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R&D Agents - just a timer question
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Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2017-02-08 19:31:01 UTC

hey,

R&D agents, RP/day, anyone know what time the NPC working day officially starts/ends? EVE time ofc.

I presume they work 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds a day with no holidays, even during DT or extended maintenance, but I wondered what time they actually give you the points.

Random and pointless I know, but nothing worse than having a question and not being able to find any answers. Or even any further info.
Tau Cabalander
Retirement Retreat
Working Stiffs
#2 - 2017-02-09 00:28:59 UTC
RP points are "random and pointless" now, so I doubt if anybody ever bothered to investigate.
Andrew Indy
Cleaning Crew
#3 - 2017-02-09 08:45:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Andrew Indy
In the end of the day it deal not matter a huge amount. Even with a several agent the isk you make is a tiny .

I think I worked out that with my 2X5 lvl4 agents with lvl4/5 skills I would make like 600mil from all the RP I have gained over 5-6 years. So like 100mil per year.

My PI makes that is 6 days , Missions/incursions/WHs make that much in a few hours.

That is the one lot of SP I really regret spending, don't make my mistake (Unless you really need the skills for invention as well).

But yes, I believe they work 24*7 (maybe 23.5x7 as most things stop over DT)
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2017-02-09 10:30:41 UTC

hmm, well... Thanks for your input I guess...

RP aren't really random, the amount you receive per day is dictated directly by your skill level in your chosen field of study, in conjunction with the standing you have with the particular agent that is doing the research, and they are not pointless unfortunately as they are a mandatory input material requirement for all T2 invention research.

As for the skill points being a waste, well yes they are if you don't need them,and you can just extract them now, should you desire to redistribute them. If you do require datacore's then they are a good investment as they save a fair amount of Isk over time, therefore increasing the margin of profit from selling either the T2 BPC's from the researched BPO's directly, or running them through a manufactory to sell the actual items.

For industrialists, cutting research time/costs and shaving the costs off our overheads, backs, sacks and cracks is how we roll.

What I asked was if anyone knows the time, the internal time the RP's tick over from being non existent yet to be determined pre algorithm quantities, to post algorithm calculation manifestations and being assigned to your character, their must be a a internal clock that regulates then dictates the time RP's are distributed?

If you are also doing the R&D agent mission they provide, (24h ish random timer again) then your standing with that agent changes ever so slightly in the positive. This obviously effects the amount of RP's you will receive the following day. Knowing the time of RP distribution would allow us to complete the mission before the timer for the following day initiates.
Zarek Kree
Lunatic Legion Holdings
#5 - 2017-02-09 18:06:22 UTC
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance wrote:

hmm, well... Thanks for your input I guess...

RP aren't really random, the amount you receive per day is dictated directly by your skill level in your chosen field of study, in conjunction with the standing you have with the particular agent that is doing the research, and they are not pointless unfortunately as they are a mandatory input material requirement for all T2 invention research.

As for the skill points being a waste, well yes they are if you don't need them,and you can just extract them now, should you desire to redistribute them. If you do require datacore's then they are a good investment as they save a fair amount of Isk over time, therefore increasing the margin of profit from selling either the T2 BPC's from the researched BPO's directly, or running them through a manufactory to sell the actual items.

For industrialists, cutting research time/costs and shaving the costs off our overheads, backs, sacks and cracks is how we roll.

What I asked was if anyone knows the time, the internal time the RP's tick over from being non existent yet to be determined pre algorithm quantities, to post algorithm calculation manifestations and being assigned to your character, their must be a a internal clock that regulates then dictates the time RP's are distributed?

If you are also doing the R&D agent mission they provide, (24h ish random timer again) then your standing with that agent changes ever so slightly in the positive. This obviously effects the amount of RP's you will receive the following day. Knowing the time of RP distribution would allow us to complete the mission before the timer for the following day initiates.






Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your question regarding the timing. However, if your purpose for farming datacores is to use them for invention, there are far more efficient ways to get them than R&D agents. Even an Alpha alt can run defensive (or even offensive) FW plexes and earn enough LP to purchase many times more datacores than an R&D agent can produce. That's where most of the datacores on the market come from these days.

Admittedly, R&D agents are mostly passive (other than traveling to them and picking up), but one hour of FW plex farming will net you enough LP to buy more datacores than an R&D agent can produce in 6 months.

Very few people still farm R&D agents because they simply don't produce enough datacores to make it worthwhile compared to other sources.
Owen Levanth
Sagittarius Unlimited Exploration
#6 - 2017-02-09 18:26:04 UTC
Zarek Kree wrote:
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance wrote:

hmm, well... Thanks for your input I guess...

RP aren't really random, the amount you receive per day is dictated directly by your skill level in your chosen field of study, in conjunction with the standing you have with the particular agent that is doing the research, and they are not pointless unfortunately as they are a mandatory input material requirement for all T2 invention research.

As for the skill points being a waste, well yes they are if you don't need them,and you can just extract them now, should you desire to redistribute them. If you do require datacore's then they are a good investment as they save a fair amount of Isk over time, therefore increasing the margin of profit from selling either the T2 BPC's from the researched BPO's directly, or running them through a manufactory to sell the actual items.

For industrialists, cutting research time/costs and shaving the costs off our overheads, backs, sacks and cracks is how we roll.

What I asked was if anyone knows the time, the internal time the RP's tick over from being non existent yet to be determined pre algorithm quantities, to post algorithm calculation manifestations and being assigned to your character, their must be a a internal clock that regulates then dictates the time RP's are distributed?

If you are also doing the R&D agent mission they provide, (24h ish random timer again) then your standing with that agent changes ever so slightly in the positive. This obviously effects the amount of RP's you will receive the following day. Knowing the time of RP distribution would allow us to complete the mission before the timer for the following day initiates.






Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your question regarding the timing. However, if your purpose for farming datacores is to use them for invention, there are far more efficient ways to get them than R&D agents. Even an Alpha alt can run defensive (or even offensive) FW plexes and earn enough LP to purchase many times more datacores than an R&D agent can produce. That's where most of the datacores on the market come from these days.

Admittedly, R&D agents are mostly passive (other than traveling to them and picking up), but one hour of FW plex farming will net you enough LP to buy more datacores than an R&D agent can produce in 6 months.

Very few people still farm R&D agents because they simply don't produce enough datacores to make it worthwhile compared to other sources.


On the other hand, I tend to overdo it a bit with invention and over time I've amassed a ludicrous amount of T2-BPCs, far more than I can ever build. The about 12 R&D agents I have across three characters produce actually enough data cores to support my industry alt, if I some day can restrain myself enough to only invent what I can build. P
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2017-02-10 11:34:11 UTC
Zarek Kree wrote:

Even an Alpha alt can run defensive (or even offensive) FW plexes and earn enough LP to purchase many times more datacores than an R&D agent can produce. That's where most of the datacores on the market come from these days.

Thanks, I had not remotely concidered this, good to know. I had no idea we were allowed alpha alt's, I thought as a omega it was against the EULA to run a alpha alongside it, I have suspected since they were introduced that the majority of alpha accounts are in fact alt's for the very reason of providing free services advantageous to their mains, but isn't that technicaly considered multiboxing?
Gaius Clabbacus
Control Alt Delve
Goonswarm Federation
#8 - 2017-02-10 15:09:02 UTC
At science lvl4 I get 90-ish Research Points/agent/day, at science lvl5 it goes to 114-ish. Substracting the 10k ISK/core that the agent charges there is a net profit of 80-100k ISK/agent/day. If you don't collect them more than once a year it is almost worth the effort.

Keep in mind that CCP has been rumor-mongering (for quite some time) that research agents may go away and/or other datacore sources may be implemented.
Zarek Kree
Lunatic Legion Holdings
#9 - 2017-02-10 16:31:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Zarek Kree
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance wrote:
Thanks, I had not remotely concidered this, good to know. I had no idea we were allowed alpha alt's, I thought as a omega it was against the EULA to run a alpha alongside it, I have suspected since they were introduced that the majority of alpha accounts are in fact alt's for the very reason of providing free services advantageous to their mains, but isn't that technicaly considered multiboxing?


Well, it's definitely not against the EULA to have an alpha alt, though you generally can't multibox them because you can only have one alpha account logged in at any one time. But I only referenced an alpha alt being able to do FW plexes to highlight the fact that it's a very low skilled solo activity. There's no reason you can't do it with one of the toons on your main account, but any account can do it.

As an example, running one small offensive plex with a tier 2 faction (something easily done with a T1 Catalyst with T1 guns) nets you 17,500 LP for a little more than 15 minutes of work. If you ran three of them an hour, that's 52,500 LP. Datacores go for 50 LP, plus 50,000isk each (sold in batches of 5). If you sold 1 for every 2 you kept to cover the isk price, that's 100 LP per datacore. That equates to 525 datacores per hour to keep for your use.

Even with good skills, you only get about one datacore per day per R&D agent - and you have to sell some of those to cover the isk requirement. That's fine as a passive income source, but it's nowhere near enough to keep up with an industrialist's needs.
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#10 - 2017-02-10 17:47:12 UTC
Gaius Clabbacus wrote:

Keep in mind that CCP has been rumor-mongering (for quite some time) that research agents may go away and/or other datacore sources may be implemented.


Do you have a source for this rumour-mongering?
Zarek Kree
Lunatic Legion Holdings
#11 - 2017-02-10 18:10:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Zarek Kree
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance wrote:
Do you have a source for this rumour-mongering?



To my knowledge, a May 2012 devblog remains the only source of this speculation. However, they were pretty clear that they were nerfing R&D agents in a big way because they didn't like the passive nature of datacore farming. That's also when they added datacores to the FW LP store to encourage active farming.

An excerpt says: "While we do acknowledge that the initial period to train up for high-level research agents takes time, effort and money, we are not particularly fond of the passive datacore income in general. Indeed, once the initial requirements are met, this is not so much of an active profession and more of a passive collection of items, which we want to look at."

They also supposedly addressed their desire to phase out datacore farming in a 2012 interview with Ten Ton Hammer, though I've never bothered to actually listen to it.

Given that this is now almost 4 years later, they may leave it the way it is indefinitely, but they could also completely eliminate it at any point since most people have now transitioned away from R&D agents post-nerf (or don't depend on them anymore), so they probably wouldn't get much push back.
MadMuppet
Critical Mass Inc
#12 - 2017-02-13 00:03:17 UTC
That nerf was one of the nails in the coffin for my recent three year break (yeah, I'm back from the dead). I was lucky enough to have finished the training a week before they announced it was going to get nerfed. I'm hoping they'll take it out of the game so I could reclaim the skill points I wasted. (not holding my breath).

This message brought to you by Experience(tm). When common sense fails you, experience will come to the rescue. Experience(tm) from the makers of CONCORD.

"If you are part of the problem, you will be nerfed." -MadMuppet
Erebus 'TheChin' Sundance
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2017-02-13 09:56:29 UTC

Cheers Zarek o7

I can see their point, probably put on the back burner as opposed to abandoned, more pressing/interesting matters to address.

I will check out the FW option but continue milking the R&D agents until something actually changes.
Andrew Indy
Cleaning Crew
#14 - 2017-02-14 05:33:37 UTC  |  Edited by: Andrew Indy
MadMuppet wrote:
. That nerf was one of the nails in the coffin for my recent three year break (yeah, I'm back from the dead). I was lucky enough to have finished the training a week before they announced it was going to get nerfed. I'm hoping they'll take it out of the game so I could reclaim the skill points I wasted. (not holding my breath).


I'm sort of in the same boat (less the rage quite :) ), I had most trained up before the nerf and back then i was fairly new so I did not read dev blogs ect and only realized after I had finished the training.

I hope they don't remove it. Since the vast majority of the skills are used for T2 BPC production I doubt they would refund the SP so unless you create T2 BPCs they woudl then be useless.