OP Wiki

Production

Production is how you turn raw resources and components into usable items. It happens at a production facility (a "mill") at your docked base. Everything here is docked-only.

UI locations follow the client UI overview (the Refinery / Recycling / Repair / Insurance categories on the top bar). Mechanics below are confirmed against the server.

Production lines

A production line is a saved recipe: it defines what you produce and from what. The full component list for every craftable item (with research levels) is generated in Recipes. You run a line for a number of rounds.

  • List lines — see your available lines.
  • Start a line — run it in a facility for a chosen number of rounds (minimum 1).
    • You can pay from your personal wallet or the corporation wallet.
    • The source components can be searched from your inventory or your robots.
  • Calibrate a line — tune a line's settings.
  • Set rounds — choose how many rounds to run.
  • Query next round — preview what the next round will consume/produce.
  • Cancel — stop a running production.
  • Delete a line — remove a saved line.

Running a line consumes components (and credits) and produces the target item over the rounds.

One-shot operations

These are single actions rather than multi-round lines. Each has a Query variant that previews cost/output before you commit.

  • Refine — raw materials → commodity, using the item's recipe (see Recipes). You choose how many of the target item to make; the recipe's nominal inputs are scaled by a material multiplier of 1 + 50/(bonus + 100) where bonus is your refining skill (extensions + facility points + standing points). With no bonus you consume 150% of the nominal recipe; with maximum bonus it drops toward 100%.
  • Recycle / reprocess — breaks an item back into its recipe components (the reverse recipe). The yield is nominal × (1 − 75/(bonus + 100)) × the item's health ratio — with no skill bonus that's a base 25%, improving toward 100%, and a damaged item yields proportionally less (repair it first if it's valuable). Only whole "batches" (full default quantities) are recycled; the remainder stays. Mission items are deleted, not recycled.
  • Repair — restores a damaged item/robot to full health. The price is (missing health %) × the item's material value × 75/(bonus + 100). The "material value" is computed recursively: the item's recipe is broken down to raw materials and priced at the world market averages, so repair cost floats with the market. The skill multiplier starts at 75% with no bonus and trends to 0 with maximum bonus.
  • Research components — produce research components (query + run).
flowchart LR
    I["An item you already have"] -->|+ research kit| RL["Research lab\n(both consumed)"]
    RL --> P["CPRG\n(material + time efficiency)"]
    P -->|calibrate| ML["Mill (mass production)"]
    ML -->|degrades 2–3 pts/round| P
    F["CPRG forge:\ncombine two programs\n(stronger base + ⅓ of weaker)"] --> P
    PT["Prototype facility\n(recipe + shards + previous-gen specimen,\n~10× cycle time)"] --> I
    I -.->|feed back into research| RL

The item lifecycle (the circular process)

Item creation is a loop of three connected facilities:

  1. Research (reverse engineering) — feed an item of the item you want to produce, plus a research kit whose level meets the item's research level (kits are levels 0–10), into the research lab. Both inputs are consumed, and the job yields one CPRG for that item. The resulting program's efficiencies start from the item's per-item base (most items 50, ammo higher, turrets up to 90) and are raised by kit level above the required level × 5 plus your research-skill bonus (up to +50 more). So a kit a couple of levels above the item — and decent production extensions — is what turns a fresh 50/50 program into a competitive one. This is how new items enter your production repertoire.
  2. The mill (mass production) — mass-produce from the program. Each round degrades the line's efficiencies (2–3 points per round, per item category; see CPRG) — when waste gets too high, calibrate a fresh program onto the line. Prototype items also take a specimen of the previous generation as a component (one standard module to make a T2 prototype, one T2 to make a T3), which is consumed in the process.
  3. The prototype facility — produce a prototype of an item directly: the recipe's materials plus robot shards and the previous-generation specimen, at roughly 10× the mill's cycle time (plus the usual time multiplier). You can only prototype items unlocked in your tech tree. Prototypes cost dramatically more than their standard equivalents; their main purpose is to be researched into high-quality programs (researching a prototype item is what unlocks the next tier) — or used on the robot when the item is too rare to drop and too expensive on the market.

Tier progression

Most modules and robots come in tiers T1 → T4 (the client's tier badge; the standard → named1 → named2 → named3 definition lines, then the elitet4/ artifact special lines). The rules:

  • Each tier is a separate item with its own tech-tree node. Unlocking a node costs research points (researched from kernels) and requires the parent node — so tiers must be unlocked in order. You can only prototype (or mass-produce) an item whose node is already unlocked: there is no way to make a higher tier without the research.
  • Each higher tier consumes one specimen of the previous tier as a component (plus materials and robot shards). A T1 item therefore can never be "turned in" for a T3 — the T3 prototype needs a T2 item, and the specimen is consumed, not converted: the output is a brand-new item.
  • Every item page shows its tier line — the whole T1 → T2 → T3 → T4 chain as links — and the tech tree node pages show each tier's parent/next node and point prices.

Example, the small miner module line: standard small miner (T1) → Biroter 5050 small miner module (T2) → Sublimator Low-D small miner module (T3) → Scraper-990 small miner module (T4) — and the same pattern for every module/robot family.

Prototypes & research kits

  • Prototype — produce a prototype item (start + query). One prototype per slot; more parallel prototype jobs come from production extensions.
  • Merge research kits — combine multiple research kits into a higher one (run + query). A higher kit both shortens research time and raises the resulting program's efficiencies.

CPRG (calibration programs)

A CPRG (calibration program) is what a production line runs on — a per-item program with material efficiency and time efficiency points (0–100 each). You get one by researching the item at a research lab (the research level gates which items you can produce at all), or by activating a calibration capsule.

  • A freshly researched CPRG starts at 50/50 points.
  • Forge CPRGs at the calibration-program forge: combine two CPRGs for the same item; the result keeps the stronger program's points as a base and adds a third of the weaker one's. Forging takes time and costs credits (time × the facility's price per second).
  • Calibrate a line with a CPRG to set its efficiencies. Each production round degrades the line's efficiency (a per-item decalibration value), so lines drift back down over time — recalculate before long runs.

The efficiencies feed the mill's formulas (per production cycle):

  • Materials consumed = recipe × 1 + 50/(material points + skill + 100 + millBonus) — a new 50-point CPRG with no skill and no tech-tree mass-production bonus consumes ≈ 133% of the nominal recipe.
  • Production time = facility base time (3,600 s per cycle for a mill) × 1 + 100/(time points + skill + 100) × the item's duration modifier — a new CPRG with no skill takes ≈ 1 hour 40 minutes per item.
  • Price = production time × the facility's price per second (7 credits/s for the PBS mill, 3 for the large/medium PBS research labs) × the item's price modifier (1–10).
  • Mission-related CPRGs are free and fixed at 10 seconds.

Insurance

The insurance facility insures your robots, not your production output:

  • Buy a policy for a robot (it must be undamaged, unpacked, and not a starter bot), list your policies, query a policy, delete a policy.
  • Coverage lasts 15 days (+ extension bonus days); you can hold policies on 1 + (extension bonus) robots.
  • Each robot has a content-defined fee and payout (the insuranceprices table, 67 robot definitions); the fee is discounted by a fee-extension bonus and can be paid from the corporation wallet.
  • If the insured robot is destroyed, the payout is paid in credits (the robot is still lost) — see combat.

Facility & status

  • Facility info / description — what a production facility offers.
  • In progress (mine / corporation) — what is currently being produced.
  • Production history — your past production.
  • Components list — available production components.
  • Server info — production server status.

Practical notes

  • You must be docked at a base with a production facility.
  • Query before you run — the query variants show cost and output so you don't burn components on a mistake.
  • Corporation wallet — you can spend corp funds for production if allowed.
  • Components come from robots too — a line can pull source components from your fitted robots, not just your inventory.
  • Recycle at full health — a damaged item yields less; repair expensive items before reprocessing them.
  • Skill multipliers are the real economy levers — the refine/recycle/repair/mill bonuses all scale the same way; investing in production extensions pays off in material savings on every run.
  • Insurance is a robot safety net — buy it for expensive fits before deep-space PvP.
  • Research kits are the gate — an item's research level (1–9) decides which kits can decode it, and running a kit several levels above the item is the cheapest way to raise the resulting program's efficiencies.