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they should have done this from the start.. how can you put something into the game. give to a select few, then remove it from the game and leaving the stuff in hands of the select few. that has an effect no matter how pretending its only small effect to run rampant in the game.. i know there's some major alliances out there that has a full stock of T2 BPO's and are willing to fight tooth and nail over their benefit.. but those things should have been limited runs period..

or just open up a new industry of creating T2 BPO's.. to even the playing field.. you want to be fair for everyone right?? right???

That does not explain what happened to the original 10%.

We had a 10% wasteage factor and every level of ME halved that so 50% of the 10% for ME 1 75% of the 10% for ME 2 etc...

We are removing the old ME values and adding in this new +11% - 10% thingy

I can make a lot of assumptions here but the wording they chose is very confusing. It sounds like they are removing that 10% so if something required 100 units of trit with 0 ME it would now require 90 and muliplying that 90 by 1.11 repeating to get back to 100 or 99.99... but it makes no sense why you would remove something just to add it in again just to remove it again. I mean why not just say you are converting how ME is figured instead of adding and removing stuff twice?

Please clarify.

Can we please also get increased max runs on capitals like Orca and Freighters ?

Now I can make jobs for a month with 6 orcas or 2 freighters. (more on pos) It is much more clicking and flying arround if I have to produce from one run BPCs.

Oh and are you saying my ME 12 Charon BPO will be perfect after patch ? saving me the remaining research time ? great!

ME/TE Research

I like the principles of these changes, my only concern is that there are some undesirable effects from only partially replicating the skill training model.

What I'm concerned about is what happens when you are trying to get a high rank blueprint to some of the higher research levels - for example, level 10 on a frigate comes out at about 2 months. As far as I can tell from this blog, this can only be achieved by putting the blueprint in a single job for the entire 2 months.

This is a significant difference from both the existing research design, and the skill training design that is being used as a basis.

In the existing design it could take much longer to get to "perfect", but you could get there in small, manageable chunks, realizing incremental benefits along the way. You could quite quickly get to a minimum acceptable level for production, and then work away at the remainder using a series of short jobs as and when you had downtime on that blueprint. Under the new system it sounds like you'd have to commit the blueprint for the entire duration all at once.

In the skill training design, you have to put the full time in before you see any benefit, but again you can make progress towards that in increments - if you choose to switch to training another skill, you keep the skill points accumulated so far and can resume training towards the next level from where you left off. Similarly if you have to temporarily interrupt training (e.g. to plug in implants). This level of flexibility is lost in the translation to blueprint research, as you either have to let the job run for the full duration or lose any progress made towards the next level.

This loss of flexibility becomes even more relevant in the new design because of the removal of using blueprints stored in a station at a starbase. One of the ways of mitigating exposure around this is to run shorter jobs (so you don't lose as much if they get interrupted) at the cost of having to attend to them more often. Yes, you can just sit them nice and safe in an NPC station instead, but I get the impression that's not really the direction the Rubicon concept is pushing us towards.

I would prefer to see blueprints being given an equivalent to skill points (ME points and TE points), which build up to the ME and TE levels. While slightly more complex than the proposed changes, it is identical to the skill training system that everyone is already familiar with, and still meets the goals of making the benefits at each level more obvious. While it is potentially more complex to specify a number of ME points when placing the job, the UI could default to specifying the research in terms of Levels (automatically translating to the number of points for you), but allow you to manually edit the specific number of points if desired to get to the desired run-time.

In terms of the translation of old blueprints into new ones, I don't personally see any need to deviate from the proposals as given. Yes, it flattens out the differences between current ME10 and above, and yes, technically I lose out from that. But I'd personally prefer development time being put into the main feature set that all players will be living with for years, rather than into an overly complicated transitional arrangement.


Copying Times

In order to meet the stated goal of "build from copies", it sounds like you are wanting the BPO to yield greater throughput when copied from than when manufactured from directly. These proposed changes achieve that for the base stats of the blueprint, but don't appear to take TE research into account. If copying only has a 6.25% advantage at TE0, then manufacturing overtakes it again from TE8% and above (i.e. Level 4, which is not particularly hard to get).

While the improvements currently on the table are still a big step forward towards the copy-centric model, if you want to keep the carrot of greater throughput working, then one of two things needs to happen:

1) Make TE affect copying time as well as manufacturing time

2) Set the new copying time equal to the TE20% manufacturing time

Personally I would prefer the first option as it adds extra value to TE research, which has traditionally been less valued relative to ME research.


Also, can you confirm what is going to happen to blueprints where copying time is already significantly below the manufacturing time (e.g. it takes me 4 minutes to manufacture 1 run of Antimatter Charge S (TE0), but only 6 seconds per run to copy. Will the copy times on these blueprints be increasing? This seems to be common for T1 ammunition and drones and could have a particular effect on invention if the copy times are increased to match manufacture times, due to the high max-runs on these blueprints. (e.g. max-run copy of Antimatter Charge S would go from 2.5 hours to around 4 days).

OK, upon running through EVERYTHING once again, it does actually work out at ME10 as Weasle pointed out.

You said a lot for very little reason beyond simplifying the maths and here I went chasing ghosts for a little bit so thats my bad.

What in the actual ****, greyscale?

But... just note that you really only had to change copy times and could've left it as it was. The change you made was totally and completely pointless.

Those are balance changes. CCP will eventually get around to module balance changes, but they're outside the scope of a Science and Industry-focused release.

MDD

All the hard math is converting from this system to the new system. Once in the new system, everything is really easy math-wise.

Yeah, it took me a moment to see that.

He really could've just said that he was simplifying it and nothing was actually changing. I can't ******* believe I'm agreeing with a goon, but there you go.

Can you please make it so manufacturing/copying from T2 BPO can only be done from a POS?

Looks like the right time to start "removing" those from the game by letting them get blown up in POS. T2 BPO shouldnt be in game anymore, we have invention now.

As an inventor, I'm curious how you will handle the negative ME levels.

Currently, at ME -4, and a 10% Waste Factor, there is a 50% material waste.
Likewise, ME -3, -2, -1, 0 represent a 40%, 30%, 20%, & 10% increase in material wastes.

I assume the new levels will be ME 0 represents 111% of current, with ME -1 an additional 10%, likewise ME -4 an additional 40%?

1.11111 * 1.4 = 1.55555, so ME -4 will have an additional 5% waste on top of current production quantities.


Overall, I suspect that most T2 modules will see a 30% increase in prices with the changes so far.

For example, a Light Neutron cannon II will now require an extra robotics and 3 extra particle accelerators. That's an extra 120k isk in materials to the current production cost of ~600k isk. Add in the increased "line costs", and the net result is a fairly hefty 20-30% increase in the production prices of most T2 modules.

Are POS arrays, lowsec stations, and nullsec outposts perhaps going to have "ME Benefits" that make producing in those "riskier" locations?