Science & Industry

So I started working on a spreadsheet to calculate the material requirements needed for my BPO's. I started with Deflection Shield Emitter Blueprint. I pull the base material requirement off a blueprint 0/0 ME/TE respectively shown in industry without facility calculations incorporated. This gives me the base materials needed for the blueprint and thus a starting point for my mathematical genius (the term genius is likely not to apply but it makes me feel better about myself) to start crunching numbers. I began with the material list of Fernite Carbide x 22, Ferrolgel x 1, Sylramic Fibers x 9. I started with Fernite Carbide and took the base material multiplied by the material efficiency of 10%, which gives me

 =(22-(22*0.10))

The material requirement is 19.8. I check the blueprint in game and go to 1 run to check the rounding rule. It is set to round up. In Excel this becomes

 =ROUNDUP(22-((22*ME)),0)

##Note, the number 0 at the end of the formula is how many decimals to round the number up to. In this case that is 0## I now get 20 units per run. being that 19.8*5 is now 99 which is a whole number. I verify that this applies to the number of runs in the game. at 4 runs the cost is 80, at 5 runs the cost is 99. I add a multiplier to my formula for quantity and determine that the formula is now

=ROUNDUP((22-((22*ME)))*Quantity,0)

This calculated the ME modification flawlessly. I move forward to Ferrogel which has a base cost of 1 unit per run. I apply the same formula to verify for the next material to ensure that it applies universally.

=ROUNDUP((1-((1*E18)))*E20,0)

With this formula every 10th run would not require an additional unit of Ferrogel and therefore the required amount of Ferrogel to complete 9 runs would be exactly the same as the amount of ferrogel to complete 10 runs. I check this formula with all other quantities of required material to verify that it applies inside of other blueprints and it does in fact apply. This tells me that for some reason CCP has chosen to skip the utilization of ME when calculating material cost for BPOs with a base material cost of 1. So ME isn't being applied universally across the BPO as a material requirement change. This may very well be an intended mechanic for unknown reasons. It feels to me like lazy code. Or someone hypothesized that a requirement of 1 is as low as it can go and there is no way to be more efficient with units of 1. Which means that a material requirement of 22 having a 10% reduction should equal 20 and not 19.8 rounded up with every fifth run yielding 19....every single time regardless of the number of runs because fractional values aren't possible. As a logical or symmetric thinker I feel that this is possibly an oversight. This clearly won't affect the cost of manufacturing a blueprint in the short run. But it will affect long term. In this particular case Ferrogel runs anywhere from 24k to 33k depending on where I purchase it from. Which means that I'm incurring an additional cost of 6,000,000 isk per 2500 runs of the blueprint. As it happens I run the components blueprints in sets of 2500 runs. (2500, 5000, 7500, 10000). The cost to me is 6m, 12m, 18m, 24m, isk respectively. This single unit of ferrrogel is eating what could potentially be additional profit.

I hope this post has been enlightening and not confusing. As a member of the Trade & Industry minor bugs like this make a great impact on me financially as I've explained above. The cascading affect on cost of production is Eye opening in regards to the impact on my wallet. With Hyperdunking as it has been dubbed being a viable method of slaughting people in HighSec in what was previously a fleet engaging a Freighter and being a freighter pilot myself this single oversight in code could replace the cost if I decide to outsource with courier contacts. Or it could make me decide that the trip to Jita 25+ jumps away is worth it to collect the materials needed to provide a cheaper product.

For cases where only one unit is needed, no rounding is ever done. It's just 1 unit per run, period. Your formula for it therefor is overly complex. It should simply be: amount of runs = amount of ferrogel.

Your way of doing it is not correct sir based on my recent endevours. To show this I'll provide a link to a dropbox .png photo for your viewing pleasure and then explain what is different in my formula than yours.

DropBox Link - It's only a photo lol.

So in this photo (might have to download to see it best) I show two views of the same blueprint using two different formula's.

My formula where I round after I have multiplied by the quantity and your (presumed) formula where I round before I multiply the quantity.

So you say round it up once you determine that 22 with an ME of 10% is 19.8, So the requirement is 20....always, now multiply the 20 by the amount of units you want. 2500 units is 50,000 units required material.

Now do it my way. Take the 19.8 multiply it by 2500 and then round it up. In this case you don't need to round up the result and it is 49,500 units.

Now check it inside of EVE. You can do this by Opening the market. Selecting a blueprint and hit "View in industry" The blueprint will not have a facility selected so no additional modifiers will be applied. Apply your formula to a base material cost. Then apply my formula to the base material cost to confirm the correct one. To verify click the box for ME and change it to 10, then set the quantity to 2500 units. Note the difference form your formula and the formula I use. If you do any large scale production jobs 10,000/100,000 units you will see a significant different in price where a ME material cost is a fraction of a whole number.

Yes I am rounding and expecting precision. Perhaps you don't understand how computers work. They are input output devices. You input information, it outputs information. If I enter the same formula into my calculation as CCP does then I should get the same exact results as CCP does. People depend on precision when they download applications that do all of this math for them. Applications like EVE Industry Calculator for Android which apparently has an incorrect formula for ME and doesn't accurately calculated the material efficiency modification which usually ends in me purchasing an additional unit of material and thus throwing off the calculation for the profit margin percentage and the cost per unit to create.

Please apply to be a volunteer so you can relocate my post to the correct forum location. Until then instead of just telling me that I did something wrong, also tell me where it SHOULD have gone so I don't make the same mistake twice. I don't see how "EVE General Discussion" doesn't apply to my general discussion about the material efficiency formula.....but since you know everything perhaps you could both explain that and where to put my post the next time I make one?

Fantastic. Despite your sarcasm you at least provided useful information.

Not sure what the purpose of this topic is at this point. You've established two factors in the process, namely rounding after ME is applied and that materials can not be lower than 1 per run. Those are the rules of the game that you have to work with. Why are you writing a thesis on how you disagree with the rules CCP set out for not just you, but for everyone?



If you don't get the same result then your formula is off somewhere. I've written my own spreadsheets for working with the current industry and the results are always accurate, no exceptions. So how on earth are you implying that this is CCP's fault?

LOL!

I think you are going to fit in just fine here in the ol' EVE-O forum. +1 like from me.

Mr Epeen

Oh yeah. Sure. I believe that. *fumbles in her pocket for her tesseract*

The end result is the following formula:

=IF(Base>1,ROUND((Base-(((Base*ME)+(Base*FacilityBonus))))*Quantity,0),1*Quantity)

This applies universally across the blueprint.

Subsequently an afterthought. This can be simplified during the calculation of ME reduction by removing seperately calculating Base*ME and Base*FacilityBonus. by doing (Base*(ME+FacilityBonus)). So your Formula would then be.

=IF(Base>1,ROUND((Base-(((Base*(ME+FacilityBonus)))))*Quantity,0),1*Quantity)

This thread has been moved to Science & Industry.