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New dev blog: Starbase happy fun time

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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#941 - 2011-11-09 17:57:00 UTC
Weaselior wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Hi again.

Talked to Art people, they're going to take another look at the icons at some point and see if there are any usability improvements that could be made, but probably not for the Winter release as the relevant resources are all tied up making new spaceships and stuff.


dude this is something that could be done in a minute in any image program the art people are blowing smoke up your ass

they could have done it in the time they took making you go away


We used prioritized lists for a reason Smile There's always tiny things that people could be doing besides what they're currently working on, but as soon as you open the door to "just do this quick thing now it'll only take five minutes" (it takes an hour, things always take longer than you think they will), you find that all you're ever doing is five-minute (one-hour) fixes, and the #1 priority work you're supposed to be working on (Battlecruisers, in this case) never actually gets finished.
Grady Eltoren
Hogyoku
#942 - 2011-11-09 18:07:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Grady Eltoren
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Weaselior wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Hi again.

Talked to Art people, they're going to take another look at the icons at some point and see if there are any usability improvements that could be made, but probably not for the Winter release as the relevant resources are all tied up making new spaceships and stuff.


dude this is something that could be done in a minute in any image program the art people are blowing smoke up your ass

they could have done it in the time they took making you go away


We used prioritized lists for a reason Smile There's always tiny things that people could be doing besides what they're currently working on, but as soon as you open the door to "just do this quick thing now it'll only take five minutes" (it takes an hour, things always take longer than you think they will), you find that all you're ever doing is five-minute (one-hour) fixes, and the #1 priority work you're supposed to be working on (Battlecruisers, in this case) never actually gets finished.



Bah - you may have a point there Greyscale with your prioritization professional approach....but I still like the Sandwhich to a guy off the street idea submitted by said Goon. :)

In all seriousness though, I want to argue this point you make,

This approach of priority assumes the product is right to begin with though right? I would argue the art department could have done a lot better. They should know things need more difference than that. Take MWDs and AB's for so long. I think they need to go back and redo/modify their first draft work they submitted to you. All blue blocks will do for now but in the sense of prioritization shouldn't they finish the job they started already???

P.S. Different shaped blocks with different colors is the +1
Strike Severasse
#943 - 2011-11-09 18:10:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Strike Severasse
CCP Guard wrote:
Greyscale has news for all you starbase managers out there!....


Perhaps a step toward Small Holdings? as in tiny POS, perhaps with some cloaking or level of security?

.
mkint
#944 - 2011-11-09 18:20:17 UTC
Aaaaand, no response to the assertions that this is a nerf to small groups, and a buff to Grayscale friends.

Biiig surprise.

Instead we get "nobody at CCP knows how to use the filler tool in MS Paint." *sigh*

Maxim 6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
Nova Fox
Novafox Shipyards
#945 - 2011-11-09 18:29:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Nova Fox
becuase its very complicated beyond using the paint bucket acutally as the pictures are layered and then there are various sizes of them as well. Then updating the data base and QA testing it. I estimate its about a 10 man hr job.

Also its full afterburner time, features that dont tie the rope and hang on tight enough now are going to get dropped for release and have to wait for the next flight.

Dust 514's CPM 1 Iron Wolf Saber Eve mail me about Dust 514 issues.
Romandra
These are not the droids you're looking for
#946 - 2011-11-09 18:39:38 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Hi again.

Changes:

  • We're going to kick the build time down to 5 minutes and see where that gets us to.
  • We're going to allow component assembly arrays to build fuel blocks too because why not.
  • We're going to kick the granularity up by a factor of ten and re-implement ~15%/~25% fuel use bonuses for faction towers (and remove the faction-tower-specific bay size increases at the same time).
  • CORRECTION: offline timers are not changed, that's still instantaneous; sorry for any confusion, I'm going to get the blog updated in a bit.


WRT the faction tower fuel use, we were hoping that what we were being told by various large-scale fuel operators that maintaining the high refuel interval was the main benefit for most people, as all other things being equal a 1/2/4 scheme is easier to work with than a 10/20/40 one. Obviously we didn't talk to enough small-scale users for whom the use bonus is a bigger deal; this feedback thread has established that this is still a big deal, so we're dropping to our first fallback position and doing 10/20/40 instead.

Things we're not considering:

  • Upping cycle times. It breaks reactors etc, and it makes the system harder for players to wrangle. We'd like to move away from designs that require you to memorize data tables to use them properly.
  • Making the handover (or anything else to do with this change) more complex/more automated. If for example we determined that we couldn't do this without some form of upgrade script, we'd have cut the feature, because it increases the workload and the risk of this change by a factor of two or three, and at that level we can't justify committing to it. This goes for putting fuel into towers, it goes for running two fuel types at once (which would require major code changes) and so on.


Other things:

  • You'll be able to reprocess fuel blocks in the normal way, getting back all the materials etc.
  • Currently they're configured to be researchable, with fairly short durations. I'm seeing some questions about this here - is there a strong reason why these need to be unresearchable? I don't have an industry designer on hand right now or I'd ask them :)
  • We'll keep an eye on the ice use situation and make further changes there if needed
  • WRT the changes to robotics use, assuming large towers are the primary use case then going the other way would kick global consumption up by a factor of 3-4, which would make them a gigantic production bottleneck. Reducing the demand on small/medium towers a little is believed to be a better option than significantly driving up the running costs of all non-small towers everywhere.
  • The handover isn't doing anything magic - it'll use old fuel before the switchover and new fuel afterwards. We're saying "half-and-half" because we're recommending you all put a mix of old and new fuel in your towers while the switch is happening, so it has old fuel available before the switch downtime and new fuel available after the downtime.
  • WRT talking to players earlier, we have to strike a very careful balance between getting feedback early and not getting people's hopes up. Ideally we'd get input from everyone as soon as we start design work, but our experience has been that bringing very vague designs to the community, and/or pitching designs that subsequently get cut due to being infeasible, creates more disruption than holding back until we're sure something is actually going to work. We do of course talk to subject-matter specialists (ie, people who play that area of the game regularly) within CCP, and the CSM, in the early stages of the design.



I already liked this post, but I really just have to say this somewhere: WHAT IS WRONG WITH CCP?!?! WHY ARE THEY LISTENING TO USER FEEDBACK?!?

=P

Thanks, CCP Greyscale! As a long time EVE-O pilot, you really have no idea how encouraging it is to have this sort of thing happen. I've grown to used to issues like this being raised by the userbase and CCP ignoring us completely. It's incredibly refreshing to see the reverse happen in this thread.
Weaselior
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#947 - 2011-11-09 18:40:04 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Weaselior wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Hi again.

Talked to Art people, they're going to take another look at the icons at some point and see if there are any usability improvements that could be made, but probably not for the Winter release as the relevant resources are all tied up making new spaceships and stuff.


dude this is something that could be done in a minute in any image program the art people are blowing smoke up your ass

they could have done it in the time they took making you go away


We used prioritized lists for a reason Smile There's always tiny things that people could be doing besides what they're currently working on, but as soon as you open the door to "just do this quick thing now it'll only take five minutes" (it takes an hour, things always take longer than you think they will), you find that all you're ever doing is five-minute (one-hour) fixes, and the #1 priority work you're supposed to be working on (Battlecruisers, in this case) never actually gets finished.


While getting the battlecruisers finished is a #1 priority as you can't launch those without being finished, a change to the box colors is a massive UI improvement for very little effort. It should be ranked quite highly as it's probably the most bang for your buck you can get from the art department for improving the game. Things that enable you to quickly tell things apart at a glance are massively helpful for a well-designed UI.

Head of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal Pubbie Management and Exploitation Division.
Raid'En
#948 - 2011-11-09 19:25:26 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:

We used prioritized lists for a reason Smile There's always tiny things that people could be doing besides what they're currently working on, but as soon as you open the door to "just do this quick thing now it'll only take five minutes" (it takes an hour, things always take longer than you think they will), you find that all you're ever doing is five-minute (one-hour) fixes, and the #1 priority work you're supposed to be working on (Battlecruisers, in this case) never actually gets finished.

icons are not made to be nice, they are made to be easy to understand.
that's btw why new turrets icons are terrible. and here you did the same mistake.
Koraeth
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#949 - 2011-11-09 20:00:25 UTC
Raid'En wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:

We used prioritized lists for a reason Smile There's always tiny things that people could be doing besides what they're currently working on, but as soon as you open the door to "just do this quick thing now it'll only take five minutes" (it takes an hour, things always take longer than you think they will), you find that all you're ever doing is five-minute (one-hour) fixes, and the #1 priority work you're supposed to be working on (Battlecruisers, in this case) never actually gets finished.

icons are not made to be nice, they are made to be easy to understand.
that's btw why new turrets icons are terrible. and here you did the same mistake.



Besides, we lived for how many years without being able to tell BPO and BPC apart, I think you can handle this ;)
Tairon Usaro
G-Fleet Alpha
#950 - 2011-11-09 20:11:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Tairon Usaro
usually i am quite sceptical about simplifications - Veterans love EVE not because of simplicity but because of complexity - but i consider these changes overall as good changes, because they take out complexity in an aspect, that did not contribute positively to the game experience (it did in fact contribute to my EXCEL experience .... Blink )

I have a question concerning the building of the fuel blocks:

does the assembly of fuel blocks come with any kind of compression or volume inflation ?

In order words will it make sense to haul fuel components from Empire or haul fuel blocks from Empire ?
Assuming that i have to buy fuel components completely from Jita market.
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#951 - 2011-11-09 20:14:56 UTC
mkint wrote:
Aaaaand, no response to the assertions that this is a nerf to small groups, and a buff to Grayscale friends.

I don't understand how this nerfs them. Could you explain please?
Arana Mirelin
Te'Rava Industries
#952 - 2011-11-09 20:32:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Arana Mirelin
Tairon Usaro wrote:
usually i am quite sceptical about simplifications - Veterans love EVE not because of simplicity but because of complexity - but i consider these changes overall as good changes, because they take out complexity in an aspect, that did not contribute positively to the game experience (it did in fact contribute to my EXCEL experience .... Blink )

I have a question concerning the building of the fuel blocks:

does the assembly of fuel blocks come with any kind of compression or volume inflation ?

In order words will it make sense to haul fuel components from Empire or haul fuel blocks from Empire ?
Assuming that i have to buy fuel components completely from Jita market.


It apparently is a minor compression:

From here:
Quote:
Allright, I'll do the math:
4 Fuel Pellets 200m3

Material volume for 4 pellets:
8 coolant*1.5 = 12m3
4 enriched uranium*1.5 = 6m3
400 racial isotope * 0.15 = 60m3
4 mechanical parts * 1.5 = 6m3
20 Oxygen*0.38 =7.6m3
1 Robotics*6 = 6m3
150 Heavy Water*0.4 = 60m3
150 Liquid ozone*0.4 = 60m3
Total = 217.6m3


This was calculated before the granularity change on the fuel blocks, so it still lists it as 4 blocks @ 50m3 each. Now, it's 40 blocks @ 5m3 each, so the math works out the same.

Edited:
I believe that this was also calculated somewhere in this thread as well, but that was the place I could find it easily.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#953 - 2011-11-09 21:33:48 UTC
There's also been a few requests to make the blocks compress a little bit more (maybe so we can stretch existing fuel bays out to 28-30 days) - but no dev response.

Large tower is 110,000 m3 capacity. 5.00 m3/block, 40 blocks per hour, gives us 22.92 days of run-time. If they were to simply change the size to 4.00 m3, we'd get 28.64 days of run-time. Which would be a nice extra bonus.
CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#954 - 2011-11-09 21:37:48 UTC
Tower capacity is up to 140k so you're at ~29.1 days already post-patch.
Sassums
Dark Venture Corporation
Kitchen Sinkhole
#955 - 2011-11-09 21:59:33 UTC
There still has been no response on the issue of faction towers no longer dropping.

If we are fixing and working on the POS system, why not fix this issue as well.
David Laurentson
Laurentson INC
#956 - 2011-11-09 22:19:34 UTC
mkint wrote:
Aaaaand, no response to the assertions that this is a nerf to small groups, and a buff to Grayscale friends.

Biiig surprise.

Instead we get "nobody at CCP knows how to use the filler tool in MS Paint." *sigh*


I don't see how this makes things worse for the littleguy. Ammo factories are tiny. In hisec, I don't even need that.

In w-space, I literally will not notice the ISK difference (which will probably be down marginally after the PI changes, by my dodgy math), but trust me I will notice the drop in volume of ice I need to ship in (~6%).


Thinking about it: this might hurt the booster manufacturers in lowsec who have to run small/medium towers to break even on their chosen goods. I can't think of anyone else this will harm.
sukee tsayah
Southern Cross Silver Shields
Flying Dangerous
#957 - 2011-11-09 22:31:41 UTC
mkint wrote:
Aaaaand, no response to the assertions that this is a nerf to small groups, and a buff to Grayscale friends.

Biiig surprise.

Instead we get "nobody at CCP knows how to use the filler tool in MS Paint." *sigh*


+1

Amen.
Lucid Phoenix
Infidel Armaments
B.S.I.
#958 - 2011-11-09 22:50:49 UTC
I think modifying the faction towers to use the same fuel as normal towers is ridicilous. The whole point of investing in one of the faction towers is reduced fuel costs, so it will pay for itself.

Now I understand that in trying to simplify the game, and making the fuel costs more simplistic, I get that. However a bigger fuel bay, isn't going to do it in so far as a fair trade off.

What I propose is this, and incremental increase in the powergrid/cpu output for the tier 1/tier 2 towers, thereby retaining some of the 'fuel savings', and allowing the simplization of the fuel situation at the same time.

Please give this idea serious thought, as it would only be fair to reap some ACTUAL benefit to faction towers people paid their hard earned isk for.

Thank you

Lucid Phoenix

Infidel Armaments
Jenn Makanen
Doomheim
#959 - 2011-11-09 22:53:02 UTC
Lucid Phoenix wrote:
I think modifying the faction towers to use the same fuel as normal towers is ridicilous. The whole point of investing in one of the faction towers is reduced fuel costs, so it will pay for itself.

Now I understand that in trying to simplify the game, and making the fuel costs more simplistic, I get that. However a bigger fuel bay, isn't going to do it in so far as a fair trade off.

What I propose is this, and incremental increase in the powergrid/cpu output for the tier 1/tier 2 towers, thereby retaining some of the 'fuel savings', and allowing the simplization of the fuel situation at the same time.

Please give this idea serious thought, as it would only be fair to reap some ACTUAL benefit to faction towers people paid their hard earned isk for.

Thank you

Lucid Phoenix

Infidel Armaments



Learn to read. It's already changed.
sukee tsayah
Southern Cross Silver Shields
Flying Dangerous
#960 - 2011-11-09 22:58:55 UTC
David Laurentson wrote:
mkint wrote:
Aaaaand, no response to the assertions that this is a nerf to small groups, and a buff to Grayscale friends.

Biiig surprise.

Instead we get "nobody at CCP knows how to use the filler tool in MS Paint." *sigh*


I don't see how this makes things worse for the littleguy. Ammo factories are tiny. In hisec, I don't even need that.

In w-space, I literally will not notice the ISK difference (which will probably be down marginally after the PI changes, by my dodgy math), but trust me I will notice the drop in volume of ice I need to ship in (~6%).


Thinking about it: this might hurt the booster manufacturers in lowsec who have to run small/medium towers to break even on their chosen goods. I can't think of anyone else this will harm.


https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=324859#post324859