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Evelgrivion
Black Nova Corp
Band of Brothers
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Posted - 2008.03.17 10:57:00 -
[1]
EVE Online's present manufacturing mechanics don't exactly do much to encourage mass manufacturing. On top of there being minimal savings in producing a dozen vs one ship or module, the T1 market is so crowded with small time manufacturers that it is nearly impossible to turn a profit in that sector - especially when people treat their minerals as "free."
To combat this, I think all Tech 1 ship blueprints, from frigates to battleships (not capital ships) should have a second bill of materials added. This new addition to blueprints would give builders the option of making their ship's straight out of minerals or out of sub-components, which are made from their own blueprints, out of the same minerals as Tech 1 items are.
These sub-components, when added together and compared to the plain T1 manufacturing edition counterparts, would provide a net savings of approximately 2% in material costs over a non-component manufactured version. With each blueprint costing approximately 100 million ISK (7 to 8 component blueprints, with one or two unique per race), this addition would benefit the manufacturers looking to push for large scale while taking cost savings into account.
To save on time and precious blueprint slots, these subcomponent BPOs would have perfect manufacturing right off the bat - but the ship blueprint's would still need to be researched to prevent waste.
What do you think? 
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Malachon Draco
eXceed Inc.
eXceed.
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Posted - 2008.03.17 13:07:00 -
[2]
I would be in favour of just removing the 10% limit on reducing ME. Why not make it something like a log function. If you research that BS print for a year straight, you should be able to shave off another 10% IMO. Add another year and shave off another 5%. It will cost time and isk, but I'd rather see a bonus like that for the dedicated producer than making the whole process more complex. Same for PE.
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Zhen Zhu
NEW DAWN CO
INTERDICTION
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Posted - 2008.03.17 16:23:00 -
[3]
I like the component idea... at least for ships. Leave modules and the like alone.
Similar to cap ship construction really. But it would make it more interesting. You could produce mainly minmatar ship engines and the like.. or armor plates. etc
I think your on to somethin man.
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Tarron Sarek
Cadien Cybernetics
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Posted - 2008.03.17 17:45:00 -
[4]
Hm, interesting idea. But it is quite complex.
Higher installation costs could also solve that problem. Something like 0.5 - 1% of original BPO cost. Plus the random amount for the station owner.
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- Balance is power, guard it well -
Please stop using the word 'nerf'
Nothing spells 'incompetence' or 'don't take me serious' like those four letters |
Evelgrivion
Black Nova Corp
Band of Brothers
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Posted - 2008.03.17 21:43:00 -
[5]
 Originally by: Tarron Sarek
Hm, interesting idea. But it is quite complex.
Higher installation costs could also solve that problem. Something like 0.5 - 1% of original BPO cost. Plus the random amount for the station owner.
In my opinion, issues should be solved without making the game less fun for casual players... While that would definitely boost economies of scale, I don't think it would be fair to weekend warriors 
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Letrange
Chaosstorm Corporation
Apoapsis Multiversal Consortium
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Posted - 2008.03.17 22:44:00 -
[6]
Actually one of the real problems is that "setup time" for production lines is not covered accurately by the minimal 1k isk to setup a line. There should be a time and cost penalty to setting up a production line, not just 1k. Putting in a "Line setup time" as part of any production run would make things more "realistic" and would allow for the follow-on waving of charges if the next job produced exactly the same item. This would really advantage POS production lines over high sec ones as you'd be able to control follow-on production.
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Nekopyat
Moons of Pluto
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Posted - 2008.03.18 05:15:00 -
[7]
Originally by: Evelgrivion
In my opinion, issues should be solved without making the game less fun for casual players... While that would definitely boost economies of scale, I don't think it would be fair to weekend warriors
Agreed.
Though I'm thinking the OP's idea would actually be pretty good for small corps and casual players. Right now it is pretty difficult to parralize T1 construction... having the option of somehow splitting up the job between multiple industrialists in order to get a savings would be interesting.
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CCP Chronotis
C C P
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Posted - 2008.03.18 11:24:00 -
[8]
Introducing an extra step between minerals and products is something that is never far from my mind admittedly. The idea of alternative pathways which are more complex but more efficient is nice as an extension of that and I like it personally. The extra step after that is more complex ingredients = more complex product but then we move into the area of having to author many variations of each type and it gets rapidly very complex to balance.
From my point of view, the main issue with any such idea is the current reprocessing mechanic. Reprocessing also happens to be the cause of many issues today in eve because you can recover >95% materials from reprocessing of modules, drone, ships and charges for example and all the macro and micro scale issues that stem from that.
Personally, I would want to see that number very much reduced which then frees us to add such suggested complexity to manufacturing without worrying about someone being able to reprocess more materials from an item than were used to make it (the main issue with your idea).
There is a little insight anyway to the issue for me, I like and support the idea wholly and is very much on my wishlist as well :)
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Cailais
VITOC
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Posted - 2008.03.18 12:42:00 -
[9]
Originally by: CCP Chronotis
Introducing an extra step between minerals and products is something that is never far from my mind admittedly. The idea of alternative pathways which are more complex but more efficient is nice as an extension of that and I like it personally. The extra step after that is more complex ingredients = more complex product but then we move into the area of having to author many variations of each type and it gets rapidly very complex to balance.
From my point of view, the main issue with any such idea is the current reprocessing mechanic. Reprocessing also happens to be the cause of many issues today in eve because you can recover >95% materials from reprocessing of modules, drone, ships and charges for example and all the macro and micro scale issues which stem from that.
Personally, I would want to see that number very much reduced which then frees us to add such suggested complexity to manufacturing without worrying about someone being able to reprocess more materials from an item than were used to make it (the main issue with your idea).
There is a little insight anyway to the issue for me, I like and support the idea wholly and is very much on my wishlist as well :)
As for scaling install costs by product, I am still looking into the viability of that as I mentioned in the discussion in my blog here.
One option might be to limit the reprocessing concept to a stage above the mineral.
For example the current production process being:
Ore > Mineral > Product (reprocess): Product > Mineral.
Now change this to:
Ore > Mineral > Base material > Components > Product (reprocess being in reverse to the mineral state).
As you reprocess down to each previous stage you suffer extensive wastage. The components essentially act like 'rigs' in that each item requires a series of components and those components influnce its attributes.
For example lets say a ship derives its Mag Arm resistance from the Component 'Electroplate'. The Arbitrator requires 2 x units of Electroplate to complete: better Electroplate providing better Kin resists. Better Electroplate can be manufactured using high quality base materials. However if you reprocess the Arbitrator you recieve poor quality base materials. Reprocess that base material again and you you recieve lower end minerals.
C.
Improved Low Sec Idea!! |
Matthew
BloodStar Technologies
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Posted - 2008.03.18 13:26:00 -
[10]
Originally by: Evelgrivion
the T1 market is so crowded with small time manufacturers that it is nearly impossible to turn a profit in that sector - especially when people treat their minerals as "free."
Actually, there's more room to make money in T1 than a lot of people seem to think. And the main problem isn't people who treat their minerals as "free", it's people who get modules direct from NPC loot without having to expend any minerals or manufacturing time.
As it is, demand for an item has to get above the loot supply before any manufacturer can hope to make money. It's the same situation as we had when agents still handed out T2 materials as mission rewards. No amount of tweaking POS helped that situation, because the mission runners would still churn out enough supply for the whole market, and weren't bothered by the lower prices as it wasn't their main income from the mission.
Originally by: Evelgrivion
These sub-components, when added together and compared to the plain T1 manufacturing edition counterparts, would provide a net savings of approximately 2% in material costs over a non-component manufactured version.
The thing that makes me skeptical about this idea is that when you're mass producing stuff, factory time tends to be your limiting factor (even with a theoretically infinite supply of alts, there's only a limited number of factory slots within reasonable hauling distance). Committing significant factory time to making sub-components is unlikely to make sense to these manufacturers, as the increased effective build time of an item would more than outweigh the material saving.
However, if the efficiency gain from using components is large enough to be worth the extra time, that will lead us to the components being produced as a commodity, pretty much every T1 job done using components, and a whole new army of alts filling up the factory slots to make the components.
Elsewhere, Chronitis has said he wants to change ME research to reduce the lab spammage we see at the moment. I'd hate to see that happen only to have a spam-inducing mechanism introduced for manufacturing instead.
Originally by: CCP Chronotis
From my point of view, the main issue with any such idea is the current reprocessing mechanic. Reprocessing also happens to be the cause of many issues today in eve because you can recover >95% materials from reprocessing of modules, drone, ships and charges for example and all the macro and micro scale issues which stem from that.
While reprocessing does cause some problems, it's the only thing that's currently acting to sink the oversupply coming from the looting of many T1 modules. If reprocessing yields are nerfed with T1 NPC loot as it is, a lot more of that loot is going to reach the market still as modules (instead of as minerals from reprocessing), which will make the situation worse.
Removing T1 loot drops needs to be done before any nerf to reprocessing yields.
Personally, I'd like to go even further and remove all the named loot drops as well, and replace them with BPC drops, with the BPC's having the base T1 item as a material requirement (along the lines of the current named items for POS). This would then ensure that the entire array of goods are properly produced goods, under the influence of the correct market forces. If this isn't done, you could nerf T1 loot only to find that the lowest named item still distorts the market nearly as badly - especially if you rebalance loot drop frequency to compensate for the lack of T1 loot.
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There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines. |
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Matthew
BloodStar Technologies
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Posted - 2008.03.18 13:29:00 -
[11]
Originally by: CCP Chronotis
Introducing an extra step between minerals and products is something that is never far from my mind admittedly. The idea of alternative pathways which are more complex but more efficient is nice as an extension of that and I like it personally.
While I do like the idea of more complex but more efficient pathways, "complex" shouldn't mean just investing more factory time to get a material saving (which is what the OP's suggestion really boils down to).
If it's tweaked so that it is worth using components, then it will be worth producing components as a product in themselves, to sell on to other manufacturers. An entire industry of alts would get set up to process the universe's mineral supply into components, eating up masses of factory time in what is essentially a "make-work" process.
The extra stages of the Tech 2 pathway work as a complex pathway because it feeds off a significantly different supply base and production model. Just adding something to build out of minerals before you build the T1 item wouldn't have the same effect, and I don't feel it would really add anything to the game.
Originally by: CCP Chronotis
The extra step after that is more complex ingredients = more complex product but then we move into the area of having to author many variations of each type and it gets rapidly very complex to balance.
You already have a whole array of meta variations for items that are already fairly well balanced - the named loot drops. Converting these into BPC and "meta-build" components, insted of just dropping the finished module directly, would give you a new supply chain, a complex process that could sit neatly as a stepping stone between the tech1 and tech2 processes, and if you make a T1 module a material requirement, would prevent the loot drops from distorting the T1 market.
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There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines. |
Nova Fox
The Scope
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Posted - 2008.03.18 15:48:00 -
[12]
I suggested something sometime ago about a similar subject but it only applied to ships.
However with limited time I doubt I can find it, but the basic break down would need some explaining.
It was first, that ships would be comprised of 4 parts: Navigation, Engineering, Mechanics, and Electronics, this was tailored in support of sub system targeting as well in which pilots would lock corners of the target icon to target these parts so they can deal heat or damage to these areas.
Now the parts are normally defaulted to the ships current stats but when manufacturers can obtain 'licences' which replaced the standard part with a developed one from a company few examples would be a, La Dai Digital Fortress, or a Duvolle Magpulse Drive Nozzle. Which has variances between high hp low performance, to high heat resistances, and high performance low hp. This would help greatly in messing and toying around with heat and heat ewar if ever it comes about it also opens a can of worms for customization of ships.
Licences would be used in conjuntion with the 1 run blueprint and causes changes in required materials to build the ship, licences could probably require the advance materials or alternative materials to obtain from companies.
Unlike rigs the changes are irreversable once built and remain with the ship for the remainder of its life time, also sale though market may become impossible and would have to be done though contracting, also you can repackage it and not destroy the modified parts.
But I can only imangine the freakish nightmares of a database goliath this could cause :(.
How to make feel low sec feel like low sec |
Manfred Rickenbocker
The Elliance
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Posted - 2008.03.18 16:04:00 -
[13]
This is always an interesting topic. Seeing as how T2 production relies on the T1 variant (unnamed) to produce the T2 variety, the only reason to actually manufacture T1 items would be for T2 manufacture provided they could not be bought on the market for cheaper. Furthermore, the large quantities of Named items would appear to obscure the need for T1 in the realm of fitting, as every Named item possesses better attributes than the associated T1. Since it is common to have Named items be only marginally more expensive than base T1, it behooves pilots to upgrade to any named they can get their hands on.
The curious philosopher economist in me would really love to see what would happen with the removal of T1 drops from NPCs. First what must be determined is the source for the current quantity of T1 on the market. Since Eve's market is (almost) an example of perfect competition, the standard pilot will most likely look at an item's market value and its mineral value. If the mineral value outweighs the market value, then it will be reprocessed, thereby preventing an item from becoming completely zero. However, since manufacturing requires more minerals than comes from reprocessing (perfect refine vs. perfect manufacture) it will almost always be more costly to produce a T1 item for market. Therefore it is safe to assume MOST of the T1 items on the market (depending on the region and supply) are probably from loot drops.
I think its almost safe to say that the drop rate of T1 vs. Named (independent of quality) is around 50%. If T1 were to be removed from loot drops, the T1 price would go up over that of named, and the T1 items would be inherently worthless. A pilot would normally choose marginally better attributes for a marginal increase in cost, however without preventative cost, there is no demand to utilize T1 when fitting ships. Having a high price will entice people to manufacture them (increasing supply) but without the desire for the items it would be an inflationary market. As a side note, this might also confuse the new player experience as new players will wonder why more valuable items cost less and feel cheated if they purchase T1 before doing extensive item research.
This argument DOES become skewed when you move up in module class. Frigate modules are extremely common due to the accessibility of L1 & 2 missions and high-sec ratting/exploration/deadspace, and will be highly affected by this change. Battleships will be largely unaffected for exactly the same reason: there is a better profit margin in (some) BS class modules that allow for manufacturing at a profit and named modules can cost in the millions (particularly for turrets). Cruiser modules will probably be the true determinant for the validity of this strategy. Their supply is mediocre due to access in Lv 3/4 missions and dangers of Low Sec, but demand is high because their class is the most popular cost/efficiency.
As to how this might apply to sub-components, sub components would be useful, but just an extra step in the process and an extra bit of confusion. It'd be easier just to reduce the max possible refine. If, however, this was going to be the basis for custom items, id be for it. An easier fix for manufacturing (and research) may be similar to the way corporations rent offices. Keep the public system as now, but allow individuals who have achieved standing to rent out private slots (not subtracting from public slots) for their personal use. This would be a monthly charge per slot, but allows for unlimited research/manufacturing at no cost because of the monthly fee. More slots would cost more money (linear, stacking-nerfed, increase in cost per) so as to free up public slots for small-time individuals.
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Peace through superior firepower: a guiding principle for uncertain times. |
Laendra
Multispectral Images
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Posted - 2008.03.18 17:11:00 -
[14]
Personally, I, too, have never liked the mechanic to ship production...it seems a bit too simplistic for something so complex as a ship...
You should have to build hulls based on a specific ship design...(e.g. to build a rifter, I would need to produce a Rifter hull)...hulls could have various minerals making up it's composition (or you could require production of alloys which are used to make hulls), which would affect its resistances and costs. Then you would add the seperate components that make up a Rifter....such as a Frigate-classed warpdrive, sub-warpdrive, computer core, weapon mounts, shield generators, drone bays, et.al, and then the standard capsule mounting.
Salvaging would allow you to retrieve a percentage of the minerals (or alloy, if that route was used) from the hull, possibly some of the components (such as a warpdrive, etc.) and modules fitted, as well as a "chance" for a rig if one was mounted. The only time something would be easily retrievable from a wreck would be if they had drones in their drone bay, or whatever was in their cargohold that survived. (I've always hated the idea of rig components being salvaged from most wrecks.)
Reprocessing would only return at 50-75% of perfect material levels, after skills and equipment are taken into account, unless you disassembled in a factory slot (which would require time and money), which would allow you to recover 100% of the perfect levels....first pass of a ship would return the hull and components...which would have to be used or disassembled seperately (although you could setup a number of "batches" to disassemble more than one per factory job).
anyway, just my 2 isk
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Laendra
Multispectral Images
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Posted - 2008.03.18 17:20:00 -
[15]
Edited by: Laendra on 18/03/2008 17:20:48
Regarding economy of scale, each single run should have a fractional amount of various minerals required, which is rounded up, so that when you are building, say, 1 item, it's "perfect" value for one material is 100.05, which would round up to 101.00 for the single run. For 10 runs, it would cost you 1000.5, which rounds up to 1001, which is 9 cheaper than the single run...but for 100 runs, would cost you 10,005, which is 95 cheaper than the 10,100 for the 100 individual runs. This fractional value should be based off of the maximum number of runs possible (i.e. 1 run for something that takes longer than 30 days for 2 of the items, or the max run value of the Blueprint for those items that can fit the max run inside the 30 day limit..taking into account assembly arrays and factory outposts) Then, you have your economy of scale...
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Verys
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Posted - 2008.03.18 18:35:00 -
[16]
The thing in the real production sector is that often building materials can be bought in cheaper at larger scale thus saving the company money for producing. Also mass production makes things cheaper as some cost aspects can be removed. An idea i would like to see for constructing is the ability to specialize a bit more like a real company would do. A suggestion of mine is per example:
Using extra construction equipment
At a large scale a company will want to invest in machines/equipment that makes producing cheaper or more efficient, why not in eve?
Use of alloys
Some alloys might be more efficient to use on an item so why would you not be able to research and apply your own researched alloys thus having a chance of using less or more (there must be compensation) material.
Upgrade pos producing ability
I'd like to see some more advanced upgrades for producing in posses instead of stations. This would mean you could add extra equipment for faster or more efficient producing.
Variable construction costs
It can happen that a job goes awfully wrong and will consume more minerals than it is supposed too so i would like to see an extra small cost of minerals which might be used or not depending on how succesfull the production went. Thus your reserve minerals would be consumed 100% to 0% and everything in between. Giving new people also a chance against the massive mass producing people.
The industry in eve could use a lot of new production methods based on those in reality to make it more dynamic/inventive and overall interesting.
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Matthew
BloodStar Technologies
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Posted - 2008.03.18 21:45:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Manfred Rickenbocker
If T1 were to be removed from loot drops, the T1 price would go up over that of named, and the T1 items would be inherently worthless.
This would only be true if the price of named is below the T1 base mineral requirement cost, which means that named drops alone are oversupplying the market. Which is likely to indicate either the loot drop is broken, or the module is useless and there is negligible demand for it anyway.
Making named loot a manufactured item, with the rats dropping BPC/components instead of the modules, and requiring a T1 mod to make the named version neatly avoids any possible issue here - by definition, named would cost more than T1 in that situation.
Originally by: Verys
The thing in the real production sector is that often building materials can be bought in cheaper at larger scale thus saving the company money for producing.
There's no reason why you can't do that in Eve - but it's more a trading than a producing issue anyway.
Originally by: Verys
Using extra construction equipment
At a large scale a company will want to invest in machines/equipment that makes producing cheaper or more efficient, why not in eve?
Chronotis has already touched on the problem here - with the ability to refine a very high percentage of the mineral costs of an item, anything that reduces the mineral requirements of a production job below their base value (which you can currently get to with PE5 and a high ME research level) opens up the possibility of manufacturing minerals (build for base - 10%, refine for base - 5%, you've "built" 5% of the base minerals). You'd very quickly end up with loads of minerals spontaneously appearing out of thin air in factory slots rather than being mined. The original implementation of some of the POS manufacturing arrays made this possible, and it was abused before they changed the POS arrays to give time instead of cost discounts.
Regardless of the mechanism for doing it, you can't give bonuses to mineral requirement until you nerf reprocessing, and you can't nerf reprocessing until you sort out the loot drops.
Originally by: Verys
Variable construction costs
It can happen that a job goes awfully wrong and will consume more minerals than it is supposed too so i would like to see an extra small cost of minerals which might be used or not depending on how succesfull the production went. Thus your reserve minerals would be consumed 100% to 0% and everything in between. Giving new people also a chance against the massive mass producing people.
Random aspects favour the mass producer massively over the new people and small-time producers, because the mass producers are the only ones who are likely to see the "average" performance in practice, and the mass producers are more likely to have the reserves to soak up a run of bad luck. Some of the new people will hit the jackpot, some will go bust under a random scheme. It tends to lead to a market where you have to be a big player before you can reasonably enter it at all. This has already been clearly seen in invention.
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There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines. |
Goumindong
Merch Industrial
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.03.18 22:32:00 -
[18]
Originally by: CCP Chronotis
Introducing an extra step between minerals and products is something that is never far from my mind admittedly. The idea of alternative pathways which are more complex but more efficient is nice as an extension of that and I like it personally. The extra step after that is more complex ingredients = more complex product but then we move into the area of having to author many variations of each type and it gets rapidly very complex to balance.
From my point of view, the main issue with any such idea is the current reprocessing mechanic. Reprocessing also happens to be the cause of many issues today in eve because you can recover >95% materials from reprocessing of modules, drone, ships and charges for example and all the macro and micro scale issues which stem from that.
Personally, I would want to see that number very much reduced which then frees us to add such suggested complexity to manufacturing without worrying about someone being able to reprocess more materials from an item than were used to make it (the main issue with your idea).
There is a little insight anyway to the issue for me, I like and support the idea wholly and is very much on my wishlist as well :)
As for scaling install costs by product, I am still looking into the viability of that as I mentioned in the discussion in my blog here.
Is there any way to mark items with an indicator which would tell what percentage of the normal reprocess they would produce without increasing database load or making it impossible to stack modules?
So lets say someone produces Tempests that use 90% of the refine payout. Each tempest produced is tagged "refine .9" or has their refine attribute set to .9. And then when you refine, you would get out 90% of the minerals from that item.
For ships at least, it seems it could work so long as you could stack each similar percentage of item. So you could stack 90% tempests with each other and 91% tempests etc.
I don't see how it could be done with modules.
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Nova Fox
The Scope
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Posted - 2008.03.19 01:25:00 -
[19]
Smelting materials to make alloys? that doesnt sound like a bad idea at all really to help drive up the costs increase more specialists in the field and maybe allow refining mechanics to be rerolled.
How to make feel low sec feel like low sec |
Tsanse Kinske
WeMeanYouKnowHarm
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Posted - 2008.03.19 02:28:00 -
[20]
Originally by: Matthew
Personally, I'd like to go even further and remove all the named loot drops as well, and replace them with BPC drops, with the BPC's having the base T1 item as a material requirement (along the lines of the current named items for POS). This would then ensure that the entire array of goods are properly produced goods, under the influence of the correct market forces. If this isn't done, you could nerf T1 loot only to find that the lowest named item still distorts the market nearly as badly - especially if you rebalance loot drop frequency to compensate for the lack of T1 loot.
The more I think about this, the more I like it.
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Evelgrivion
Black Nova Corp
Band of Brothers
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Posted - 2008.03.19 08:49:00 -
[21]
Lots of interesting points in this discussion.
Short of a complete market code re-write, I suppose the only way to deal with the "minerals from thin air" problem would be to simply make it so all ships reprocessed into the components, rather than directly to minerals.
On the plus side, that would also help alleviate the huge quantities of materials regained when stuff is reprocessed 
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J'Mkarr Soban
Proxenetae Invicti
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Posted - 2008.03.19 08:59:00 -
[22]
I read this yesterday and spent most of the time mulling it over - and it seems perfect.
As pointed out, part of the problem is casual gamers, who won't be able to compete with the larger traders when it comes to bulk orders using the current system. But because there is an extra niche in the supply chain with components, they could quite happily spam out those components in the full knowledge that they'll get bought up fairly soonish. If things get serious, then they can focus on mass production themselves.
I'd recommend though that the skills be very minimal to do this, as it would provide a perfect 'break in' point for newbies who want to explore this - I'm sure there are many newbies that have decided against going down the production route because of having to directly deal with the massive operations that have had years of effort put into them.
Hell, I might take it up as a side project - anything that can make me money whilst I'm doing other things is a good thing!
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"Wait, why was there even a flag for that to begin with?"
"..." |
Carniflex
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2008.03.19 09:50:00 -
[23]
While getting 'named' module BPC's from rats instead named modules themselves is interesting idea I see 2 propblems with that solution
1) Those NPC's are fitting those 'named' modules thus it does not make sense for them to drop BPC's instead of modules.
2) Possible database issue, as BPC's do not stack and there is 1000 item limit per hangars. If module is crap it is not sensible to build it, however as you have spent time and effort looting it it is not sensible to trash the BPC either, thus we would have tens of thousands BPC's piling up in PvE player hangars all nice and stored in cans, 1000 of them per can.
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Ellaine TashMurkon
CBC Interstellar
The Unseen Company
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Posted - 2008.03.19 10:21:00 -
[24]
Simply nerf refining so that you can get 80% or 90% at best.
This also would hurt (but not destroy) mineral compression - you can transport compressed minerals but you always loose some.
Item sizes can be lowered again (ratters and mission runners would be very happy to see that).
Advanced production could requier POS assembly arrays, making them reasonably useful. Otherwise, collecting 20 BPOs of T1 ship components is not all that hard and very soon every average manufacturer would just do that.
pre-rigged ships
Also, with advanced production methods we might get something that manufacturers wanted for years: researching and building different versions of ships.
This wouldnt really require adding new market code or anything big. This could work with rig+invention mechanics.
From CCP it requires;
a)adding new group of rigs that do not have BPOs on market. Those are ship modifications that need to be built in on production stage. Those rigs would give different effects (better or worse then normal rigs - balance decision). Pre-built rig types may be connected to ship types, classes or races.
b)adding new invention items and "reactions" to get pre-rigged ship blueprints.
c)slightly changing manufacturing mechanics to allow building assembled and modified ships (rather then packaged ones)
d)optionally also changing getName() function or whatever its called, to include pre-installed rigs in ship type name (visible in contracts, overview, showinfo) and/or description in showinfo.
1.Using invention and new special kinds of invention items you produce a BPO or BPC (balance decision) from your T1 BPO.
2.Production needs some additional materials added to base minerals.
3.The final product is an assembled ship (or multitude of them) with 1 rig from the pre-built group, type dependent
Example (a rather random one);
I buy an Armageddon BPO. I research it to reasonable ME.
From LP shop or from exploration of from cosmos missions I get a Basic Occult Data Interface (new invention item, its basic because its less then T2).
I throw some nanofiber internals, some slaves (for crash tests), some overdrives, some laser rigs (to know what items give what outcome you need to experiment or as someone who alreday succeeded) and I start invention. I also need normal datacores (there's too many of them on market anyway).
I get a Hunter-geddon 5 run, -1 ME BPC. Its a modified geddon adapted for nano fits and slightly improved for fighting nano gangs.
I need a bit less tritanium, a little bit of T2 components, some named nanofiber 800mm plates, some laser-related rig parts and some electronic parts. Its overally about 90m in cost.
When its built, its not a new ship type. Its an Armageddon ship and it has one rig inside. It gives me -25% shield and armor hp, -15% power grid, -15% capacitor, -20% mass, +20% to large laser turret tracking and -20% to large laser turret signature resolution.
This rig can be removed (destroyed) as normal, effectively turning my ship into a normal Armageddon. However, it cannot be created in any other way but the one above. So this specific rig can only exist in a geddon an maybe an omen or something.
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Matthew
BloodStar Technologies
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Posted - 2008.03.19 13:04:00 -
[25]
Originally by: Goumindong
Is there any way to mark items with an indicator which would tell what percentage of the normal reprocess they would produce without increasing database load or making it impossible to stack modules?
From the behaviour we currently see, and the structures revealed in the data dump, I suspect the database won't allow that. It appears that there are two places for properties to be stored: the Type, or the Item, with things only being stackable if they have no item-specific properties (e.g. a repackaged module can be stacked, but an assembled one can't because it has item-specific values, such as damage sustained).
If you tag every item with a refining percentage, that's either going to be an item-specific property, and nothing will stack anymore.
Originally by: Goumindong
For ships at least, it seems it could work so long as you could stack each similar percentage of item. So you could stack 90% tempests with each other and 91% tempests etc.
To do that under the current database system, you'd need to define a new item Type of "90% Tempest", "91% Tempest" etc. Not only would that be extremely messy and defeat the point of the Type abstraction, it would also open up the possibility of a world of bugs where two types that should be the same in everything but yield get mistakenly given different stats.
Apart from balancing, this is the primary stumbling block currently in the path of all sorts of ship customization and product differentiation schemes.
Originally by: Evelgrivion
Short of a complete market code re-write, I suppose the only way to deal with the "minerals from thin air" problem would be to simply make it so all ships reprocessed into the components, rather than directly to minerals.
In practice there isn't really a difference between that and just nerfing reprocessing yield %-age to be below the usage at maximum discount. Either way it's a nerf to reprocessing, which will impact the loot situation.
Originally by: J'Mkarr Soban
As pointed out, part of the problem is casual gamers, who won't be able to compete with the larger traders when it comes to bulk orders using the current system. But because there is an extra niche in the supply chain with components, they could quite happily spam out those components in the full knowledge that they'll get bought up fairly soonish
..........
Hell, I might take it up as a side project - anything that can make me money whilst I'm doing other things is a good thing!
Anything the casual gamer can do, the factory alt of a mass producer can do just as well. It would trigger mass producers to use up even more slots, leaving less room for casual producers in good locations.
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There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines. |
Matthew
BloodStar Technologies
|
Posted - 2008.03.19 13:06:00 -
[26]
Originally by: Carniflex
While getting 'named' module BPC's from rats instead named modules themselves is interesting idea I see 2 propblems with that solution
1) Those NPC's are fitting those 'named' modules thus it does not make sense for them to drop BPC's instead of modules.
2) Possible database issue, as BPC's do not stack and there is 1000 item limit per hangars. If module is crap it is not sensible to build it, however as you have spent time and effort looting it it is not sensible to trash the BPC either, thus we would have tens of thousands BPC's piling up in PvE player hangars all nice and stored in cans, 1000 of them per can.
I completely agree. Been giving this some more thought, and BPC are just awkward in all sorts of ways. So I'll modify the suggestion, taking a leaf from the OP's original thought on alternative build requirements.
The NPC's would drop a new set of materials. This could either be wrecked versions of the named modules if you want to keep the direct drop balance as it is now (e.g. you'd get a drop of "Wrecked Local Hull Inertial Stabiliser"), or could be a more generic thing that could be used on a range of different modules (e.g. a "guristas local hull modification").
These materials would act on a production job in a similar way to the decryptors in invention, and the job would use a standard T1 BPO/BPC. So adding a wrecked local hull inertial stabilizer to an Inertial Stabiliser I build job would get you a Local Hull Intertial Stabiliser instead.
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There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines. |
Manfred Rickenbocker
The Elliance
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Posted - 2008.03.19 16:15:00 -
[27]
Originally by: Ellaine TashMurkon
...
pre-rigged ships
Also, with advanced production methods we might get something that manufacturers wanted for years: researching and building different versions of ships.
This wouldnt really require adding new market code or anything big. This could work with rig+invention mechanics.
...
That'd be REALLY fun to play with. Add in rigged modules etc too, however this sounds something mysteriously like T3.
Originally by: Matthew
Originally by: Carniflex
While getting 'named' module BPC's from rats instead named modules themselves is interesting idea I see 2 propblems with that solution
1) Those NPC's are fitting those 'named' modules thus it does not make sense for them to drop BPC's instead of modules.
2) Possible database issue, as BPC's do not stack and there is 1000 item limit per hangars. If module is crap it is not sensible to build it, however as you have spent time and effort looting it it is not sensible to trash the BPC either, thus we would have tens of thousands BPC's piling up in PvE player hangars all nice and stored in cans, 1000 of them per can.
I completely agree. Been giving this some more thought, and BPC are just awkward in all sorts of ways. So I'll modify the suggestion, taking a leaf from the OP's original thought on alternative build requirements.
The NPC's would drop a new set of materials. This could either be wrecked versions of the named modules if you want to keep the direct drop balance as it is now (e.g. you'd get a drop of "Wrecked Local Hull Inertial Stabiliser"), or could be a more generic thing that could be used on a range of different modules (e.g. a "guristas local hull modification").
These materials would act on a production job in a similar way to the decryptors in invention, and the job would use a standard T1 BPO/BPC. So adding a wrecked local hull inertial stabilizer to an Inertial Stabiliser I build job would get you a Local Hull Intertial Stabiliser instead.
See, now this would add some extra improvement to the process I'd like however it remains tricky to balance and even out. As with the case of turrets (this is easy because there are small, mid, large, XL versions) there are shared names (ex. Modal Neutron Blaster, Modal Heavy Neutron Blaster, Modal Large Neutron Blaster) versions of each size and flavor so it'd be tricky to measure out. Perhaps allowing for the manufacturer to throw in some non-standard minerals like Morphite to help spice up the mix and add extra chances for bonused items to pop out?
Perfect refining is "realistic" per-se, since you can always melt down steel and get approximately the same amount of steel back out (although you have to re-smelt for carbon and other impurity doping). The way the new manufacturing calc works to curb it in that you cant get perfect no-waste should take care of the anti-refining. Refine for perfect materials, but manufacturing always leaves excess scraps. The question becomes do you want to handle the mineral loss on the refine side or the production side?
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Peace through superior firepower: a guiding principle for uncertain times. |
Matthew
BloodStar Technologies
|
Posted - 2008.03.19 19:12:00 -
[28]
Originally by: Manfred Rickenbocker
See, now this would add some extra improvement to the process I'd like however it remains tricky to balance and even out. As with the case of turrets (this is easy because there are small, mid, large, XL versions) there are shared names (ex. Modal Neutron Blaster, Modal Heavy Neutron Blaster, Modal Large Neutron Blaster) versions of each size and flavor so it'd be tricky to measure out.
There are a lot of different ways it could work, depending on how far you wanted to stick with the current loot drop distributions, and how far you wanted to open it up to allow the market to redistribute supply of named items based on demand, rather than drop rate.
The closest to the current situation would be the "wrecked module" approach. If the NPC would drop a Modal Heavy Neutron Blaster now, they would drop a Wrecked Modal Heavy Neutron Blaster in future. The Wrecked Modal Heavy Neutron Blaster could only be used to produce a Modal Heavy Neutron Blaster. Supply of named items would remain completely tied into the rate of loot drops, so we'd see the same ratios and supply levels as we do now. But the loot drops themselves would be an additional process into manufacturing, rather than injecting supply in direct competition with manufacturing.
If you wanted a more adventurous change, you could abstract the materials to various levels. This could be fairly tightly controlled, e.g "Meta 2 Beam Laser Component", slightly wider, e.g. "Meta 2 Turret Component", or all the way out to just "Meta 2 Component". Alternatively, you could remove the Meta restriction, so just have "Medium Beam Laser Component", "Beam Laser Component", "Turret Component" or "Generic Component" (again depending on how far you want to abstract it). If you go for the more abstract options, you then just make larger modules and higher meta level use more of the components (and NPC's with better drops just drop more components).
The more abstracted options would let market forces drive the distribution of meta item supply, with the drop rates just determining overall meta supply rather than the specific breakdown of it - I'm open to persuasion as to whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, it's nice for free-market economics and removes some of the onus of fine-tuning loot drops. On the other hand, a lot of the components are likely to get sucked up into the most popular meta items, and the higher meta items. This might leave you with just T1, best named and T2, with the other meta's ignored, and also leave the meta items of less popular mods unreasonably expensive.
Originally by: Manfred Rickenbocker
Perhaps allowing for the manufacturer to throw in some non-standard minerals like Morphite to help spice up the mix and add extra chances for bonused items to pop out?
Well, I would envisage this not being a chance-based process - if you get the loot to make a given meta level, then that's the level that always comes out. Adding a random element would make it more on a par with invention in complexity, whereas I'm envisaging it as a stepping stone between the two:
T1: Simple inputs, certain outputs
Named Meta: Complex inputs, certain outputs
T2/invention: Complex inputs, uncertain outputs
I would also be against being able to up the meta level by injecting minerals or other readily available items. It would likely lead to a skewing towards high-meta items. Many of the best named items are extremely close in performance to their T2 equivalents, and the generally lower fitting requirements actually make them preferable in some cases. Their limited supply is the main thing that stops some of them seriously draining the demand for T2 (arbalest vs T2 heavy missile launchers come to mind as an example).
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There is no magic Wand of Fixing, and it is not powered by forum whines. |
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