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New dev blog: Starbase tweaks: an update

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ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#81 - 2011-11-23 19:00:01 UTC  |  Edited by: ZaBob
ZaBob wrote:
And without a volume adjustment, I think it is a serious PITA for WH operators. I brought this up before; others have brought it up, too. That, I think, you could take care of in a single stroke; you'd spend more time discussing the exact value than implementing and testing.

I think you've fallen in love with both the feature and the schedule. I think you need to back off and not rush this.

As it is, I would MUCH rather just not have it, and continue with the status quo. If you want to make my life easier, just reduce the volume on the ice fuels. Save yourselves a bunch of QA work.

I spend FAR more time hauling fuel, than I do calculating how much of each fuel. The complexity really doesn't bother me. The volume does. The volume of these blocks is FAR higher than the volume of ice fuels alone, which is all I current have to haul.

Can we get you, CCP Omen, and a bunch of other devs to go live in a WH for a couple months? It would be both fun for you, and educational.


Just to be clear, we would, of course, make the fuel at our POS. Hauling fuel blocks is obviously stupid.

But getting the array brought in, set up, the BPOs, researched, and going through the extra step -- not one BIT of that makes my life simpler. It is 100% extra PITA.

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.
Trimutius III
Foundation 053
#82 - 2011-11-23 19:07:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Trimutius III
Mnengli Noiliffe wrote:
to be honest, 5 minutes instead of 10 is simply no change.

I mean what is the point in introducing the need for manufacturing in the first place? why before you did not have to manufacture anything to fuel a starbase, and now you have? what kjnd of nerf is that?

If this is supposed to be a usability upgrade (instead of a usability nerf as it is now), just make this conversion free, or take some symbolic time, like 1 minute for 400 cubes.

With what it is now, we'll have all the high sec manufacturing facilities taken by only the fuel cubes production for years to come.

You might just say so if you wanted to nerf high sec manufacturing, not disguise it as a 'boost' to starbase management.

lol... Believe me these manufacturing jobs won't be nearly enough to fill up slots in highsecs. One station with 50 slots will be enough to produce fuel for 600 hours of work of Large POS. So actually 1 manufacturing station in highsec is enough to fuel 600 large POSes (or 1200 medium Poses or 2400 small Poses) and it just rough calculation because I wasn't taking in account sov bonuses and factional POSes bonuses and PE bonuses. And there are so many manufacturing slots in high sec that it actually will put some strain near trading hubs probably but if you will go at least 3-5 jumps away from hub there will be slots available as they are now...

And actually having this blocks will simplify stuff especially for people who won't manufacture them and will by ready to use blocks in Jita.
ZaBob
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#83 - 2011-11-23 19:08:22 UTC
ZaBob wrote:

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.


In fact, the *only* thing being made simpler is buying completed fuel, and putting fuel into the tower/managing inventory *within* the tower.

Overall, this is making things MORE complicated; exactly the opposite of your goal.

I vote for just dropping the whole idea. Sorry to rain on your parade. I know that feels like crap; I've had some bad ideas get knocked down after spending shiploads of time on them.

But I think it's the right thing to do.
Ethilia
Freelance Excavation and Resistance
#84 - 2011-11-23 19:13:10 UTC
ZaBob wrote:
ZaBob wrote:

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.


In fact, the *only* thing being made simpler is buying completed fuel, and putting fuel into the tower/managing inventory *within* the tower.

Overall, this is making things MORE complicated; exactly the opposite of your goal.

I vote for just dropping the whole idea. Sorry to rain on your parade. I know that feels like crap; I've had some bad ideas get knocked down after spending shiploads of time on them.

But I think it's the right thing to do.


Frankly, I like the fuel pellets and they only need to do 2 things to make it close to perfect for me: 1. reduce their size by 4x or more and 2. make manufacturing instant (or very fast).
Woodiex3
Apex Clan
#85 - 2011-11-23 19:24:57 UTC
the other way to handle the switch over "disable fuel consumption" by towers for 2 weeks ?
Ingvar Angst
Nasty Pope Holding Corp
#86 - 2011-11-23 19:29:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Ingvar Angst
Double posted. Poop.

Six months in the hole... it changes a man.
Ingvar Angst
Nasty Pope Holding Corp
#87 - 2011-11-23 19:33:07 UTC
ZaBob wrote:

Just to be clear, we would, of course, make the fuel at our POS. Hauling fuel blocks is obviously stupid.

But getting the array brought in, set up, the BPOs, researched, and going through the extra step -- not one BIT of that makes my life simpler. It is 100% extra PITA.

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.


My apologies, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on the degree of added difficulty this provides us in wormholes. There are, as I'm certain you're aware, two main schools regarding fueling pos's in holes... those who do PI for fuel and those who don't. Regardless of the path you wander, you're still required to bring in ice drippings for the fuels PI can't provide (in addition to PI fuels if you don't make your own).

So let's look at the first group, those like myself that make our own PI pos fuels. I'm not sure who, if anyone, actually has all their ammo assembly array and/or component assembly array slots filled up 24/7... I've certainly never come close... so for many I assume it's not a question of slots available (unless you're a non-industrial type... that's another story). So, yeah, we have an extra step in the processing, but it's not that big of a deal really. When you get the BPO, make a couple copies, start some less-than-fully-efficient pellet making while you research the BPO, then use the BPO (or better copies) exclusively.

Those that don't do PI for fuel actually have it easier... all they need to do now is fill the hold with pellets and they're good to go. No calculating robotics vs. liquid ozone vs. mech parts vs... well, you get it. Pure fuel importers get a break.

Non-industrials... those that don't manufacture but make pos fuels from PI... there's a couple options opening up now, and they're actually pretty interesting if you consider it...

1. Lrn2Produce. OK, OK, not everyone wants to manufacture. They're spending skill points where they want them, so this won't be attractive to many. So I present Option 2.

2. Consider switching your PI over to high value P3 and P4 products to export, buy pellets for import. Yeah, it may be annoying to switch the PI networks over, but if you run the numbers... well, I'm seeing overall profit potential that's rather attractive.

Yes, it looks on the surface like there's great PITA potential, and there is... but only if you let it.

Oh, as an aside, someone calculated the volumes of the fuels and the blocks and it turns out there's a bit of compression happening... the pellets take a bit less space than the volume of their parts.

Six months in the hole... it changes a man.
Chribba
Otherworld Enterprises
Otherworld Empire
#88 - 2011-11-23 19:41:31 UTC
Nice to see the reduction back on the faction towers.

/c

★★★ Secure 3rd party service ★★★

Visit my in-game channel 'Holy Veldspar'

Twitter @ChribbaVeldspar
Aineko Macx
#89 - 2011-11-23 19:41:36 UTC
Ingvar Angst wrote:
2. Consider switching your PI over to high value P3 and P4 products to export, buy pellets for import. Yeah, it may be annoying to switch the PI networks over, but if you run the numbers... well, I'm seeing overall profit potential that's rather attractive.

Still, you have to haul much more m3 out and in of the WH than before, which is exactly what ZaBob is complaining about.

iveeCore 3.0: The PHP engine for industrial activities and CREST library
Zagdul
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#90 - 2011-11-23 19:43:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Zagdul
CCP Greyscale wrote:
Lake wrote:
CCP Greyscale wrote:

Lake wrote:
A suggestion to make the switchover less painful, and which doesn't require code changes to the Crucible release:

Run a DB script to convert the fuel currently in towers into fuel blocks during the DT.

This will alleviate some player concerns about producing enough fuel blocks in a reasonable time frame (and the resultant price shock) by providing a one-time buffer of up to roughly a month of fuel block production.

It prevents the inevitable player frustration with towers going offline due to mis-fueling (no matter how many blog posts or news items you make, this will happen, and it will be frustrating and they will blame CCP).

It's verifiable. You can check the results of the script before any code runs when you turn the server on.

It's just all around easier on the players. That's the whole point of this change right? Less frustrating non-gameplay.

It makes you look like the good guys. You already took the player advice on raising the block-count so you could do fuel bonuses sanely. This alleviates the remaining major concern.


If we made this a condition of adding fuel blocks, we wouldn't be adding fuel blocks, because it pushes the complexity and risk to a level that's unacceptable for a change of this sort. We'd love to do an automatic switch-over script, but it's just not going to happen, sorry.


The suggestion I made is obvious, so naturally you've already considered it and rejected it.

The purpose of my post is to raise your awareness of the value of that extra complexity and risk, by giving other players an opportunity to support the notion. The hope is that given sufficient "likes" and posts chiming in with support (and perhaps a couple of CSM reps I know adding their own comments) you'll determine that the extra effort is worth the value to the players.

Though I contend that the risk and complexity of a one-off DB script is actually less than the complexity and risk than asking every manager of every one of tens of thousands of POS in the game to prepare for a hard switchover date. But then perhaps you have more faith in humanity than I do.


To be clear, I'm not saying "the complexity and risk of a switchover script makes a switchover script not worth doing", I'm saying "the complexity and risk of a switchover script makes fuel blocks not worth doing", at least for this release. We rejected doing this sort of upgrade because it would take so much QA time to test it properly that we'd have to cut a whole stack of other features to get it in, and while we like fuel blocks we don't think they're important enough to justify cutting all the ship balancing we're doing, for example.

If you want to argue that "no fuel blocks at all" is better than "fuel blocks without a handover script", then that's an interesting conversation (although only in a theoretical sense this late in the day), but "fuel blocks and a handover script" just isn't something we could justify considering for this release. We only have so many developer hours to work with in a given expansion so everything is a zero-sum decision - adding time to one thing means taking it away from something else.


Iniquita wrote:
You cant just make pos use both fuel types in series? If Fuel A exists then use it, else Fuel B?

The downside I see is that we're not only going to have go forth and toss fuel blocks in these pos, but then someone with starbase config will need to go around and take out the old fuel that is no longer being consumed. Having the pos burn both fuel types as long as they exist in the proper quantity in the tower would be an effective transition strategy imo.


Basically, no - see previous point :)

(Doing this would entail significant code changes to the way starbase fuel works, which would push the complexity sufficiently high that it would mean cutting the entire feature.)


I would.

My corp manages almost 80 POS's. As it stands now, the blocks add more work, not less. They're adding an additional step to manage.

The problem with fueling towers is the trips you have to make back and forth to manage them. The cost in jumping this fuel around is also something not factored into the sov bonuses. Making the fuel blocks smaller will make a LOT of people's lives who are slaves to this game easier.

The blocks don't help us unless they're smaller M^3.

You could adjust the size of the fuel bay to compensate but this is what we're after. Something more manageable to where you don't need a freighter to haul stuff. I can assign someone in the corp to run fuel blocks around in a covert indy ship making the job of managing a corporation less of a hassle.

IMO, we should be able to fuel 1 large tower for 3 weeks with a cloaky hauler (10km3). So, roughly a size around 10-15m^3 would be ideal.

Dual Pane idea: Click!

CCP Please Implement
Celebris Nexterra
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#91 - 2011-11-23 19:43:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Celebris Nexterra
Couple of my corpies were all freaking out about how useless our faction towers were going to be after the patch, I just kept telling them "CCP will change it, the change to get the fuel bonuses back will be easy."

Thank you for being badasses and helping me out =)

You guys are more awesome every single day!
Kristen Andelare
Night's Shadows
Dark Souls.
#92 - 2011-11-23 19:47:49 UTC
Ingvar Angst wrote:
ZaBob wrote:

Just to be clear, we would, of course, make the fuel at our POS. Hauling fuel blocks is obviously stupid.

But getting the array brought in, set up, the BPOs, researched, and going through the extra step -- not one BIT of that makes my life simpler. It is 100% extra PITA.

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.


My apologies, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on the degree of added difficulty this provides us in wormholes. There are, as I'm certain you're aware, two main schools regarding fueling pos's in holes... those who do PI for fuel and those who don't. Regardless of the path you wander, you're still required to bring in ice drippings for the fuels PI can't provide (in addition to PI fuels if you don't make your own).

So let's look at the first group, those like myself that make our own PI pos fuels. I'm not sure who, if anyone, actually has all their ammo assembly array and/or component assembly array slots filled up 24/7... I've certainly never come close... so for many I assume it's not a question of slots available (unless you're a non-industrial type... that's another story). So, yeah, we have an extra step in the processing, but it's not that big of a deal really. When you get the BPO, make a couple copies, start some less-than-fully-efficient pellet making while you research the BPO, then use the BPO (or better copies) exclusively.

Those that don't do PI for fuel actually have it easier... all they need to do now is fill the hold with pellets and they're good to go. No calculating robotics vs. liquid ozone vs. mech parts vs... well, you get it. Pure fuel importers get a break.

Non-industrials... those that don't manufacture but make pos fuels from PI... there's a couple options opening up now, and they're actually pretty interesting if you consider it...

1. Lrn2Produce. OK, OK, not everyone wants to manufacture. They're spending skill points where they want them, so this won't be attractive to many. So I present Option 2.

2. Consider switching your PI over to high value P3 and P4 products to export, buy pellets for import. Yeah, it may be annoying to switch the PI networks over, but if you run the numbers... well, I'm seeing overall profit potential that's rather attractive.

Yes, it looks on the surface like there's great PITA potential, and there is... but only if you let it.

Oh, as an aside, someone calculated the volumes of the fuels and the blocks and it turns out there's a bit of compression happening... the pellets take a bit less space than the volume of their parts.



Nice breakdown Angvar.

ZaBob, I'm wondering what you would do if you hauled Ice to a Highsec POS instead of pellets? You can't fit a refining array on a highsec POS, and the m3 of a block of ice is far higher than the Ice fuels you get out of it once refined. I think you might have not thought that one through quite fully.

I've been running a highsec POS for over two years, alone. Now that CCP isn't going to nerf my faction POS, I'm pretty happy with this change, overall. But my toon that runs the POS has no manufacturing skillz at all, so I'm going to incur more PITA passing PI mats back to my manufacturing toon and fuel pellets the other way. I'll live with that. Sadly, since alliance access on POSes for manufacturing/invention, etc is STILL broken, I can mount a ammo array and make the pellets in the POS, something I'd love to do.

So CCP, when are we going to see THAT issue with POS usefulness looked at and corrected? Alliance access needs to actually work. We're completely gimped right now for anything that has material inputs and/or produces actual outputs. Obviously you're not getting to it this patch. But soon?
Zagdul
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#93 - 2011-11-23 19:59:14 UTC
The only benefit to these blocks is that they remove the need for a spreadsheet.

They do not make logistics easier, they make it harder.

The ONLY way these will be an improvement is if the final product is smaller M^3 and easier to move.

Dual Pane idea: Click!

CCP Please Implement
DaiTengu
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#94 - 2011-11-23 20:08:11 UTC
If you have to push it out this way, why are you only allowing 2 weeks?

My alliance has many hundreds of POSes, some that we only visit once every 3-5 weeks to fuel, based on sov, tower type, etc.

Why could you not consider pushing the final switchover to 4-6 weeks off? This means that when we go to re-fuel the POS, we can use fuel blocks and we don't have to rush to re-fuel every POS within a 2 week time period.
Aluminy
Stargazer Exploration Company
#95 - 2011-11-23 20:08:12 UTC
ive never seen a bigger bunch of whiny *** cry babies...

all i here is WAAAAAAAAA pellet WAAAAAAAAAAA m3 WAAAAAAAAA extra job slot

pellet = 1 fuel for tower - if your corp runs the same faction towers in null / low / wh spaces then it is simple and ez to keep enough of these on hand to fuel your towers instead of 8 different types of fuel as the system works now

m3 = i do believe several have done the math and the cubes for the same amount of time now compared to ice / pi fuels of an equal time the cubes come out roughly smaller anyway... not by much no but there is no EXTRA hauling here... even for those that manufacture the pellets, you had to haul the fuel in to begin with... so you either haul the ice like you always have or you haul the pellet... no change here really~

extra job slot - cry whine cry throw temper tantrums all y'all like... simple production of any kind takes 2 weeks of training to be any good at... either pull up your big boy pants and get to work or sell your pi and help pay for the pellets... quite simple really... this "extra" step is hardly work of any kind...

my thoughts to CCP Greywolf - 2 big thumbs up... i know for one that this will greatly reduce the amount of work i put into fueling towers every 3ish weeks... being able to stuff towers full of pellets rather then the time taken to calculate and find 8 different fuels and make sure we have enough stock of those different kinds of fuels is quite frustrating when dealing with 20+ towers... making sure however that we have enough pellets to go around much less stress and work... don't let these ingrates get ya down keep up the good work

for the rest of you tards i do have some cheese to go with that whine
Aluminy
Stargazer Exploration Company
#96 - 2011-11-23 20:09:50 UTC
DaiTengu wrote:
If you have to push it out this way, why are you only allowing 2 weeks?

My alliance has many hundreds of POSes, some that we only visit once every 3-5 weeks to fuel, based on sov, tower type, etc.

Why could you not consider pushing the final switchover to 4-6 weeks off? This means that when we go to re-fuel the POS, we can use fuel blocks and we don't have to rush to re-fuel every POS within a 2 week time period.




first valid arguement ive heard since the debate started... and out of a goon >< who woulda figured right?
Ariane VoxDei
#97 - 2011-11-23 20:30:44 UTC  |  Edited by: Ariane VoxDei
Numbers:

Spacenumbers.
Large tower, 40blocks of 5m3 per hour: 200m3/hour
Current fuel, without stront, at max usage: 228.5m3/hour

Saving 28.5m3/hour. Or 12% saving.
Saving irrelevant if you make it locally at POS.

Timenumbers:
5m manufacture (unskilled). somewhere around 4.5m skilled, to make 1 hour of fuel.
Assuming 4.5minutes per run:
Per day: 24*4.5 = 1.8hours of manufacture time (prior to array speed bonus).
Per 30day month: 54hours (2.25days) of manufacture time.

Make your tradeoffs accordingly.

Edit: hint. Tip someone to use 54hours/month on their production pipes and leave the hazzle behind.
Danastar
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#98 - 2011-11-23 20:43:13 UTC
Hi everyone
First I want to congratulate CCP on their decision to make things right. I appreciate their efforts on that.
I will also apologize for not being able to read all the posts on the initial thread, so I may say something that's already been said.

The idea of making fuel blocks is good but it is very bad implemented because:

1. It will not save me the estimations
2. I will have to do additional manufacturing jobs (currently not required)

The only good thing is that the LO and the HW will be constant number (small help with math)

So instead of making it easier, it will become more time consuming (just imagine all the work, if you have say 10+ poses and you have to manufacture the fuel for them at a pos). If CCP really want to help us with fueling star bases, they need to save us the estimations.

One easy way to do is to create a special container of some sort. The container must have two options to input - pos type and days for fueling. For example:

- Caldari Control Tower Large;
- 20 days fuel.

After setting these options, the container must do all estimations. I don't even need to know those numbers. What i need from there is to have a stock pile of the different fuel materials and simply drag and drop in the container. You go on dragging and dropping until you meet the quota for all materials (if quota is met, it may indicate that by turning letters light green of the corresponding material; if quota is not met, it may indicate by showing red letters for the corresponding material, also remaining units until you meet quota).

When all quotas are met, you need a single button click to turn it into fuel blocks (or just wrap it in some sort of package) IMMEDIATELY. Yes - the idea of having to manufacture the fuel blocks is very bad. It adds more time and work to a task that is already boring and tedious enough. It confronts with the "we want to help you on fueling poses" statement.

I'd rather have it not changed than having to spend more time and efforts on that issue

--Danastar
Leovarian Lavitz
Ninjuggernauts
Fly Fearless
#99 - 2011-11-23 21:18:56 UTC
I support this product and or service. Bringing fuel pellets to a market near you!
Hirana Yoshida
Behavioral Affront
#100 - 2011-11-23 21:37:04 UTC
Good tweaks ... wondrous what common sense can do, is it not? Smile