These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dev blog: Researching, the Future

First post First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Rollaz
AirHogs
Hogs Collective
#941 - 2014-05-14 17:38:49 UTC
Alexander McKeon wrote:
Comparing ME 10 to ME 50, it's a .706% savings. If you're building an Abaddon, that works out to ~1.5m ISK / hull at current mineral prices. Plenty of folks build battleships by the dozens. If you're making 20 hulls per day, a 25m / day cost advantage over your competition is worth spending extra research time. Stop pulling numbers from the æther, get your spreadsheets out and look at how much isk a .7% cost advantage translates to when the true scale of production is taken into account, and you'll understand why many, many BPOs in this game are researched past ME 10.



@CCP Greyscale THIS^^^^

Since you've decided to keep the 10 point system for sure, then please raise the conversion number on some sort of scale. (these numbers are for example and haven't been measured in any way, they are simply to throw out an idea for you to come up with a way to increase the conversion breakpoint of the previously researched bpo from ME10 higher.... ie:

ME1 = 1%
ME2 = 2%
ME3 = 3%
ME4 = 4%
ME5 = 5%
ME6-7 = 6%
ME8-9 = 7%
ME10-12 = 8%
ME13-16 = 9%
ME17+ = 10%

I'm STRONGLY opposed to an ME10 cutoff... I think ME10 is too low for the cutoff for conversion of old bpos

Additionally... above ME17 create some kind of minor compensation for ME17-100 (i'd be ok with compensation being based on ACTUAL % of savings of materials and not the time spent for them as suggested previously. Anything over ME100 (in most cases) is below .1 of 1% and shouldn't be compensated.

Thanks for being open to suggestions, it's an improvement over the CCP attitude I've experienced in the past, I trust your interest in creating a solution is genuine and not placation.

HAVE FUN - MAKE ISK - NO DRAMA No Api's   -   No Wars   -   No Awoxing   -   No Kidding! Hogs is OPEN for recruiting!  Join our in-game channel "Airhogs"
Throwaway Sam Atild
Republic Military School
Minmatar Republic
#942 - 2014-05-14 17:51:34 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:


Yeah, I made some assumptions about the mapping between the number in the database and the number in the client that turned out not to be true :/ It's not a big deal going forwards as we know exactly what the numbers do in the new system, but yeah, the way the blog describes the current balance is not accurate. Sorry about that :)


The Problem

The copy time changes are concerning to me as the head of a small invention based production corp. The eight-fold increase in copy time for many 'small scale' modules means that in order to produce the max-run copies required for 10 run becomes a significant choke-point for invention based manufacturing. An example of this is the warp scrambler I BPO which currently has a copy time of 1 min, a max run of 300, and a build time of 8 min. If I understand correctly, the copy time will be increased to 8 min with the update.

As an example, a type of project we frequently run, including various bonuses, a batch of 100 modules (Warp Scrambler II) used to have the following slot-hour requirements before the upcoming change:

75 hours copying -> 20x max run copies
25 hours invention -> 20x invention attempts
170 hours building

With the changes, to achieve the same results we see:

600 hours copying
25 hours invention
170 hours building

The bottleneck for this project, which I believe is a common type of project, shifts from the 17 hours of building to 5 days of copying.


A potential solution

Decrease the max copy # on these types of blueprints (E.G. Warp Scrambler) in proportion with the copy time increase. The 8x increase in copy time would be coupled with a 1/8x max copy resulting in a max of 40 runs per BPC. This preserves the desired across the board normalization of copy time to build time, while removing the affect on T2 module production time. Because the BPO's for this broad category of modules are relatively inexpensive (Warp Scrambler I BPO = 394k isk) producing T1 off the BPO rather than a copy should not be an issue for folks, so the reduction in max copies should be an issue.

I don't have enough experience to say if increasing max copies based on time reduction would be have other effects for the blueprints receiving a copy time reduction. It would preserve the current state regarding invention, but I don't know what other effects it may have, aside from increasing max-copies which seems to be desirable by other players in the thread.


A less elegant solution


If it is in fact the intent to increase the bottleneck on these types of modules, the adjustment on my end is less pleasant. Copying characters are easy to train, so to maintain our operations, my corp members would train up 'copy monkeys'. These are alts with about 10 days of training that have no purpose in life but to copy things. It adds character switching to the already painful invention process. Please CCP Greyscale! Don't unintentionally bring more of these tormented copy monkeys into the EVE Universe!

Disclaimer: I don't consider myself a production expert at this point, being relatively new to running a production corp. Its possible I've missed something super obvious that renders my concern meaningless.
Seith Kali
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#943 - 2014-05-14 17:51:46 UTC
Not really sure why it matters if it is 10 or 17, its just petty semantics. Even at 17 his ME 50 battleship is nearly three times over researched.

There is still plenty of time to research subcaps to 17 so it doesn't stop people who would want to try to benefit from it particularly.

In fact the only reason you would make it 17 instead of 10 is to give all the people with large numbers of sensible mid-teen BPO's a load of pointless work to do in order to continue producing immediately after patch day. It is just not that big of a deal. 10 is just low enough not to be particularly disruptive to people with sensibly researched BPO collections and just high enough to not give people time to churn out large numbers of 'perfect' battleships and things.

It really isn't that big of a deal. Theres nothing wrong with choosing 10, 12, 17, whatever. Lower is just less disruptive.

Apprentice Goonswarm Economic Warfare Consultant - Drowning in entitlement and privilege. 
Hirogenale
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#944 - 2014-05-14 17:58:02 UTC
Seith Kali wrote:
Alexander McKeon wrote:
Megumi Miura wrote:
6. If BPO compensation is given then compensate the right thing. Compensate the cost advantage (e.g. 0.00258%) they would loose not the time (e.g. 2+ weeks) they thought it was worth.
Comparing ME 10 to ME 50, it's a .706% savings. If you're building an Abaddon, that works out to ~1.5m ISK / hull at current mineral prices. Plenty of folks build battleships by the dozens. If you're making 20 hulls per day, a 25m / day cost advantage over your competition is worth spending extra research time. Stop pulling numbers from the æther, get your spreadsheets out and look at how much isk a .7% cost advantage translates to when the true scale of production is taken into account, and you'll understand why many, many BPOs in this game are researched past ME 10.


50 is ludicrously over researched and 10 is currently under-researched. No one is going to be building battleships with ME10, so it is a crap comparison. Try a sensible value like comparing current ME 14 and 50.

Then remember that everyone with an ME 14 BPO will have a perfect one in the new system. Picking current ME 10 as the rounding value really doesn't impact current blueprint collections, it is just as good of a number to pick as any.

Even if CCP went for ME14 as the rounding base, the only people it would affect are those researching now for the round up as every other BPO being produced with is going to be at or above optimal. It really doesn't matter if it is 10 or 14 for those people, there is plenty of time to get 14 on any sub-capital and capitals are all perfect long before 14 anyway.

It really is just semantics. No one is hurt by this except the people that thought an ME50 battleship bpo is worth more than an ME15 one. Anyone know knows better will have an ME 15 one and doesn't care.

The fact we even need to discuss this is just building the case for what an excellent set of changes these are.


14 to 50 still saves you 470K per 100mil, 20 to 50 still 280K
assuming a 5% profit margin thats ~9.5% more profit on 14 to 50 and ~5.5% more profit on 20 to 50.

I really don't see how anyone can call that overresearched, that are pretty significant amounts for longterm planning manufacturers...

even researching from 50 to 80 would still result in a ~1.4% higher profit. (thats not a lot anymore, but planning for several years that would still make some difference)
AFK Hauler
State War Academy
#945 - 2014-05-14 18:01:28 UTC
Just wondering if the new math has been detailed for the calculated research time for TE?
Still cannot find that can of worms in this thread.
Seith Kali
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#946 - 2014-05-14 18:02:59 UTC
Honestly, you sound like the kind of person who should get into the T2 BPO trade. I hear a few are going cheap...

Apprentice Goonswarm Economic Warfare Consultant - Drowning in entitlement and privilege. 
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#947 - 2014-05-14 18:10:25 UTC
Seith Kali wrote:

It really isn't that big of a deal. Theres nothing wrong with choosing 10, 12, 17, whatever. Lower is just less disruptive.


But there is still the issue of what to do with newer players that will face 4-5x as long to research to a "decent level".

And... fo course, the issue that NONE OF THIS WAS NECESSARY ANYWAY.

CCP misunderstood the source of the complexity, attacked the wrong thing, and created a giant CF that has had to be hacked and thrashed and hacked and thrashed.

Throw it out and start over while there is still time!


1) Turn hard cap on facility slots to a soft optimal with increasing costs for going above the optimal concurrent jobs.

2) Keep ME as it is, and do better conversions in the UI. Or toss the 1-10 reduction, stay with waste and convert it to Research Points with a RP = 100th current ME.

You remove the need for 90% of the hacking and thrashing needed to fix what the disastrously fail design has created.


I'm sure Greyscale is a nice guy. He just needs to think through all these changes from the beginning, instead of making rash decisions, without regard for consequence, not understanding what he's doing, breaking tons of stuff, then hacking and thrashing to try to implement last minute fixes to the things he didn't realize he was breaking.


And then, his flat out refusal to eat a little crow and back away from his horrid failures, continuing to try to hack and trash in more last minute changes, is particularly troubling.

LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#948 - 2014-05-14 18:13:19 UTC
Hirogenale wrote:
14 to 50 still saves you 470K per 100mil, 20 to 50 still 280K
assuming a 5% profit margin thats ~9.5% more profit on 14 to 50 and ~5.5% more profit on 20 to 50.

I really don't see how anyone can call that overresearched, that are pretty significant amounts for longterm planning manufacturers...

even researching from 50 to 80 would still result in a ~1.4% higher profit. (thats not a lot anymore, but planning for several years that would still make some difference)


It is "over researched" because they are trying to justify, and define away the mega design failure that is the research overhaul.

They "need" a ME 50 to be over researched, because otherwise the flaws in the re-design are obvious.
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#949 - 2014-05-14 18:24:44 UTC
Rollaz wrote:

ME1 = 1%
ME2 = 2%
ME3 = 3%
ME4 = 4%
ME5 = 5%
ME6-7 = 6%
ME8-9 = 7%
ME10-12 = 8%
ME13-16 = 9%
ME17+ = 10%

I'm STRONGLY opposed to an ME10 cutoff... I think ME10 is too low for the cutoff for conversion of old bpos


Doesn't address the insanely long research times new players will face.

Doesn't address the need to round up, move round at batch, removing the concept of a "perfect" BPO below fully researched, need to change invention, need to change gazillion other things....

Something that looked like a small change to "fix" something that wasn't a problem, and could have been fixed in other ways, has cascaded into a huge number of game breaking changes.

Better option is to toss out this change to research and start over.

Heck, at this pint, I'm ready to completely toss out all research BPO and have them come from NPCs perfectly researched.
Odoya
Aeon Abraxas
#950 - 2014-05-14 18:58:04 UTC  |  Edited by: Odoya
LHA Tarawa wrote:
[quote=Seith Kali]

And... fo course, the issue that NONE OF THIS WAS NECESSARY ANYWAY.

CCP misunderstood the source of the complexity, attacked the wrong thing, and created a giant CF that has had to be hacked and thrashed and hacked and thrashed.

Throw it out and start over while there is still time!


1) Turn hard cap on facility slots to a soft optimal with increasing costs for going above the optimal concurrent jobs.




The original concerns as expressed by the CCP devs did not make a compelling case for the change(s). It is harder to offer feedback in response to proposed changes when feedback in response to the issue (cogently stated) and not to its proposed fix, would yield a much more fruitful discussion.

Eve has so many interesting ways to balance out industry without trying to fix problems observed on the server for China, etc. It would be great to build on the "lumpiness" idea by adding in logistics, distance and Empire politics (tax rates, licensing fees, etc..) and push incentives to decentralize markets not production centers. That would add great depth to play experience and new player opportunities / satisifaction.

A compelling example of fixing this before its broken would be the addition of metamaterials to balance access to resources. Those very items: nonlinear metamaterials, and plasmonic metamaterials now constitute an incredibly high % of a component build. But now that it is a "normal" part of T2 builds, it's not a topic open for discussion. But I'd argue, it does not appear to have been a "successful" change.

Is there really a game imbalance in manufacturing? I would argue that a high sec manufacturer does not make substantially more isk than a high sec missioner of similar SP. A industritalist or any Eve player can be expressed as an isk per hour potential like an ingame salary. If we're going to use statistical models to somehow pursue an idea of parity in game play, why not apply in these terms rather than as an approach to the current set of proposed changes? Irascible or not, the player community is vested and has put forward some great thoughts.
Apelacja
Sad Najwyzszy
#951 - 2014-05-14 19:21:55 UTC
Zalmun wrote:
Will the changes affect existing T2 BPCs (as in adjust their TE/ME to the new standard), or only new T2 BPCs invented after the changes go live?



yea good question....

i
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#952 - 2014-05-14 19:28:50 UTC
Odoya wrote:
LHA Tarawa wrote:
[quote=Seith Kali]

And... fo course, the issue that NONE OF THIS WAS NECESSARY ANYWAY.

CCP misunderstood the source of the complexity, attacked the wrong thing, and created a giant CF that has had to be hacked and thrashed and hacked and thrashed.

Throw it out and start over while there is still time!


1) Turn hard cap on facility slots to a soft optimal with increasing costs for going above the optimal concurrent jobs.




The original concerns as expressed by the CCP devs did not make a compelling case for the change(s). It is harder to offer feedback in response to proposed changes when feedback in response to the issue (cogently stated) and not to its proposed fix, would yield a much more fruitful discussion.

Eve has so many interesting ways to balance out industry without trying to fix problems observed on the server for China, etc. It would be great to build on the "lumpiness" idea by adding in logistics, distance and Empire politics (tax rates, licensing fees, etc..) and push incentives to decentralize markets not production centers. That would add great depth to play experience and new player opportunities / satisifaction.

A compelling example of fixing this before its broken would be the addition of metamaterials to balance access to resources. Those very items: nonlinear metamaterials, and plasmonic metamaterials now constitute an incredibly high % of a component build. But now that it is a "normal" part of T2 builds, it's not a topic open for discussion. But I'd argue, it does not appear to have been a "successful" change.

Is there really a game imbalance in manufacturing? I would argue that a high sec manufacturer does not make substantially more isk than a high sec missioner of similar SP. A industritalist or any Eve player can be expressed as an isk per hour potential like an ingame salary. If we're going to use statistical models to somehow pursue an idea of parity in game play, why not apply in these terms rather than as an approach to the current set of proposed changes? Irascible or not, the player community is vested and has put forward some great thoughts.



Manufacturing, in general, actually makes way less than a mission runner or miner, because of the passive nature of it.

I get wanting to create less complexity and more meaningful choices. However, the first step to any project is really understanding the problem.

Perhaps waste % = 10% * 1/(1+ME) was difficult to some, but it was manageable. We could have change ME to start at 1, renamed it to "waste divider". The the new formula would have been waste = 10% / waste divider.

But, the real complexity came from multiplying the waste % by the items needed and then redermining inflection points in teh round. 4 input needed, even at 10% waste it rounds to 0. 5 items needed, 5% waste rounds to 0. 9 items, 5% rounds to 0, but for 10 you need 2.5% waste. I know many argue that this is actually simple match... Yeah, but so it 10%/(1+ME). While the waste % only needed to be done once, and you got for all BPs, the comparison to need to redetermine rounding inflection points needed to be done for each and every BP separately (or group anyway).


The move to infinite slots was equally misguided, and in fact, may have been the starting point for where things when so horridly wrong. The hard cap should have been converted into a soft cap, with costs increasing for going over the cap. SUPER simple to implement and would have made WAY more sense that solar system wide costs.

Once they removed all concept of slot, they needed to come up with a bonus for POS and Outpost that didn't involve slot numbers, so they turned to ME reductions. And this may have lead to the fail conversion of waste add to research reductions as whole %s.

Either way, these to mega disasterous fails in design pale in comparison to the "teams" that will allow mega alliances to buy special advantage and CRUSH new and small corps in the manufacturing game.



All in all, I give the industry rework a 2 starts out of 10 possible. Refine/compress = good. UI = good. No remove research = bad. Cost scaling at soalr system usage = horrid. Research as whole %, round up, job level rounding, reductions below perfect, changes to invention, other hacks to cover up fails in design = horrid.
Shoogie
Serious Pixels
#953 - 2014-05-14 19:37:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Shoogie
So much has changed in the last couple pages.

I gave my opinion on the ranks of capital ships some (20ish) pages ago. If titans are set at rank 480, then one can get that blueprint from ME0 to ME9 in 1 year, 2 months 23 days. Then for the last level from ME9 to Perfect in an additional 1 year, 8 months, 12 days. Total research time 2 years, 11 months, 6 days. These times are assuming metallurgy 5 and an NPC station. Someone who can put it in a Hyasyoda lab and avoid attracting attention can go from 0 to perfect in 1 year, 10 months, 28 days.

Since the Hyasyoda lab was changed from a 0.75 time modifier to a 0.65, maybe rank 480 is too small. Rank 600 would still be in the same ballpark of 2 years to get the last level in an NPC station or 16 months in a POS. Two years for the longest research times will make most people say, "no, it's not worth it." But it is not too long that it is totally impossible. So if titans are in the area of 600, other capital ships scale down from there.


But you should also think about the other end of the spectrum. What level to stop researching a blueprint to should be a meaningful decision at all times. The current proposal is to have all T1 ammo be rank 1 and most T1 modules to be rank 2. For a rank 1 blueprint, it takes 2 days 5 hours to get from 0 to perfect ME. An additional 2 days 5 hours to get to perfect PE. So you can go from NPC sell order to perfect/perfect in less than 5 days. Everybody will do that. Nobody will ever build from a blueprint that is less than perfect/perfect.

I suggest making T1 ammo be rank 5. Here are the research times at rank 5:
ME1.......6 minutes, 33 seconds
ME2.......15 minutes, 37 seconds
ME3.......37 minutes, 11 seconds
ME4.......1 hour, 28 minutes
ME5.......3 hours, 30 minutes
ME6.......8 hours, 20 minutes
ME7.......19 hours, 47 minutes
ME8.......1 day, 23 hours, 8 minutes
ME9.......4 days, 16 hours, 11 minutes
ME10....11 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes

Then players have interesting decisions. When work teams can save 4%, 5%, 7.5%? off material costs, then players need to think about the benefit of one more ME level. It is a no-brainer to spend 1 day to get to ME7. But then should you sacrifice 1 more day of production to get it to ME8? After that, should you lose 3 more days to get it to ME9? After that, should you invest another week to get it to perfect? And how high do you research PE? Perhaps PE 14 will be "good enough" for most people, and some people will choose to train all the way to PE20 on blueprints they plan to build a great deal from.

And some people can say, "I don't want to spend 3 weeks to make a perfect/perfect blueprint. I'll pay someone to do it for me."

If ammunition is rank 5, then T1 drones should be rank 8, and T1 modules rank 10. Then you can extrapolate from there. I actually think rank 20 for frigates, 40 for cruisers, and 60 for battleships is pretty good.
Apelacja
Sad Najwyzszy
#954 - 2014-05-14 19:45:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Apelacja
Shoogie wrote:
So much has changed in the last couple pages.

I gave my opinion on the ranks of capital ships some (20ish) pages ago. If titans are set at rank 480, then one can get that blueprint from ME0 to ME9 in 1 year, 2 months 23 days. Then for the last level from ME9 to Perfect in an additional 1 year, 8 months, 12 days. Total research time 2 years, 11 months, 6 days. These times are assuming metallurgy 5 and an NPC station. Someone who can put it in a Hyasyoda lab and avoid attracting attention can go from 0 to perfect in 1 year, 10 months, 28 days.

Since the Hyasyoda lab was changed from a 0.75 time modifier to a 0.65, maybe rank 480 is too small. Rank 600 would still be in the same ballpark of 2 years to get the last level in an NPC station or 16 months in a POS. Two years for the longest research times will make most people say, "no, it's not worth it." But it is not too long that it is totally impossible. So if titans are in the area of 600, other capital ships scale down from there.


But you should also think about the other end of the spectrum. What level to stop researching a blueprint to should be a meaningful decision at all times. The current proposal is to have all T1 ammo be rank 1 and most T1 modules to be rank 2. For a rank 1 blueprint, it takes 2 days 5 hours to get from 0 to perfect ME. An additional 2 days 5 hours to get to perfect PE. So you can go from NPC buy order to perfect/perfect in less than 5 days. Everybody will do that. Nobody will ever build from a blueprint that is less than perfect/perfect.

I suggest making T1 ammo be rank 5. Here are the research times at rank 5:
ME1.......6 minutes, 33 seconds
ME2.......15 minutes, 37 seconds
ME3.......37 minutes, 11 seconds
ME4.......1 hour, 28 minutes
ME5.......3 hours, 30 minutes
ME6.......8 hours, 20 minutes
ME7.......19 hours, 47 minutes
ME8.......1 day, 23 hours, 8 minutes
ME9.......4 days, 16 hours, 11 minutes
ME10....11 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes

Then players have interesting decisions. When work teams can save 4%, 5%, 7.5%? off material costs, then players need to think about the benefit of one more ME level. It is a no-brainer to spend 1 day to get to ME7. But then should you sacrifice 1 more day of production to get it to ME8? After that, should you lose 3 more days to get it to ME9? After that, should you invest another week to get it to perfect? And how high do you research PE? Perhaps PE 14 will be "good enough" for most people, and some people will choose to train all the way to PE20 on blueprints they plan to build a great deal from.

And some people can say, "I don't want to spend 3 weeks to make a perfect/perfect blueprint. I'll pay someone to do it for me."

If ammunition is rank 5, then T1 drones should be rank 8, and T1 modules rank 10. Then you can extrapolate from there. I actually think rank 20 for frigates, 40 for cruisers, and 60 for battleships is pretty good.


It will hurt ppl who own titan`s bpos right now and made afford to research them.


To get me 5 u should need around 2 years in pos.
Banko Mato
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#955 - 2014-05-14 19:59:44 UTC
Apelacja wrote:
Zalmun wrote:
Will the changes affect existing T2 BPCs (as in adjust their TE/ME to the new standard), or only new T2 BPCs invented after the changes go live?



yea good question....

i


Answered here...

LHA Tarawa wrote:
Odoya wrote:

[...]Is there really a game imbalance in manufacturing? I would argue that a high sec manufacturer does not make substantially more isk than a high sec missioner of similar SP. A industritalist or any Eve player can be expressed as an isk per hour potential like an ingame salary. If we're going to use statistical models to somehow pursue an idea of parity in game play, why not apply in these terms rather than as an approach to the current set of proposed changes? Irascible or not, the player community is vested and has put forward some great thoughts.



Manufacturing, in general, actually makes way less than a mission runner or miner, because of the passive nature of it.[...]


Industry and missioning can only be compared in a very limited setting, since industry is by far the most scalable way of making profit in terms of accounts involved. One can barely multibox more than a pair or so of missioning toons without serious impact to the efficiency of each runner. Mining on the other hand scales well with the number of concurrently logged in toons and is manageable (Forgot the name of that guy who used to multibox an entire fleet of ice miners). Industry now again is on an entirely different level: You can have upwards of 20 to 40 industry characters and manage them with ease, generating profits per "effort hour" that missioning won't be able to beat even with a x10 multiplier on mission rewards. And the new UI will skyrocket those isk/hour profits for organised industrialists ;)

If looking only on the industry and missioning capabilities of a single independent toon, then yes, industry makes generally smaller income in comparison.

The repeated mentioning of outpost ME boni made me think a bit... Maybe reduce outpost bonus to the same level as a POS array and instead make it provide an upgrade based and system wide speed bonus to manufacturing jobs? So +2ME and e.g. (10 + upgrade_level*5)% speed bonus? I have the feeling that the impact of a real 5ME bonus is hard to estimate in the bigger picture when a dozen factors need to be calculated in, therefore it might be worth considering to start with another bonus and observe the industry landscape after the patch.

Any thoughts on this?
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#956 - 2014-05-14 20:15:12 UTC  |  Edited by: LHA Tarawa
Banko Mato wrote:
The repeated mentioning of outpost ME boni made me think a bit... Maybe reduce outpost bonus to the same level as a POS array and instead make it provide an upgrade based and system wide speed bonus to manufacturing jobs? So +2ME and e.g. (10 + upgrade_level*5)% speed bonus? I have the feeling that the impact of a real 5ME bonus is hard to estimate in the bigger picture when a dozen factors need to be calculated in, therefore it might be worth considering to start with another bonus and observe the industry landscape after the patch.

Any thoughts on this?


As you mention, manufacturing easily scales to more alts, and with infinite jobs per facility, the importance of time to run a job shrinks considerably.

Time to run may be huge at the high end, such as capitals, supers and titans, (especially capitals where you'll have to run batches for a good round) but I see it as being totally irrelevant below that level.
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#957 - 2014-05-14 20:16:12 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:

Rollaz wrote:

What is the current plan to compensate all the bpo's that are researched OVER ME10, if there is no plan, are you talking about making one?


Considering it, not 100% committed to it, still soliciting feedback on what exactly people would find reasonable so we can figure out if there's a good balance to be struck.


I don't think that this is a good idea, but if you absolutely have to, I'd highly recommend the compensation come in the form of a number of BPCs, loosely commensurate with the wasted time researching a BPO over ME10. The conversion would have to be severely hobbled, however, so that a person can't just toss in a bunch of BPOs a month before Crius and be rewarded with more than one monthsworth of BPCs, or, really, even an equivalent number.

Using BPCs as the reward mechanism is unique among the suggestions here in that it only provides a temporary advantage, rather than one that lasts forever (in the oft-suggested case of "research tokens" to be applied to new BPOs to instantly raise their ME/PE, or having an over-researched BPO explode into a number of perfectly researched additional BPOs commensurate with the wasted research time.)

Again, I think that the complaints coming in are overblown and the result of a culture of extreme entitlement, but that's just my opinion. You may see things differently.

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.
Driven
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#958 - 2014-05-14 21:42:26 UTC
As a long time bitter vet, playing for 11 years, I welcome change - thoughtful change.

Is this that? Seems questionable.

I have an assload of cap ship BPOs that are researched up to ME19 in some cases, like a Charon, or ME 15 and ME 16 on other freighters, as well as supers and carriers at ME 11 and more.

Am I going to get screwed on the investment in my material research because its too "hard" for noobs to figure out research? Seems like the blogs are focused on standardizing and dumbing things down. Why exactly is that so great?

If you guys are going to allow for this kind research investment to not get screwed over in some way then make all the changes you want. Otherwise its not much more than a penalty for being willing to take the time to invest in research in exchange for making the game simpler for stupid people. Why is that good?

Lets the idiots who can't figure **** out or want instant gratification go play WoW or My Little Pony Online or whatever.

Hope you think it through.

Thanks.

D
CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#959 - 2014-05-14 21:44:23 UTC
Shoogie wrote:
So much has changed in the last couple pages.

I gave my opinion on the ranks of capital ships some (20ish) pages ago. If titans are set at rank 480, then one can get that blueprint from ME0 to ME9 in 1 year, 2 months 23 days. Then for the last level from ME9 to Perfect in an additional 1 year, 8 months, 12 days. Total research time 2 years, 11 months, 6 days. These times are assuming metallurgy 5 and an NPC station. Someone who can put it in a Hyasyoda lab and avoid attracting attention can go from 0 to perfect in 1 year, 10 months, 28 days.

Since the Hyasyoda lab was changed from a 0.75 time modifier to a 0.65, maybe rank 480 is too small. Rank 600 would still be in the same ballpark of 2 years to get the last level in an NPC station or 16 months in a POS. Two years for the longest research times will make most people say, "no, it's not worth it." But it is not too long that it is totally impossible. So if titans are in the area of 600, other capital ships scale down from there.


But you should also think about the other end of the spectrum. What level to stop researching a blueprint to should be a meaningful decision at all times. The current proposal is to have all T1 ammo be rank 1 and most T1 modules to be rank 2. For a rank 1 blueprint, it takes 2 days 5 hours to get from 0 to perfect ME. An additional 2 days 5 hours to get to perfect PE. So you can go from NPC sell order to perfect/perfect in less than 5 days. Everybody will do that. Nobody will ever build from a blueprint that is less than perfect/perfect.

I suggest making T1 ammo be rank 5. Here are the research times at rank 5:
ME1.......6 minutes, 33 seconds
ME2.......15 minutes, 37 seconds
ME3.......37 minutes, 11 seconds
ME4.......1 hour, 28 minutes
ME5.......3 hours, 30 minutes
ME6.......8 hours, 20 minutes
ME7.......19 hours, 47 minutes
ME8.......1 day, 23 hours, 8 minutes
ME9.......4 days, 16 hours, 11 minutes
ME10....11 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes

Then players have interesting decisions. When work teams can save 4%, 5%, 7.5%? off material costs, then players need to think about the benefit of one more ME level. It is a no-brainer to spend 1 day to get to ME7. But then should you sacrifice 1 more day of production to get it to ME8? After that, should you lose 3 more days to get it to ME9? After that, should you invest another week to get it to perfect? And how high do you research PE? Perhaps PE 14 will be "good enough" for most people, and some people will choose to train all the way to PE20 on blueprints they plan to build a great deal from.

And some people can say, "I don't want to spend 3 weeks to make a perfect/perfect blueprint. I'll pay someone to do it for me."

If ammunition is rank 5, then T1 drones should be rank 8, and T1 modules rank 10. Then you can extrapolate from there. I actually think rank 20 for frigates, 40 for cruisers, and 60 for battleships is pretty good.


This is a good post, thank you.

Part of the aim with ammo in particular is to create some industrial content that a fresh player can dive into without a lot of time invested. My understanding of the low-end T1 market is that it's sufficiently cut-throat that those few percentage points between say 8 and 10 might well be the entirety of the available profit margin, and 11 days is a long time for someone whose skills are still training in less than four hours.

For these reasons we will probably keep T1 ammo where it is. In light of your post, though, I'm considering kicking at least some T1 modules up to higher ranks to create a broader spread there; potentially f.ex scaling rank by module size, and pinning most of the unsized module around cruiser sized modules. Seem reasonable?
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#960 - 2014-05-14 22:15:56 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:
For these reasons we will probably keep T1 ammo where it is. In light of your post, though, I'm considering kicking at least some T1 modules up to higher ranks to create a broader spread there; potentially f.ex scaling rank by module size, and pinning most of the unsized module around cruiser sized modules. Seem reasonable?

This seems like a reasonable idea. It's also good information to know, generally (at least without having to do a bunch of weird SQL queries on the SDE to figure it out.) Stuff like this helps us plan our new player guidebooks; I can now, for instance, push any new players interested in industry to ammo and frigates and frigate modules, rather than having them beeline straight for the battleship modules and risk their frustration at 30 day research timers. Assuming, of course, it's agreed to actually do this.

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.