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New dev blog: Starbase happy fun time

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Red Bluesteel
State War Academy
Caldari State
#1001 - 2011-11-11 00:28:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Red Bluesteel
Teclador wrote:
Dear CCP Greyscale,

after reading you Dev Blog on the planned changes to the Starbase System, some of these changes we waiting ages for but some could be really better.

1. Using Jump Bridges
Currently you need an Password and no shoot configuration to use a Jump Bridge.

Better, adding more and clearly defined Access Roles to the Structures / Access tab in the POS Manager Menu. You have here currently View, Take and Use Rows, but Use is quit not in use.

Use Roles could be:

  • Corporation
  • Alliance
  • Standing (+5)
  • Standing (+10)

(Keep in Mind that refueling the JB, must be also possible by these Groups, make the POS Manager live easier)

2. Passing Force Field
The Old System with Password is absolute worthless, but with some changes it could be more Flexible too.

Force Field Pass through Options:

  • Corporation
  • Alliance
  • Standing (+5)
  • Standing (+10)
  • * Extra Check box for extra Password security


3. Using Defense installations (Guns, Ewar, etc.):
Use Roles could be:

  • Corporation
  • Alliance
  • Standing (+5)
  • Standing (+10)

(Keep in Mind that refueling, must be also possible by these Groups, make the POS Manager live easier)

4. Improvements to other installation like Corporate Hangar, Ship Maintenance Array, Silos, (Adv.) Mobile Laboratories are also in bitter need, not only in fact of the access politics to them. (Repackage of Items)

5. Tower Setup Password security, so that not everyone can change the settings to an tower with only the right role.

6. Install Patterns for easier dropping and Anchoring new Towers automatically, with save Functionality like Ship Fittings.


I Hope i could give you some other good impressions what can be changed to the Starbase System, to make our Eve live more secure and more flexible, in special to the POS Managers out there Big smile.


This, 100% Agree (could be a copy of my thoughts Big smile)

This is a clear view from a position of pos manager and therefore I hope this is not overlooked by CCP.
(Dream of 1001 nights Roll)
Arkimedies
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1002 - 2011-11-11 05:19:08 UTC
Fuel Pellets ? Bahhh.

They are POS Pills, red pills, green pills blue pills and white pills. POS's are not chickens in the yard that you give pellets too!
POS's are dysfunctional conglomerates of disparate modules loosely orbiting a somewhat defined point in space that definitly need Pills, lots and lots of pills.

So, definitely colored pills, ditto small pills, better for the pill junkies.

Rorqual compression? Yes Please.

POS Tanker with jump capability? Yes please (but only if you can fit a covert cyno to it just for lols and merry xmas to potential gankers).

/start rant/
And, to all the whiners, please read the Blog, assembly all the pretty letters into words, then assembly all the pretty words into sentence's then try to comprehend the meaning behind those sentence's, that is if you are capable of it. A very high percentage of the people whineing in this forum seem to be incapable of basic literacy and comprehension
/end rant/
Mary Mercer
Doomheim
#1003 - 2011-11-11 05:58:21 UTC
I quit reading a few pages ago but I had an idea and if it's already shared I'm sorry.

First, Why do we have to remove the current fueling option in order to have the new one? We are going to allow the towers to switch over which means they are already going to be coded to handle both fuels in the fuel bay. Expand on that.

  • Fix the tower to burn both fuels. Have it check for fuel blocks every hour it cycles. If no blocks are present have it check for the old fuel types.
  • Fix the rate of water and liquid ozone on the tower even if they are going to use the old way of fueling keep the concept that the tower will now burn everything at a fixed rate.
  • (This is my favorite) Increase the burn rate of fuel by 10% when running under the old system. This offers WH guys the option of only hauling in water, Isotopes, and LO and not having to manufacture the blocks in the hole. Of course if they haul their PI to market and sell it, and buy the blocks they'd save a percentage on their fuel expense.

    • Incentive, with options. Think of it as 87 or 92 octane. Twisted
    Mary Mercer
    Doomheim
    #1004 - 2011-11-11 06:09:29 UTC
    Vincent Athena wrote:
    I think having the faction towers at 10% and 20% savings is fine. Faction towers right now do not reduce the need for many fuel types, like robotics. With the new system they will reduce the need for all types, so a smaller percentage is a good balance.

    There still seem to be 2 concerns for me and seen in some posts. One is the overall increase in heavy water and liquid ozone use. If you mine basic ice, you get for every 12 units of isotopes, 2 units of HW and one of LO. But the blocks require for every 12 units of isotopes 4.5 units of HW and 4.5 of LO, a basic mis-match to the ore. For the high sec dweller who mines their own ice, this is an issue; they will have a WH and LO shortage unless they mine far more. Then they will have an isotope excess.

    Fixes:

    Change the fuel block build requirements.

    Add the other ices to all ice belts (even high sec), things like Dark Glitter and Glare Crust, and let the miners, the market and the sandbox figure it out. (Edit: Or add Dark Glitter and Glare Crust Grav sites to areas that normally do not have such ore).

    The other issue seems to be the block color. I can take or leave this one, but different colors would be cool.



    This could be fixed later. Maybe they just want to burn up some of the stocked up HW and LW the prices are too low on both atm if you ask me. Leave it the way it is until the market adjusts then make fixes.
    Mary Mercer
    Doomheim
    #1005 - 2011-11-11 06:25:21 UTC
    Grady Eltoren wrote:
    CCP Greyscale et al:

    3) Have you done a time analysis on building the blocks versus just doing the math? I bring this up because after having fueled many POS's for years I am just NOT seeing it. To me the math was never a problem; I just used one of the many free websites like chucker's out there. Now we have to build/wait/run an array/haul/move from array to array...etc This new process seems like it is saving time, and just curious as to who it is saving time for?



    Thank you in advance



    I'm not trying to troll here so don't take it that way but really, who cares about the time involved? I mean within reason of course. Think about the extra time that goes into making fuel for a pos now that we can't just buy enriched uranium, robotics, and other various fuels off the market sold by npc's.

    I realize in null there is likely a certain extra suck factor in having to spend MORE time on fuel for the pos before it gets to it, but seriously this generates another industry and it SHOULD take more time. That's what deters some folks from doing it themselves and paying for the work to be done by buying the blocks off the market and selling their PI to the market.

    Someone early was B****ing about the "little guy" this is a perfect industry for the nub assuming it's not crazy skill intensive.. buy items off the market, generate some blocks, sell the stuff back. I'm mildly disappointed that they cut the build time in half.
    J'Rela
    Black Lotus Heavy Industries
    #1006 - 2011-11-11 06:39:30 UTC  |  Edited by: J'Rela
    On fuel blocks:
    I am against this idea [edit: as originally proposed] for a few reasons.

    First, this simply fails at its design purpose. As a tower manager, this doesn't even address the bulk of my workload (which is onlining and offlining modules, not managing fuel supplies) but more importantly, it really doesn't make my job any easier.

    This can actually make supply-chain management worse if one operates more than one racial type of tower. Suppose, for example, you decided for some reason to shift some of your towers from Gallente to Caldari towers. Now, in either system your supply stocks are now maladjusted, but with the new system, you will be unable to [edit: quickly re]allocate your secondary stocks of non-racial fuels. In other words, the opportunity cost of switching tower types increases. [edit: though, not really significantly. See the first paragraph of this complaint.]

    The shot goes wide and it's a clean miss, in other words. I'm your target market for this change and I do not like it specifically because it does not help me.

    Secondly, this is a huge nerf-bat swung at faction towers. I have never cared that my faction towers burn longer. I have to check them twice a day regardless. I care that I have to move fuel in lower volume and that they improve my margins for industrial processes. Faction towers are expensive and scarce. Removing their economic merit would be kind of a bummer for those of us who have already invested in them. [edit: no longer relevant to the discussion]

    Thirdly, this stands to make most tower operations more expensive[edit: significantly penalize many tower designs relative to others]. The vast majority of towers are not operated at full CPU and power load, and not just because that's fairly difficult to do.

    Fourth, this removes some potential dynamism from the fuel market.

    Now, there are some potential merits here, so to try to preserve them while removing most of the drawbacks I see above:

    Suggestions:
    A:
    1) Retain isotopes, LO, and heavy water as distinct fuel quantities, allowing each to keep on serving their distinct functions.
    2) Replace commodity fuels with "maintenance packs" manufactured from said commodity fuels. These should be much more granular than the proposed fuel blocks (i.e. a small tower might use 10 in an hour) so that
    3) faction towers can use less of them. Alternatively, faction towers could operate on longer cycles.

    [edit: apologies for not reading the comment thread and realising that suggestion 3 and part of 2 were already implemented.]
    J'Rela
    Black Lotus Heavy Industries
    #1007 - 2011-11-11 07:08:56 UTC  |  Edited by: J'Rela
    Mary Mercer wrote:

    Someone early was B****ing about the "little guy" this is a perfect industry for the nub assuming it's not crazy skill intensive.. buy items off the market, generate some blocks, sell the stuff back. I'm mildly disappointed that they cut the build time in half.


    This isn't an industry at all. Like all industries that move from intermediate products to final products, manufacturers will handle it in-house. If anything, it will probably make it harder for manufacturers who are not fully vertically integrated.

    So yes, it is worse for the little guy. However, I do not care.
    Scrapyard Bob
    EVE University
    Ivy League
    #1008 - 2011-11-11 12:57:36 UTC
    J'Rela wrote:
    Mary Mercer wrote:

    Someone early was B****ing about the "little guy" this is a perfect industry for the nub assuming it's not crazy skill intensive.. buy items off the market, generate some blocks, sell the stuff back. I'm mildly disappointed that they cut the build time in half.


    This isn't an industry at all. Like all industries that move from intermediate products to final products, manufacturers will handle it in-house. If anything, it will probably make it harder for manufacturers who are not fully vertically integrated.

    So yes, it is worse for the little guy. However, I do not care.


    It's an industry just like ship building, module construction, or ammo production is. You have the exact same choices:

    a) Vertically integrate and do it yourself.

    Which means that you tie up extra ISK in inventory (unless you manage your supply chain well) so that your production line doesn't run out of inputs every few hours, resulting in a run to the market. More work for you. But you do save maybe 2-5% in the cost of fuel every month.

    b) Pay someone else

    You pay someone else a slight premium for the finished product. You can buy exactly what you need, without any waste product sitting in your corporate hangar, tying up liquid ISK. Plus, you don't have to fuss around with constructing the item.

    (The issue with a "POS fuel pellet" industry being available to a small time producer is the ISK amount involved and the volume of materials. With Industry V, a POS array, and a PE 15 BPO, you're looking at about 275M ISK of inputs every 24 hours to keep that array slot busy. Hauling volume is about 125k m3 of materials needed every 24h.)
    Creat Posudol
    German Oldies
    #1009 - 2011-11-11 15:15:35 UTC
    Mary Mercer wrote:
    I quit reading a few pages ago but I had an idea and if it's already shared I'm sorry.

    First, Why do we have to remove the current fueling option in order to have the new one? We are going to allow the towers to switch over which means they are already going to be coded to handle both fuels in the fuel bay. Expand on that.

  • Fix the tower to burn both fuels. Have it check for fuel blocks every hour it cycles. If no blocks are present have it check for the old fuel types.
  • Fix the rate of water and liquid ozone on the tower even if they are going to use the old way of fueling keep the concept that the tower will now burn everything at a fixed rate.
  • (This is my favorite) Increase the burn rate of fuel by 10% when running under the old system. This offers WH guys the option of only hauling in water, Isotopes, and LO and not having to manufacture the blocks in the hole. Of course if they haul their PI to market and sell it, and buy the blocks they'd save a percentage on their fuel expense.

    • Incentive, with options. Think of it as 87 or 92 octane. Twisted


    Let me quote a line from the dev blog to answer why that proposal won't work:
    Quote:
    The starbase system doesn't allow for multiple simultaneous fuel types, so we have to switch from one to the other during downtime.


    And frankly I'd rather let them spend the time needed to implement this on something with a greater use to all of EVE Cool
    db Deckard
    Loc-Nar Support Services
    #1010 - 2011-11-11 19:50:33 UTC
    This move to fuel cubes may actually have more profound effects than people realize. I do believe this does nerf the small groups in more ways than one. Many small groups pay carefull attention to profit margins in the game to squeek out every isk possible to afford our toys. I ran the numbers per the quote in their blog and concluded I will not be doing reactions if this change comes to pass. I suspect that will drive many other small corps out of reactions as well. This will reduce the levels of moon minerals being sold @ JITA and reduce the levels of composites available. The result will be a lowering of prices of the former do to the glut, and a raise in price of the latter due to the short supply. Towers and their components will also decline in consumption. Lastly because many corporations will not be able to afford to operate towers PI consumption will also drop and those prices will also fall off dramatically.

    I think this has more potential to make a good number of people madder than the last big change. Most of us have spreadsheets or out of game tools that tell us exactly what our consumption rate is and the costs. If they want to fix something fix corp permissions and access at POS, thats a problem that needs addressing.

    -db
    Galfaey
    Hibernian Ascendancy
    #1011 - 2011-11-11 20:06:26 UTC
    I like the Idea of the Fuel Blocks except for one thing, The faction fuel bonus.

    Understandably, you don't want to use fractions of blocks, but consider this:

    1.) Reduce the materials required to make the blocks slightly (1/3 perhaps)

    2.) Require the POS's use 3/6/9 blocks per hour for each respective tower size.

    3.) Reduce the blocks/hour required for each Faction tower Tier by one.

    EX: Gallente Control Tower Large = 9 (Blue) blocks/hour
    Serpentis Control Tower Large = 8 (Blue) blocks/hour
    Shadow Control Tower Large = 7 (Blue) blocks/hour

    4.) Leave the Fuel bay sizes the same.

    This way may still give the refueling time length advantge of faction towers, and
    still leave refueling computations simple.

    Might be a good idea. I hope someone reads this and considers this as a balanced option.
    db Deckard
    Loc-Nar Support Services
    #1012 - 2011-11-11 20:33:50 UTC
    I really have to go back to do the math !!!

    Today I spend (i)525,203.12 per hour per tower = (i) 378,146,246.40 for 30 days
    Under the cube concept I would spend (i)591,996.32 per hour per tower = (i)426,237,350.40 for 30 days

    Thats a 13% increase in operating costs per tower. Thus I would concur that if the fuel blocks where reduced in cost by 1/3 that would lower overall costs by 12%.

    -db
    Dream Five
    Renegade Pleasure Androids
    #1013 - 2011-11-11 22:38:27 UTC

    Great changes!!

    Definitely must keep the fuel consumption difference.
    Dream Five
    Renegade Pleasure Androids
    #1014 - 2011-11-11 22:40:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Dream Five
    BTW something to keep in mind is if you want to get advantages from simplification you have to buy fuel blocks and they will come with a manufacturing price premium. So either you manufacture yourself or pay someone a 10-15% premium.

    You do realize that nobody is going to bother spending time doing high volume hauling, manufacturing and adjusting 0.01isk orders in a competitive market unless the manufacturing profit is over 10%? And if you are manufacturing yourself this actually makes the system more complex than it was before. Not only do you have to haul all the same junk but also spend time manufacturing, acquiring and researching fuel BPOs et c.
    Scrapyard Bob
    EVE University
    Ivy League
    #1015 - 2011-11-11 22:59:54 UTC
    db Deckard wrote:
    I really have to go back to do the math !!!

    Today I spend (i)525,203.12 per hour per tower = (i) 378,146,246.40 for 30 days
    Under the cube concept I would spend (i)591,996.32 per hour per tower = (i)426,237,350.40 for 30 days

    Thats a 13% increase in operating costs per tower. Thus I would concur that if the fuel blocks where reduced in cost by 1/3 that would lower overall costs by 12%.


    Pretty sure that your calculations are wrong. I ran the numbers before the price speculation in the various products and it came out to be around:

    Old fuels:

    Amarr: 136 / 213 / 366
    Caldari: 140 / 220 / 381
    Gallente: 176 / 291 / 523
    Minmatar: 139 / 217 / 375

    Fuel pellet numbers:

    Amarr: 87 / 171 / 341
    Caldari: 90 / 178 / 354
    Gallente: 122 / 241 / 480
    Minmatar: 89 / 175 / 348

    Naturally, since the price of LiqOz will go up slightly, you won't see quite the same savings as before. But POS fuel always goes up and down with the seasons / months / expansion cycle.

    And prices based on today's numbers:

    Old-style fuel:

    Amarr: 141 / 223 / 386
    Caldari: 145 / 229 / 399
    Gallente: 195 / 329 / 598
    Minmatar: 145 / 230 / 400

    If we were to use fuel pellets today:

    Amarr: 92 / 181 / 361
    Caldari: 95 / 187 / 372
    Gallente: 139 / 276 / 549
    Minmatar: 95 / 188 / 373

    Based approximately on the following prices (which may be slightly off, but for an apples-to-apples comparison, they work well enough).

    Coolant: 9500
    En Uranium: 10950
    Mech Parts: 10650
    Oxygen: 282
    Robotics: 69000
    HW: 111
    LiqOz: 410
    Heliotopes: 458
    Hydrotopes: 502
    Nitrotopes: 498
    Oxytopes: 1113
    James Bryant
    Deep Core Mining Inc.
    Caldari State
    #1016 - 2011-11-11 23:26:43 UTC  |  Edited by: James Bryant
    CCP, heard your art department was backed up. Allow me to present how the icons should look:

    Here's the showcase of all four, made from 256x256 sources: Four Fuel Blocks

    And the individual transparent PNGs:

    Turqouise
    Gold
    Blue
    Red

    It was maybe an hour, two tops, to whip out the Wacom and do them from scratch. And I don't even have the source files!

    You're welcome to use them, but if not, pleeeease convince your art team to take the 10 minutes out of their day to alter the existing ones.

    -JB
    Reathena
    Center for Advanced Studies
    Gallente Federation
    #1017 - 2011-11-11 23:29:06 UTC
    At first, I wanted to add my vote AGAINST the currently proposed fuel rework, but after working through the numbers and reading the updated proposal.... well, read on. (it all assumes that my math is correct and my understanding of the updated proposal is also correct)

    I (my alt) has an elite faction medium tower in high-sec. The reason for it is not for longer fueling but for economical fueling costs.

    Current consumption is:
    169 iso's/hr
    25 heavy water/hr
    6 liquid ozone/hr
    7 oxygen
    everything else matches a normal med. tower.

    under the new system, as I understand with the newly proposed faction considerations, I would effectively need to supply this:
    (~25% reduction of fuel pellets used per cycle due to elite faction tower)
    1 fewer coolant
    0.5 fewer enriched uranium
    1.5 fewer mechanical parts
    0.5 more oxygen
    0.625 fewer robotics
    19 fewer iso's
    31.25 more heavy water
    50.25 more liquid ozone

    Those last two are biggies for me. Those allowed me to fine-tune my tower. With the proposed system, it encourages me to be wasteful - anchor more objects - wasn't there some correlation between number of object and lag? (innocent look)

    The manufacturing process for pellets actually complicates things for someone who handles PI, Ice Mining and Fueling of their POS(s). It adds more logistics steps. I also find the whole 'it simplifies the math' argument to be pointless. Eve is a complicated game. _That_ is the attraction for me. If you simplify it, I will lose interest.

    Personally, the logistics problem isn't so bad for me - another income stream, perhaps.

    As to the costs - I just ran the numbers with the prices as of the writing of this and if my math is correct, it will be cheaper for me to run my elite faction medium tower with pellets. I sure hope my math is correct.

    If the costs stay about the same (or get lowered) I'm all for it!!! Big smile

    Reathena
    Alt for a paranoid carebear
    Bear
    SoreCitrus
    State War Academy
    Caldari State
    #1018 - 2011-11-12 11:05:47 UTC
    Sorry if this had already been answered but what will happen with the fuel that we already have in wormholes? Say for example that I have 6 months fuel for my tower inside a wormhole and after the patch it needs fuel blocks instead. So what happens in that scenario?
    Pyro Miner
    The Scope
    Gallente Federation
    #1019 - 2011-11-12 11:23:15 UTC
    Reathena wrote:
    At first, I wanted to add my vote AGAINST the currently proposed fuel rework, but after working through the numbers and reading the updated proposal.... well, read on. (it all assumes that my math is correct and my understanding of the updated proposal is also correct)

    I (my alt) has an elite faction medium tower in high-sec. The reason for it is not for longer fueling but for economical fueling costs.

    Current consumption is:
    169 iso's/hr
    25 heavy water/hr
    6 liquid ozone/hr
    7 oxygen
    everything else matches a normal med. tower.

    under the new system, as I understand with the newly proposed faction considerations, I would effectively need to supply this:
    (~25% reduction of fuel pellets used per cycle due to elite faction tower)
    1 fewer coolant
    0.5 fewer enriched uranium
    1.5 fewer mechanical parts
    0.5 more oxygen
    0.625 fewer robotics
    19 fewer iso's
    31.25 more heavy water
    50.25 more liquid ozone

    Those last two are biggies for me. Those allowed me to fine-tune my tower. With the proposed system, it encourages me to be wasteful - anchor more objects - wasn't there some correlation between number of object and lag? (innocent look)

    The manufacturing process for pellets actually complicates things for someone who handles PI, Ice Mining and Fueling of their POS(s). It adds more logistics steps. I also find the whole 'it simplifies the math' argument to be pointless. Eve is a complicated game. _That_ is the attraction for me. If you simplify it, I will lose interest.

    Personally, the logistics problem isn't so bad for me - another income stream, perhaps.

    As to the costs - I just ran the numbers with the prices as of the writing of this and if my math is correct, it will be cheaper for me to run my elite faction medium tower with pellets. I sure hope my math is correct.

    If the costs stay about the same (or get lowered) I'm all for it!!! Big smile

    Reathena
    Alt for a paranoid carebear
    Bear








    your faction tower wil only get a 20% discount, not a 25%, thx to a csm dude saying 20% is easier (proberly sells pi stuff himself)

    old 25% was only on some part of feul, the 20% works on all,

    for my large faction it wil actual mean i need to spend more isk on feul
    for smal and med it proberly be less as the round numbers down for those blocks (they not gona let it use a 0.5 robotic etc)
    Pyro Miner
    The Scope
    Gallente Federation
    #1020 - 2011-11-12 11:24:27 UTC
    SoreCitrus wrote:
    Sorry if this had already been answered but what will happen with the fuel that we already have in wormholes? Say for example that I have 6 months fuel for my tower inside a wormhole and after the patch it needs fuel blocks instead. So what happens in that scenario?


    yahave to convert the old feul into th newfeul type with will be easy todo with a comp array or ammo array and some cheap bpo's that wil be seeded a month before the change