EVE General Discussion

Damnit, forums ate my post...

Short version: Its possible CCP Soundwave might be an honest fool, we need to push the CSM to make him confront the flaws in his plan. Im sure most CSM people take their job seriosuly, let them know its a problem.

CSM contact details are in the Jita Park speakers forum

I got into research in the hopes of getting a T2 bpo. That never happened and then they nerfed the system. Oh well, at least I get datacores. Now they are nerfing that as well? What the heck did I bother with all that grinding and training for?

What they should do is revamp the whole R&D system. Give us more things to purchase with those RP other than just datacores. Maybe let us buy T2 components, bpc's, etc.

And just when you thought CCP couldn't out-fuk themselves, they manage to successfully shatter a new boundary of stupidity.

Not enough details yet.

How do we know how much loss will be from current R&D agents? It might be a lot or might be small. It hasn't been stated.
How do we know the prices of datacores won't go down or up or perhaps just stay the same?
How do we know what types of cores will be available for the FW folks or where it all comes from or how you obtain it?
Dynamic LP store? At what points does it change, at what costs/values and what item turn-in to get them if any?
"Datacores" - FW - all types of cores or just faction based ones and are they earned or dropped or a composite?

If it's not all types of datacores, then what?

Alt farmers parked to just "earn" them, I do see taking a bit of a hit but if you think any mass amounts of sympathy will arise for chars that log in only long enough to contract batches of datacores over to mains... No, that I don't see garnering much support from any in the community except other farmers.

The info here is just too vague right now on how it will pan out. It might raise prices, it might lower them. There are just too many factors to know how it will work without seeing it up and running - live style. Especially with something about "dynamic LP stores" going in. That's a hell of a lot of room for CCP to tweak it.

Remember how Incursions were supposed to be so well designed - how it was supposed to enhance PvE but also hold competitive PvP aspects? Then there were problems with gankers setting up the logistics guys and such... then the income levels came into question, etc.

Such changes as this... It's a major wait and see.

My suggestion would be to also introduce much higher jumpbridge costs and much smaller jumprange for capitals.

This should make EVE a tad bigger again and bring some "risk" to hauling all those datacores to null sec then.
We can't have any riskfree Isk, you know.

So, you want to be able to attack pve fitted ships with your pvp fitted ships.

Sounds balanced to me.

The main factors that will impact data core prices are the ISK cost of data cores through the FW LP store versus ISK cost of data cores through R&D agents. CCP Soundwave has clearly stated that he doesn't want exploration to benefit from data cores so we can ignore that avenue that was suggested by CCP Soundwave barely six months ago.

So what it boils down to is simply what the ISK cost is for purchasing data cores from the FW LP store. The dynamic LP store will be nonsense if all that changes is the LP value of various items: the ISK farmers will simply keep buying whatever earns them the most ISK for the input costs. With the firehouse of FW LP about to open up due to new ways of earning LP, I'd be surprised if people don't switch to data cores and ammo simply because the market for Navy ships will be saturated.

If the ISK cost of data cores from the FW LP store is 0, the floor price of data cores becomes 0 ISK. CCP will run into their usual problems of underestimating player greed, underestimating the ISK farmers willingness to engage in PvP to farm ISK, and completely stuffing up their attempts at introducing new features.

So you're a FW participant, and you've gone just about completely broke from getting yourself blown up. You have stacks of LP though, so you head off to the FW LP store and find the stuff that only requires LP: you trade your 1M LP for 100k data cores, and head off to flood the market with data cores than end up earning you about 10 ISK/LP. But you didn't have to spend any ISK to make that ISK, so you figure you're ahead.

You end up with a race to the bottom, EVE Online style. In the meantime all those people with R&D agents in the wings are continually accruing RP that they won't redeem since they'll lose ISK in the process.

So what happens if CCP makes the FW data cores cost ISK? For argument's sake, let's say it's on parity with the ISK cost of R&D agent data cores. You have the R&D agent farmers who have RP accruing at a fixed rate per day. Then you have the LP farmers who have LP accruing directly in relation to how much stuff they blow up in FW fights. At the end of the month the R&D farmer can collect 50 data cores per agent maximum, while the FW pilot can buy 5000 thanks to his handy store of FW LP. Again, the race to the bottom ensues due to the FW guy having no other option that he can afford. Thanks to dynamic scaling, all the navy ships are costing millions of LP, so the FW ISK farmer settles for what he can afford to buy that will sell for a profit: data cores. The R&D guy sees that two hours of effort collecting data cores is going to net approximately 10M ISK of profit and gives up.



CCP Soundwave has stated in this very thread that all data cores will be available through the FW LP stores for LP.

The only way that data cores are not going to drop to the FW LP store floor price within a month or so of this patch is if the supply scales with data cores collected from R&D agents. Of course, FW LP data cores could be set at 100k ISK to purchase in the first place, which means the price for data cores will trend towards 100,000.01 ISK.

With higher availability of data cores, there will be many more people attempting to invent T2 stuff. The price of T2 stuff will tend towards the value of the embedded technetium.

Now the only remaining face palm moment remains: will CCP make the "dynamic" calculation of LP prices happen when people access the LP store, or is this yet another task that is being placed on the "too hard, just do it during downtime" pile?

In the meantime, the null sec blocs continue to roll in the ISK from their tech moons, laughing all the way to the bank while all the trivial income sources are wiped out of the game. Soon there will be no choice but to join a OTEC alliance and beg for ISK to you can fly a ship in whatever fleet you are ordered to attend.

EVE will die a death of a thousand paper cuts, each one representing an idea from a Goon that seemed really cool at the time and noone else at CCP was going to criticise because they don't want to rock the boat. It's a pity that EVE is about more than just blowing up spaceships. CCP even highlighted this at Fanfest: too much emphasis on blowing stuff up, not enough emphasis on extracting resources and making things.

A BPO or BPC requires the same materials and time to produce an item in high-sec as it does in null. The advantages of producing in high-sec comes from proximity to resources and proximity to the people who buy your product. If you move the resources out of high-sec (i.e. datacores and high-end minerals) that is not going to change the fact that people will still build things primarily in empire, close to the rest of the resources they need and close to the buyers.

Also, don't complain that high-sec is convenient. That's how it's supposed to work. Empire space is the center of New Eden, where billions of people live out their lives, so naturally that's where the commerce would be.

Null-sec, on the other hand, is a frontier, remote and lawless, and in the old days with vast distances between settled systems.

So unless you want to offer the builders of EVE some cheap labor in null-sec that we can outsource our workload to, I don't think it makes much sense to move T2 production.

Nothing stopping T2 production from happening in zero-sec at the moment, it would be more efficient as it would save them hauling the moon good to empire. The only ingredient missing from zero-sec is datacores.

However, if your building T2 stuff in zero-sec to use in zero-sec it would be much easier to move datacores from high sec to zero-sec than move the moon good from zero-sec to high-sec due to volumes. In terms of reducing risk and cost of production it makes even more sense to research BPC's in empire and haul the bpc's out top zero-sec, and them build T2 produce with moon goo from zero-sec.

But if we are really talking about T2 production thats sole purpose is to be exported and sold in high-sec then manufacturing in zero-sec and hauling manufactured produce to high sec would be a logistical nightmare as produced stuff has higher volume.

In other words, the way it is now is as efficient as it can be.

But this is all meaningless talk as CCP Soundwave's idea that moving datacores from high-sec to low-sec is going to move T2 production to zero-sec has no rational basis behind it. Hes proposed a bad solution to fix a problem that doesnt exist.

The greatest subsidy that hisec gets to manufacturing is the number of people in hisec allowed to do manufacturing. As a result, there is always a supply of near- or below-cost material for you to work with for T1 manufacture. Noone has to worry where their next load of Tritanium is going to come from.

In nullsec, mining is an express pass on the ridicule bus. If you're not shot by blues, you'll be labelled a bot if not kicked from corp. People who manage to maintain an industrial lifestyle in null sec are the exception, not the rule. Even in supposedly "industry friendly" corporations, you are still expected to be able to fly approved fleet fits in mandatory fleet fights.

The funniest joke in the game is the null sec alliances complaining that it's hard to get serious industrialists out to null sec, then in the same breath they laugh about the industrial corp they tricked into flying billions of ISK worth of ships and bootstrapping resources through EC-P8R. This talk of "farms and fields" from The Mittani is the greatest joke of all: he's not interested in farms and fields as activities to occupy his industrialists with: he just wants more stuff (for his minions) to blow up.

Malcanis is neglecting the huge effective disincentives to null sec manufacturing which have absolutely nothing to do with game mechanics, very little to do with carrot, and a hell of a lot to do with stick.