Science & Industry

There is nothing remotely that dramatic in these changes. They already delayed it a month due to the handful of edge cases and that is more than sufficient. Edge cases fixed, balance preserved.

This is so very true; presuming everyone always invents t2 battleships and larger with process decryptors makes you look like a fool. Check contracts sometime. Talk to smaller end inventors. I've seen a lot of JF, Blops, etc BPCs up for sale that used different decryptors, and have tried to talk people out of using inefficient ones. Sure, process may be the most efficient, but they aren't always used to invent BS and larger.

Haven't dug into the numbers too much like I plan to yet (model comparing overall gamewide usage before & after the patch including ability to revise based on expected change in decryptor usage, anyone? Depends on if I can setup the spreadsheet in a reasonable amount of time tomorrow) so I don't want to comment on the numbers too much, but...



When moons are such that we don't need a team of fifty people constantly refueling POS, emptying the silos, and clearing (often multiple times a day) siphons off of them, that they inject isk straight into the corp wallet instead of the value being realized by selling the materials to people who turn around and run even more POS, it'll be completely passive income. Until then, the most valuable of them is worth at best what one ishtar ratting two hours a day can make (and the guy maintaining the POS is undoubtedly more active than the ratter, too), and the "completely passive" argument is a dead horse flogged by the jealous or ignorant.


Besides, consider this: Demand for moon goo is separated from the actual moongoo by intermediate reactions, then advanced reactions, then Tech II component construction, and then the actual Tech II build times itself. For that reason, the moon markets shift in response to changing demand very slowly, and Alchemy - which regulates prices - makes upward changes even slower. With a full invention overhaul on the horizon after Crius, things probably won't have room to move very far before that shakes things up again anyway.

Hey, I'm not upset with anyone - I meant literally what I said, which was that when Theng says "this is what I was worried about", I was not clear what the "this" was referring to. If it's about dealing with some invention issues as part of a follow-on package of changes to invention, then I totally understand the skepticism. Normally I wouldn't even be suggesting that we're waiting for later patches in public, but I'm sufficiently confident of these ones happening that I'm making an exception in this caes. I totally take the point that planning for a follow-up is risky, but the counterpoint in my mind is that the changes that were shelved were only being considered because they *were* a band-aid that would be ripped off shortly anyway. Normalizing to 24h with the current queuing mechanics is not a good long-term fix, in our eyes, so if we plan on the assumption that there is no follow-up, we still wouldn't be implementing that change :)



I'll have another look at the math here next week. This looks like it lines up very nicely with current numbers, but it's not totally clear yet that we do want to match them exactly. The current balance is to a large degree arbitrary, and if it weren't for the fact that we had done some very specific balance changes to moon minerals to deal with bottlenecks that we don't want to revisit, I wouldn't be attempting to get any closer than ballpark numbers anyway, because trying to tune to match arbitrary legacy balance is generally a poor use of time. If it looks like these changes will significantly impact moon mineral values then we'll probably do some more tuning, but if we'd just be changing everything in the same ratios with no impact on economic balance beyond the price of ships, that's probably not something that merits fine-tuning simply to match existing numbers. If there's a cost-balance problem with T2 ships then that would be much more sensibly addressed by a targeted balance pass on those costs; simply preserving the status quo has no value if the status quo itself has no specific value.

Again, I'm happy to be argued around on this sort of thing :)

As has been explained, CCP could try to tune the system to keep consumption stable. Doing so requires making assumptions about how players react to the changes, how players then react to the changes those changes prompt (a preferred decryptor becoming popular enough as to price itself out of usefulness, for example), and so forth. If they get it wrong, everything gets ****ed up. Frankly, I'd rather see them overshoot and increase consumption, than undershoot and decrease it. Decreasing it drops Tech II build prices and thus drops the value of building it in the first place, while overshooting it not only does the opposite but has its effects moderated by Alchemy.

But again, it is pure speculation and only CCP have the means and the data to see if it really is a factor to consider.

If it looks like these changes will significantly impact moon mineral values then we'll probably do some more tuning, but if we'd just be changing everything in the same ratios with no impact on economic balance beyond the price of ships, that's probably not something that merits fine-tuning simply to match existing numbers.

Well only speculation in that I'm guessing by how much prices will increase, but with all of the changes together, prices WILL increase. Install costs, teams, etc all will drive costs up. Less minerals from reprocing will have a slight to moderate affect. Making the material cost of of t2 production higher will increase cost. Making things take longer will increase cost. I'm guessing the refine changes will also remove an amount of minerals from the market that now have to be compressed as ore instead. Likely a marginal increase in cost, but again add all of these together... and well I arrive at my 15-30% guesstimate.