS's rigged for a total of 82 rigs.

    After the change, this goes up to 48/50 for all 3 classes. However, since frig rigs now use only 1/25th as much material and cruiser rigs use only 1/5th as much, even though 96% of all ships are now rigged it uses the equivalent building material to 61 rigs before the change.

    Meaning that less salvage will be needed overall, and thus demand will decrease and prices will drop further. Over time, of course. Initially I expect demand to go way up while people ramp up production of the smaller rigs, and thus prices should jump up for a while initially.

    And I totally agree that BC's are the big winners here.

  6. Indeed, you're perfectly right Kirith... the big winners are BC's, as I wrote in Rigged For Her Pleasure

    All hail the rigged Brutix (now with OK-ish active or buffer tank). The Thorax will also be an even more pimped out gankmobile too...

    Of course, the countermeasure to high small/med rig prices is always making your own... you don't need perfect manufacturing skills; small rigs need no research, med rigs need very little.


AddThis button