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New dev blog: Starbase tweaks: an update

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Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#141 - 2011-11-24 17:33:04 UTC
Danastar wrote:
Scorpio DK wrote:


when it comes to actually fueling the tower its much easier its a gallente tower i need x amount of gallente blocks, not x amount of 8 different fuel types so this part i really like just for making it easier.




my oh my...
if you want to make your own fuel, you will still need x numbers of 8 different fuel types - guess some of us will learn that the hard way
it is completly different matter if you are lazy and want to buy already manifactired fuel blocks - you will have to pay extra, beacuse someone has done it for you and he would want to be paid for that

Overal this change is bad for the ones willing to make the fuelblocks themselves and good for the ppl with deep pockets, who will not mind paying say 10% more but save themselvs some brain effort.

And i want to make something clear - there is nothing wrong if CCP wants to make our life miserable. It may even be regarded as good thing, because fighting new challenges is what makes us not lose interest. But saying "guys we want to help you on this one" and implementing feature that actually makes things worse - that is wrong.


Here is the really tricky part... if you put the new BP in and tell it to build some fuel blocks it will TELL you exactly how many of them you need. This confusing game mechanic will occur whether you build your fuel blocks in the station you purchase the raw materials in, haul them to another station for construction, or wish to make a note of the totals and then go acquire the materials in other ways to build at your own POS facilities. It's diabolical, I know, but I guess you will figure out how it works "the hard way". Oh my.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#142 - 2011-11-24 17:47:23 UTC
Aluminy wrote:
ZaBob wrote:
Aluminy wrote:

m3 = i do believe several have done the math and the cubes for the same amount of time now compared to ice / pi fuels of an equal time the cubes come out roughly smaller anyway... not by much no but there is no EXTRA hauling here... even for those that manufacture the pellets, you had to haul the fuel in to begin with... so you either haul the ice like you always have or you haul the pellet... no change here really~



I really think you shouldn't whine about people whining, when you haven't even bothered to understand what they're talking about.

Compare the m3 of the *ice fuel alone* (which is all we need haul) to the m3 of the fuel pellets.

I gave hard numbers way back when.

Maybe instead of flaming and whining yourself, you could engage in constructive dialog? Reading and thinking before writing might be a good place to start.


lol maybe you should take your own advice bout not posting when you dont know what your talkin bout

Quote:
Spacenumbers.
Large tower, 40blocks of 5m3 per hour: 200m3/hour
Current fuel, without stront, at max usage: 228.5m3/hour



Sheesh, can't you read????

Large tower, *ice fuel*, at our current usage, 161.1 m3/hr. Now becomes 200 m3/hr.

That's a pretty significant expansion!

ICE FUEL. Not total fuel. The planetary fuel is already right there. We only need to bring in ICE FUEL. ICE FUEL.

ICE FUEL.
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#143 - 2011-11-24 18:27:27 UTC
ZaBob wrote:
Aluminy wrote:
ZaBob wrote:
Aluminy wrote:

m3 = i do believe several have done the math and the cubes for the same amount of time now compared to ice / pi fuels of an equal time the cubes come out roughly smaller anyway... not by much no but there is no EXTRA hauling here... even for those that manufacture the pellets, you had to haul the fuel in to begin with... so you either haul the ice like you always have or you haul the pellet... no change here really~



I really think you shouldn't whine about people whining, when you haven't even bothered to understand what they're talking about.

Compare the m3 of the *ice fuel alone* (which is all we need haul) to the m3 of the fuel pellets.

I gave hard numbers way back when.

Maybe instead of flaming and whining yourself, you could engage in constructive dialog? Reading and thinking before writing might be a good place to start.


lol maybe you should take your own advice bout not posting when you dont know what your talkin bout

Quote:
Spacenumbers.
Large tower, 40blocks of 5m3 per hour: 200m3/hour
Current fuel, without stront, at max usage: 228.5m3/hour



Sheesh, can't you read????

Large tower, *ice fuel*, at our current usage, 161.1 m3/hr. Now becomes 200 m3/hr.

That's a pretty significant expansion!

ICE FUEL. Not total fuel. The planetary fuel is already right there. We only need to bring in ICE FUEL. ICE FUEL.

ICE FUEL.

And -- to bring out an aspect I should have pointed out earlier -- if we bring in ice fuel to make pellets, that 161.1 m3/hr goes up to 180 m3/hr of ice fuel hauled.

This change is being sold as making my life easier. It doesn't do that.

If you haven't thought these things through, don't try to make fun of the people who do think these things through.

And, for the record, I'm not whining. If CCP wanted to do this to rebalance the game for some reason, I wouldn't be happy, but I wouldn't be expending this effort.

But CCP Greyscale's stated goal here is to make my life easier. Taking him at his word, I'm pointing out what does and doesn't actually do that.

That's called constructive dialog. What do we call what you're doing?
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#144 - 2011-11-24 18:34:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Ranger 1
I don't remember them promising this would be easier for everyone, particularly those under utilizing their POS's. You may have to rethink how you handle them.

I have little doubt that the intrepid WH community can figure it out.

Edit: Hmmm, perhaps you can talk them into considering certain WH systems give an additional benefit to POS fuel consumption. I'm pretty sure that if they did other systems would have penalties to the same, which would make for an interesting dynamic.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Ariane VoxDei
#145 - 2011-11-24 18:56:19 UTC
Yeah agree the numbers don't look attractive, I just put the current maxload numbers out there so the (spreadsheetlazy) majority could get an idea of what we are talking about. Specially the hisec-pos crowd for whom it will be much simpler to just get cubes on market.

If you can source the PI stuff locally (at most 1 jump away) and decide to manufacture the cubes at the POS that needs it, it becomes a unattactive deal, since you have almost no simplification (complexities of ratios shifted to production instead of direct use) and have to run extra jobs and use production hours.
While that is almost a nonissue if you have a ammo array on site, it still means having one of your limited numbers of jobs tied up with that for a few days per month per large tower, instead of being used for profitable industry or alliance armaments.
In that scenario, in the face of a lack of improvements to it, different tradeoffs need to be made or it becomes a wholly negative impact.
Increasing the compression seems the only way forward that is somewhat palatable to the devs in charge. No doubt they would be bitches and nerf the fuelbays to "compensate", but whatever. Volume is unattractive atm.
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#146 - 2011-11-24 19:39:15 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Generally speaking, we want to keep the deep complexity in core systems that make the game mechanically interesting, but we also want people to spend as much time as possible interacting with other people (because they're the most interesting "content" we have avaliable). We'd generally like to find ways to spend less time on mechanical tasks - through streamlining or, where acceptable, simplification - so they can spend more time dealing with people.


Hauling fuel is a lonely task. Blowing past gate camps (I don't even wave) is about the extent of the interaction; mostly it's boring jump/warp/jump/warp.

Reducing, not increasing, my time spent hauling fuel will make me very happy, and let me spend more time actually doing stuff with my corpmates, or hunting down intruders, or manipulating the market, or any of the other stuff that I do that actually involves interaction.

If you cut the volume of the ice fuel that goes into those fuel pellets by 50%, I'll be a happy hauler. (I'll also be a jucier target for pirates, but that's my problem, and just the interaction you're looking for).

You can do that without ANY of the risk and complexity of introducing fuel pellets.

If you do introduce fuel pellets, and cut the volume of the fuel pellets themselves, you'll make some other people happy as well. For me, that would mean more hauling OUT in order to take advantage of it; that might or might not pay off. Again, doing so should also make pirates happy. Slightly fewer targets, but but the reward on some of those targets doubles.

Either way, cutting volume is the key to reducing the mechanical tasks here.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#147 - 2011-11-24 20:15:45 UTC
Magic Crisp wrote:
You know, it's nearly 2012, we do have storage snapshots, virtualization snapshot, even i can take a snapshot of my gf, just to keep a nice copy of her :)


It's fine and dandy for folks playing with virtual machines at home to say, "Hey, it only takes five minutes to rewind to a snapshot of my Windows XP virtual machine, I don't see what's so hard". Sadly, even with modern technology a snapshot of a 100GB database still weighs in at about 100GB. Once you test the script to alter fuels, you've made changes to the database and must reload the snapshot.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#148 - 2011-11-24 20:29:51 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:


Here is the really tricky part... if you put the new BP in and tell it to build some fuel blocks it will TELL you exactly how many of them you need. This confusing game mechanic will occur whether you build your fuel blocks in the station you purchase the raw materials in, haul them to another station for construction, or wish to make a note of the totals and then go acquire the materials in other ways to build at your own POS facilities. It's diabolical, I know, but I guess you will figure out how it works "the hard way". Oh my.



I guess I'm even more diabolical.

My spreadsheet not only tells me this now, it also tells me how much to buy or load into my ship, either for my standard ship configurations, or any available m3 I may have available after loading other cargo. All based on up-to-the-minute fuel supplies in tower and hanger.

And it will tell me anywhere, even sitting in Jita watching the scammers compete for the most obvious scam.

And it will tell me how much to buy as an N-day supply. I've toyed with making it predict the ISK requirement in Jita and other trade hubs, fetching prices automatically -- I've done that for planetary production.

Hmm, I must be FAR more diabolical.

Maybe I should be griping that this makes it too easy for the numerically-challenged, and nerfs any advantage you may have from being diabolical?
Aelen Kendt
State War Academy
Caldari State
#149 - 2011-11-24 20:36:10 UTC
ZaBob wrote:
ICE FUEL. ICE FUEL.

ICE FUEL.


armor hacs?
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#150 - 2011-11-24 20:38:54 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
Magic Crisp wrote:
You know, it's nearly 2012, we do have storage snapshots, virtualization snapshot, even i can take a snapshot of my gf, just to keep a nice copy of her :)


It's fine and dandy for folks playing with virtual machines at home to say, "Hey, it only takes five minutes to rewind to a snapshot of my Windows XP virtual machine, I don't see what's so hard". Sadly, even with modern technology a snapshot of a 100GB database still weighs in at about 100GB. Once you test the script to alter fuels, you've made changes to the database and must reload the snapshot.


Um, I agree that people are underestimating the difficulty and complexity, but you seriously understate the value and power of virtualization technology for testing.

Once you test the script to alter the fuels, you *discard* the changes, and return to your snapshot.

And a snapshot of a 100GB database does *not* take 100GB, if it was based on another base snapshot. If you make 1GB of changes to a 100GB database, and snapshot, it takes around 1GB of storage.

If CCP QA is not leveraging the full power of virtualization in their testing, they should take serious look at it. It really does revolutionize QA and development.

That still leaves a lot of work, though, around ensuring you have set up the right test cases, and properly validated the results. The big advantage is that now you can afford to repeat this process over and over, at each iteration of development.

Also: It's more complex to manage virtual machines and storage when you're managing a whole cluster of them. So we shouldn't assume QA has it easy.
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#151 - 2011-11-24 20:46:51 UTC
Aelen Kendt wrote:
ZaBob wrote:
ICE FUEL. ICE FUEL.

ICE FUEL.


armor hacs?

Big smile

Just trying to save repetitions, since I wasn't able to alpha through his mental armor.

But feel free to picture me throwing and breaking things and generally having a tantrum.

I'll go have my time-out now.
L0v3r b0y
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#152 - 2011-11-24 22:37:11 UTC
Vyktor Abyss wrote:
Just to reiterate on what I said in earlier blogs; in principle I support this change and am glad you're making the sums easier for POS operators (although there is an extra step now with fuel block production).

Please consider iterating/overhauling POS VERY SOON though, especially by breaking up their functions into other structures, with differing fuel requirements. POS should not be the swiss army knife structure they currently are, IMHO and I'd like to see you have a range of structure with differing attributes for the differing functions (such as moon mining, reacting, T3 production, Labs, Capital production etc etc etc).

Cheers.


An excellent idea, with one major addition: a pos needs to be defendable! and not by hotdropping your own MOM fleet in to fight the one attacking it. Then perhaps us younger, newer alliances/corps might try to go back out to nullsec. Then, and when it becomes more profitable to be in nullsec than it is to stay in empire running incursions.
Salpun
Global Telstar Federation Offices
Masters of Flying Objects
#153 - 2011-11-24 22:40:21 UTC
Wiki page is up with new changes and a list of prices and where to get them.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/CustomsOffice

If i dont know something about EVE. I check https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/ISK_The_Guide

See you around the universe.
L0v3r b0y
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#154 - 2011-11-24 23:19:39 UTC
Sassums wrote:
While for face value this update to POS's looks great, but when you dig down a bit, I do hope you aren't pulling what the NGE did to SWG. Please don't dumb to game down to drawn more players. Companies have tried that, and failed miserably.

It seems CCP takes the easy way out of some issues, such as the ECM Exploit you had with Magnatar systems in WH space. When will this issue be resolved. Instead of fixing the issue, you simply removed the advantage to the system altogether.

What about faction towers? You had said their drop rate was far too frequent, rather than fixing that up front, you simply remove them from dropping at all. When will they be reintroduced into the game?

When will you give CEO's and POS managers better control over who can access what? If I give someone access to High Slot 1, they can access High Slot 1 on every CHA within the pos. The only way to change this, is to require Config Starbase equipment or fuel manager. But even then, you can only divide up the access so far.

When will we have the ability to divide up the SMA like we do the CHA, to prevent theft among the corp members.

When will we have better logs on who is doing what within the POS, to allow us to catch thieves in the act?


Whoa. What an excellent idea. An audit trail of who has removed what, and from what CHA's. Assinging a CHA to one member, or a particilaur group of members, so that not everyone who has access to ANY CHA can steal my shinies from it. Further, wouldn't it be nice to do the same thing with SMA's so that only 1-2 (or more, on your tastes) can steal the corp freighter, instead of anyone? And not just at POS's. The audit trail for Corp Hangars in stations would be nice too.
L0v3r b0y
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#155 - 2011-11-24 23:27:58 UTC
Dario Kaelenter wrote:


When the additional POS upgrades come along I hope they are spectacular so we finally get more for our isk than a big piñata in space to attract Capital/BS & Logi blobs Roll
Agree with this point completely!

As far as the rest of it goes, I Like! these changes. It does make it easier for my hauling monkeys to just "stuff as many gallente blocks into a Gallente/Serpentis tower as possible."

As far as the whining about hauling ice, why are you hauling ice? I haul compressed! ice! That is, if i don't mine it in system or next door. There's this wonderful new ship called the "Rorqual", might want to check it out...
Teclador
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#156 - 2011-11-25 01:09:35 UTC
Dear CCP Greyscale and Team,

good work so far.

But i hope you will look further into Starbase Management and rethink about a redesign as i already mentioned and posted it in the former comment blog to this general Item here New dev blog: Starbase happy fun time.

I think this will help all the POS Managers out there and all the Users too, to get an handy manageable POS state of the art.

Solong
Teclador
Akinesis
Black Rose Inc.
Black Rose.
#157 - 2011-11-25 01:16:18 UTC
I hope I haven't missed something (but I'll quickly be corrected if I have), but can one of the tweaks be an option to repackage items in the POS Corp hangar? Would be a big help!
Dario Kaelenter
ACME HARDWARE
Exxitium
#158 - 2011-11-25 03:23:11 UTC
L0v3r b0y wrote:
Dario Kaelenter wrote:


When the additional POS upgrades come along I hope they are spectacular so we finally get more for our isk than a big piñata in space to attract Capital/BS & Logi blobs Roll
Agree with this point completely!

As far as the rest of it goes, I Like! these changes. It does make it easier for my hauling monkeys to just "stuff as many gallente blocks into a Gallente/Serpentis tower as possible."

As far as the whining about hauling ice, why are you hauling ice? I haul compressed! ice! That is, if i don't mine it in system or next door. There's this wonderful new ship called the "Rorqual", might want to check it out...


Yeah for mining the ice in Lo sec or Null sec (not WH) then Rorqual is great (we can make em so more business for us!!) and that would likely be feeding POSs in Lo and Null sec.

Doesn't work so well in a WH and in Empire! Many R&D corps would mine or buy close by and haul once to POS.

In General I like the block idea IF there is a benefit to offset the extra work in :

    *Less Hauling

    *Lower or no change in cost


This "upgrade" provides generally an increase in cost and more hauling!

Many ppl here are engaging mouths b4 brains and saying "Oh the fuels blocks are less hauling" tho they don't come out of thin air and if they THINK about the production cycle and costs involved they may realise it's gonna cost them more in isk and hauling somewhere in that process. They either get to haul less and pay more or pay less and haul more.

The HW/LO portion should have been set at a lower amount than the maximum possible to be consumed at present as I'm sure that a very large number of POSs don't have CPU and PG running 24/7 maxed out. For many this will represent a haul more and pay more scenario. CCP should be able to run the numbers or maybe they have and just decided inflation is good.
Maybe they should be politicians!!

I think the portion should have been more like 100/100 to make it more balanced and easier to calculate (4 Empire ice blocks for the LO and 2 for the HW). That way there would still be an increase in Ice Product business and also less of a cost increase for POS owners.

Especially as this is closely following the PI changes with increases in costs ... double tax in Hi sec and more than tripple in lo sec on the Interbus PCOC's (17% rate on SISI currently)


PS - Tip for posters ... COPY ya post b4 ya PREVIEW lol
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#159 - 2011-11-25 03:29:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Scrapyard Bob
Fuel block BPOs still not seeded on Singularity. Definitely not showing up at Thukker Mix factories (not even the Minmatar Fuel Block BPO).

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/npc/Thukker_Mix/stations

(Research time for ME/PE research is 3h 20m as a base, which looks correct. Same ME time as the various Ammo BPOs such as EMP L. Base waste factor on the fuel block BPOs is 5% with a 300 max runs per BPC.)
Dario Kaelenter
ACME HARDWARE
Exxitium
#160 - 2011-11-25 03:45:14 UTC
Two step wrote:
The original blog said the block BPOS were going to be in Thukker Mix stations. Does that include their highsec/lowsec stations, or will it only be in 0.0 stations?



OMG the Amarr Empire will go to war if they have to all send isk to Thukker so it's citizens can continue to fuel their industries !!

Caldari State may also assist Cool

Surely other races have been spying and have also been perfecting this technology ?!?

And WHY would Thukker bother making fuel blocks for other races ... ok maybe they would still help Gallente but surely they would delay and avoid making similar product for Enemy races just to get their people a technological advantage Twisted