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Dev blog: Researching, the Future

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Zappity
New Eden Tank Testing Services
#1081 - 2014-05-17 22:30:29 UTC
These changes won't 'break' invention. It might drastically decrease profitability and bring T2 profit margins closer to other manufacturing domains.

Whether further adjustments are needed really depends on how much deflation CCP is willing to endure. If they want to avoid deflation due to T2 module price drops (due to increased production efficiency due to decreased clicks) then they will need to increase T2 production cost, either in terms of input material cost, invention chance or time to invent.

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Odoya
Aeon Abraxas
#1082 - 2014-05-17 23:01:58 UTC
Zappity wrote:
These changes won't 'break' invention. It might drastically decrease profitability and bring T2 profit margins closer to other manufacturing domains.

Whether further adjustments are needed really depends on how much deflation CCP is willing to endure. If they want to avoid deflation due to T2 module price drops (due to increased production efficiency due to decreased clicks) then they will need to increase T2 production cost, either in terms of input material cost, invention chance or time to invent.


"Break" requires as much definition and agreement as "working fine" does :-) But why bring T2 profit margins closer to other manufacturing efforts? Is that an a priori goal?

Also, going back to the idea of measurable results, will less clicking and and greater quantities lead to deflation? Will such forces be a primary motivator? if so, why incent discounts for longer, unattended manufacturing runs? The market can only absorb so much so I think saturation, not ease of use, will drive pricing as a *primary* factor. Oddly, the cost to initiate jobs may taper off production too if this idea of "teams" kicks in and adds a disincentive to produce goods. As an aside, I would say holding product is almost always better than holding isk because *generally* speaking, I'd say we can be sure that isk becomes less valuable over a long cycle with only short upticks whereas certain products lose significant value due to major game changes. Anyone who agrees with such a view might prefer to hold over produced T2 goods in lieu of isk. But, I think the risk is over production, not necessarily deflation in long cycles. And, even if market flooding changes the timeframe in which a market becomes saturated, it is the inability to adapt to different T2 playstyles that will frustrate players who need to flip their product to stay productive (ie, need the isk back out of a given cycle more than 'bigger' players). Make industry more enjoyable but do not punish long term playstyles.

I mention metrics because it gives a chance to mitigate what many invested players fear and that is not so much change as it is loss of wealth or effort from gains made in the current system. Arbitrarily (perceived as such if the case isn't made) resetting everyone ot the starting line is a huge demotivator. Keeping a paying customer is less expensive than acquiring a new one.

Not that you were speaking to my point, but I would say a case for "fixing" or "breaking" has not been made. However, it seems everyone agrees less clickiness would be great. While it seems that the devs are good naturedly engaged, it seems they possess much more agency than other dev efforts to the extent change for change's sake has appeal where data or facts is not in evidence. Ultimately, regardless of how much time I have spent in Eve, I can participate only as a consumer and it is much more fun to *be* the mad scientist developer than it is to *be subject* to the mad developer scientist as a consumer ;-)

But, I will respect solid metrics even if I do not agree with priorities.
probag Bear
Xiong Offices
#1083 - 2014-05-17 23:19:34 UTC  |  Edited by: probag Bear
Steve Ronuken wrote:
An example of how a mid-scale inventor goes about his business (restricting this to one account. many use more):
[snip]
Copy slots are the bottleneck, rather than invention slots.


For contrast, my routine:

1 copy alt
12 invention alts
6 manufacturing alts
(naturally the manufacturing alts can be a subset of the invention alts)


  1. Each inventor alt starts 10 identical 6hr invention jobs with ~50% success rate.
  2. Each manufacturing alt starts 10 identical 4.5hr/7.5hr manufacturing jobs.
  3. The copy alt starts 10 min-run max-batch copy jobs: 1.25hr. This gives out 200 BPCs, which more than covers the 120 BPCs used in invention.


Invention is by far the bottleneck for me.

CCP Greyscale wrote:
I'm updating my big-ass spreadsheet to link T1 and T2 typeIDs so I can run the math on making copy time 80% of build time in all cases and then setting invention time to "(build time / 2) - copy time"; while I'm working on it, does anyone think this is going to make their head explode?


Please remember that the limiting factor in invention is NOT universal by any means. Neither is the optimal run number of copied BPCs.
In my market, I need 0.5 manufacturing alts and 0.05 copying alts per 1 inventor alt.
For someone inventing just Damage Control IIs, the numbers seem to be closer to 6.67 manufacturing alts and 1.08 copying alts per 1 inventor alt (please correct my math if it is wrong; I have never invented DCIIs).

Fixing invention time to manufacturing time will change the limiting factor for many things. That can easily be something good, something you want changed, and I'm fine with that. But I don't want it to be something that you just overlook and yet it significantly changes the dynamics of the invention profession.

Quote:
Another thing to think about - if we mess with the invention math so we can kick max run counts up without breaking a bunch of things (including making sure we scale job time correctly against output runs), does the potentially large increase in practical invention throughput risk breaking the market? If you could put in 24 hours' worth of invention in one go, are we going to see a destructive glut of T2 BPC supply?


It does not break the market. It does however change it drastically. Few people are willing to invent in 1hr ticks, but if you allow them to invent 24 1hr ticks at once with no drawback, it stops being such a cumbersome activity. This in turn drives profit margins way down by a lot, which the market will stomach perfectly well. There might be a small initial glut, but it'll go away fairly quickly.


As a bit of an example:

  • I currently run 3 invention/manufacturing ticks per 24hrs
  • I currently use 12 characters for this activity (not including the short-train copier char).
  • The number of slots I need is 0.48 manufacturing and 0.05 copying per 1 invention. This leaves a potential 62 manufacturing slots unused.
  • I am 10.8% of my market's supply.
  • I've fixed profit at 300mil per tick, or 900mil per 24hrs


If both of the suggestions in your post are implemented:

  • I will run 1 invention/manufacturing tick per 24hrs
  • The number of slots I need will be 4.24 manufacturing and 0.001 copying per 1 invention.
  • With the same number of slots, there would a potential 91.7 science slots left unused.
  • I would have 20.2% of my market's supply
  • I would be able to halve profit per item and still have it increase to 900mil per tick, and remain 900mil per 24hrs.


Edit tally: Fixed one unimportant wrong number. Clarified two small items and two medium items. Made an edit tally in case anyone has already quoted my post and is in the process of responding. Went on a format-fixing spree and have now finally stopped editing. Should've reread this post before posting it.
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#1084 - 2014-05-18 00:24:42 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
An example of how a mid-scale inventor goes about his business (restricting this to one account. many use more):

1 copy alt. Primarily with Science and lab slots. Might also have some manufacturing skills to produce T1 parts.
2 inventors.

The copy alt sets up 10 max run module copy jobs in a tower. These will take around 2 days, 18 hours to complete.

While those are happening, the inventors work through the previous cycles copies, at around 1 hour, 15 minutes per job, and 20 jobs per period. (doing ammo would drop the run time to 38 minutes. and copy times to 1 day 17 hours ish)

With a 5 hour day, that's around 80 invention jobs a day. Which means by the time the copy jobs complete, you've run through all the copies.

Adjusting the copy times upwards and the invention times downwards would mean you have a long period where you have no copies to invent off, reducing your throughput, rather than increasing it or leaving it the same.

Now, you could adjust the way you're doing the invention, using some of your invention alts slots to copy things. But that's a less than trivial change.

Copy slots are the bottleneck, rather than invention slots.



Depends what you are inventing, however. Interceptors take (in public slots not a POS) 25 hours to invent and only about 5 hours to copy. Marauders are even more extreme, 75 hours to invent and only about 8 to copy.

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Anathema Device
State War Academy
Caldari State
#1085 - 2014-05-18 01:48:09 UTC
Anathema Device wrote:

1% at ME1
2% at ME2-3
3% at ME4-7
4% at ME8-15
5% at ME16-31
6% at ME32-63
7% at ME64-127
8% at ME128 - 255
9% at ME256 - 511
10% at ME512 or higher.

Use a similar conversion for PE/TE.

Given there has been no negative feedback from the people asking for compensation for highly researched BPOs then a variant on this idea is better than the CCP linear ME1 to ME10 conversion. Given different sized ships, modules, rigs and components are researched to different ME levels (probably no ME1024 Titan BPOs) then the scaling could be dependent on other behind the scenes adjustments CCP is making to rebalance module research/copy times. One possibility is:

1% = ME1 for all BPOs
2% = ME2-3 for Ammunition, ME2 for all other BPOs
3% = ME4-7 for Ammo, ME3-4 for Small rigs, ships (e.g. frigates), modules, ME3 for all other BPOs
4% = ME8-15 for Ammo, ME5-8 for Small, ME4-6 medium rigs, ships (e.g. cruisers), etc., ME4 for all other BPOs
5% = ME16-31 Ammo, ME8-15 Small, ME7-10 Medium, ME5-6 Large, ME5 for Capital ships
6% = ME32-63 Ammo, ME16-31 Small, ME11-18 Medium, ME7-10 Large, ME6 Capital Ships
7% = ME64-127 Ammo, ME32-63 Small, ME19-34 Medium, ME11-18 Large, ME7-8 Capital Ships
8% = ME128-255 Ammo, ME64-127 Small, ME35-66 Medium, ME19-34 Large, ME9-12 Capital Ships
9% = ME256-511 Ammo, ME128-255 Small, ME67-130 Medium, ME35-66 Large, ME13-28 Capital Ships
10% = ME512+ Ammo, ME256+ Small, ME131+ Medium, ME67+ Large, ME29+ Capital Ships

This can minimise requests for compensation based on high research levels, will reduce the gift boosting of current BPOs up to 'perfect' BPOs, CCP did not put an upper limit on research under the current rules and people have invested real money via game time and ISK to reach their goals. The current linear translation proposed by CCP does not compensate for the real money that will be taken from one group and effectively gifted to other players who will receive 'perfect' BPOs. CCP's quick and dirty, linear solution for ME/PE/TE translations needs to be revisited.
Aluka 7th
#1086 - 2014-05-18 02:52:44 UTC
Anathema Device wrote:
Anathema Device wrote:

1% at ME1
2% at ME2-3
3% at ME4-7
4% at ME8-15
5% at ME16-31
6% at ME32-63
7% at ME64-127
8% at ME128 - 255
9% at ME256 - 511
10% at ME512 or higher.

Use a similar conversion for PE/TE.

Given there has been no negative feedback from the people asking for compensation for highly researched BPOs then a variant on this idea is better than the CCP linear ME1 to ME10 conversion. Given different sized ships, modules, rigs and components are researched to different ME levels (probably no ME1024 Titan BPOs) then the scaling could be dependent on other behind the scenes adjustments CCP is making to rebalance module research/copy times. One possibility is:

1% = ME1 for all BPOs
2% = ME2-3 for Ammunition, ME2 for all other BPOs
3% = ME4-7 for Ammo, ME3-4 for Small rigs, ships (e.g. frigates), modules, ME3 for all other BPOs
4% = ME8-15 for Ammo, ME5-8 for Small, ME4-6 medium rigs, ships (e.g. cruisers), etc., ME4 for all other BPOs
5% = ME16-31 Ammo, ME8-15 Small, ME7-10 Medium, ME5-6 Large, ME5 for Capital ships
6% = ME32-63 Ammo, ME16-31 Small, ME11-18 Medium, ME7-10 Large, ME6 Capital Ships
7% = ME64-127 Ammo, ME32-63 Small, ME19-34 Medium, ME11-18 Large, ME7-8 Capital Ships
8% = ME128-255 Ammo, ME64-127 Small, ME35-66 Medium, ME19-34 Large, ME9-12 Capital Ships
9% = ME256-511 Ammo, ME128-255 Small, ME67-130 Medium, ME35-66 Large, ME13-28 Capital Ships
10% = ME512+ Ammo, ME256+ Small, ME131+ Medium, ME67+ Large, ME29+ Capital Ships

This can minimise requests for compensation based on high research levels, will reduce the gift boosting of current BPOs up to 'perfect' BPOs, CCP did not put an upper limit on research under the current rules and people have invested real money via game time and ISK to reach their goals. The current linear translation proposed by CCP does not compensate for the real money that will be taken from one group and effectively gifted to other players who will receive 'perfect' BPOs. CCP's quick and dirty, linear solution for ME/PE/TE translations needs to be revisited.


It looks like overcomplicated process just so that some of (us) highly researched BPO owners could keep profits up.
Original 10 level (ME1-5% to ME10-10%) is fine.
Khan'matar
HEK CARTEL
#1087 - 2014-05-18 04:41:30 UTC
Quote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
I'm updating my big-ass spreadsheet to link T1 and T2 typeIDs so I can run the math on making copy time 80% of build time in all cases and then setting invention time to "(build time / 2) - copy time"; while I'm working on it, does anyone think this is going to make their head explode?


CCP Greyscale: I feel your pain.

Having to clump together the output of SQL Joins -- if only the Database exports were available in 'Comma Separated Values' as well -- you could Import into a spreadsheet pretty easy then.

You have to admit those .CSV's are pretty universal now. They feed straight into most databases fairly well. Most BI tools chew them up like beef jerky.








Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#1088 - 2014-05-18 06:48:44 UTC
Khan'matar wrote:
Quote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
I'm updating my big-ass spreadsheet to link T1 and T2 typeIDs so I can run the math on making copy time 80% of build time in all cases and then setting invention time to "(build time / 2) - copy time"; while I'm working on it, does anyone think this is going to make their head explode?


CCP Greyscale: I feel your pain.

Having to clump together the output of SQL Joins -- if only the Database exports were available in 'Comma Separated Values' as well -- you could Import into a spreadsheet pretty easy then.

You have to admit those .CSV's are pretty universal now. They feed straight into most databases fairly well. Most BI tools chew them up like beef jerky.




While Greyscale has direct access to the DB for doing exports, both of raw tables, and of result sets resulting from more complex queries, for other people:

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/rubicon-1.3-95173/

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Niko Lorenzio
United Eve Directorate
#1089 - 2014-05-18 07:17:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Niko Lorenzio
Steve Ronuken wrote:
An example of how a mid-scale inventor goes about his business (restricting this to one account. many use more):

1 copy alt. Primarily with Science and lab slots. Might also have some manufacturing skills to produce T1 parts.
2 inventors.

The copy alt sets up 10 max run module copy jobs in a tower. These will take around 2 days, 18 hours to complete.

While those are happening, the inventors work through the previous cycles copies, at around 1 hour, 15 minutes per job, and 20 jobs per period. (doing ammo would drop the run time to 38 minutes. and copy times to 1 day 17 hours ish)

With a 5 hour day, that's around 80 invention jobs a day. Which means by the time the copy jobs complete, you've run through all the copies.

Adjusting the copy times upwards and the invention times downwards would mean you have a long period where you have no copies to invent off, reducing your throughput, rather than increasing it or leaving it the same.

Now, you could adjust the way you're doing the invention, using some of your invention alts slots to copy things. But that's a less than trivial change.

Copy slots are the bottleneck, rather than invention slots.

No way. copying is easy as hell. Easy to train into, easy to run. Inventions require a lot more skills and effort. For us inventions have been the bottleneck for years. Now if only you could queue industry jobs like skills....

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Ekaterina 'Ghetto' Thurn
Department 10
#1090 - 2014-05-18 08:57:27 UTC
Gilbaron wrote:
Quote:
We are currently of a mind to shift invented BPCs so they have positive (or at worst 0) ME and TE figures. This a) prevents the removal of extra materials giving invention an extra-hard kick, and in particular b) prevents every invented T2 item from requiring two of the relevant T1 items (due to always rounding up materials). This will probably put all invented BPCs in the 1-5% ME/2-10% TE range, with decryptors adjusted to match. We may adjust T2 build costs upwards across the board to put the net T2 resource usage roughly where it is currently, so we don't end up nerfing the demand for T2 components. (This obviously also serves to close the gap somewhat between invention and T2 BPOs; this is not a goal here but it's an acceptable side-effect.)


If i understood this right it's a rather massive T2 BPO nerf.

if you want to touch T2 BPOs you should NOT touch their profitability. touch the impact they have on the market.


Isn't it obvious that the profitability aspect of T2 BPOs IS the impact they have on the market. There is no other aspect as far as I can see.

" They're gonna feel pretty stupid when they find out. " Rick. " Find out what ? " Abraham. " They're screwing with the wrong people. " Rick. Season four.   ' The Walking Dead. ' .
Anathema Device
State War Academy
Caldari State
#1091 - 2014-05-18 09:25:00 UTC
Aluka 7th wrote:

It looks like overcomplicated process just so that some of (us) highly researched BPO owners could keep profits up.
Original 10 level (ME1-5% to ME10-10%) is fine.

Of course if you were trying to auction a Damnation T2 BPO at ME21 PE8 for hundreds of billions of ISK then a less generous BPO conversion process may result in a less than 'perfect' BPO and less profit. Maybe your position is tainted by a case of T2 BPO self interest. Luckily for me Aluka I'm not interested in your T2 BPO auction.
Medalyn Isis
Doomheim
#1092 - 2014-05-18 09:44:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Medalyn Isis
probag Bear wrote:
Please remember that the limiting factor in invention is NOT universal by any means.

Would just like to requote this to emphasise. As many others have also highlighted, each BP is limited by a different aspect of the production chain. If you do decide to amalgamate everything to have exactly the same ratios and have every BP limited by manufacturing slots, then you will turn the current bumpy landscape into a flat desert. I don't think that will be good for the invention gameplay as I highlighted in my previous rather extensive post on page 54.
Aluka 7th
#1093 - 2014-05-18 10:16:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Aluka 7th
Anathema Device wrote:
Aluka 7th wrote:

It looks like overcomplicated process just so that some of (us) highly researched BPO owners could keep profits up.
Original 10 level (ME1-5% to ME10-10%) is fine.

Of course if you were trying to auction a Damnation T2 BPO at ME21 PE8 for hundreds of billions of ISK then a less generous BPO conversion process may result in a less than 'perfect' BPO and less profit. Maybe your position is tainted by a case of T2 BPO self interest. Luckily for me Aluka I'm not interested in your T2 BPO auction.


I was speaking as owner of 1000+ BPOs some of which have ME perfect or up to 200. And with those I make serious money not Damnation. Damantion BPO is good as strategic resource and nice money source for low time invested in using it. Because main limitation of T2 BPO is low volume (can use just one line) but better profitability. While for example on bomb BPO/BPCs I can run all 10,20,30.. lines. Same with invention which allows me to run a lot of lines with smaller profit per line but higher total profit per day. So.. yea. 10 levels with ME10 becoming perfect is still best IMHO and promise I won't cry after millions lost in getting ME 100 on capital rig BPO(s).
Anathema Device
State War Academy
Caldari State
#1094 - 2014-05-18 10:58:40 UTC
Aluka 7th wrote:
I was speaking as owner of 1000+ BPOs some of which have ME perfect or up to 200. And with those I make serious money not Damnation. Damantion BPO is good as strategic resource and nice money source for low time invested in using it. Because main limitation of T2 BPO is low volume (can use just one line) but better profitability. While for example on bomb BPO/BPCs I can run all 10,20,30.. lines. Same with invention which allows me to run a lot of lines with smaller profit per line but higher total profit per day. So.. yea. 10 levels with ME10 becoming perfect is still best IMHO and promise I won't cry after millions lost in getting ME 100 on capital rig BPO(s).


Correct me if I'm wrong. You're stating that as a single player you are losing millions of ISK on a limited subset of Rigs (i.e. Capitals).

If just one player is losing millions of ISK how many billions of ISK is CCP taking from all players by the linear, 10 level conversion? So I'm not surprised there have been requests for compensation. The alternative methods and tables I've been throwing up are only to generate some discussion. I thought ME512+ = 10% may have been seen as a bit extreme but that doesn't seem to be the case in this thread.

I can accept that there are people like yourself who prefer the proposed linear 1% to 10% conversion but that doesn't solve the issue for the people who want compensation for their time, effort and ISK sunk into BPO research that CCP is taking without compensation. I can appreciate CCP wants a simple conversion process without compensating players as they may hope this transition will become ancient history soon enough. T2 BPOs continue to cause friction and the current transition has to be tweeked to accommodate them. The 'perfect' BPO's gifted in this transition are likely to be another cause of friction between new and old players.

Maybe after July it is time CCP rethought their position on T2 BPOs and allowed players to invent T2 BPOs from T1 blueprints to finally put a stake through the heart of the T2 BPO controversy. Either T2 BPOs have a legit place in the game or they have no place in the game.
Aluka 7th
#1095 - 2014-05-18 13:28:57 UTC  |  Edited by: Aluka 7th
Compensation lol, just let it go and enjoy the game.

T2 BPOs lost some value and high ME BPOs lost market advantage but we still can do our job proper. If I don't sell my Damanation BPO, I will happily produce Damnations for my client(s) like I did for last 6 years as its incredible ship and very useful (my first kid will see this world in 3 months time so I wanted to cash out, free some time and get some plex/fun money but meh) and I will now have even better Tech 1 BPOs even if someone else will have same quality BPO although he got ME only to 10. Whatever. Deep space transport is awesome, we got prospect frigate, there is that industry dynamic with new patch... you win some you loose some. Over the year I adapted to too many changes in PvP and ships to cry over spilled milk.

Real pain I feel for freighter pilots that got nerfed to hell, now they NEED rigs to haul roughly same amount of cargo and lost effective HP in process. They should just increase the size of capitals to stop freighter moving carriers and dreads in their holds and leave freighter base cargo alone!

Fly unsafe Blink
Apelacja
Sad Najwyzszy
#1096 - 2014-05-18 16:46:03 UTC
When those changes will be aplied to sisi?
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#1097 - 2014-05-18 18:17:33 UTC
Niko Lorenzio wrote:
No way. copying is easy as hell. Easy to train into, easy to run. Inventions require a lot more skills and effort. For us inventions have been the bottleneck for years. Now if only you could queue industry jobs like skills....



I'm talking purely from a time pov.

(As someone else pointed out, for T2 ship production, it's a different case)

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Niko Lorenzio
United Eve Directorate
#1098 - 2014-05-19 05:13:58 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
Niko Lorenzio wrote:
No way. copying is easy as hell. Easy to train into, easy to run. Inventions require a lot more skills and effort. For us inventions have been the bottleneck for years. Now if only you could queue industry jobs like skills....



I'm talking purely from a time pov.

(As someone else pointed out, for T2 ship production, it's a different case)


Time wise yes, but realistically it does not match up to reality.

Let's say it takes 2.5 days to make 20 maxrun copies. With 10 science slots you will create 200 copies in 2.5 days with just 10 job installations. Let's say Inventions takes 1.25hours. If you can only log in once a day for an hour 200 copies (with 10 installs per day) will take you 20 days. If you can stay logged in for 1.5 hours, you'll halve that number to 10 days.

It's very inefficient right now and any increase in invention time will be drastic as those who cannot stay logged in long enough to install subsequent jobs will be able to invent less and less per day.

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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#1099 - 2014-05-19 13:59:39 UTC
Ok, where the hell was I? :P

I am going to create a new thread somewhere (F&I or M&I, haven't decided) on further blueprint-stat-related discussions; I'm replying here to tie off this thread, but I'll be mainly responding in the new thread once I make it.]

Aliventi wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Querns wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Querns wrote:

Don't forget to exclude T2 BPOs from this copy time adjustment. :)


I'm going to come around to T2 BPO copy issues eventually :) We'd like T2 BPOs to be copying ideally, but not if it's only viable for balance reasons in a gallente outpost.

Actually, thinking on this, there is a KISS solution here -- make the copy bonus from pos and outposts simply not apply to T2 BPOs.


That is a thing I am considering :)

Don't do this. Choices and consequences. If you are copying your T2 BPO in a POS for the time bonus, POS gets blown up, you should lose your T2 BPO to whomever blew it up. Same for you copying it in a conquerable outpost. Let the POS/Outpost games begin!

Edit:: Y'all took a well deserved additional 6 weeks to get this all figured out. Why not find a good way to remove T2 BPOs from the game, while still compensating the owner properly. instead of playing around trying to figure out how to balance them with all these changes? At Fanfest you said you were going to do it anyway. Why not save some time and do it now?


We would prefer to give a longer definite warning before changes to T2 BPOs themselves. I'm not ruling out something forcing our hand, but in the absence of that we're hoping not to have to tackle them head-on in Crius.

Gilbaron wrote:
Reasons why Invention is inconvenient:

1. clickfest
2. clickfest
3. clickfest
4. optimisation. in order to make a lot of money from invention you need to optimize a lot of things. copying, invention and building all run on different timers and quite a lof of thinking is required to reduce downtime on your slots (character wise).

the interface changes you have planned will drastically reduce the amount of clicking necessary to start an invention job. that is very very convenient and will probably increase the amount of people that are willing to actually get involved with invention. it will also potentially change their behaviour, especially the use of meta items (expected price drop because of the refining changes for quite a few of them combined with easy usage) that change by itself will increase supply without increasing demand and therefore decrease prices

most modules run on 30 minute invention timers. change that to 20 hours and you will make a LOT of people VERY happy. But be careful not to increase the amount of BPCs that can be produced with that kind of job by the same factor.

time x40
bpcs x6

that should put invention in a situation where you can expect that an relatively active and dedicated inventor is able to produce the same amount of T2 BPCs per day (1x ~20hrs job vs 6x 30 minutes). at the same time, all those who don't like restarting jobs every 30 minutes will be able to produce more. that is significant for the market but probably won't cause a massive crash. as a side effect, some people may move from ships to modules which is good for the ships market.

please keep in mind that ~20 hour timers are awesome (start jobs at the end of a play session so that they are ready at the beginning of the next)

tl;dr

increased invention times ? yes please
massively increased supply of T2 BPCs ? nope


The optimization is the thing we want to put all the emphasis on eventually. Figuring out how to do things better should be a neverending process :)

Matthew wrote:
[quote=CCP Greyscale]
Regarding the last bit, yeah, it's based on the T2 output, which is the only thing that makes sense when we're trying to align build, copy and invent time, but I did exactly what you do there at first and it took me about a minute to realise why the whole column was negative :)


Thanks, though I still can't work out any scenario where taking the difference between half the build time and the copy time would work.

If I take both the copy time and build time from the T2 blueprint, then if we modify the copy times of the T2 blueprints using the 0.8*productionTime change, then we end up back at the problem that invention time ends up always being -0.3*productionTime.

If I use the current T2 production and copy durations, the only blueprints that would have a positive invention time would be jump freighters (for everything else, the current copy time per run is significantly greater than the build time).

If we are trying to align the build, copy and invent times within the properties of the T2 blueprint, then wouldn't it be easier to say that productionTime is the "master" variable, and define both researchCopyTime and researchTechTime in relation to productionTime. e.g. say that researchCopyTime = 0.8*productionTime to meet the "copying faster than producing" goal. Then say that researchTechTime (defined per run of T2 BPC output) is some fraction <0.8 of T2 productionTime, to take into account that invention is not 100% successful.

I did also see what happens if you take the productionTime from the T2 blueprint and the new copy time from the T1 blueprint - which would be an attempt to do an end-to-end balancing of lab time used. But you still end up with jump freighters siege/triage/capital tractor, and the ever-popular perpetual motion unit, with negative invention times, and the Deep Core Mining Laser having a time of zero. You also end up with lots of strangeness around how the max-runs conversions work. Trying to do this would also significantly constrain what you could do with the times across the T1 and T2 blueprints, so while such an end-to-end balancing sounds nice in theory, I'm not sure it's going to be practical.

Anyway, query I used to get the numbers to play with (T1 copy...
CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#1100 - 2014-05-19 14:01:36 UTC
Throwaway Sam Atild wrote:
There's some very valid rumblings here about the potential (and paradoxical) down-side to improving the accessibility of the invention process. There are certain barriers that I personally believe preserve the T2 market.

I'll begin by speaking generally, and then narrow my focus a bit. I've been running a production team (a real one, not the type you can "auction" or whatever) of about six players (not characters) who have trained from scratch over the last 4-6 months. In general we're not poor, and we're not space-rich. I'd consider us average players for the most part.

When we select a project to pursue and build, there's a level that makes it worthwhile that currently sits between 400-600M isk per month per character. There are not any T1 projects that are worthwhile for us. I believe that this is likely because there are no barriers to T1 production. In fact, there are many T1 items that sell well below what they cost to make because people want to do industry despite their finished products selling for less than what their raw materials would. T1 items that do possess barriers, tend to be either isk barriers from prohibitively expensive BPO's, or POS access for research etc...

T2 modules are preserved from this because they have a number of barriers that come along with them:

1. POS Access
2. Knowledge of a complicated system
3. Isk investment
4. OCD click limit (described by others in the thread very accurately)

The update is going to eliminate most of these barriers I expect. I suspect that the projects that made some isk in the past are going to become very similar to the current T1 market, where the projects that the average player can pull of are barely worth doing, and the projects worth doing will be limited to a subset of players with access to the significant resources required to get into the field.

Aside from the OCD click limit that plagues T2 drone manu and other similar projects, I actually like the barriers to T2 production. They are manageable for an average player. A few players can get together, hang a POS and profit from their special knowledge. The investment to get going is a probably in the 3B range, which a group can pool together for without too much trouble.

The new system is going to allow more folks to build T2. If that makes the game more fun for everyone, then I think its great. I suspect it will kill the market however, unless new barriers are added, and I'm afraid that I can't think of any particularly good ones.

My gut feeling is that this is going to wipe out the 'middle-class' of manufacturers as the only remaining barrier to profitable projects will be the isk investment required for the bigger BPO's. It won't break the market or anything crazy, but mat prices will likely rise and more people will build for themselves rather than buy from the market.

TLDR: Removal of POS barrier will make lower level T2 production similar to T1 production, eliminating profit margin at low ends and removing the incentive for isk motivated players to pursue it. May be a good trade-off if 'fun motivated'


Over the longer run, my gut feeling is that it would make sense to allow the "flashy" production (ships in particular) to be oriented more towards what you're describing as the "fun-motivated" side of the market, and have more things in the componentry arena that are balanced towards profit-minded players. This isn't a clear strategy, but it seems like it might allow us to serve both markets in a cleaner way.

Medalyn Isis wrote:
[quote=CCP Greyscale]Another thing to think about - if we mess with the invention math so we can kick max run counts up without breaking a bunch of things (including making sure we scale job time correctly against output runs), does the potentially large increase in practical invention throughput risk breaking the market? If you could put in 24 hours' worth of invention in one go, are we going to see a destructive glut of T2 BPC supply?

The results would be varied. For example a hobgoblin II currently takes around 4 hours to manufacture, 2 hours to invent, and 4 hours per copy. This is a major click fest. Almost certainly one of the reasons people don't manufacture so many is because of the effort involved. On the other hand there are plenty of other items which have a much larger manufacture time, large ammo for instance has a 7 day build time, so it is unlikely that will be affected.

That being said, I think it is good to have some variation between the items, as it makes the inventors choices matter.

Let me just give one example of why the obsession with having your manufacture slots always full is not something which I think gameplay should be balanced around. There are 4 aspects I have identified which add to interesting gameplay as a result of having a bumpy landscape when it comes to cop/inv/man ratios.

Considering the Overall Picture

Take the hobgoblin II, each BPC takes 4 hours 26 mins to manufacture. Then take Barrage M ammo, which take 3 days 15 hours to manufacture with a cryptic accelerant. The clever inventor knows that he only needs to que up one job per day of hobgoblin IIs and he will almost double the profit of the inventor building Barrage M despite the fact that his manufacture slots are empty for over 80% of the time. The clever inventor calculates all of this into overall picture when considering what to manufacture.

Different Jobs for Different Occasions

Another aspect of having a bumpy landscape, is it allows you to adapt your manufacturing chain to your own personal play time. Lets say if you can only come online at the weekend. Well then you know you need to put a long job in over the week, and when it comes to the weekend you can que up lots of the smaller more profitable jobs. If these smaller more profitable jobs are amalgamated into long 24 hour + jobs, then this niche...