EVE Online developer explains how to build Tech III strategic cruisers

For many players of massively multiplayer online titles, the crafting side of these games is especially appealing. Quite a number of EVE Online's players are drawn to the crafting side of this particular sci-fi MMO, and those in large corporations and alliances have learned how their collective efforts can allow them to produce vast quantities of items and reap equally vast sums of ISK.

EVE's crafting system is also very much the backbone of the game. Almost every ship and module used by players in the game was created by another player. Those who are into the combat aspects of the game are reliant upon the producers to supply their tools of destruction, and that destruction in turn creates demand (and fuels profits) for EVE's industrialists. It's an interesting bit of symbiosis (despite that animosity towards those on the other side of the fence) that keeps New Eden thriving.

Many players are wondering what will be involved with production of the advanced Tech III strategic cruisers in next month's Apocrypha expansion.Tech III is an advanced modular ship technology which will be reverse engineered from an ancient (NPC) race called the Sleepers... who can only be found via wormhole exploration and will not give up their secrets easily.

EVE game designer CCP Chronotis has written a dev blog that should help clarify Tech III production, titled "How do I build a strategic cruiser?" Since many players prefer blowing up ships over building them, the TLDR version should suffice: "Subsystems and hulls are manufactured from components; components are manufactured from a mix of Sleeper NPC salvage and Polymers. Polymers come from a reaction of minerals and fullerenes. Fullerenes are a new type of harvestable gas. The blueprints or reactions needed to facilitate these are also found within wormhole space. The skills and structures required will be seeded on the market and appropriate assembly lines added to existing outposts."

But for those interested in expanding their production lines, a more detailed explanation goes into the various intricacies and arcana involved with finding and creating components and polymers, then using them to produce Tech III ship hulls and their modular subsystems. CCP Chronotis also details a new game mechanic: reverse engineering.

For players involved in EVE Online's industrial side with an eye on the opportunities Tech III and wormhole exploration will create for them, "How do I build a strategic cruiser?" could be considered required reading. The EVE Online developers are fielding the questions that are inevitably rising in a thread linked to the dev blog.