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Blueprint data adjustments thread

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CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#41 - 2014-05-20 11:31:13 UTC
Sabriz Adoudel wrote:
Firstly, these proposed changes will drastically change the decryptor market. By closing the gap in production cost between 'good' ME results and 'bad' ME results, throughput (invention probability x modified max runs) will become the only important statistic on most decryptors. Currently, the difference between build price on a no decryptor invented BPC and a Process decryptor BPC is 25%; after these changes it will be 3-6% depending upon how you do it. Factor in invention chance, and the Process decryptor will only just be worth using on Marauders after this change, whereas presently it is used on HACs and anything larger.

Personal interest statement on this feedback: given that I am sitting on hundreds, maybe thousands of Symmetry decryptors (and low double figures of the much more expensive and soon to be nearly worthless Process decryptors), I can live with this :). Doesn't mean I think it's a good change, but it will definitely make me billions.


Secondly, there are four things that can be limiting with the present tech 2 production system - player tolerance for clicks, copy slot time, invention slot time and production time. The second and third overlap as they Examples of each:

- Warrior II is limited by click tolerance
- Most battleship modules are limited by copy slot time; in addition, for most inventors that do not have access to a POS, this becomes limiting for many more things.
- Rigs and ships are limited by invention slot time
- Ammo is limited by production time
- In addition, all sorts of production may be limited by available capital (for example, I cannot run nine Marauder builds at once).

I would recommend you continue this system. The less knowledgeable inventor will continue mass inventing one or two items they are familiar with and will just accept that they always have (for example) too many production lines; the more knowledgeable will game the system and do some from each category, trying to maximize all four resources, and the most knowledgeable will treat the whole system as an optimization problem and try to solve it for maximized ISK, rather than maximized resource usage.


Concrete suggestions:

- Increase the multiplier for larger module (BS/capital) copy and invention time significantly, and decrease the multiplier for small modules, so that those with science slot hours to spare have the option to focus on larger modules, and those for whom science slot hours are limited can focus on smaller ones.

- Sample times of what I'd like to see for public station slots, max skills:

Copying:
Light Neutron Blaster I, 20 copies, 300 runs: 30 hours (presently 100)
Heavy Neutron Blaster I, 20/300: 120 hours (presently 100)
Neutron Blaster Cannon I, 20/300: 300 hours (presently 100)

Invention:
LNB II: 60 minutes (presently 150)
HNB II: 240 minutes (presently 150)
NBC II: 600 minutes (presently 150)

Production time:
For consistency I assume no decryptors anywhere here, although for obvious reasons anyone actually building Neutron Blaster Cannon II would use at least a cheap Symmetry decryptor and I believe they are optimal on Heavy Neutron Blaster II too.
LNB II (no decryptor, 10 runs): 20 hours (currently about 22.2)
HNB II: 40 hours (currently I think these are about 45)
NBC II: 60 hours (currently about 67)

In short, science times would go up in a 1:4:10:X ratio from frig:cruiser:BS:capital modules, with production times 1:2:3:X. (I'm leaving capital modules out; someone that knows more about them than me is more qualified to make suggestions there).


A side benefit is that this would provide science jobs that work well for people that log on twice a day. Presently someone looking to optimize the % of time their science slots are in use that can log on twice a day is somewhat limited to rigs, as most invention jobs are either short module jobs (2.5 hours or less) or long ship jobs (25 hours or more).



Personal interest statement: I and my in-game associates are very, very large net user of Light Neutron Blaster II and would benefit from less science slot hours being required to produce these, so I do stand to personally gain from this proposal.


Yup, this essentially breaks decryptor balance as-is; we're generally leaning towards being OK with this given that we intend to significantly overhaul that mechanic following Crius anyway.

I really like the math you're doing here and the way it positions different modules in different market areas. I may steal this :)

probag Bear wrote:
And while we're pointing out inconsistencies in blueprints stats:

All T2 non-armor rigs have the following manufacture requirements:

  • Small rigs - Level 1 of parent rigging skill
  • Medium rigs - Level 1 of parent rigging skill
  • Large rigs - Level 1 of parent rigging skill
  • Capital rigs - Level 4 of parent rigging skill

T2 armor rigs are the only ones that follow a different pattern of manufacture requirements:

  • Small rigs - Level 1 of parent rigging skill
  • Medium rigs - Level 2 of parent rigging skill
  • Large rigs - Level 3 of parent rigging skill
  • Capital rigs - Level 4 of parent rigging skill


Thanks, I'm passing this along to Ytterbium who has his face in skill balance right now :)

Loraine Gess wrote:
If you are going to display production times down to the second (this WAS sighted for Crius, right? Please?), please have TE clearly indicate what each level will shave off. If runs are calculated to be able to take fractions of a second, either individually and/or in a batch configuration, this information is highly valued and needed. It should be prominently displayed in the EVE window.




Because, unfortunately, our time keeping is not a decimal system.


This will need to be brought up in a UI thread, sorry. I can't fix this in Excel :)

[quote=Skia Aumer][quote=CCP Greyscale]Possibly changing...
Medalyn Isis
Doomheim
#42 - 2014-05-20 11:42:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Medalyn Isis
How about this for a neat formula which ties things together, which allows enough flexibility still to not break everything.

Total build time for max run BPO/BPC ∝ Rank * ( Meta Level + 1 )

Max run copies on BPO/BPC ∝ 1 / Volume of one run of end product

Copy time per run = Build time per run * 0.8


This way you have quite a few variables which can be adjusted to tweak things so we don't end up with some silly build times.

I'll run some numbers when I am back at home.
Gilbaron
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#43 - 2014-05-20 11:46:12 UTC  |  Edited by: Gilbaron
Quote:
We're going to have to change some things majorly if we do this, yeah :) I think it's *probably* worth the disruption, though.


if you are doing significant disruptions you should probably try to avoid significant changes towards shorter manufacturing/invention times (over the whole market, for single items it's irrelevant)

changes to industry will cause a lot of people to take a look at the feature. right now, the margins are tight in a lot of areas because of :reasons: . Significantly shorter manufacturing/invention times will only make things worse. right now, invention is a high maintenance space-occupation, some longer cycles will be very welcome.

any significant price changes should not be much of a problem, some people are going to make a bunch of money from it, but that will dry up rather quickly compared to the tiericide changes that still have an impact today.mostly because the possible speculation profit comes from manufacturing time, not manufacturing cost.
Zakarumit CZ
Zakarum Industries
Forgers United
#44 - 2014-05-20 11:47:22 UTC
CCP Greyscale wrote:

Incidentally, if anyone can explain why we see eg ME -8 Sensor Booster II blueprints in people's inventories on TQ, that'd be super, because I can't immediately see how that has happened :/



...this isnt first change to invention CCP is doing. In long lost past, decryptors had even stranger modifiers, thats why you can see ME -8 or even other similar things that cant be produced anymore.
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#45 - 2014-05-20 11:56:54 UTC
Gilbaron wrote:


any significant price changes should not be much of a problem, some people are going to make a bunch of money from it, but that will dry up rather quickly compared to the tiericide changes that still have an impact today.mostly because the possible speculation profit comes from manufacturing time, not manufacturing cost.



Agreed. I raised the ones I did just to clarify that I stood to gain from the changes.

I may or may not have just started panic buying 12 different items.

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com

probag Bear
Xiong Offices
#46 - 2014-05-20 12:46:38 UTC  |  Edited by: probag Bear
CCP Greyscale wrote:
probag Bear wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:

- I'm considering changing invention times so that build time is generally twice copy+invention, to maintain balance across character manufacture and research slots; this also has the advantage of giving invention time a clear driving force

To give you some data, I whipped up a quick script to go through every inventable item and find out what the limiting factor is.

[snip]


I will run through this this afternoon, thanks for the work! :)



Let me know if there's anything you need there. Those CSVs only took a few lines of extra code to generate, and I can change them whichever way you want.
I made them because with all the decryptors and modifiers, you might not be able to see the actual impact of changes by looking at just base values. And because I doubted you had a profit-maximization script lying around.

CCP Greyscale wrote:
Yup, this essentially breaks decryptor balance as-is; we're generally leaning towards being OK with this given that we intend to significantly overhaul that mechanic following Crius anyway.


Requesting that at some point in the process of decryptor redesign, you also contact the team in charge of loot tables and work out new drop rates, since the valuable decryptors are likely to change.
probag Bear
Xiong Offices
#47 - 2014-05-20 12:58:08 UTC
Oh, and while we're spamming you with questions and requests:

Whenever you get the time, remember that there's a sizable chunk of blueprints with 0% base waste. I don't recall you telling us how they'll be handled, but they'll eventually need to be handled.

As a quick example, every single T3 subsystem blueprint takes 5 separate materials, requiring 1 unit of each, with 0% base waste. If you revamp these BPs the same as all the 10% base waste blueprints, they will suddenly require double the materials at ME lower than 10. Which means always, since these BPs can only be obtained as 0-ME BPCs via reverse engineering.

You could just band-aid this by making reverse engineering spit out 10-ME BPCs. But then you've got a lot of other 0% base waste blueprint groups you'll have to look at individually and decide whether to band-aid or not.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#48 - 2014-05-20 14:13:44 UTC
(Woo. people doing my job for me Blink Carry on.)

Just to expand on that last statement. There are 177 blueprints with 0% waste, 69 with 5% waste, and 2883 with 10% waste.

5% ones are things like the new implants, the mind links, and the fuel blocks.

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter

Retar Aveymone
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#49 - 2014-05-20 14:21:05 UTC
Steve Ronuken wrote:
(Woo. people doing my job for me Blink Carry on.)

Just to expand on that last statement. There are 177 blueprints with 0% waste, 69 with 5% waste, and 2883 with 10% waste.

5% ones are things like the new implants, the mind links, and the fuel blocks.

60 of those 0% waste ones are getting deep-sixed with the compression change

not sure what the rest are though - maybe items only seeded as bpcs?
Sales Alt negrodamus
Sanctuary of Shadows
#50 - 2014-05-20 15:29:23 UTC
Hey Greyscale,

Nice changes on the invention stuff. Will have to watch this very carefully because this is how I make all of my isk...

Some thoughts....

* Are invention skills going to be looked at?

Currently there's no reason for me to ever train level 5 invention skills due to how poor the bonus is, and it doesn't meaningfully set me apart from other people doing this kind of industry unless I decide I want to start doing T3 hulls for some reason.

* Are research agents ever going to be useful for invention again outside of their current near-useless status as suppliers of datacores?

* Please be careful when making major material changes.

There appear to already be plans to change the loot spew mechanic and crap all over salvage drop rates. Please try to not price people out of the entire t2 rig market again.

* When oh when will this be on the test server?

You have so many moving parts for industry changes, and its' such a huge moving target. Please PLEASE give us time to process this at least for a bit.
Steve Ronuken
Fuzzwork Enterprises
Vote Steve Ronuken for CSM
#51 - 2014-05-20 15:38:37 UTC
Retar Aveymone wrote:
Steve Ronuken wrote:
(Woo. people doing my job for me Blink Carry on.)

Just to expand on that last statement. There are 177 blueprints with 0% waste, 69 with 5% waste, and 2883 with 10% waste.

5% ones are things like the new implants, the mind links, and the fuel blocks.

60 of those 0% waste ones are getting deep-sixed with the compression change

not sure what the rest are though - maybe items only seeded as bpcs?



All the subsystems. Which are reverse engineered, so that's pretty much fine.

And a bunch of drops/purchases. So also fine.

As long as they don't have material increases anyway Smile

Woo! CSM XI!

Fuzzwork Enterprises

Twitter: @fuzzysteve on Twitter

Highfield
Vanishing Point.
The Initiative.
#52 - 2014-05-20 15:44:37 UTC
I might be totally in the wrong neighbourhood, but how do (advanced) capital component blueprints tie in to this all?
Fredric Wolf
Black Sheep Down
Tactical Narcotics Team
#53 - 2014-05-20 15:49:31 UTC
I have been reading most post on this and I am not a large industry person but my thought was why not make build time tied to the bast material of the items that make it up? Set a base build time and then use the materials as multipliers to that number so once the formula is built no matter what tweaks you do to ships and or creating new modules the numbers will already be derived by what is put into the item. This would also make sense as working with mainly trit is common and simple so it would have a .1 modifier to the build time where as working with morphite is rare so the modifier would be 1.5 or some other large number.

Below is a sample of what I had in mind it is off from a tristan with current base material

Tristan Amount Modifier
Tritanium 23100 0.1 2310
Pyrite 6270 0.2 1254
Nocxium 77 0.5 38.5
Mexallon 2970 0.3 891
Megacyte 1 1 1
Isogen 330 0.4 132
Zydrine 11 0.9 9.9
Total Time 4636.4 seconds
That number comes out to 1 hour 29 minutes which is only 11 minutes less that current
This is an easy way to manage large amounts of data IMO and make numbers scale well to the complexity of the item base on materials required.
CCP Greyscale
C C P
C C P Alliance
#54 - 2014-05-20 16:09:30 UTC
Medalyn Isis wrote:
How about this for a neat formula which ties things together, which allows enough flexibility still to not break everything.

Total build time for max run BPO/BPC ∝ Rank * ( Meta Level + 1 )

Max run copies on BPO/BPC ∝ 1 / Volume of one run of end product

Copy time per run = Build time per run * 0.8


This way you have quite a few variables which can be adjusted to tweak things so we don't end up with some silly build times.

I'll run some numbers when I am back at home.


This seems like it's in the ballpark of what I'm likely to end up doing :)

Gilbaron wrote:
Quote:
We're going to have to change some things majorly if we do this, yeah :) I think it's *probably* worth the disruption, though.


if you are doing significant disruptions you should probably try to avoid significant changes towards shorter manufacturing/invention times (over the whole market, for single items it's irrelevant)

changes to industry will cause a lot of people to take a look at the feature. right now, the margins are tight in a lot of areas because of :reasons: . Significantly shorter manufacturing/invention times will only make things worse. right now, invention is a high maintenance space-occupation, some longer cycles will be very welcome.

any significant price changes should not be much of a problem, some people are going to make a bunch of money from it, but that will dry up rather quickly compared to the tiericide changes that still have an impact today.mostly because the possible speculation profit comes from manufacturing time, not manufacturing cost.


Yeah ok, noted. I think we can probably swing things around the current midpoint in terms of job length. I like the idea of there being some sorts of things that are easy to dabble in, and other things that are geared towards serious industrialists.

Zakarumit CZ wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:

Incidentally, if anyone can explain why we see eg ME -8 Sensor Booster II blueprints in people's inventories on TQ, that'd be super, because I can't immediately see how that has happened :/



...this isnt first change to invention CCP is doing. In long lost past, decryptors had even stranger modifiers, thats why you can see ME -8 or even other similar things that cant be produced anymore.


Yeah, I figured it probably was, I just couldn't see anything in the history of decryptors that suggested these sorts of numbers.

probag Bear wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:
probag Bear wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:

- I'm considering changing invention times so that build time is generally twice copy+invention, to maintain balance across character manufacture and research slots; this also has the advantage of giving invention time a clear driving force

To give you some data, I whipped up a quick script to go through every inventable item and find out what the limiting factor is.

[snip]


I will run through this this afternoon, thanks for the work! :)



Let me know if there's anything you need there. Those CSVs only took a few lines of extra code to generate, and I can change them whichever way you want.
I made them because with all the decryptors and modifiers, you might not be able to see the actual impact of changes by looking at just base values. And because I doubted you had a profit-maximization script lying around.

CCP Greyscale wrote:
Yup, this essentially breaks decryptor balance as-is; we're generally leaning towards being OK with this given that we intend to significantly overhaul that mechanic following Crius anyway.


Requesting that at some point in the process of decryptor redesign, you also contact the team in charge of loot tables and work out new drop rates, since the valuable decryptors are likely to change.


Will let you know if I need more data, thanks :)

Loot tables will be looked at with decryptor changes, I'm pretty confident that the people likely to be involved will think of this and I'll try to make sure to remind them.

probag Bear wrote:
Oh, and while we're spamming you with questions and requests:

Whenever you get the time, remember that there's a sizable chunk of blueprints with 0% base waste. I don't recall you telling us how they'll be handled, but they'll eventually need to be handled.

As a quick example, every single T3 subsystem blueprint takes 5 separate materials, requiring 1 unit of each, with 0% base waste. If you revamp these BPs the same as all the 10% base waste blueprints, they will suddenly require double the materials at ME lower than 10. Which means always, since these BPs can only be obtained as 0-ME BPCs via reverse engineering.

You could just band-aid this by making reverse engineering spit out 10-ME BPCs. But then you've got a lot of other 0% base waste blueprint groups you'll have to look at individually and decide whether to band-aid or not.


I imagine that they'll be bumped up 10% and then rounded to the nearest whole value, which takes us back to 1 unit. We don't support partial units for build costs.

[quote=Sales Alt negrodamus]Hey Greyscale,

Nice changes on the invention stuff. Will have to watch this very carefully because this is how I make all of my isk...

Some thoughts....

* Are invention skills going to be looked at?

Currently there's no reason for me to ever train level 5 invention skills due to how poor the bonus is, and it doesn't meaningfully set me apart from other people doing this kind of industry unless I decide I want to start doing T3 hulls for some reason.

* Are research agents ever going to be useful for invention again outside of their current near-useless status as suppliers of datacores?

* Please be careful when making major material changes.

There appear to already be plans to change the loot spew mechanic and crap all over salvage drop rates. Please try to not price people out of the entire t2...
LHA Tarawa
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#55 - 2014-05-20 17:46:12 UTC
Sorry for double post. DId not see the new thread when this was first posted.



This may sound naive, but the whole BPO->copy->BPC->invent->T2 BPC seems like this "not good" complexity thing.

IF already planning massive changes to invention, why not BPO->intent->T2 BPC.

Click fest reduced, able to alter copy time and max run without significant impacts to invention,

Ask how many runs they want on their output T2 BPC (up to a max). Scale the time and number of input datacores and such to the runs on the output BPC.
Seith Kali
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#56 - 2014-05-20 19:20:32 UTC
LHA Tarawa wrote:
This may sound naive, but the whole BPO->copy->BPC->invent->T2 BPC seems like this "not good" complexity thing.


"Not good" complexity is things like having to google what damage a missile does because the name is arbitrarily abstract or having to know that jump fuel is a 'manufacture and research' product in the market. Complex production chains are exactly good complexity. I can run a copy business, an invent business without needing to own BPOs a production business outsourcing my invention. All meaningful interactions. Next you'll be saying we should mine T2 components from moons because reactions are 'not good' complexity and a clickfest.

Sorry for breaking the chain of good posts, but folly must be rebuked.

Apprentice Goonswarm Economic Warfare Consultant - Drowning in entitlement and privilege. 

Chanina
ASGARD HEAVY INDUSTRIES
#57 - 2014-05-20 21:01:36 UTC
Greyscale wrote:

- We are rebasing invention TE/ME values to all be positive or 0 at all times, removing negative ME/TE from invention outputs, as this solves a number of issues with removing extra materials


I like this simplification, it makes invention much easier to teach others in and reduces the confusion for players not knowing the invention process. Looking up the BP with "link -> item type" in chat will bring you the TE/ME: 0/0 version and to explain someone he needs +50% on top of that material makes it complicated. Good decision.

Greyscale wrote:

- I'm considering changing invention times so that build time is generally twice copy+invention, to maintain balance across character manufacture and research slots; this also has the advantage of giving invention time a clear driving force


I understand the part of “driving force” for invention time but a producer aiming for T2 production is skilled faster than an inventor. In my corporation it is a small team of inventors producing the T2 BPCs and a solid number of players running the production.

For the Balance of manufacture and research slots please take into account that for invention is not only based on chance it also needs to copy before. With a chance of 50% (simplified) you need 2 invention slots and before that someone has to make copies, so you have 3 slots tied up to get 1 manufacture job.

Adjusting the production time to the invention time isn't a bad Idea in general. But it is hugely varying currently. You need 1h 15m to invent a 100 MN MWD and it takes 7 Days to build it. On the other side you have 1h invention for a hobgoblin and ~5h production time.

Both extremes are out of balance but making an invention job for a 100 MN MWD to take 3 days is damn long. Reinstalling invention every 1:15 hour is tedious and I would really like to have it only once or twice an evening. But to keep current productivity that would need an increase of the output runs.

Further more the current invention output is highly depending on online time. With one invention cycle every 1:15 hour you get 2 to 3 on an average evening if you don't wander of in another region. If you increase this time to something between 3 and 7 hours many players won't manage to get more than one cycle each evening. That would greatly nerf the output of invention. I would suggest if you touch this times consider increasing the output runs. I would be fine with the invention taking 12 hours but the result is not a 10 run copy but a 50 run copy. But that starts to go deep into invention cost balance soon and might be out of scope. And therefore I would even suggest to keep the current invention times until you redo the hole invention thing. I will stop here for now on that subject.

Greyscale wrote:

- Removal of waste necessitates an increase in all manufacturing costs
- Removal of negative TE/ME probably requires an increase in T2 build costs to balance out component demand before and after


I totally agree here. Maybe you could use the meta-level as factor in manufacturing costs. That would make it future-proof for maybe soon to come constructable meta level items < meta 5. But keep in mind the impact of location not getting too big. Paying a bit more in a system with 2 production stations than in one with 8 is OK but if that gets too much one sided I think it is a too strong pull factor.

Greyscale wrote:

- We would generally like all blueprint data to follow a coherent pattern; we're still discussing how far we would like to take this

Sounds good, it is always helpful if there is a solid pattern to follow if you want to explain something to someone else. I would suggest the T1 item bpo as the base line while T2 and later Meta-level BPs go with a meta modifier. Currently that would be t2 item takes 5 times of a t1 item.

But those are the obvious ones. Is cost scaling a part of this “data”? Is the BPO rank part of the installation cost and / or the team cost? A rank 10 item is harder to build than a rank 1 so it would be reasonable if the workforce gets more expensive with BPO rank.
Sales Alt negrodamus
Sanctuary of Shadows
#58 - 2014-05-20 21:07:43 UTC
Greyscale, just to bounce this off someone whose responding and actively thinking about industry....

Is CCP happy with the way drugs work? These do not appear to have been touched in several years.

Eg, is there going to be a balancing pass made against them and/or are there plans for more specialized boosters?

I like making them, but they are an incredible nuisance due to how horrible the pos interface is for chaining the reactions. And how it is just annoying to get them into highsec.

Personally I'd like to see more variety and specialization like with implants that do some of the same things but some really different things.

Like mining / science / industry specific boosters.

Further, its' really hard to source materials and bpcs for drugs due to how certain components only appear in certain constellations. At least please make it regional, or not at all location based like with what was done to moon materials.


Overall I like the changes. I think. But to repeat myself, we definitely need to see them on sisi becuase eve has a lot of moving parts and y'all are tweaking a lot of them.
Kenneth Feld
Habitual Euthanasia
Pandemic Legion
#59 - 2014-05-21 00:08:59 UTC
One other thing is the difference between blue prints that get invented and ones that don't

These don't need to worry about max runs
Cap Components
T2 cap components
shuttles
containers
Carriers
dreads
orca
rorqual
there are probably others...


These do:
anythign that gets invented
Also, balancing a max run bpc for invention to the times, or maybe doing away with the requirement for max run. Maybe making the size factor in so max run isn't always required
MailDeadDrop
Archon Industries
#60 - 2014-05-21 00:31:56 UTC  |  Edited by: MailDeadDrop
Kenneth Feld wrote:
Also, balancing a max run bpc for invention to the times, or maybe doing away with the requirement for max run. Maybe making the size factor in so max run isn't always required

Max runs *isn't* always required. It is the most efficient for module invention because it amortizes the fixed invention cost across the most number of modules.

It would be nice if max runs BPCs had some useful effect on ship invention though.

MDD