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Dev blog: Researching, the Future

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Marcus Iunius Brutus
Hoborg Labs
#661 - 2014-05-05 11:32:29 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
It should be noted that ME is becoming /less/ important as it's no longer the only way to affect the materials needed for blueprints.

Manufacture in a POS, have -2% to the materials required, for example.


Steve, could you give source of this information? (POS array giving bonus to ME)
Quintessen
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#662 - 2014-05-05 12:18:08 UTC
PDP11 wrote:
Quintessen wrote:
So now instead of being a year behind someone or two years behind someone in researched BPOs, I'm four years or eight years behind them. CCP will be creating a class of permanently better off industrialists.

The only occasions longer times will impact the efforts of the major Alliances will be when CCP introduces new blueprints. At that point all the major Alliances are on an equal footing so they are not disadvantaged. So why should any major Alliance be unhappy if they pull further ahead of you. CCP has had T2 BPOs providing an advantage for older players for years and does not want to upset this influential group of players by eliminating that anomally. Disadvantaging the holders of the soon to be minted 'perfect' Titan BPOs would be a radical change from past CCP practices.

The market instability around mining warfare links did not cause CCP to compensate players when the supply was squeezed then relaxed. I haven't seen any statements that promises compensation for all the time sunk into BPOs. You may have conversion benefits but that is just a once off conversion kludge. Change is promised and the current system will soon be scrapped. Better spending your time determining how you can gain an advantage. For me it is a trivial change because I'm small scale and don't have to make a profit at this time.

CCP can tweek parameters at any time to re-balance BPO times. I hope they show some common sense and appropriately scale research times. I'm running research jobs on all my Alts so dedicating one slot for a long train is insignificant. I'm never going to be training all the racial Titans, Carriers and Dreds at the same time. I can live with the sub-capital times as I'm not building them. This change has minimal impact on me and I'm guessing the majority of players aren't taking much interest in this topic. Limited interest translates into limited pressure on CCP.

Other areas like the introduction of NPC teams without introducing a player team structure is a greater disappointment.


This is about new players and new player retention. EVE already has a perception problem with respect to looking like it values older players over newer ones -- something that makes a decent number of people I've talked to no longer interested in playing.

There's a perception that CCP is artificially inflating the older players to keep them subscribed with their 10 accounts while fleecing the newer players who try and pay to keep up. I'm not saying that's actually happening, but perception is what is going to drive retention rates.

The major alliances are the current major alliances. New alliances will form and disruptive gameplay that makes news often comes form these new alliances. But it's also the individuals who matter here and the high-sec industrialists in the two and three person corporations. CCP can't continue to look at just the major null-sec blocks. They need to look at all players including future ones.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#663 - 2014-05-05 12:23:07 UTC
Marcus Iunius Brutus wrote:
Steve Ronuken wrote:
It should be noted that ME is becoming /less/ important as it's no longer the only way to affect the materials needed for blueprints.

Manufacture in a POS, have -2% to the materials required, for example.


Steve, could you give source of this information? (POS array giving bonus to ME)



It's my magical CSM powers that I told myself in the past Blink


Or more seriously:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4527743#post4527743



(Oddly worded, but that's because they had said a 5% reduction initially. Then reduced that to 2)

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter
DireNecessity
Mayhem-Industries
#664 - 2014-05-05 13:24:29 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
It should be noted that ME is becoming /less/ important as it's no longer the only way to affect the materials needed for blueprints.

Manufacture in a POS, have -2% to the materials required, for example.

There is no 'perfect' any more. Just 'not worth researching under these particular circumstances'.


Not the whole story:

1) In the blueprint copy market the best way other than price to distinguish yourself from your competition is by selling better quality blueprints. The new system squeezes quality into a mere ten steps and then, on top of that, generously rounds up all blueprints to the next full level in the transition. Suddenly all blueprint copiers are crushed into the same perfect 10 class and a unique, hard fought market disappears.

2) Sure blueprint ME becomes less of the total story but that doesn’t mean its import disappears. Unlike chasing team bonuses or setting up POSes, ME efficiency lasts FOR ALL TIME. You’ll get in on top of any temporary team bonus FOR ALL TIME. You’ll get it on top of a POS bonus FOR ALL TIME. Surely if it’s worth chasing a 2% POS bonus that not only engenders ongoing fuel expense but also ongoing wardec risk, it will often be worth chasing a 1% blueprint bonus with a single one and done cost.

3) Understand that much of the dispute is about the transition handing vets that final batch of “not worth researching” advantage for free via generous rounding up at time of transition. If that’s not a big deal imagine if CCP proposed a transition in the other direction rounding all blueprints *down* to the next level. The terrifying outcry so frightened Greyscale he specifically avoided it, “Our current line of thinking is to do the math such that no currently researched blueprint gets any worse in terms of the bonus it provides.” If blithely rounding down is too brutal, blithely round up is too generous.
ST Mahan
Doomheim
#665 - 2014-05-05 15:36:47 UTC
Any news to changes in max runs on BPC's; specifically Capital Components?

Thanks.
Quintessen
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#666 - 2014-05-05 17:09:49 UTC
DireNecessity wrote:
Steve Ronuken wrote:
It should be noted that ME is becoming /less/ important as it's no longer the only way to affect the materials needed for blueprints.

Manufacture in a POS, have -2% to the materials required, for example.

There is no 'perfect' any more. Just 'not worth researching under these particular circumstances'.


Not the whole story:

1) In the blueprint copy market the best way other than price to distinguish yourself from your competition is by selling better quality blueprints. The new system squeezes quality into a mere ten steps and then, on top of that, generously rounds up all blueprints to the next full level in the transition. Suddenly all blueprint copiers are crushed into the same perfect 10 class and a unique, hard fought market disappears.

2) Sure blueprint ME becomes less of the total story but that doesn’t mean its import disappears. Unlike chasing team bonuses or setting up POSes, ME efficiency lasts FOR ALL TIME. You’ll get in on top of any temporary team bonus FOR ALL TIME. You’ll get it on top of a POS bonus FOR ALL TIME. Surely if it’s worth chasing a 2% POS bonus that not only engenders ongoing fuel expense but also ongoing wardec risk, it will often be worth chasing a 1% blueprint bonus with a single one and done cost.

3) Understand that much of the dispute is about the transition handing vets that final batch of “not worth researching” advantage for free via generous rounding up at time of transition. If that’s not a big deal imagine if CCP proposed a transition in the other direction rounding all blueprints *down* to the next level. The terrifying outcry so frightened Greyscale he specifically avoided it, “Our current line of thinking is to do the math such that no currently researched blueprint gets any worse in terms of the bonus it provides.” If blithely rounding down is too brutal, blithely round up is too generous.


1) Pushing it down to 10 levels is the price of simplifying the system. Rounding is a different matter, but for the vast majority of non-mineral BPOs, many of the 100 steps will be pointless. Also 0.1% steps seem kind of pointless, but that's the kind of increment we're talking about with what you're talking about. I think you might have a better case for 0.5% increments than 0.1% increments.

2) Yes, blueprints are long lasting, but are sometimes destroyed. And often to scale up you may need to add more blueprints. But all that's besides the point. Are you suggesting that blueprints not maintain their ME and TE levels; that they degrade with time? Are you proposing that you round off instead of up or down? Honestly, they have to pick some rule and they picked one that promotes existing industrialists over all future industrialists. There's less distinction between industrialists now, but way more between existing and future.

3) Of course the cries would be worse. People hate the perception that they've lost ground of footing compared to where they were. Some people also hate losing ground relative to others, but that is, in fact, a different thing. You, too, are gaining ground. Just not as much as others. But that's to be expected at the leading edge. The last 2% is that much harder than the first 2%. They were going to affect existing players somehow. And, frankly, EVE could use a little less distance between the bottom and top for people to even feel like they have a chance.
Shoogie
Serious Pixels
#667 - 2014-05-05 19:36:22 UTC
Our problems with the new research system:

1) IT DOES NOT SIMPLIFY ANYTHING.
* The old formula 1/(10*(1+ME) was not difficult. You can even drop the 1+ for a quick approximation. ME 10 was approximately 1/100 inefficient. ME 20 was approximately 1/200 inefficient. Sure, the new way: ME5 is 5% worse than "perfect". ME8 is 2% worse than "perfect". Is slightly better, BUT, neither of those approximations really tell you the true story because of rounding. You use a discrete number of each raw material. Did 7% really save anything over 6%?
* So you still need to actually look at the bills of materials. Currently, if you want to build something and there are two BPCs in contracts, you can show info on them and compare. Otherwise, you can plug it into a spreadsheet or use a 3rd party tool to tell you what the quantities will be. The new UI change is even better. It allows you to get a quote for blueprints you don't even have. So the information will be available in game. Thank you! We all love it. But that is the UI change, and doesn't have anything to do with the research change.

2) IT REMOVES CHOICES FROM PLAYERS.
* Today, if I am going to go on vacation for a week, I can pick 11 of my favorite blueprints and get 1 week more research on each of them. I get a little warm fuzzy feeling when I deliver them, even if the savings are minimal.
* In the future, research levels will not be granular. If I want to research a battleship blueprint to perfect, it will tie up one of my science lines for over 4 months! I can't afford to do that on my main character who makes me a lot of isk by inventing.
* Today, I can calculate my opportunity cost for researching big blueprints. Researching a freighter blueprint one level would take 33 days. How much profit could I make building from or copying that blueprint instead of researching it for that time? What will the savings be on future freighters if I do this? I have that choice.
* In the future, research times will be so stupidly long that nobody will do it. Should I spend 3 years researching my freighter blueprint? Absolutely not. I'm not sure where I will be in 3 years. Also, in 3 years of expansions, CCP may do something that makes freighters obsolete.

3) NEW PLAYERS WON'T BE ABLE TO COMPETE WITH VETERANS
* If you have an ME 5 carrier or dreadnought BPO today, congratulations. You will have a practically permanent 2% advantage over everyone who ever tries to break into the industry in the future, because in the future it would mean 2 years, 2 months of research to get a blueprint to your level.

4) GHOST RESEARCH WILL BECOME A THING
* Locking away a science line for years on my main character will not happen. It precludes me from doing any copying or invention or anything else sciency. However, it is very easy to start a new account, train Metallurgy 5 and a couple levels of Laboratory Operation. Hand over a couple big ticket blueprints to research, and never log the account in again. If the research is done out of a corporate office in an NPC station, then I don't even have to re-activate the account at the end. Just have a director deliver it to get the blueprint back when it is done.

TL:DR
The new research scheme does not deliver on the promise of simplicity.
However, it causes lots of bad things.
Quintessen
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#668 - 2014-05-05 23:39:22 UTC
Shoogie wrote:
Our problems with the new research system:

1) IT DOES NOT SIMPLIFY ANYTHING.

2) IT REMOVES CHOICES FROM PLAYERS.

3) NEW PLAYERS WON'T BE ABLE TO COMPETE WITH VETERANS

4) GHOST RESEARCH WILL BECOME A THING

TL:DR
The new research scheme does not deliver on the promise of simplicity.
However, it causes lots of bad things.


1) I think a lot of people find it adds simplicity. The fact that it mimics the skill system means it's one less concept the players have to get. And while we shouldn't remove things for the sake of removing them, I'm not sure CCP has heard a convincing argument as to why the old system was better than the new other than it disadvantages existing industrialists who tried to drop below 1% waste. The issue isn't one of 7% not being always significant over 6%, but that 6% cost savings is far easier to explain than 1/(10*(1+ME)) in waste. Chess isn't a good game because it has dozens and dozens of rules. It's a good game because the simple rules create a complex whole. The best, longest lasting games often have simple rules with complex results.

2) I'm not sure you have a point here. You still have the same choices as before. Opportunity cost still abides and if it doesn't cover this it also doesn't cover the skill system. The skill system is a better system than the pre-Kronos ME system. It's easier to explain, has meaningful choices --- high cost for the last little bit of improvement or low cost for lots of little, early improvement. The issue is that now you don't really have to make that hard trade off because you can easily min/max your time putting the blueprint for research any time you're not actively using it.

3) Here you do have a point and that's because the research times on blueprints have been jacked through the roof. They really need to come down. That said, as above, the hard choices that you need to make aren't a bad thing. The permanent advantage that people who already have a ton of researched blueprints -- that's a bigger issue.

4) Ghost research is already a thing. Frankly, I'd like to see it where only one character could have an active research queue per account. You can have an industry alt and a sub-cap alt, but they can't be researching all at the same time. That would allow CCP to raise the number of research and manufacturing slots per character without ruining the market as a whole by oversaturation.

There are problems that need to be addressed, but the majority of your positions, I feel, ignore the complexity of the current system just because you got it and feel others should have to as well.
Cerrydwin
United Mining and Hauling Inc
The Initiative.
#669 - 2014-05-06 06:50:11 UTC
Apologies if this has been covered somewhere in the 30+ pages before.

"and the highest current rank is Titans at 3414 (good luck maxing that out!)"
Why would we be proud of that? Why intentionally make something so unattainable? 28 years* for rank 10? really?

Let's assume that an Archon at ME 0 today costs 1,045 million isk to build. At ME 2 it costs 960 mil and at ME 8 (perfect) it costs 954 mil. There's little point to going past 2, as 93% (85 of the 91 mil) of waste is eliminated at that point. So, an equivalent conversion of capital ship BPOs would look at the actual waste in terms of capital components and convert that to the closest real waste in the new system. That ME 2 Archon would become an ME 9 Archon with 3% higher waste, though in reality you would still only be wasting one drone bay (the same one from ME 6 through ME 10, in fact). If you were to look at effective waste then the new ME would be 6. New Archon BPO owners would be able to research 9 ME levels in 12 weeks (8.5 using a POS). Using the dev-blog-proposed value of rank 853 results in a time to research of 2.3 years* for this same ME9. Who in their right mind wants to wait over two YEARS to see a return on their industrial investment? On the other hand, if the target is ME 6 that would take a base time of 71 days, not too far off from the 88 station / 66 POS research times for old ME 2.

Near the end of last year as my dwindling $ income saw me faced with the prospect of quitting eve or getting serious about plex, I decided to sell off some characters and invest in capital ship production. Planning all of this took a few months (including grinding standings for reprocessing), then getting and researching the blueprints took a few months. Now I'm six months into my investment of 30+ billion isk in what had been a (relatively) stable market since before I joined the game lo these seven years past. Sure profits, right?
No. Now I need to completely rework how I need to haul inputs, most likely adding 6bil to my costs for a jump freighter and removing the ability to use minerals. Ouch. Hope the ore market stabilizes someday.
Now I don't know what the material costs of my hulls will be next month. Will they be profitable? Who knows?
Is my research on the BPO's worth anything now? What good is ME 2 on a capital hull in the new world of simple research? Is it still as lumpy as the existing method, or do I need to invest another EIGHT MONTHS of research before my hulls are competitive? I can't afford another eight months of game time and I really want to keep playing, so I sure hope there's another way forward.

Now for something positive, I hope. Clearly the capital hulls do not fit easily into the nice, neat 10-level box. They didn't fit into the old efficiency curve idea either; the payoff from capital ship research is lumpy. Since we're already modifying every value known to man, why not add a zero to capital components? What was once one component at 10,000m³ is now ten components at 1,000m³ each. Component material costs are divided by 10 per run. All existing BPCs have runs multiplied by 10 and all existing components are multiplied by 10. The component cost for all capital hulls goes up tenfold. Net change: nothing so far, everything is exactly as it was before except for bigger numbers floating around.
Now you have some power, some flexibility. Let's look at an Archon before and after. Before, you need 11 armor plates. ME 2 eliminates that one extra armor plate (and all other wasted components except one drone bay) after around two months of research, so now you need 10. Further research will do nothing until ME 8 (where you save that last wasted drone bay), not cost effective. After, you need 110 armor plates. Each level of research removes one extra plate (or four extra drone bays); each step yields a definite and fairly smooth improvement in the cost of production. All ten steps of ME will save you isk in production, though only the first six or seven will actually be worth researching.


* quoted times to research assume the time is rank * (time value from the dev blog for each ME)

Also, thanks for taking hundreds of hours of work in over a dozen spreadsheets and rendering them absolutely meaningless. Depressing.
Shoogie
Serious Pixels
#670 - 2014-05-06 14:46:49 UTC
Quintessen wrote:
1) I think a lot of people find it adds simplicity. The fact that it mimics the skill system means it's one less concept the players have to get. And while we shouldn't remove things for the sake of removing them, I'm not sure CCP has heard a convincing argument as to why the old system was better than the new other than it disadvantages existing industrialists who tried to drop below 1% waste. The issue isn't one of 7% not being always significant over 6%, but that 6% cost savings is far easier to explain than 1/(10*(1+ME)) in waste. Chess isn't a good game because it has dozens and dozens of rules. It's a good game because the simple rules create a complex whole. The best, longest lasting games often have simple rules with complex results.


There is no math, and there never was!

All you need to know is the concept of diminishing returns. That is the same for both systems. You must open up the blueprint and look at the bill of materials in a 3rd party tool (currently) or in game (new UI) and see if the difference in build cost is worth the difference in cost of the BPC.

You can say 6% waste is easier to explain than 1/70 waste, but in reality they are both lies! The truth always involves a lot of rounding which is best shown on the BOM.

Quintessen wrote:
2) I'm not sure you have a point here. You still have the same choices as before. Opportunity cost still abides and if it doesn't cover this it also doesn't cover the skill system. The skill system is a better system than the pre-Kronos ME system. It's easier to explain, has meaningful choices --- high cost for the last little bit of improvement or low cost for lots of little, early improvement. The issue is that now you don't really have to make that hard trade off because you can easily min/max your time putting the blueprint for research any time you're not actively using it.


When the system is designed so that everyone will research their blueprints to the exact same level, then that is not really a choice.

T1 ammo takes 3 days to get to the new perfect. That is not too onerous. Everyone who builds T1 ammo will be using perfect blueprints.

T1 modules take less than a week to get to the new perfect. Again, everyone who builds them will be using perfect blueprints.

T1 Frigates take 8 days to get to level 8, 19 days to get to level 9, or 1 month 14 days to get to perfect. A few people might start building at level 8 if they see a quick opportunity, but if they want to build in any quantity, they will wait and use perfect blueprints.

This follows up to capital ships. For freighters, dreads, and carriers, it is 2 months to get to level 6, 5 months to get to level 7, 11 months to get to level 8, and 2 years, 2 months to get to level 9. Everyone who builds them will research them up to level 6. Someone who wants to make this a major part of their income will research to level 7 (but not on a real character). Nobody will ever research them to level 8 or 9 unless they are taking a leave of absence from the game.

So researching blueprints is no longer a choice, but rather it is a time sink before you can really begin production.

Quintessen wrote:
3) Here you do have a point and that's because the research times on blueprints have been jacked through the roof. They really need to come down. That said, as above, the hard choices that you need to make aren't a bad thing. The permanent advantage that people who already have a ton of researched blueprints -- that's a bigger issue.


Malcanis's Rule in action. Nobody will ever research a carrier blueprint to level 8 or 9 again... yet many people will get them handed out on June 3rd.

Quintessen wrote:
4) Ghost research is already a thing. Frankly, I'd like to see it where only one character could have an active research queue per account. You can have an industry alt and a sub-cap alt, but they can't be researching all at the same time. That would allow CCP to raise the number of research and manufacturing slots per character without ruining the market as a whole by oversaturation.


Ghost research is not really a problem today, because you can only install a job for 30 days at a time. For Titans and Supers you can get more than that because one level takes longer, but how many of those blueprints are really in research at any time? After Kronos, every high rank blueprint will be viable for ghost research. 4 1/2 months for a battleship? Nobody will ever do that on a character that makes isk copying, inventing, or reverse engineering.

Quintessen wrote:
There are problems that need to be addressed, but the majority of your positions, I feel, ignore the complexity of the current system just because you got it and feel others should have to as well.


My position is that the current system is not complex because it is trivial to check the bill of materials--and that is getting even easier with the new UI.
Loraine Gess
Confedeferate Union of Tax Legalists
#671 - 2014-05-06 15:00:17 UTC
If your profit margins are thin enough that ME 8-->9 is the difference between profit and loss, and that research is time prohibitive, you need to build something else.
Shoogie
Serious Pixels
#672 - 2014-05-06 16:26:00 UTC
It is not the difference between profit and loss. It is the difference between profit and about 1% more profit.

How is your comment relevant to this discussion that everyone will research their prints until the time becomes onerous? That level will be the same for everyone. Therefore, researching is not a choice but a time sink.

Back when capital ships were first introduced, some dev was very smart to set the time to research one level to be ~1 month. That is a meaningful choice. I can build and make profits from 3 ships. Or I can research the BPO and make MORE profit on all future ships. When is the break even point? Is it worth it to me?

Consider a hypothetical dreadnought with an ME0 cost of 2.5 B isk. I have an ME3 blueprint (pre Kronos) which will become an ME7 blueprint at the Kronos patch. I am making 50M isk profit per ship. I can build three per month.

Today, I check the BOM and realize that I will make 70M isk per ship profit if I research it to level 4. If I research my blueprint, I lose 150M isk in potential profit, but then gain +20M isk per ship for all future builds. So I will make up the 150M after producing 7.5 ships, or 2 1/2 months after the 1 month research. Total 3 1/2 months to break even. This is a meaningful choice.

In the future system, I check the BOM and realize that I will make 25M isk per ship more profit if I research it to level 8. But level 8 takes 6 1/2 months. That would be 975 M isk in lost profits from the ships I could have produced. That is 39 months of continuous production to break even after the 6 1/2 month research. Nearly 4 years! What is CCP going to do to dreadnoughts in the next 4 years? Nobody is going to choose to do that, and therefore it is NOT A MEANINGFUL CHOICE.
Apelacja
Sad Najwyzszy
#673 - 2014-05-06 16:32:38 UTC  |  Edited by: ISD Ezwal
*Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.

ON CAPITAL SHIPS PROFIT IS LOW ( if u compare for the investment)......and mostly is coming from those small differences between a bit better researched bpo or less. In the proposed system all the ppl with me 3 BPOs will be sunk forever. And we have invested toons of iskies to start the capital building lines and can NOT move just like taht to another system. Enough penality is coming from end of compression.


Shoogie gave more less good numbers.
Micheal York Solette
PathFinder's Initiative
#674 - 2014-05-06 17:24:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Micheal York Solette
Hi

I have a suggestion. If all the BPO's & BPC's can be accessed in the cans then we can lock those down in Aduit Cans. Set it up so that a Corp can lock down the Aduit cans so they don't get stolen and that way we can bring in new members in to the Corps without mixing up BPO's. This also means no one can steal them ethier, it's easier for a Corp to relocate, or just moving the BPO's somewhere to research them. And for the BPO thiefs out there after you have the BPO's you could boot the guy out of Corp even if you don't know the Password because in 30 days after you can repackage those cans and then the BPO's are unlock and yours.

MYS Big smile
Sigras
Conglomo
#675 - 2014-05-06 19:38:04 UTC
Shoogie wrote:
It is not the difference between profit and loss. It is the difference between profit and about 1% more profit.

How is your comment relevant to this discussion that everyone will research their prints until the time becomes onerous? That level will be the same for everyone. Therefore, researching is not a choice but a time sink.

Back when capital ships were first introduced, some dev was very smart to set the time to research one level to be ~1 month. That is a meaningful choice. I can build and make profits from 3 ships. Or I can research the BPO and make MORE profit on all future ships. When is the break even point? Is it worth it to me?

Consider a hypothetical dreadnought with an ME0 cost of 2.5 B isk. I have an ME3 blueprint (pre Kronos) which will become an ME7 blueprint at the Kronos patch. I am making 50M isk profit per ship. I can build three per month.

Today, I check the BOM and realize that I will make 70M isk per ship profit if I research it to level 4. If I research my blueprint, I lose 150M isk in potential profit, but then gain +20M isk per ship for all future builds. So I will make up the 150M after producing 7.5 ships, or 2 1/2 months after the 1 month research. Total 3 1/2 months to break even. This is a meaningful choice.

In the future system, I check the BOM and realize that I will make 25M isk per ship more profit if I research it to level 8. But level 8 takes 6 1/2 months. That would be 975 M isk in lost profits from the ships I could have produced. That is 39 months of continuous production to break even after the 6 1/2 month research. Nearly 4 years! What is CCP going to do to dreadnoughts in the next 4 years? Nobody is going to choose to do that, and therefore it is NOT A MEANINGFUL CHOICE.

You could say the same thing about the current system too, just in a different way.

Take your hypothetical dreadnought at ME 4, youre making 70 M per ship, and you look and see that researching it to ME 5 you could make 72 M ISK per ship. You have the same choice, lose 210M now for +2M isk on every build but now your ROI is 36 months.

The calculation is the same but instead of taking longer to research you're currently just getting less profit from each research.
Sigras
Conglomo
#676 - 2014-05-06 20:20:10 UTC
I would like additional information about how negative ME is calculated because right now it's just ((0.1 * |-ME|) + 1.1) * BaseMaterialCost

So if perfect is 100 units
ME 0 BPC = 110 units
ME -4 BPC = 150 units

I assume afterward it will be calculated the same way except without the base waste. ((0.1 * |-ME|) + 1) * BaseMaterialCost

The problem with this is that the base cost has been raised meaning that negative BPCs get charged extra.

If perfect is 100 units
ME 0 BPC = 110 units
ME -4 BPC = 154 units (((0.1 * |-4|) + 1) * 110 = (0.4 + 1) * 110 = 1.4 * 110 = 154

Is this intended or is the formula being changed?
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#677 - 2014-05-06 22:21:42 UTC
Sigras wrote:
I would like additional information about how negative ME is calculated because right now it's just ((0.1 * |-ME|) + 1.1) * BaseMaterialCost

So if perfect is 100 units
ME 0 BPC = 110 units
ME -4 BPC = 150 units

I assume afterward it will be calculated the same way except without the base waste. ((0.1 * |-ME|) + 1) * BaseMaterialCost

The problem with this is that the base cost has been raised meaning that negative BPCs get charged extra.

If perfect is 100 units
ME 0 BPC = 110 units
ME -4 BPC = 154 units (((0.1 * |-4|) + 1) * 110 = (0.4 + 1) * 110 = 1.4 * 110 = 154

Is this intended or is the formula being changed?



Worse than that. All those "extra items" that were not effected by ME are moving to regular inpul, and will be hit by the same 40% increase for BPC and 10% decrease for BPO.
DK Anaroth
Border Industrial Limited
#678 - 2014-05-06 22:28:22 UTC  |  Edited by: DK Anaroth
Sigras wrote:
I would like additional information about how negative ME is calculated because right now it's just ((0.1 * |-ME|) + 1.1) * BaseMaterialCost

So if perfect is 100 units
ME 0 BPC = 110 units
ME -4 BPC = 150 units

I assume afterward it will be calculated the same way except without the base waste. ((0.1 * |-ME|) + 1) * BaseMaterialCost

The problem with this is that the base cost has been raised meaning that negative BPCs get charged extra.

If perfect is 100 units
ME 0 BPC = 110 units
ME -4 BPC = 154 units (((0.1 * |-4|) + 1) * 110 = (0.4 + 1) * 110 = 1.4 * 110 = 154

Is this intended or is the formula being changed?


Actually this is a problem for positive ME as well. While the shift from PE to the TE% actually works because the difference between PE0 and a perfect PE is actually 20%, it is not the same for ME.

A current ME0 has 10% waste above the perfect ME. Which means that a perfect ME has effectively a 9.09% reduction in materials, rather than the 10% reduction assumed by the conversion process.

Thus the suggested conversion scale will effectively spread out the new percentage reductions for the existing ME values more than it should, and as negative ME correspond to significantly extra waste, they are unduly effected by this.

This also affects the shift of the baseline from the perfect to the ME0% value as they multiply by 111.1% rather than the 110% suggested by the numbers.

So with the present numbers, in the new system the ME0 BPC will use 111 units in your case and the ME -4 blueprint will have a -40% material reduction and end up using 155 units. Going the other way a ME 2 converts to 7% reduction and a ME10 to a (perfect) 10% reduction. So they end up using 103 and 100 units respectively. Before those two used 103 units and 101 units.
Shoogie
Serious Pixels
#679 - 2014-05-06 22:32:53 UTC
Sigras wrote:
Take your hypothetical dreadnought at ME 4, youre making 70 M per ship, and you look and see that researching it to ME 5 you could make 72 M ISK per ship. You have the same choice, lose 210M now for +2M isk on every build but now your ROI is 36 months.

The calculation is the same but instead of taking longer to research you're currently just getting less profit from each research.


A savings of 2M isk is not realistic when capital components are worth between 8M and 10M isk each. Try playing with the calculator. https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/blueprints/calc.php

But that is exactly the point.

One can do the calculations and see how long the ROI is. If the ROI is too long, do not do that activity.

There is a huge difference between tying up a blueprint and one of my precious science lines for one month vs tying it up for 6 months or a year or five years! People can plan for a couple months down the road. Nobody can plan for 5 years down the road in this game.
Nervon
HaveItYourWay Corp
#680 - 2014-05-06 23:36:35 UTC
How to fix well researched BPOs

Give owners credit to apply to other BPOs


-create a way to research T2 BPCs