Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm programming on an application to calculate mining events through the loot logs of a fleet and encountered a strange behavior of the logs, which does not make any sense to me in that form.

Generally, it's about logging ore....and there this behavior occurs especially on ice mining.


Problem:

The "log" does not just log every process of mining ore with the respective timestamp, which a log normaly should do.
It also puts together objects with the same itemname and then simply updates the appropriate time.

The loot log for Ice Mining with a Mackinaw and a cycle time of 2 minutes should look like that at my definition:

2012-01-01 20:00:00 | Nexuscrawler | Blue Ice | 4 | Ice
2012-01-01 20:02:00 | Nexuscrawler | Blue Ice | 4 | Ice
2012-01-01 20:04:00 | Nexuscrawler | Blue Ice | 4 | Ice
2012-01-01 20:06:00 | Nexuscrawler | Blue Ice | 4 | Ice
2012-01-01 20:08:00 | Nexuscrawler | Blue Ice | 4 | Ice


Instead, EVE seems to search an object with the same itemname before entering a new log entry, and then simply adds the new amount to the old one and and updates the log time.
At the end of this mining action, the log does not look like the one above, but like this:

2012-01-01 20:08:00 | Nexuscrawler | Blue Ice | 20 | Ice


From such a log entry I then read, that I had looted 20 Blue Ice at 20:08 .
This information is quite useless, because i dont know, in what duration that ice was lootet.
Did this player now mined uninterrupted, or did he begin at 15:00, waited 4 hours and was done at 20:08?
You'll never know, cause the log just shows the last logged time.


So I wrote a petition and asked for the reason, why the log isn't just logging, but also calculating and summarizing for itself.
The answer was, that this is done to reduce the server load and that I should write a suggestion at the player forum, to start a disscussion about that and maybe change the way, EVE logs actions taken from players.

This log function, as it is now, is neither an accurate "log", because it is summarizing logs and you can not distinguish them afterwards....nor it is a good summarize table.
Or do you export the log after a fleet event and look on it line per line?
Most players would write an excel sheet or use third party software, to calculate the logs.....those "self-calculatiing" logs doesnt make the work of third party developers, which are working with them, easier.

My personal problem with such a "dynamic" log ist now, that I can't just take the entrys and calculate them....i have to reverse engineer them before (if possible) to get a halfway meaningful result.


Maybe this problem does not apply to most player....maybe only to developers which are working with those logs....but think of the following:

Player 1, Player 2 and Player 3 are mining ice....they are just some pilots who formed up to a fleet and dont know each other.
The event lasts from 18:00 to 20:00.
Now Player 1 experiences, that his can was stolen from Player 2 or Player 3 on 19:30....he want's to check the loot logs, but the only lines he can find are:

2012-01-01 20:00:00 | Player 1 | Blue Ice | 155 | Ice
2012-01-01 20:00:00 | Player 2 | Blue Ice | 130 | Ice
2012-01-01 20:00:00 | Player 3 | Blue Ice | 134 | Ice

Now....looking at these summarized logs....who has stolen the can on 19:30?
Maybe here you can see the problem for normal players with such "logs".



So, the reason why i started this thread....

I want the log files to become "real" logs.
That means, logging each event that a player takes line by line as it "really" happens and with the "real" timestamp.
What is the meaning of a "log" file, which is editing itself?
There are informations, that are lost with that editing.


Hope I could explain the problem a bit.

It has been a long time since I have done any for of mining so I don't know if this is still the case but the logs for ore are also innacurate. At the end of ops there was often a disrepency between how much was mined and how much appeared in the log.