425mm Railgun I Mineral Compression

204 M Tritanium

After a few hauling operations into lowsec in order to construct large ships such as Carriers, I began to research a better way to move around massive quantities of minerals. A Thanatos for example comes from 785,000 m3 of minerals or about 2.34 Jump Freighter trips. Fuel, lost time, and hostiles killing your Cyno ships all eat into your profits. I would also like to mention that waiting out 5 minute Cyno timers can get quite boring.

Jester’s article Replicators outlines perfectly the methods used to move around vast quantities of minerals using compression. He goes into detail about how you can use a simple Tech 1 blueprint to compress minerals down to 1/28th of their size. This vastly increases your hauling capacity due to an almost perfect refine rate if you find the right station, have standings, and train up Scrap Metal Processing.

Pages 40-43 in the 2010 Quarterly Economic Newsletter outline items that are used for mineral compression and contains a graphic the shows where the majority of 425mm Railgun I’s were constructed and melted down. Note that they mainly get produced in highsec and make their way to nullsec station for reprocessing.

Imagine being able to build 100 Battleships from one haul. Imagine moving the required minerals around for a Supercarrier in only one jump. These types of statements make industry tycoons foam at the mouth. Yep, it is happening to me right now.

The Checklist

1. A few 425mm Railgun I Blueprint or other popular compression BPO that is listed in the QEN. ME36, PE40 is a good start for the Railgun BPO.
2. Minerals.
3. A Highsec station with open Manufacturing slots.
4. A character with Production Efficiency to V.