EVE Information Portal

Eve already has the richest (and most complex) crafting element of any MMO I'm aware of. The last thing it needs is more complexity.

Also this is an MMO, so why the focus on adding more NPC's? Especially when those NPC's have no more character than a couple of numbers in a spreadsheet. You know when folks describe Eve as a spreadsheet game with a spaceship UI, that's not a compliment.

Eve already has NPC's. They are the little red crosses we shoot at, and they have been totally broken in their design and implementation for the entire life of Eve.

They sit there dumbly while you slaughter their mates 20km away and when they do attack they have no AI at all. They don't remote rep, they don't try to warp off when they are nearly dead, and EWAR either by or on NPC rats either does nothing at all or has a simulated pretend behaviour that has no relation to real player ewar.

Please, fix the stuff that's been totally broken for 10 years before adding more fluff.

If you want to do something to promote industry, then why not implement PI in wspace? That would mitigate the logistics hell of supporting a manufacturing POS in wspace. Or improve the contract system perhaps.

It can be though... several pilots can assist each other in bidding for a team - and can then all reap the benefits from reduced production costs.

These NPCs aren't really NPCs, they're just tokens. What they represent is a way for players to buy temporary upgrades for their production systems. They are consumable items just like boosters (though boosters are produced by players). "Teams" aren't NPCs: they are boosters for space stations.

I don't disagree with you, in fact that's kind of my point.

As this is supposed to be a game, I'd expect a bit of effort to be made to model some behaviour and character into the representation of any NPC's in it. If you aren't going to do that, then really why bother having them at all?

Keep in mind, that I'm not suggesting that CCP should model these industry NPC/bonus tokens better, rather that they should instead fix the crap NPCs that are already in the game first, before adding more that are even worse.

seriously you think the industry is based on the interesting gameplay.
I've always thought it's about profit.

I get the feeling that some of you who like these proposed changes are not thinking this new mechanic through, or are not industrial-based characters who manufacture regularly for game play.

Example:

Say I want a TEAM in my system to build X, which is out of the way and low population. I bid and win the TEAM, and I'm off to the races.

I get the TEAM in my system for the month, so I'm happy....

So I think that I can recover my costs for winning the auction because I got a TEAM that reduces my construction costs by material use. I calculated that I need to build for 24 of the 28 available days to make excellent profit.

Things are going smoothly for the first 5 days of my build cycle, but then I notice that my station costs are starting to go up...
Apparently others who I was bidding against for the TEAM really needed to save on their costs, so they migrated to the system and began to start building their X.

After day 12 my profit window has been pushed to 34 days to recover the auction costs and higher station costs…

By day 17 I need to stop manufacturing in my system because to cost of starting a job with the TEAM is at the market value for the item being manufactured.

Because my competition did not pay for the TEAM, they do not have an additional cost associated with their manufacturing and can continue to build with profit.

/example

It is not unreasonable to expect that uncertainty in manufacturing with result in uncertain market conditions. Adding in a 4th in-game market mechanic to purchase a global commodity will introduce more complexity and uncertainty where stability is needed. I say needed because this takes time an effort to keep the war machine turning. If there is no planning for the scale necessary to accomplish the mission, then what happens when the wheel stops turning?

If your desire is to shake out industrial characters from their comfort and force them to PvP in the auction market and system migration of goods to a new build site, then you will simply have a void in the game space from the departure of those characters.

There is a specific reason stability is needed when planning industrial operations – it takes real time to complete. It is not like running a mission, bashing a POS with timers, taking a station… It’s more like hell camping. You need to make sure you have the resources, the skills, the people, the logistics, and the market opportunities. None of those factors can be directly manipulated/controlled by in-your-face aggression typical of EVE. It’s not bashing a POS, it’s building a POS… totally different mechanic.

Very few, if any, “endeavors” are undertaken without consideration to profitability in EVE… even gankers considers profitability before execution. I know several activities are popular without profit (RvB), but I cannot think of anyone in the game that can continue to lose ISK and still fly what they want. If I break even flying an Atron, then I won’t be able to afford to fly and lose a Megathron without making profit somewhere, somehow.

This mechanic will not drive conflict – period.

Forcing industrial characters to the in-your-face EVE aggression mechanic (we have come to love) is not wise. It’s not like I’ve spent 50M SP in combat related skills to build X. I spent 50M SP in industry related skills to manufacture, not fight. I’m not going to risk moving my materials, BPCs, and logistics team to a new system every 28 days. The risk of losing billions to save millions is not something that can be quantified and relied upon for profit forecasting.

Incarna (curse the name) revealed a serious disconnect between the players and CCP. It was obvious that the developers missed to point of EVE and needed to be reminded that this is a game of blowing up space ships. I love to blow up space ships. However, if I cannot make or afford to make said ships, then I have no ability to pay for my love of space carnage. I left EVE at (expansion that shall not be named) and returned at Crucible. I’m getting the feeling that CCP has lost connection with the players again. Why would a developer say they intend to simplify a perceived complex task by making it more complex? Not only is this more complex, but it is also unreliable and unpredictable. Unreliable and unpredictable are great aspects to space combat and in-your-face aggression, not “simplified” manufacturing.


/rant

You example sounds to me like you made a bad business decision in the first place.

Realistically I wouldn't expect you to make the decision to go ahead in that situation. The business-case is that you're going gain some cost savings - let's say 7.5% of the costs. Now you say the break-even point is at 24 of the 28 days, so you only make that extra profit for 4 (14%) of the days.

That makes your overall cost-saving from bidding for the team as only 1% in your scenario.

Now you've already identified that there are some risks involved with having a team in your system - that your build costs will go up etc etc. You should be able to work out a worse-case cost scenario for your particular system, and calculate what that value is as a percentage of your build cost.

There are other risks to consider (that I'm not going to list here) but you'd attempt to quantify these in a similar way.

Having worked out all your best/worst/likely cases, you make a business decision on whether to continue.

Yes sometimes you're going to get it wrong - but that's just a matter of being in business. Every serious industrialist posting on the forums here will have had a case when they made a bad call and ended up writing off millions of ISK. The aim of the game is to call those decisions right more often than wrong.

Then dont bid for the team. Be the one who moves. Or dont even move and produce without the team, since, according to your scenario, hiring them isnt profitable.

You missed the Dev post...




You are suggesting exactly what the Devs are "trying" not to let happen. It is obvious that this will cause unintended consequences that seem not to be considered by CCP.

Systems with lots of good teams. Excellent place for gank fest and market manipulations.

Mark up your minerals in the system, and gank any freighter moving minerals into the system and take their drops and put it up for sale at a markup. Doubt many manufacturers check KB stats for systems they are moving into/through.

I bet the goons could keep a 23.5 hour per day lock-down on a system that has only one way in/out.



Alway, gotta love a new gank opportunity whenever CCP create one... intended or not.