The theoretical best you can get in the factory compared to nominal component list is ~56%, since CTs are already capped at 100%. And in case someone forgot, Factory L4 gives no ME bonus, so most of the material efficiency comes from extensions (~250k EP, not counting # of lines and time bonus skills) and remaining bits from reputation (which is a *** to grind). While recycling is only 40k EP.

I don't know why some people suddenly want to nerf factory production, no reason for that whatsoever.

UPD: so capping recycling at 50% as Alexander proposed is a probably good idea, except the road to this cap should be smooth with L10 skill + L4 refinery peaking at 50%.

Good point, we best get everything balanced out so that all yields equal out the same. Better nerf that refining.

It's not about nerfing. It is about pointing out the possible side effects to the complaining and hissy fits (from multiple people)being acted on. Actions often have unintended consequences. People often turn a blind eye away from areas that they reap massive rewards from.

Here is the reality of this MINOR change as stated by Atticus:

"If losing 8 or 9% of your recycling ability is a game breaker for a producer/manufacturer, you're either in the wrong profession or wrong game."

elric, I am not on-line so I can't see your past Corp history, but have you ever lived on Beta full time for...least say longer then a month?

I did some perp-kill back tracking would you be Elric Melnibone?  From Battleaxe?

IDDQD works here too..

The farther into the game you get the less of a problem this is, but not everyone aspires to live on beta.
For the new player, plasma and recycling make up a large proportion of your income.
Your starving the beginning of the game, to fatten up beta.

upgrading beta, will not get more people into beta.
Getting more people to play perpetuum will.

well, scylla - my requeset is a balancing that doesnt have to care about what the oldest GUY ingame can do, and that everything else has to be adjusted so THAT guy cannot create a perpetuum mobile.

your right - refining is like alchemy atm, having numbers there higher then 100% is a kind of... issue when you want to balance something
- this has to be considered for eg. production, which is also like alchemy, creating something from less materials then it contains afterwards.
- this has to be considered for insurance payout, since its based on raw ores AND best production/refining extensions on beset facilities.
- when recycling such a magical item, it also has to be considered that it COULD have been built by someone with those extensions, since the game cannot tell you "this armor plate contains only 600 Titanium, not the listed 1000, because someone with magic powers has crafted it"

-> first thing you hear from someone looking at recycling screen is "man this sucks, i get only 10% of the mats back"

For someone changing any single factor in this system, its almost impossible to see how it affects the gameplay at all. It needs a revamp from ground up, and thats unavoidable if this game shall have a future.

see ERP -> because it was perhaps a bit overpowered on a certiain mech with a bunch of certain modules, it got nerfed down to... any1 using t1 erp out there? Instead of fixing the root-issue of exponential stacking tunings, the whole thing got nerfed, while in other places the same issue still exists (shields?)

edit:

two days ago i suggested someone new to the game that he could start his mixed combat/industry life using recycling, so he can concentrate on combat and production, and having a connection between both. This nerf here simply eliminated that.

Recycling should be just extra income, not the main source of materials. However, lowered recycle just means that you simply need to farm a little more, thats it.

How big of an issue was this?

If it takes 24 hours to run 11 T2 units, and recycling results in enough materials to make 11.5 units, agreed that materials are created out of thin air, but it would take 22 days or 1 player running 22 lines for 1 day to create enough material for a full run.

What's the end result here?

That a producer can create 11 units T2 units per day free, but they will need a second account building 23 lines of T1... extrapolated, that's roughly (4) maxed out accounts running everyday to create 11 'free' T4; that still require the creation and continual replacement of the T2,3,4P's...

For robots, a run of (11) mechs takes about 6 days.

Assuming about the same .5 return, that's 23 lines of bots running each week, to get 11 'free' bots. In the case of bots, your tying up a huge amount of material creating 23*11 bots per week per producer.

Lastling, the assumption of recovering the ".5" is probably even exaggerated.

That means, if you use 20k titanium per bot, that's 220k per run of 11 with a return of 10k which is something like 104.5% recycling effciency.

The insurance exploit was worth it because in volume they could get millions of NIC per bot back.
The duplication exploite was worth it because the 'time' factor was 0.

It would take months for an entire corp to set up this, creating CT's, gathering the initial raw resources to run these lines, so finally start producing what amounts to a 'few' free bots per WEEK!

Also, the whole system falls apart if you lose lvl 4 refining OR lvl 4 recycling.

Unless the % material 'gained' was well over 4.5% it simply an exploit that isn't worth the effort to exploit. The key here being that you had to be on beta with access to large amounts of Epi ANYWAY.

Tl-DR; Recycling nerf was probably over-kill and negatively effected many more players than it did to protect the integrity of the game. A better solution was noted, which was to reduce the % of the outposts instead of the individual skills.