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Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.19 11:14:00 -
[1]
I'm kinda inbetween if this should be in market discussion or in industry & science section, but I think it will fit here a bit better. Se let me start.
Currently datacores are generated in fully passive way after initial standings grind is done. Not only do they take no 'activity' to be generated on top of that they are even generated if account is inactive. So why I'm thinking about it ? I got power of 2 offer on one of my accounts. Apparently this is not as universal offer as previous ones as wording of the mail kinda hint's that only 'young' accounts that were active today got the offer. My older accounts did not get it indeed.
According to my initial calculations one can do approx 6 mil / day or approx 2 bil / year per character with datacore farming. It's sort of 'realistic' calculation, not the max theoretical. 5 agents, one science skill at 5, one at 4, one corporation. So assuming I take the offer and will go thru the standings grind (and from past experience I can confirm that this grind is indeed serious one even for me) for 3 characters I would have additional account that I would be able to let go inactive and afterwards just activate once a year to 'cash in'. Or even if PLEX price goes up again or chosen cores go down somewhat (up to ~40 % down) I might have one extra 'free' account running on datacores.
That in turn brings me to the reason why I created this post. How big is in your opinion probability that CCP will 'nerf' current situation with datacores in let's say - during the next 2 years ?
So far in my opinion this probability is moderately low - ie if I would need to take a wild swing at the number I would offer that 'less than 20%', as that time involves 4-5 expansions incuding walking in stations and dust that seem unlikely cnaditates to do anything to datacores. But I would like to get few more 'educated guesses' at it before I threaten again my will to play EVE with the amount of grinding it takes to get 3 characters to best R&D agents in R&D corp to find out that stuff I grinded for got nurfed the day I got there. |
Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.19 15:40:00 -
[2]
Edited by: Carniflex on 19/09/2009 15:40:28
For me the grind time is approx 1 month per character, as I have some limitations on my available gaming time and can't really do 4+ h gaming sessions every day. Up to around 2 months per character if new sov is actually needed for 0.0 alliances and I will have to spend few hours every day hanging in fleet and shooting those planned sov disruptors.
That in combination of having to use lower than usual quality agent for grind will result somewhat lower income already from missionrunning in there for me. If we talk here about L4 combat agent it will take approx 40 missions shared for 2 to get acsess to that agent from personal standings and after that it's approx 60 .. 100 missions more to get to higher end R&D agent from corp standings if you just take the mission with your alt and do it with your main(s) turning it in for alt solo. Depending a lot on agent quality and system security class ofc.
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Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.20 06:35:00 -
[3]
I do agree to the statement that it's not question 'if' but more like 'when' they get around doing it. However in my opinion datacores are tied to the T2 BPO's also in nontrivial manner. If we remove 'passive' datacore generation it will nuke invention hard, as datacore farming would have to start competing on open market with other 'active' ways of making isk like mining, missions, exploration and playing the markets, etcetc. So if CCP want to keep the invention competitive against T2 BPO's on any semireasonable amount of items they would need to do serious invention overhaul or serious datacore generation overhaul (altho if it comes down to that I would not put it past them to just stop generating cores from R&D agents and make exploration drop gazillion of them). I'll not rant here about what I personally think about T2 BPO's as this thread is not exactly about those. They are just one of the things that are tied to datacores.
However - at first iteration - should they decide there is problem they would probably just stop datacore generation for characters that are on inactive accounts. This culmulative probability might indeed be over 20% during next few years or next 4-5 expansions. Should this happen during next few years I would not cry too hard over it tho. I do have use for 3 extra cyno alts should this account be forced to be active to generate cores. PLEX would propably go a bit up and datacores considerably up after that kind of change. What I'm somewhat worried about and see as major risk for my time investment (in the form of standings grind) is situation where datacore generation is turned into 'active' activity. And I don't mean having to log into your datacore alt once a week to hand the poor agent some tritanium to keep RP ticking but more like having to do some more active sort of missions that take active interaction and considerable time. For example getting sent 25j to random direction to hack some container or whatever. That would put major dampener on this for me.
As far as 2 bil / year per character goes - I do not expect it to last long. Perhaps 6 or so months as datacore market has very heavy inertia on supply side. Long term it's propably roughly same as meh engineering cores plus minus approx 10..15% depending what ends up as FOTM for that time.
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Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.20 15:07:00 -
[4]
 Originally by: Cergorach
Edited by: Cergorach on 20/09/2009 13:08:52
You do realize that training those three characters on that one account to the levels they need to be that effective is going to take ~10 months
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Then there's selling a years worth of datacores. Unless your using a LOT of time, selling those datacores is going to flood the market (unless your using Mechanical Engineering DCs). And lower the prices.
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The question then becomes, was the grinding, the investment, and the chance that CCP is going to 'nerf' passive RP worth it.
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About the grinding: Use a combat character to grind to
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and every 16 missions will generate a 'special' mission that generally gives more standing increase.
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Training the characters up for trading, research, production, POS gunners, etc. Does make them more versatile, thus making it more interesting to keep them supplied with PLEXes all year round.
It can be done in 2 months per character. Lev 5 science skill, Lev 4 science skill and 5 R&D agents (ie research project management at lev 4). I have yet to go over exact math as nowdays one can do stats redistribution and up to 1.6 mil SP training is double speed. It is probably impossible to get 6 agents going in 2 months but who knows. If I optimize well enough might pull it off on one char out of 3 during that 6 months.
As far as core volume goes market can take few thousand cores without even noticing really. Granted if it happens a lot it will increase supply side and drive price down ofc. Mech engineering is high volume datacore, but other cores can still grant you higher price for a while per core than mech engineering. Everyone and his dog are already doing mech engineering afterall atm.
That is good question. I think it will. My 'break even' point would be approx 1 year. Besides should they just remove RP points generation from inactive accounts so to say 'free' account is still worth something. Main risk is that they do not remove it only from inactive accounts but also make it fully active - ie timeconsuming activity that must be done every day to get the points in what case the account would no longer be 'free'. In later scenario it would have to join my other inactive accounts and effort on it would be indeed wasted.
Yes. That is indeed best way. I myself dualaccount combat level 4 agents for it. Shared missions until alt has acsess to agent from personal standing then alt accepting missions and turing them in solo while dedicated missionrunning characters do the actuall shooting stuff. However storyline missions are not always available in R&D corp - depending on local topology. Courier missions are also ok but I really can't stand them.
Yes. Training them up for other stuff add's value to them, but it's not worth doing on them really unless the account can cover the PLEX cost to maintain itself so to say 'free'. Or in case of first additional accounts using them will grant you more isk per month than just saving the PLEX price and doing stuff solo. For example level 4 missionrunning wingman covered by PLEX can make you more isk per month than doing them solo and just using the PLEX money if you do missions X hours per month where X is function of your equpiment, skills and all other things that count when missionrunning.
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Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.20 18:39:00 -
[5]
I think you can indeed do 2 chars with 5 agents and one character with 6 accounts with 180 days. Will have even few days to spare on stuff like cyno and racial frigate 2 or 3. With lower prerequisties for cloaking that are planned in dominion could even do cloaking 1 to keep eye on gates for longer should it be needed.
That is ofc with +3 implants, optimal amount of learning skills and Neural remapping after Int/Mem ones change to Mem/Cha one.
Now all I need to think thru for me is if I really are willing to go thru with the grind it takes.
So far educated guesses to originial question seem to agree somewhat that CCP will probably do something to datacores but probability that it will throw it all away and start from scratch is very low. It will probably either stopping RP generation while account is inactive or making more cores to drop from exploration. At least that is the general feeling so to say I get. Might be misinterpreting ofc.
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Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.21 04:25:00 -
[6]
Originally by: HawkBlade
The initial cutting of RP by 50% only nerfs passive RP gain. This would effect both active and deactivated accounts. Raising the reward modifier raises the RP mission payout to original levels. This benefits only actively subscribed players while actively missioning for RP.
Of course the active player who is actively farming RP gain a small percentage but that can easily be adjusted as well.
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Tangential Issue: Does this have a knock on buffs to T2 bpos? Yes it does.
The truth is that T2 bpo's were a mistake. Refusing to fix other related mechanics simply because you have no good solution to your mistakes is ... bad judgment. IMNSHO, fix T2 BPO's or don't fix them. But stop avoiding other areas because of them.
If CCP will want to get away from 'passive' datacore farming all they have to do is to run script that will stop research on all agents, dump the datacores so far collected in the personal hangars of researches in those stations and tune up datacore drops from exploration. And yeah - it would do nasty things to datacore prices and to prices of T2 modules with high enough demand to exceed T2 BPO supply. Ships are already in most cases 'not worth it' with few exceptions and those that are invention only.
Until any 'passive' way exsists it will be used. By your proposal it would just mean that more people would pile tritanium at their R&D agent location and hand it to agent once a day. Still pretty passive. If they can be arsed to plan perhaps they would switch to some other R&D agents from same corp who are closer together but thats about it. In my opinion if you already start messing with it it would make sense to do best you can do in second iteration or you end up doing it again and again.
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Carniflex
Caldari
Fallout Research
Fallout Project
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Posted - 2009.09.21 21:03:00 -
[7]
Originally by: Ivorr Bigun
could someone tell me the factors that directly affect the number of datacores you would recieve each day?
Is it just the skill level of the related skill or do your standings also gain you more/less cores, and are there any other factors?
Agent effective quality also, altho no need to go nuts with it like training negotiations 5 just for that on your datacore alt unless you really have training time to spare. Other than that I think system security class and relevant skill levels count also. PS Effective quality is also silghtly affected by your standings with agent in question. Main factor is relevant science skill most other effects are minor compared to that.
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