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The problem is the removal of slots, payments to ethereal entities that can move around the universe at will for any and every job (to steal your phrase), and removing the ability to install blueprints remotely is a triple nerf to a problem that wasn't all that severe in the first place.

As one needed a sizable number of labs constantly running on rather high investment BPOs in order to break even on fuel costs for the month.

They're also nerfing the maximum ME level as well, so its actually a quadruple nerf.

This still does nothing for the #1 problem regarding player owned stations:

The vast ocean in high sec of POS's sitting there doing absolutely nothing. In fact these changes will
make this problem even worse since it will remove standing requirements.

So now everyone can own a POS in high sec that sits there and does absolutely nothing!

Seriously though wouldn't there be a way to make it where POS's go away after a couple of weeks
of sitting there with no fuel? Seems like this would be pretty easy.

I totally agree that payments to non-entities is utter BS, as I've stated multiple times. In an age where we have fully automated PI facilities on varying hostile planetary environments, we still haven't figured out how to automate a completely self-contained manufacturing facility.

The no-slots thing has merit for when you're willing to trade increased manufacturing costs for faster production, but the lack of any option for queuing when desired means they still haven't really thought this out very well. As it appears now, we will be forced to rush all of our jobs, at increased costs, instead of pacing ourselves and spreading the jobs out, if we so desired.


They're simplifying the math by changing the focus of ME/PE research. Currently, you spend a fixed, pre-determined amount of time to gain decreasing improvements on blueprints. After sometimes an extreme ME limit for some items, you could have a perfect BPO (say, ME 3200 for EMP XL ammo).

With the change, you have 10 ME levels, and (as I understand it) ME 10 is the "perfect" ME. ME 10 EML XP BPO will be the new perfect. However, you take increasingly longer lengths of time to train each level for a fixed, pre-determined increase.

The ME change is only a nerf in that now, ME 1 means 5% waste is reduced while in the future it means only 1% waste is reduced. Theoretically, the time spent to obtain a perfect BPO for an item with large quantities of materials is the same under both systems, while times for intermediate ME levels will differ. You just won't be able to spend the barest, minimal amount of time for a huge 5% gain any longer. I'm not excited about that, since I've benefited from it as well, but it makes sense to change it in this manner. A finer granularity would have been nice though.


The cost scaling with multiple structures is pants-on-head ******** (filtered? really??), but I've tried to let others say that so far since I couldn't think of a nicer way to phrase it and still convey my meaning. Limited slots makes FAR more sense. Even upgrading the facilities makes more sense if this broken mechanic is going to be pushed through, though upgrading would generally convey more than a mere job installation cost reduction. It would imply better automation for one, which we apparently haven't figured out yet.


The bulk of my complaints about the changes center squarely around the installation ISK costs for W-space and for Sov Nullsec that I feel should not exist. I've not really considered the changes from the point of view of the industrialist who doesn't already live out of a POS (W-space, sometimes Null), but these changes could hurt them even more. At least in W-space, the POS exists primarily because of residency needs, so you're paying fuel costs regardless.

Personally, if we still don't know how to automate things, then I think "work force" changes should come in conjunction with PI changes to allow us to produce (train, etc) citizens on our planets. We would train Engineers, Soldiers, Scientists, (Slaves?), etc. and then feed them to our industrial facilities. Hisec, Lowsec, NPC Null would already have populations ready, managed by the Sov holder, so paying for a "work force" makes sense. Sov Null and W-space, you bring your own, it's up to you to do or not do.

But if we can automate PI facilities that build things on planets, why do we suddenly require manual labor crews to build things in space?

While reading through this thread, one reoccurring thought keeps hitting me - instead of CCP having some ridiculous aspect of stacking station modules for a bonus effect, why not have these "working teams" offer the bonuses instead? Various teams would have various levels of quality similar to how agents used to have quality (until CCP did not like everyone gathering around one agent while others idled, but now are going full circle - but I digress) and have them for various amounts of time: one time deal, one week, one month. Or have a player pay a huge cost in ISK and keep them permanently as part of their station.

Perhaps I am missing the obvious.

Excellent point.

Under this new system, output quality / chance of success / production time / etc. should become a function of cost only, and no longer a function of cost AND skill. The majority of the skills would have no purpose any longer, and skills that were for research and manufacture only, which excludes Graviton Physics/etc, should have their SP refunded.

Then we would only need skills like "Manufacturing Connections" or "Scientific Connections" to determine our skill at managing project teams and reducing hiring costs. And if the teams were affiliated with any particular faction, as everything NPC is, standings with the respective entities would further impact relations with the work teams: tree-hugging hippie Gallente work crews wouldn't work quite as hard for, or be quite as happy with, a hardened Amarrian former slave-lord contractor who was an enemy of the Gallente Federation, if they would work for them at all.

Once you start introducing NPCs, contrary to the stated goals of the game to put everything in player hands, you have to fully realize the benefits, drawbacks, and repercussions of using NPCs. And unfortunately, that brings everything full circle back to mission grinding for standings ... that you guys are trying to get rid of.

The cool thing about industrial changes is the entire system can be completely wrecked and slowly rebuilt, as, right now, in preparation for the next few months of complete economic chaos, industrialists are busily deepening their stockpiles, so they can sell oceans of crap for 2-4 times as much as it is currently worth.

To say, there will still be a semi-stable market when crius goes live. If the procurer is any indication, market stability will be pretty much unaffected for the next year or more, despite the rug being yanked from under it.

The problem is CCP will take the temporary post-crius stability as "mission accomplished" then move on to do other things. So when pre-crius stockpiles start running dry, and prices start skyrocketing, then CCP will go into panic mode.

I hope you haven't made any significant investments.

Metallurgy skill is used as a modifier for ME research time, 5%/level. So still worth it; Combined with just one lab you're now at a 50-55% reduced research time. Not sure about the implant though.

Also, the devblog has missed the little side bombshell brought up in the Starbases SiSi thread: Moon Mining arrays will be usable in 0.4x systems...

Interesting tidbit:
It only took 6 days between the opening of the feedback forum thread on Sisi to the probably firm commitment of "features" announcement in a DevBlog and this feedback thread.

Additional tidbit, that I honestly had overlooked in my continued crusade against the removal of "Remote from corporate office" campaign. Corporations that had previously used the mechanic to do their research at a POS due to the gridlock at stations in primarily ME and Copying in addition to the higher costs of having an office at a S&I station are out of luck. To put it simply any corporation that wants to use a station for anything in the S&I workflow will have to pay the significantly higher office rentals with those stations which will be compounded by the further demand for those office slots and the limited amount of office slots at stations. It is obvious those factors are going to virtually destroy new corporation start ups in S&I field while having zero impact on individuals (nor should it)

Alot of concerns in this thread but lets see if all is black and white.

-Bashing high sec offline tower is BORING, bashing high sec duckstar with pos gunners is even more BORING.
-Bpos in danger?Unlimited copy lines anyone?Copy your bpos use bpcs, laugh when merc kills your pos after 4days of bashing and gets bpc, merc tears best tears?
-I have to pay tax to use pos?So what you really think those big industrial corps out there will not insta increase the price on their product to cover their cost I'm sure they will.Market is self-correcting system.
-Also to the people talking about pos setups, get on sisi because all these theorys are gibberish the IGB setup is no longer true.Much has changed for example no slots, you can produce everything in 1array.
-No one is happy about clickfests but how about we wait until 22july before we have our opinions and give ccp a chance to show their work.

I still maintain the installation costs for Sov Null and W-space should not exist.


However, if we ignore the fact that Nullsec polices their space much like W-space does, and consider the "lol lore" potential for work teams to make contractual agreements with the blue doughnut to fly to destination systems unimpeded, I can still see an ISK sink related to hiring specialist teams in Sov Nullsec. The routes are well-known, if only a tad dangerous. The costs will be greater than in Hisec, naturally, but it's not impossible.

The same cannot be said for W-space. The routes are not well known at all -- in fact they are completely random -- and a specialist team trying to fly around W-space would last maybe 5-10 minutes before exploding. Many W-space entities don't even go to K-space for a week or more, so the "lol lore" explanation for contractual agreements doesn't even fly.


If a trade-off is required, then drop the specialist teams from W-space. W-space is categorized as a separate universe, so it would be very easy to limit advertisements to K-space universe. The prices in W-space would also be the highest in the game due to the lowest demand in the game, so they likely won't be used very often anyway.


By and large, the overall framework looks great, and will spice things up in Hisec for sure. Unfortunately, what works in Hisec doesn't work everywhere else, and this is just another example of such. There is still plenty of time before Crius to get some of these glitches straightened out, as they seem relatively minor even if their impact is generating a lot of noise. The "Array Stacking" mistake can just be dropped, and bonuses pushed to after-Crius, to work on something worth being proud of.