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Automatic Fitting Purchasing
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Sephanor
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#1 - 2011-12-04 22:41:50 UTC
So first of all, I love that we can now drag a fitting to the market to create a quickbar folder, it definitely makes fitting new ships a lot easier. So I got to thinking on how this idea could be expanded upon relatively easily and I thought why not make a sort of customizable market macro which you could run for the fitting in question. You just give each item a price range, distance from pilot, and sec level. Then when you buy one the system just runs and purchases the quantity of items you want which match the criteria which you've set. So say for one item in a fit you could do the following:

Sensor Booster II

anything < 1.2mil
no further than 2 jumps away
highsec, lowsec and nullsec

and when you run it just buys the cheapest item or the closest item which matches this criteria, altho you'd probably want to check that all the items are available before buying any. Infact you could use this for just about any large scale purchasing if you set it up right. I think this is a relatively small scale addition which could definitely positively impact a lot of players playing experience, thoughts?
Rina Asanari
CitadeI
#2 - 2011-12-05 08:11:17 UTC
Meh... there's too much to consider when placing your orders. For example, when being in HiSec I definitely wouldn't purchase something on a lowsec station, since the gates to lowsec are likely to be camped. Or if that module you put into your fitting isn't available somewhere close to your location. Would you replace it with something similar or would you relocate to another tradehub and maybe buy the rest there as well?
Sephanor
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#3 - 2011-12-05 13:03:31 UTC
If you only wanted to purchase in highsec you would just set it to only query orders which are in sec > 0.4 systems. For dealing with items which are missing i'd suggest that it display a dialogue box before it buys anything saying like, the following items are available, the following are missing would you like to proceed etc etc. So you could buy what you can or opt to try another hub or whatever. Pretty simple really.
Emperor Salazar
Remote Soviet Industries
Insidious Empire
#4 - 2011-12-05 13:39:19 UTC
This is what I thought the new quickbar change was going to be. While it did make things easier, I would definitely love to see something like this. There are plenty of parameters that could be worked into it to make shopping easier (jump range, security status, all in one station, max price per module, meta options you are willing to have as well). It could even return a "not all modules were available given your parameters, proceed with purchase of those that do?"

Definitely something that could be worked into the system quite well and would be appreciated by all.
mxzf
Shovel Bros
#5 - 2011-12-05 14:49:24 UTC
If you give a mouse a cookie ...

Seriously, the changes were a good thing that made it a lot simpler to find a big list of parts and helped everyone out. But now, just a couple days later, you're asking for a big huge addition to what they just finished making (and making a system that could buy things off the market semi-intelligently like that would definitely be a huge undertaking). Why can't people be happy with what they do have instead of demanding more and more?
Rina Asanari
CitadeI
#6 - 2011-12-06 08:18:18 UTC
Emperor Salazar wrote:
This is what I thought the new quickbar change was going to be. While it did make things easier, I would definitely love to see something like this. There are plenty of parameters that could be worked into it to make shopping easier (jump range, security status, all in one station, max price per module, meta options you are willing to have as well). It could even return a "not all modules were available given your parameters, proceed with purchase of those that do?"

Definitely something that could be worked into the system quite well and would be appreciated by all.


I ask you to flesh out the decision logic (buy/don't buy/buy where) and the number of parameters which can be set and how they would influence the actual decisions. Just because to get an idea about how complex that thing may get.
Sephanor
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#7 - 2011-12-09 00:03:59 UTC
Theres no reason to have anything other than distance, sec and a price for each item. Sure i guess you could have others but thats all that you need for a working system.
DooDoo Gum
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2011-12-09 20:00:06 UTC
mxzf wrote:
Why can't people be happy with what they do have instead of demanding more and more?


i guess it does not promote growth
Rina Asanari
CitadeI
#9 - 2011-12-10 06:38:09 UTC
Sephanor wrote:
Theres no reason to have anything other than distance, sec and a price for each item. Sure i guess you could have others but thats all that you need for a working system.


Really? Think about the following scenario:

You need three items. Item A is where you are, B is one jump out, C is one jump out into the opposite direction. That means to get either B or C you may need to travel two jumps.

Now take the same three items, but their locations are different: Item A is where you are, C is two jumps out, B on a station in the system en route to C. On the first glance this setup seems worse, because C is to be found further away than in the first scenario, but actually you need to travel less.

And that's just a simple example where a decision simply based on distance leads to sub-optimal results. Matters get exponentially worse (Traveling Salesman Problem is a part of this, and that is already bad enough) if you add more items to the mix.
Sephanor
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#10 - 2011-12-14 16:22:47 UTC
Rina Asanari wrote:
Sephanor wrote:
Theres no reason to have anything other than distance, sec and a price for each item. Sure i guess you could have others but thats all that you need for a working system.


Really? Think about the following scenario:

You need three items. Item A is where you are, B is one jump out, C is one jump out into the opposite direction. That means to get either B or C you may need to travel two jumps.

Now take the same three items, but their locations are different: Item A is where you are, C is two jumps out, B on a station in the system en route to C. On the first glance this setup seems worse, because C is to be found further away than in the first scenario, but actually you need to travel less.

And that's just a simple example where a decision simply based on distance leads to sub-optimal results. Matters get exponentially worse (Traveling Salesman Problem is a part of this, and that is already bad enough) if you add more items to the mix.



You don't have to calculate the route you would take to pick up your items, that would just make the system overly complex. All you need to check is whether there is an item on the market matching your price criteria for which the number of jumps to it is less than or equal to the number of jumps you've set as the limit.

So say for example that I have a fit which I want to set up for automatic purchase and I say that I am willing to accept matches within 1 jumps from my current location. Now I run the script in Jita for example and so the system would take Jita and all of the systems within one jump of Jita and add them to a set. Then for each item in the fit it just queries the market and buys the cheapest item which is being sold in a system in that set. If I was to set the criteria to anything within 5 jumps then you would just create a set of all the systems which are within 5 jumps of Jita and start again.

Now sure there are 7 systems adjacent to Jita so you could end up with 7+ actual jumps to collect your goods but they would all be within the vicinity of your original start point.
Taint
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#11 - 2011-12-14 17:52:40 UTC
when we are at it, can i haz an i win button to ?
Rina Asanari
CitadeI
#12 - 2011-12-15 09:01:29 UTC
Sephanor wrote:
Now sure there are 7 systems adjacent to Jita so you could end up with 7+ actual jumps to collect your goods but they would all be within the vicinity of your original start point.


That's where you don't see the actual crux of this problem. Let's say your purchases are scattered on the seven neighboring systems. To reach the first you have to jump once. The second to the last you have to jump TWICE, because every time you must cross Jita again.

So thats 1 + (6*2) = 13 jumps you have to do to gather your stuff. The best case (7 jumps) is only reached if the systems neighboring Jita are interconnected as well. And usually they aren't, so a good guess would be 10 jumps.

Now let's say you extend the search limit by just one system and you may find the stuff in two systems - each two jumps out. Or even maybe scattered on those two systems and the systems inbetween (meaning five locations, including Jita).

Then you need two jumps from Jita to reach the first and maybe picking up the stuff from the system inbetween, then (as the worst case) four jumps to the second system on the route, tallying up to six jumps in total.

Still better than even the best case when looking at the direct neighbours only.
Sephanor
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#13 - 2011-12-15 20:12:50 UTC
Rina Asanari wrote:
Sephanor wrote:
Now sure there are 7 systems adjacent to Jita so you could end up with 7+ actual jumps to collect your goods but they would all be within the vicinity of your original start point.


That's where you don't see the actual crux of this problem. Let's say your purchases are scattered on the seven neighboring systems. To reach the first you have to jump once. The second to the last you have to jump TWICE, because every time you must cross Jita again.

So thats 1 + (6*2) = 13 jumps you have to do to gather your stuff. The best case (7 jumps) is only reached if the systems neighboring Jita are interconnected as well. And usually they aren't, so a good guess would be 10 jumps.

Now let's say you extend the search limit by just one system and you may find the stuff in two systems - each two jumps out. Or even maybe scattered on those two systems and the systems inbetween (meaning five locations, including Jita).

Then you need two jumps from Jita to reach the first and maybe picking up the stuff from the system inbetween, then (as the worst case) four jumps to the second system on the route, tallying up to six jumps in total.

Still better than even the best case when looking at the direct neighbours only.



Why does the system have to take into account how many jumps would be involved with picking up the items? As long as your items are close by i.e. no more than x jumps from the location where you ran the script its plenty useful. Plus i'd think that the average person would probably want to just set it to current station and go to a market hub to buy their stuffs.
Rina Asanari
CitadeI
#14 - 2011-12-16 08:17:56 UTC
Sephanor wrote:
Why does the system have to take into account how many jumps would be involved with picking up the items? As long as your items are close by i.e. no more than x jumps from the location where you ran the script its plenty useful. Plus i'd think that the average person would probably want to just set it to current station and go to a market hub to buy their stuffs.


That's what you may want to do. But others might want to do some jumps in order to save a few ISK. Of couse, it's a personal preference how much jumps a saving of a given amount of ISK is worth. And that offers a whole new level of complexity.

If you just head out to IYFTH ("Insert Your Favourite Trade Hub") and opt to purchase everything there, it's a no-brainer: Open the fitting, iterate through the list, right-clicking the items and placing the buy orders.

But most of the time it isn't that easy, especially when it comes to contract-only stuff.
Levo Harkonnen
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#15 - 2011-12-16 14:02:14 UTC
What the OP is saying: Let's make Eve Online easy! Trust me, you don't want that. Just imagine the flood of morons and 13 year olds who are currently too busy playing COD# and calling each others mothers a wh­ore.