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Where's my fuel block switch date, Lebowski? [e: Jan 24th]
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Lili Lu
#21 - 2011-12-09 22:55:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Lili Lu
Fuujin wrote:
It's far easier to "just convert a week" when you only run a handful of towers and can easily hit all of them in that week timeframe.

Try scaling up to a few dozen (let alone a few hundred) and then having to run out to each tower and pull out the old stuff and load up a full bay of the new stuff, within the few days of block fuel you had prepped...

And most of the complaining is due to CCP's poor messaging: the initial announcement gave the impression of a switchover within a few weeks--mid december. This made everyone do a crash program to research up block BPOs, secure manufacturing slots, plan fuelling, build the blocks, and then start prepping their towers with blocks so the transition would be as smooth as possible.

Now CCP is coming out with "did we say a few weeks? we meant a few months" and now you have to stop in your tracks and figure out the most graceful back-out plan while keeping things prepped for the delayed switchover. It's a major pain in the ass.

I understand their reasoning, but the timing and messaging was poorly thought out in advance--it's not like the holiday scheduling was an unknown in november.

True I don't run dozens of towers. I do feel bad for folks that were so eager to use these things that they optimistically banked on a smooth transition. Fuel blocks should be a wonderful new feature. That very fact may have been what led so many to overproduce and overstock.

Folks that do multi multi pos work should be asking their alliance or alliance leaders for volunteers to help with the now switched up switchover. Any alliance that doesn't gather or draft volunteers for such an effort would not be one worth slaving for imo.

However, my point still stands. This was foreseeable. We all know this is a big change in the game. It was bound to encounter hiccups. Sure enough it did. Then there was the timing issue. Greyscale talked about all his folks leaving for vacation over the holidays. I was thinking of players doing the same. Regardless, as soon as the first hiccup hit it was going to push the switchover to some time after the holidays.

The wormholers have it the worst if they did this. As hauling the blocks back to a station to reprocess is not a simple option. I haven't tried putting them in a pos corp hangar array for storage, but I hope that is an option for those folks. And yes it still leaves the necessity to make more runs to known space for new batches of soon to be old fuel. On the flip side it probably is not dozens of pos (although I may be underestimating the size of some wormhole operations here).

They are now apparently going to look at whether they can temporarilly increase the size of the fuel bay on a pos. This would allow the blocks to stay in the bay and allow more room for more soon to old style fuel to be dumped in. I'm not sure that is a good idea. One could foresee problems with overstuffed fuel bays on the eventual switchover day if they reduce the fuel bay size back to the intended size.

I'm not sure how this new schedule will affect or be affected by the upcoming Hulkageddon. Regardless, not much we can do. CCP flubbed something, not unpredictably. And yes, they should have let us know there was a problem a little sooner. But banking on December 14th to the extent of converting all fuel was, for me to be kinder, overeager.
Justin Credulent
Luv You Long Time
#22 - 2011-12-09 23:48:39 UTC
Goon tears, best tears.

Null-Sec needs to HTFU and stop crying to CCP. If null-sec wants PvP, they need to stop being carebears and start fighting eachother - after years of bot-mining, they have the ships!
Xen Solarus
Furious Destruction and Salvage
#23 - 2011-12-10 00:50:25 UTC
Now i really wish i hadn't converted months of fuel into blocks!

Guess its time to buy some more. Blink

Post with your main, like a BOSS!

And no, i don't live in highsec.  As if that would make your opinion any less wrong.  
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#24 - 2011-12-10 03:10:02 UTC
Xen Solarus wrote:
Now i really wish i hadn't converted months of fuel into blocks!

Guess its time to buy some more. Blink

Or reprocess some blocks at a station where you have perfect refine... assuming you have the skill.
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#25 - 2011-12-10 05:20:54 UTC
Tau Cabalander wrote:
Xen Solarus wrote:
Now i really wish i hadn't converted months of fuel into blocks!

Guess its time to buy some more. Blink

Or reprocess some blocks at a station where you have perfect refine... assuming you have the skill.


Even if you don't, if you have Refine V and Refine Eff V trained you'd only lose 0.5% (from the HW/LOz/Isotopes). That's about 2M ISK per 30 days lost by reprocessing a month's worth of large tower fuel blocks.

With Scrapmetal Processing, you get back 100% of the inputs when you reprocess the block.
Fuujin
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#26 - 2011-12-10 08:16:51 UTC  |  Edited by: Fuujin
Lili Lu wrote:

*wall of missing the point*

But banking on December 14th to the extent of converting all fuel was, for me to be kinder, overeager.


Oh, expecting CCP to screw something up is like expecting water to be wet. The only question is if the water is going to freezing cold or boiling hot.

The problem isn't that fuel isn't onhand--even if you're built a year's supply, you can refine the stuff. The problem is if you've prepped a significant amount of towers tor the half-and-half transition "in a couple of weeks" (implying before the holidays) and now you're left in a position where you have to do 2-3x the fueling work for the next week or so, and THEN you have to do it again in another month. And you didn't have a choice in the matter--if you didn't prep the towers you'd be faced with having to do so within whatever arbitrary timeframe CCP provided (which could be as little as 24-48 hours---a virtually impossible timeline unless you play eve 23/7) and in prepping them you replace half their fuelbay with useless filler materials (which applies both ways--fuel blocks are useless before the patch, and individual fuels are useless after it). So in preparing for the promised timeline and giving yourself a bit of buffer for any implementation screwups you've now doubled your refuelling schedule.

But in attempting to mitigate and anticipate all those risks and screwups, CCP still manages to find a way to shaft you by pushing the date out over a month (or 3 fuelling cycles per tower with the blocks in place). Bravo.

This is easily one of the most required aspects of 0.0 living and one of the most soul-crushing and thankless jobs. Fuel blocks will ultimately make fueling easier, but damn if CCP isn't extracting a couple of pounds of flesh to make it happen. With a soup spoon.
Rip Minner
ARMITAGE Logistics Salvage and Industries
#27 - 2011-12-10 08:39:46 UTC
I like the name ENERGON CUBES for the win! Lol

Is it a rock point a lazer at it and profit. Is it a ship point a lazer at it and profit. I dont see any problems here.
Also Aswell
Apple Industries Inc.
#28 - 2011-12-12 16:05:45 UTC
" CCP still manages to find a way to shaft you by pushing the date out over a month (or 3 fuelling cycles per tower with the blocks in place). Bravo."

Wow, exaggerate much?

So exactly how did you get "shafted" here? You made a bunch of fuel cubes that you're going to need anyway from materials you either already had, needed or were going to obtain. I honestly fail to see the problem here.
Fuujin
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#29 - 2011-12-12 17:00:28 UTC
Also Aswell wrote:
" CCP still manages to find a way to shaft you by pushing the date out over a month (or 3 fuelling cycles per tower with the blocks in place). Bravo."

Wow, exaggerate much?

So exactly how did you get "shafted" here? You made a bunch of fuel cubes that you're going to need anyway from materials you either already had, needed or were going to obtain. I honestly fail to see the problem here.



Consider: you have towers spread across a few systems. Perhaps even several constellations, or even a region! (dare2dream)

Fueling all those towers takes a lot of time. So you prep the towers for the switchover (which by all indications will be within 2-3 weeks of the Crucible patch) by filling them up halfway with blocks, so you have the most amount of time possible to visit them after the patch and pull out the old fuel/fill it up with blocks.

Now, you have to either pull out all the blocks (just to put them all back later) OR you keep them in and have to refuel the tower 2-3 times in the next month. Had this date slippage been communicated several days earlier (when it happened), that much more effort would have been spared in switching over the towers.

I understand how this might not seem a lot of work to someone who maybe operates one (or two!) towers in a nice safe hisec station system, but trust me on this.
Also Aswell
Apple Industries Inc.
#30 - 2011-12-12 18:16:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Also Aswell
"Consider: you have towers spread across a few systems. Perhaps even several constellations, or even a region! (dare2dream)

Fueling all those towers takes a lot of time. "

If you're having to do all of this solo then your corp is broken. Either get out or recruit pilots that will pitch in and help with these activities. Everyone in our corp pitches in. Sitting around and only jumping in for the profitable ops is not an option.

You're trying to pin this on CCP setting cutover date that was further out than you wanted it to be. I'm honestly not trying to troll you here, man. You really do need to get some responsible pilots to spread out the day-to-day activities.

-AA
Steven Fonulique
SF Incorporated
#31 - 2011-12-13 10:28:28 UTC
With an important game change like this what CCP should have announced from the get go is that they would announce the switch over date at least two weeks before said date so that people knew they wouldn't need to stuff blocks into their towers before a fixed date was announced.

Arguing that player corps could manage their tower fuelling activities better doesn't change the fact that the details for this switch over were communicated badly.
Sum Olgy
Perkone
Caldari State
#32 - 2011-12-14 23:02:45 UTC
Steven Fonulique wrote:
Arguing that player corps could manage their tower fuelling activities better doesn't change the fact that the details for this switch over were communicated badly.



AND it was badly thought out in the first place. So now, if you want ALL of the information you need to look at several different forum/dev blog posts which all contain partial/confliction/incorrect information. You really need to have some prescience when announcing changes. Not just make it up as you go along. Otherwise we'll have EVE my committee and that will be horrible.

So come on CCP - you can manage changes better than this - like having ONE repository/dev blog/forum post containing ALL of the relevant information instead of several like you do at present.
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