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New dev blog: Starbase happy fun time

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Neo Agricola
Gallente Federation
#981 - 2011-11-10 06:42:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Neo Agricola
Usurpine wrote:
I havent read all thread here, just looking into it.


Change that. it will change your point of view.

EDIT:
Pro Tip: there is a button called Dev Posts, press it and serach for this thread...

CCP Greyscale wrote:
Changes that I've just checked in for testing:


  • Build time now 5 minutes
  • Can build blocks in component assembly arrays
  • Removed capacity bonus from faction towers
  • Upped batch size to 40 and dropped volume to 5m3
  • Increased fuel use in normal towers to 40/20/10
  • Increased fuel use in tier 1 towers to 36/18/9 and tier 2 towers to 32/16/8
  • Sov bonus should kick in for all towers, it will be rounding up though so keep that in mind with your calcs


Tas Nok wrote:
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.


quoting Greyscale for the Nth time cause of all the trolls too lazy to read...

DISSONANCE is recruiting Members: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=706442#post706442 Black-Mark Alliance Recruitment: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=6710
Imoshen Solomani
InNova Tech Inc
#982 - 2011-11-10 07:50:05 UTC
If you want an idea for lowering faction tower fuel consumption how about this.

Time is out changing the time the fuel cycles would be a super *****, pos's cycle every hour lets not complicate it further.

But how about this.

2 sets of fuel blocks normal ones and faction ones.
the faction fuel blocks require less materials to build. but the faction blocks can only be used in a faction tower not a normal tower.

Also a faction tower can also run on normal blocks.

How you get the blue prints for the faction fuel blocks is up in the air.

But i think this would be a workable solution to reduce faction tower fuel without over complicating things. 8 different fuel blocks instead of 4. I wouldnt bother with 2 separate sets of faction blocks for each level id just do one set to not over complicate it.

It would also help if you can reprocess the fuel blocks to allow you to convert them might be a nice idea.
Usurpine
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#983 - 2011-11-10 10:17:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Usurpine
Neo Agricola wrote:
Usurpine wrote:
I havent read all thread here, just looking into it.


Change that. it will change your point of view.

EDIT:
Pro Tip: there is a button called Dev Posts, press it and serach for this thread...


quoting Greyscale for the Nth time cause of all the trolls too lazy to read...



It did. Thanks, my bad. Sorry, its a lot of spam to read, might be a good idea to start a new thread after lots of changes.
Shivaja
CHON
THE R0NIN
#984 - 2011-11-10 10:48:17 UTC
You can't be serious guys this should be improvement Question How by adding more time and more expenses to pos fuel production chain plus removing bonuses from fraction tower is that improvement ? Not by my book .
If you do implement this am gonna indict you for war crimes against POS managers Evil
Jenn Makanen
Doomheim
#985 - 2011-11-10 10:52:01 UTC
Shivaja wrote:
You can't be serious guys this should be improvement Question How by adding more time and more expenses to pos fuel production chain plus removing bonuses from fraction tower is that improvement ? Not by my book .
If you do implement this am gonna indict you for war crimes against POS managers Evil



How about you read more than just the blog? Like the other dev posts in this thread.

You're coming to this late, and appear to think so much of yourself that you can't be bothered reading anything.
Ned Black
Driders
#986 - 2011-11-10 13:49:51 UTC
Have you thought about the ramifications this will have on Liquid Ozone? It will affect heavy water as well, but not to the same extent.

Currently people try to conserve fuel by offlining mods. But with these changes every tower will be LO and HW hogs.

A large tower right now require approx 107k of liquid ozone/heavy water with at 100%

Each block of highsec ice currently yield 25 units of LO and 50 units of HW (not counting taxes). That means that in order for someone to mine enough ice to keep the tower fueled they will have to get approximatly 4300 blocks of ice every month... probably more like 4500 blocks with taxes and skills.

Suddenly EVERY tower in the game schlurps LO and HW like there is no tomorrow... my worry is that production simply cannot keep up with the demand of all those towers... The isotopes wont be a problem however since the blocks required for the LO gives about 4 months worth of isotopes.

I don't even dare to think what will happen if you follow through and remove highsec ice as you were planning some time ago...
eideen
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#987 - 2011-11-10 14:05:07 UTC
why not make it so a small tower use 4 block/hour and 8 for a medium and 16 for a large normal towers?
that why you can still scall the amount that is need per faction tower.

so you get for a small tower:

tier 0: 4blocks/hour
tier 1: 3blocks/hour
tier 2: 2blocks/hour

medium

tier 0: 8blocks/hour
tier 1: 6blocks/hour
tier 2: 4blocks/hour

large

tier 0: 16blocks/hour
tier 1: 12blocks/hour
tier 2: 8blocks/hour

or more blocks per hours to make it easy to scal. instead of increasing cargo bay.
Echo Mande
#988 - 2011-11-10 14:05:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Echo Mande
Ned Black wrote:
Have you thought about the ramifications this will have on Liquid Ozone? It will affect heavy water as well, but not to the same extent.

Currently people try to conserve fuel by offlining mods. But with these changes every tower will be LO and HW hogs.

A large tower right now require approx 107k of liquid ozone/heavy water with at 100%

Each block of highsec ice currently yield 25 units of LO and 50 units of HW (not counting taxes). That means that in order for someone to mine enough ice to keep the tower fueled they will have to get approximatly 4300 blocks of ice every month... probably more like 4500 blocks with taxes and skills.

Suddenly EVERY tower in the game schlurps LO and HW like there is no tomorrow... my worry is that production simply cannot keep up with the demand of all those towers... The isotopes wont be a problem however since the blocks required for the LO gives about 4 months worth of isotopes.

I don't even dare to think what will happen if you follow through and remove highsec ice as you were planning some time ago...

well, I guess lowsec and nullsec icemining will get a lot more popular then. Glare Crust and Dark Glitter have a lot of LO and HW content (you'll only need a hundred or so blocks of dark glitter per tower-month) and are available if you know where to look.
I'm sure the locals will welcome you with open arms (and maybe gunports)Twisted or you can try to strike a deal with them about security and mutual POS fueling interest. Who knows, they may even keep their side of the bargain.

Wallet remarks everywhere
Vladimir Pulin
Remanaquie Federation
#989 - 2011-11-10 14:06:52 UTC
This may be a great resource saver for heavy industrialists but the small corps such as mine, which would play with the POS power and cpu needs to save up on their ice requirements will see their ice needs rise. And for these small corps having to suddenly start harvesting twice as much ice it will be a royal pain between the buttocks.
Jenn Makanen
Doomheim
#990 - 2011-11-10 14:09:36 UTC
eideen wrote:
why not make it so a small tower use 4 block/hour and 8 for a medium and 16 for a large normal towers?
that why you can still scall the amount that is need per faction tower.

so you get for a small tower:

tier 0: 4blocks/hour
tier 1: 3blocks/hour
tier 2: 2blocks/hour

medium

tier 0: 8blocks/hour
tier 1: 6blocks/hour
tier 2: 4blocks/hour

large

tier 0: 16blocks/hour
tier 1: 12blocks/hour
tier 2: 8blocks/hour

or more blocks per hours to make it easy to scal. instead of increasing cargo bay.


Yet another person coming in, without reading what's been said since the blog. Now go back and take a look at the dev postings. go to the begining and click the blue dev bar
Creat Posudol
German Oldies
#991 - 2011-11-10 15:04:23 UTC
sukee tsayah wrote:
Scrapyard Bob wrote:
sukee tsayah wrote:
[quote=Scrapyard Bob]
Hence the reason new players and small corps who base their living out of PI are getting nerfed. Thanks for the numbers.


This is not the POCO whine thread.

And this change will help small corps, because now small towers suddenly got a lot cheaper to operate. Which means you can put more of your PI materials on the market rather then spending it on your own POS fuels.

(Complaining about the rise & fall of commodities in EVE is rather pointless. Look at ice prices, or mineral prices, or any other building component which tends to rise and fall based on demand or speculation. If it becomes less profitable to harvest a particular PI good, switch to a different market segment.)


Since you're not in a small corp I would suggest you refrain from assuming what will or will not help us.

Natural fluctuation in demand and speculation is fine. Artificially decreasing demand of one material to the benefit of big corps at the detriment of small corps is not fine. Since you're in a large corp, I'm sure you're fine with the change. Want me to go away? Tough.

I'm sorry but I just don't agree with that, and I'm in a small corp (seems to be a prerequisite for you to care for someones opinion). Yes, the demand on Robotics will decrease a bit, but the price has also been rising steadily to close to twice the price it was 2 months ago. It won't bottom out or anything because of this, or even just fall significantly. Also there are other "little guys" besides very new player (who are very new only for a short time). For example those running research and/or manufacturing and/or invention POS for themselves or small corps (which I occasionally do). Those are generally NOT large towers. They will be thankful for the 0.8 to 1.2 mil saved on fuel per day. On the other hand the towers of alliances are more often then not large and don't profit nearly as much from this change.

Don't forget either that producing and selling something like fuel blocks is something a few day old char can do. What they can make with this is unlikely to be epic, but certainly enough to make up for losses that might result from the expected fall of robotics prices. It's also not much work at all. Just a couple of clicks here and there for getting the ingredients and to initiate production.

The POCO change is a different story, but from the last dev post it seems like significant changes are being made before launch. So let's not go into full panic mode just yet, before we even know what changes are actually coming. It would also be the wrong thread for that :)
Vyktor Abyss
Abyss Research
#992 - 2011-11-10 15:25:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Vyktor Abyss
I'm glad faction towers now look to be sorted and the granularity factor of 10 above your original suggestion has been applied.

I am however (along with many others) slightly concerned regarding the Liquid Ozone and Heavy Water usage now.

As a "small time POS operator" I have about 8 varied size towers all of which I try to scale down costs to make them viable both in terms of initial outlay, and running costs.

I tend to use 100% or close to of CPU because this tends to enable most vital POS functions like; moon mining, research labs, reacting and manufacturing. Defenses are the only large consumer of powergrid, but often as a small operator you can get away with weakly/undefended POS because you're not any real threat to local powerblocks and enemy towers are enough of a pain to remove by themselves that only comitted/properly motivated attackers go for POS.

I'm assuming Heavy Water consumption will stay roughly the same, but my costs (and many other peoples) for Liquid Ozone are going to go through the roof because I will be consuming 9-10 times of the stuff every hour every day. The current price of Liquid Ozone is sure to rise (much like Heavy Water has) massively after the patch if you go ahead with these rates when you total the thousands more small operators with low powergrid towers like me that will suddenly require 9 or 10 times more Liquid Ozone.

I hope you at CCP are still reading and can address this concern either by:

• Removing Liquid Ozone and/or Heavy Water from the fuel blocks altogether
• Reducing the build requirements to at least one quarter of the current Liquid Ozone requirement

OR

• Altering all Ice Reprocessing to pump out much more Liquid Ozone to offset the additional demand you'll be creating

Bear in mind Heavy Water is not the major issue here as it doesn't have any other real uses and supply of this has generally been no issue, keeping prices low making even a 500% Heavy Water price spike easily absorbed into running costs.

Liquid Ozone however has other uses from Cynos to Jumpbridge fuel and has always been much more expensive relative to heavy water. A 500% to 1000% price spike for Liquid Ozone here will not be easily absorbed - Alliances may absorb it by running more large scale ice mining ops, but you will be ruining a lot of smaller scale POS operators who are unable to mine all their own ice requirement.

I anxiously await your response CCP Greyscale on this.... Thanks.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#993 - 2011-11-10 16:04:17 UTC
Here's why I don't see Liquid Ozone prices going up any time soon (or at most, having a neutral effect on the price of POS fuel used each month).

- Null/Low sec towers already used close to the maximum Liq Oz in order to keep lots and lots of guns online.

- Hi-sec towers, get hit a bit with this because they were typically CPU capped (HW usage), but were probably already using 25-30% of their PG to run labs/arrays. So hi-sec demand for LiqOz will go up anywhere from 1.5x to 3.0x.

- There are lots of other uses of LiqOz (Cynos in particular, along with Jump Bridges). A basic cyno uses 250 units of LOz at skill level V. Pop off a few cynos per day and you're consuming more LiqOz then even a large tower would consume. Or someone can chime in about the other uses of LiqOz that dwarf POS tower consumption.

- As LiqOz prices go up, you have to mine more blocks of hi-sec ice in order to get enough. This means more isotopes on the market (more supply) leading to cheaper isotope prices. It will also mean a glut of Heavy Water on the market (leading to even lower HW prices, even with the change).

That last point is the key one. Not only will the usage of isotopes be going down (450 -> 400 per hour for a large tower), but if more ice has to be mined to keep up with LiqOz prices then that will drive the isotopes prices down even further (more supply).

The market always adapts. When POS fuel prices rise too far, more people get into the supply side. When POS fuel prices drop too far, more people start running towers to soak up the extra supply.
Jack Dant
The Gentlemen of Low Moral Fibre
#994 - 2011-11-10 16:17:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Jack Dant
Scrapyard Bob wrote:
- There are lots of other uses of LiqOz (Cynos in particular, along with Jump Bridges). A basic cyno uses 250 units of LOz at skill level V. Pop off a few cynos per day and you're consuming more LiqOz then even a large tower would consume. Or someone can chime in about the other uses of LiqOz that dwarf POS tower consumption.


I bet 0.0 jump bridges use up as much LO as towers, if not more. Each time a battleship jumps through a bridge, it uses around 250 LO.

What happens in lowsec, stays in lowsec, lowering the barrier to entry to lowsec PVP: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=476644&#post476644
xaja
yoni corporation
#995 - 2011-11-10 19:11:34 UTC  |  Edited by: xaja
Hi Greyscale

Instead of upping the Granularity, you could just do something very simple: IdeaFaction towers build up so much surplus energy in their capacitors that after running for two hours, in the third hour, they run on capacitor power alone.Idea


I'm Glad the small scale operators chipped in with feedback, cause just asking "large scale POS operators" for their input is
like... our Government giving all the funding to large, rich Nuclear Power companies and none to smaller, more decentralized outfits.

More than half of Alliance POS's aren't even built to be profitable, but to offer various needed facilities.
Kaelarian
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#996 - 2011-11-10 19:24:31 UTC
I fail to see how this change can be equated to simplifying EVE as a whole (ie WoW in space). Many people here have pointed out the obvious advantages to the refuel monkey (buy 1 fuel vs specific ratios of 8 fuels based on usage case per tower).
However. The overall process for producing POS fuel has consistently grown more complex over the years and the latest change adds to that complexity.

Back in the day you mined ice and refined it (this hasn't changed). Then you bought goods from an NPC and you were done. Then Planetary Interaction was introduced. Suddenly, you no longer bought NPC goods, you setup a complex reaction chain on one or more planets to produce those goods instead. Now in addition to ice mining and PI, compacting has been added (removing the HW/LO usage differentiation) and providing a single fuel product to haul.

Bottom line: the process is more complex, but in a useful manner. It seperates manufacturing fuel (complex process) from using fuel (1 fuel type per racial tower).

P.S. Obviously, if you are making your own fuel (i.e most w-space dwellers) the entire process is now more complex.

P.P.S. Nice to see the devs responding positively to player feedback.
gnome chaos
State War Academy
Caldari State
#997 - 2011-11-10 22:32:50 UTC  |  Edited by: gnome chaos
Neo Agricola wrote:


Because if they add that to Winter 2011, they cant surpise us with a hole new Pos Concept inkl. queues, good access interface, good adminstration interface and all the other stuff we want for Winter 2012 :-)

Be patient. :-)


If they wait until Winter 2012, what are they supposed to do for Summer 2012?

POS get fixed sooner than in a year, or they can just wave goodbye to any goodwill they get from these rather small usability changes.

There's absolutely no reason to be patient with CCP concerning POS'. They know it, and you should know it.

The current POS shambles is a perfect example of why CCP should be on their knees begging every player to stay.
Jake Shepherd
Causality Crew LTD
#998 - 2011-11-10 22:51:48 UTC
personally I don't like the fact that the new fuel pellets cover all the fuel.

Yes I like the idea of putting less items into the tower but I think that heavy water and liquid ozone should have been left out and left so they can change with what is on-line at the tower
Jenn Makanen
Doomheim
#999 - 2011-11-10 23:05:20 UTC
xaja wrote:
Hi Greyscale

Instead of upping the Granularity, you could just do something very simple: IdeaFaction towers build up so much surplus energy in their capacitors that after running for two hours, in the third hour, they run on capacitor power alone.Idea


I'm Glad the small scale operators chipped in with feedback, cause just asking "large scale POS operators" for their input is
like... our Government giving all the funding to large, rich Nuclear Power companies and none to smaller, more decentralized outfits.

More than half of Alliance POS's aren't even built to be profitable, but to offer various needed facilities.



Very simple?

You mean it's simpler to add a whole new mechanic (POS capacitors), rather than a minor adjustment of what they've already done? (greater granularity, and different costs. Which would both just be a DB change, most likely)
Tyberius Franklin
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#1000 - 2011-11-10 23:59:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Tyberius Franklin
sukee tsayah wrote:
Scrapyard Bob wrote:
sukee tsayah wrote:
[quote=Scrapyard Bob]
Hence the reason new players and small corps who base their living out of PI are getting nerfed. Thanks for the numbers.


This is not the POCO whine thread.

And this change will help small corps, because now small towers suddenly got a lot cheaper to operate. Which means you can put more of your PI materials on the market rather then spending it on your own POS fuels.

(Complaining about the rise & fall of commodities in EVE is rather pointless. Look at ice prices, or mineral prices, or any other building component which tends to rise and fall based on demand or speculation. If it becomes less profitable to harvest a particular PI good, switch to a different market segment.)


Since you're not in a small corp I would suggest you refrain from assuming what will or will not help us.

Natural fluctuation in demand and speculation is fine. Artificially decreasing demand of one material to the benefit of big corps at the detriment of small corps is not fine. Since you're in a large corp, I'm sure you're fine with the change. Want me to go away? Tough.

Your position seems to make some interesting assumptions:
1) The only persons relying on PI income are new players or member of small groups
2) Smaller entities do not own POS's and do not benefit from the fuel changes
3) New players should not have to adapt to changes in the market as a result of changes in game mechanics

While true that no one should be dictated to have to change their way of play, this change doesn't do that. Additionally, why is it that any income source should be immune, regardless of accessibility, to changes from player interaction or game mechanics if within reason?