Science & Industry

So, for those who don't know, as detailed in this dev blog, datacores from research agents are basically cut in half and datacores are introduced into FW loyalty stores: http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28659

I'm not moaning, despite being an inventor and someone that will lose out somewhat because of the changes. I do agree it was a very passive source of income. However, it was not actually much more passive than PI in my opinion - once you've got all your PI set up, all you do is set it off every day, maybe move a few extractors, and collect the results every few days. I'm comparing it to PI since that seems a useful comparisson to make, in terms of design decisions and how much effort players should put in for a return.

The dev blog also hints at further changes. I'd like to make some positive suggestions about what shape those changes might make. Datacore farming (the old way) is boring and passive, it's been nerfed by half but that to me is not a solution to the problems of it being passive and dull.

So I thought of some ways to make it more interesting:

1. Simple change: you get no research points (RP) to trade in for datacores unless you do the missions. For those of you that don't know, if you have a research agent, you get some RP per day regardless, and you can double it by doing a mission. So make it all related to missions. And while you're at it, make the missions more interesting! There are only 2 missions - deliver X trit to the agent, or a simple 1 jump courier. Add in some more interesting missions, but ones that industrial characters might do (such as the mining missions maybe)
2. Another simple change: You get LP from agent/missions, not RP. The LP stores of the research corps sell datacores. You can probably do away with research agents by implementing this change and make it all mission-based via conventional agents.
3. Another mission-based idea: again, no RP without effort, but from missions, but in this case a new set of missions geared toward more industrial characters. Missions might be like complexes, requiring scanned down, mabe hacking etc at the end to access something with datacores in it. Maybe rather than the hacking/archaeology skill at the end point, you use the relevant science skill.
4. A complex change: introduce another "mini-game" like PI for datacores. Maybe you only access it when you have access to research agents, but there is some effort and skill required. It doesn't have to be identical to PI, my point is that CCP seems reasonably happy with PI and the amount of player effort required. Just as an aside, plenty of Japanese RPGs have minigames for upgrading items and the like, there are loads of examples out there.
5. Create blueprints for datacores. Blueprints are seeded via LP stores of research corps. This is similar to the change to POS fuel, in a way. Maybe those datacore blueprints need PI ingredients, sleeper components, "normal" minerals, that's up to the designers what they would like to tie it to. So you don't grind RP any more, but you do grind with research corps to get the LP to buy the BPOs. Maybe some required components come from the LP stores too.

These are just some thoughts to get the discussion started. They are not mutually exclusive either - for example maybe suggestions 3 + 5 could work well together, where BPOs are seeded in LP stores of research corps, and you have to do some unique missions to get some of the required components.

EDIT: I think the best ideas should use the standings for research corps in some way and the science skills in some way, so that players who have already done the grind and training can use those attributes (and grinding standings / training skills is a core part of the game anyway). Of course I have a vested interest here because I have ground the standings and trained the skills, so I am biased! However the skills are needed to build Tech II items anyway so they can't really be dropped from the game, might as well find a way to use them more creatively.

Now, it's over to you, the community! Critique, discuss, flame in your usual manner

What about having R&D agents do something like . . . I dunno . . . affect your actual R&D experiments?

Like decryptors they could affect the BPCs that you get out of invention.

Each R&D agent would have two attributes
The skill that he/she specializes in (Plasma Physics, Electrical Engineering, whatever)
The bonus that he/she gives (bonus to ME or PE or Runs or Probability of Success)

Like now you can "work" with up to 6 R&D agents based on skill
If the invention that you are running requires the skill that your R&D agent specializes in you get the bonus, otherwise no bonus for you.

You have to choose which R&D agents you want to work with to maximize the inventions that you want to do.

-FM

THIS would be great, and makes total sense. +1.

Very true, if you have to interact with the agent every day in person, that's going to be a lot of travelling. I can see why they have to limit it as it stands though, you'd still want some form of cap so you can't just churn out hundreds of cores a day. Food for thought...

+1

This is something that I've been thinking about for a while. I don't have a problem with CCP nerfing the passive income side of things. I don't actually think the PI comparison is very accurate - there's no way to set up PI to run for a month or more with absolutely no player input, whereas there is no downside to doing that with R&D agents. That's not a particularly desirable situation, but I'm not sure that the current situation changes that significantly.

Since the mission RP reward is equal to one day's passive RP, though, they've nerfed the missions in exactly the same way - with the unfortunate side-effect of making that totally passive, collect datacores once a month playstyle the only half-way worthwhile use of R&D agents*. With a L4 research agent I can, once a day, do a single mission that will earn me less than half a datacore. That works out to maybe 110k ISK profit for the courier mission and significantly less for the trit mission, since the tritanium the agent wants costs ~50k. For one agent I could at least base out of the station they're in to avoid travel times (although given that R&D missions are limited to one/day it's almost certainly not worth choosing a HQ solely for that reason) but even that goes out the door as soon as you try to use multiple agents. As a source of income, the active R&D missions may well be the worst possible choice in EVE.

The flip side of that, however, is that the nerf doesn't actually make a huge difference to using R&D agents for passive income, at least once you've got the skills trained. The return on your investment has dropped, which is likely to discourage any more players from getting involved, but for anyone who's already got the skills and standings required you might as well carry on business as usual. It takes twice as long before you build up enough RP to justify cashing in, admittedly, but since RP never expire and they'll slowly but surely build up over time regardless of what else you can still get exactly the same ISK/effort now as you did before by just collecting datacores half as often.

Overall, I agree with the OP: this might discourage more players from getting involved with a broken mechanic, but the mechanic's not actually fixed. As for the suggestions for the next step:

1) The R&D mission system would need a significant overhaul, otherwise this would just boil down to 'make R&D agents useless'. I actually do like the idea of making RP depend entirely on running missions, but since they're no longer the only decent source of datacores and the potential income is pathetic, this on it's own wouldn't work.
2) Given that datacores have been included in the FW LP stores, research corps being given the same deal seems unlikely. I'd expect CCP to just drop R&D agents entirely and make FW the only source if they choose this route.
3) This I support whole-heartedly - make R&D missions actually worth doing!
4) Again, this I would support.
5) I suspect that CCP won't implement BPOs for datacores, since a manufacturer who got their hands on one could pump out as many datacores as he liked after that. (You could add some special LP store ingredients to prevent that but then you've created datacores for the datacores, and down that path lies madness.) Adding BPCs only to LP stores is essentially the same as 2) with an extra step in the manufacturing process - see above for my thoughts.

*The missions were arguably a waste of time even pre-nerf, admittedly, but now they're even more of a joke than they were.