Science & Industry

Oh. Sad to see the feature go. :-(

I believe that the low usage is not due to the idea not being appealing, but because teams have a very limited scope of usability.

1. the bonuses are not that big (understandable, because there is an easy-to-calculate advantage which is a no-brainer once the team is available).
2. you need to specialize on one item or a very narrow group to see any effect and produce high volume
3. the auction mechanism is total crap. Either you go for a non-interesting team no one competes for OR you have to be online in the very second the auction ends AND type fast (try this with a typical nullsec system and their cryptic names while the competitor only has to spell "JITA" 3 secs before end of auction - caused me some frustration)
4. because specific teams do not spawn all the time, you need to have the specialized production running for a longer time.

What exactly is the issue here - the Teams feature or nul-sec industry in general?

Why remove the functionality and penalize those people that are using them before you have a chance to revisit them?

That, the feature isn't where you want it to be quality wise doesn't seem like a good reason to just remove it from the game outright.

removing standings from trade/taxes etc.. might also help

or with the fast releases .. just keep tweaking it a little rather than disband it for god knows how long like so many things that get released and ignored for years before being redone or fixed

buff the bonuses they give by 50% each time until people use them, find other ways too discourage the use of jita so heavily etc..

I didn't bother using them because they always became too expensive for what I wanted to do. I don't manufacture constantly because I'm in nullsec and I don't always want to go to hisec to get moon goo or random parts needed for anything higher than T1 manufacturing. Thus bidding on a team is in my best interest. I would have wasted my money on a team I didn't end up using too often and I would have taken a team someone else in EVE could have used better. it was a great idea, but I feel there should have been more teams and that they should be more impactful to manufacturing.

I'd use them but I blew up all my isk. also add commission to who won the bid. and please don't remove them.

While your reviewing crius industry changes have a look at cost indices calculations. Rather than being based off the square root of job hours make it a bit more linear. Spread the industrialist out a bit and see if teams become more viable.

I can just see the headlines "Industrial Action in the Forge - Workers Strike due to overcrowded conditions". Then we can import teams to reduce labour cost maybe?

Neug

Teams would be 1000% more useful if you'd just fix sniping. It's not like we don't know how that's done, you implement an ebay style auction.

But between having no iterations on teams and not having them at all I suppose shutting them down until you fix it isn't a terrible move.

I used teams, i like them and I don't want to see the feature go away, although I have to admit the proposed course of action sounds sensible from CCP's point of view.

Different proposal:

1. Scrap the auction mechanism.
2. Spawn teams randomly, but with a bias towards actual industry activity.
3. players can bid ISK incentives to have teams spawn in specific locations. When they do so, they have to select a specific item category (broad or narrow) from a list.
4. optional: you may use teams that are not in your current location, but the salary then goes up drastically with distance.

ad 3: this means if a team is spawned with say specialties for "Capital construction parts" and "Small Ships" then the likelyhood for this team to spawn in a given system is higher if a system has had a high production of that item types in the recent past (those guys are intelligent and seek to work where there is actually work to be done)

Pseudocode:

1. roll team abilities randomly (as before)
2. for all systems determine relevant production of last 30 days per item category
3. for all systems do ISK incentive sum up all ISK incentives for this planet for the given abilities (e.g.: Jita - Small ships - 10m ISK)
4. roll team home system based on (base chance + relevant production bonus + relevant ISK incentive bonus - teams already present malus)


Why is this better than the situation now:
- you don't have the snipering any more
- players still have the ability to affect the dynamic space-scape with their actions
- ISK incentives require a meaningful decision - it's not 0.01 ISK more than the one before or 1 second later than someone else
- the "pull" mechanism has a passive self-organizing component because teams are more likely to spawn where the actual production happens. Which means the spacescape gets bent by your actions anyway. More sandboxy than ever.


OK, this proposal would need some ressources etc to be implemented, but what do you think about the idea?

The whole thing could be labelled "improved team AI" ;-)