This is one point I must agree with.  A science three site is always a great thing to see on your scanner and opening it up to see the Mk2 CTs used to be great.  However, with the huge influx of players the market has been swamped and CT's below 50/50 are really not worht having.  I would rather find a few high end decoders and uber-rare Niani components then a 25/25 CT that will never sell or be viable for production.

Yes I know you can still build with them but with the volume of CTs hitting the market it makes more sense to simply wait for a better CT to appear on the market then to use a 25/25.

CTs could use a combination option. Combine two 30% CTs and get a 50% CT. Make sure you get less return the higher the CT level so it's not worth it until you've got about 4 or 5 20% to 40% CTs.

Decoders also need this option and then you can greatly increase the drop rate of lower equipment and it adds a NIC sink that outposts can return 50% of.

CTs are not regular drops, even with Science III sites, which themselves are not popping up left-right-and-center.  And when you pin one down only to get a few moderately useful items and a 25% stack of waste paper it really tends to leave a sour taste behind.

If they started at 45% a highly skilled industrial person/corp could produce them at a reasonable return, a few times, before the CT was scrap.  60% and 75% would just increase their usability.  More usable CT's = more affordable Mk2 bots (though honestly I'm not enamored of more slots but no higher fitting stats or... anything else to make them a 'bit more' than a stock Mk1) = more people using them for their PvP fix beyond massive industrial blobs.

With a 25% CT you could build your bot, recycle it, and still have enough mats to build it again with a 50% CT...  the waste is *that* enormous.

The RE screen could be used, allow (2) Ct's to be placed in the drag-n-drop, and then present the resulting CT. It would use an RE slot and require time to do.

Here are some 'balance' negatives to offset this process as I could see this becoming an easy way to 'eek' a few more runs out of normal CT's without having to sacrifice another prototype; that is combining (2) T4 LWF CT's and get a 3rd set of runs without needing to make another T4 LFW prototype.

- A fixed % in material reduction to higher, like 5%
- Does not effect the % to time, highest used
- CT's less then 25% and more than 80% would be invalid.

So if you where to RE a 50/50 CT and a 75/75 CT; The result would be 80/75.
while a 25/25 CT and 75/75 would also be 80/75 too.

But a 25/25 and a 25/25 would be 30/25, and you could keep going until you hit 80/25.

For decoders, same thing, but it would be 10-1 and decoders above X would be invalid. Where X is the current highest level decoder required, which I think is 8 currently?

If that max CT you could combine was 25% that would be ok. Otherwise you can combine a semi-expenisve 75% with a less expensive 64% to get a very valuable 88% CT, or (2) 75%'s for  90% which is very desirable for hmechs (because of the large material requirements).

The more complex an item is, the higher the minimal decoder is needed. The best decoder there is at this time is a level 10, so there is a mechanical upper limit to the % CT that can be created.

The impact of better CT's is they use less material in the mass production process. This mean either less mining for self suffcient corps or lower manufactoring costs for corps building for profit.

The price of level 9 and 10 decoders means that very few are used except for the large cost runs (typically hmechs). Sure it now takes (2) heavy mechs to create 1 better CT, but when you can make 10 units per run and save 15% on each, your actually making them cheaper.

I don't believe the concept of this idea was to create a way to reduce the material cost, but to combine new and old CT's together to get a little more value out of the initial investment.

I'm not sure that itself is a good idea, but when it comes to MKII ct's that can't be created, only discovered, the 25% ones really have no particular value, and being able to combine multiples of them into a useable CT seems like a good mechanic. But again, I don't think even with this that being able to combine (2) 75% MK II CT's into a 90% CT is the right direction.

What ongoing effect would better CT's have? It's difficult to say, but without a cap on the top end, the cycle of mass producing ever cheaper bots simply for CT's could be exploited at worst, and cause an upset in raw material pricing at a minimum. I don't feel that there is an issue with TOP end CT %'s, but if there is that should be addressed directly and not coming sideways at it with regenerative CT recycling.