Blueprint Research
BPO = Blueprint Original - BPC = Blueprint Copy - ME=Material Efficiency - PE= Production Efficiency
Why research a blueprint?
Well the answer is easy, if you build from a blueprint that has a material efficiency of 0 then you are wasting materials building the item. Every BPO has a 10% wastage on it at ME0 which you can reduce by researching the ME of the BPO.
Material Efficiency (ME)
So researching ME reduces the wastage factor on a BPO, means you use less materials to make the item and thus can reduce costs and enhance profits.
I'm going to put the next bit in bold you DON'T need to research ME to stupid amounts to reduce wastage most BPOs you will get less than 1% wastage by ME researching to 25. Tech 2 BPOs take MUCH MUCH MUCH less ME researching to get less than 1% wastage, on average ME5 will do the job. Players researching ME to hundreds are fooling themselves if they think they are actually doing anything to the wastage. It costs far too much to do the ME research to stupid numbers to actually gaining any benefit to manufacturing.
If I had my way I would cap BPO ME researching to ME50, after that a BPO shouldn't be ME researchable. Anyway enough of the argument about ME research and on with the guide.
Lets look at a Drake BPO researched and unresearched.
You can see the difference between an untouched BPO (left) and one researched to ME35 (right).
Production Efficiency (PE)
Researching the PE on a BPO reduces the time it takes to make 1 of the items on the BPO. So lets take a look at a Drake BPO unresearched and researched.
Untouched BPO on the left has a manufacturing time of 4 hours 10 minutes, underneath this time is my manufacturing time (skill adjusted) of 3 hours 12 minutes. On the right a BPO researched to PE5, this drops the manufacturing time to 3 hours 28 minutes, 2 hours 40 minutes (skill adjusted). This is what researching PE does to a BPO.
