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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 15 post(s) |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
29
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Posted - 2011.11.07 16:03:00 -
[1] - Quote
Quote:The one downside of this big-blocks approach is that it's impossible to give faction towers a fuel consumption bonus any more (you can't consume 2/3 of a block). We talked to some large-scale starbase operators about this, and they told us that the main bonus of faction towers for them is actually that they last longer between fuel cycles. To try and compensate for the increased running costs, we've taken the above bay size increases and added +25% bay size on top of that for the "tier 1" faction towers, and +50% bay size for the "tier 2" ones. We're hoping people will find that a satisfactory tradeoff, but we're listening for further feedback on this change.
That is because for large-scale operations the cost isn't the issue, but logistics are.
For all the people operating just one or two towers (be it for research, invention, reverse engineering, ......) will care about the cost and barely about going 3-5 jumps to the nearest hub every 45 days instead of 30. For Industrial applications you already have to haul quite a lot of stuff around, that bit of fuel hauling doesn't really make a difference. Reducing the tower operation cost does make a difference though.
I personally don't operate any faction towers at the moment (but have in the past). It would be worth quite a bit of extra ISK though as an investment, after all you can get that back by re-selling it once you're done with it as long as nobody blows the thing up.
Have you considered increasing the fuel cycle time (75 minutes instead of 60 or something) as the bonus instead of requiring less fuel units? Or would that be too hard to implement? |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
30
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Posted - 2011.11.07 16:22:00 -
[2] - Quote
Pavee Lackeen wrote:So basically you are just adding another step in the fueling process while removing some bonuses?
Doesn't seem like anything was gaining and the drudgery increases.
Seriously, nothing was gained? wtf? It's a HUGE advantage to be able to just buy a couple of blocks and be done with it... No fiddling with numbers, how many of this, how many of that to fill the fuel bay... just get X blocks. MUCH better! |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
30
|
Posted - 2011.11.07 16:51:00 -
[3] - Quote
Taedrin wrote:I am actually somewhat unhappy with these changes.
1) Having virtually EVERYTHING anchor and online in seconds is WAY too fast. It would be better, IMO, to allow multiple items to anchor/online at once, or to be able to queue up anchoring/onlining actions around a tower so that you can simply tell the tower where you want everything to be, and it will anchor it for you - freeing you up to go do some other activity instead of having to sit there and baby-sit the thing.
That would most likely be a much more complicated change: instead of just adjusting a couple of database entries you'd have to implement a way to queue or (un-)anchor modules in parallel. The dev blog and posts by devs in this thread have made it quite clear that they are working on or towards a real solution to the disaster which are POS'. I'd rather see them spend some small amount of time on quick and easy fixes, which also achieve a goal well enough, instead of using much more time to rework the current system with similar results. That time can be used to either fix something else or work on the new system already (fingers crossed!).
I do agree though that it shouldn't be possible to anchor and online a tower in mid-combat, apart from that the change seems just fine though |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
30
|
Posted - 2011.11.07 16:54:00 -
[4] - Quote
Tazmikella wrote:Seriously. Do you want to just kill the game? It is good intent to create "blocks" that people can use to fuel, but you are going about it all wrong and will harrass to stop people from using POSes all together.
First this is the "new" block for 1/hour for Small tower:
8x Coolant
4x Enriched Uranium
400x relevant racial Isotope
4x Mechanical Parts
20x Oxygen
1x Robotics
150x Heavy Water
150x Liquid Ozone
Well the current need for 1/hour for a Small tower is:
2x Coolant
1x Enriched Uranium
113x relevant racial Isotope
2x Mechanical Parts
7x Oxygen
1x Robotics
38x Heavy Water
38x Liquid Ozone
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT PICTURE?
[...]
Learn to read! That amount is for 4 blocks, not 1 block! Which makes you save 3/4 of robotics for example. It has been mentioned plenty of times already.
Reading. It helps! |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
30
|
Posted - 2011.11.07 16:59:00 -
[5] - Quote
Jenn Makanen wrote:Just a quick question for people using Faction Towers.
How long does it take for the fuel savings to make up for the cost of buying the tower in the first place?
(If you bought it when they were cheaper, it's another matter)
That actually isn't a real issue, since it's just an investment. You can unanchor and resell it (if it hasn't gotten blown up of course) at any time, getting your "deposit" back :) |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
32
|
Posted - 2011.11.07 17:28:00 -
[6] - Quote
Vincent Athena wrote:To everyone suggesting faction towers have a longer fuel cycle time: Remember the one hour cycle is built into all pos processes, moon mining reactors and so on. Adding a new cycle timer for one of those processes (fuel use) would be a pain. Also remember that starbase charter consumption is not effected, so it would still be one per hour., resulting in different starbase fuels being consumed on different schedules.
Im leaning to increase the fuel block count by x50 and drop their volume to 1 cu m.
Just consume the starbase charters at the same time you do the fuel cycle, those barely cost anything compared to the actual fuel anyway. Stretching that really makes no difference whatsoever...
But nevertheless, I'd rather rave a smaller fuel block and be able to reduce consumption then. I don't give a crap if I haul 100 or 1000 or 10000 blocks as long as the volume is the same. Who cares about the stack size? And if someone cares, WHY!?
CCP Greyscale wrote:Currently thinking about:
- Fuel divisibility situation (ie, faction/sov fuel bonuses)
- Block build times
Keep on posting, we are paying attention :)
Very good! Promising even :D
Apollo Gabriel wrote:As to Faction towers can you make them get an hour free per day? Something akin to every 23 hours they burn fuel they get an hour free? It would be a rather simple fix and keeps the cycle time at 1 hour.
That would most likely be much more work to be implemented, as you need to somehow keep track of the online-hours. Just cutting down the block size and having them require a bit less is a much simpler approach, only requiring tweaking some DB values compared to actually programming the new counter and exploit-proofing it... |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
39
|
Posted - 2011.11.09 16:13:00 -
[7] - Quote
Jack Dant wrote:Great changes there :) CCP Greyscale wrote:Currently they're configured to be researchable, with fairly short durations. I'm seeing some questions about this here - is there a strong reason why these need to be unresearchable? I don't have an industry designer on hand right now or I'd ask them :) PE research is fine, and will benefit people who turn block-building into their profession. Wastage and ME research, I'm not convinced. It will delay the initial availability and/or make fuel more expensive during the changeover period, as people either build them wasting materials or wait to research them. Plus ME research slots are always busy in empire, so you are "forcing" pos owners (especially WH corps) to also get a lab to research the BPOs.
SOOO many other easy solutions to this:
Just buy an already researched blueprint off contracts
talk to someone who has a research pos to research them for you (use forums or whatever to find such a person)
(as suggested) get a lab, if you don't already have one for researching Ammo/Cap Booster/... BPOs and the like
You also forgot that the BPOs will be introduced noticeably before the switchover to blocks. This is necessary for the mentioned half-and-half approach. Read the devblog again  This means at no time are you forced to use unresearched BPOs!
I'm also for reducing the HW/LO for building the blocks slightly. Ideally that would be based on a database query for tranquility. You could find out what the average power/cpu use of currently onlined towers is and use that (or the nearest "nice" number). HW is currently pretty cheap anyway, might be worth quite a bit more after this (even though I doubt anything close to what people seeing doomsday approaching suggest). |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
39
|
Posted - 2011.11.10 03:53:00 -
[8] - Quote
Dwarfageddon wrote:Lots of numbers, making basically no sense
Have to agree with Scrapyard Bob. Just re-read the blog. Whatever you think is happening isn't happening. Most likely you can't read like all the other people who thought that towers would be about 4x as expensive to fuel as they are now. If that's what you're saying. Is it? If not, what are you saying?
What ever you are trying to say, you seem to think it's gonna be more expensive for some reason. It isn't. It will be mostly unchanged, slightly cheaper even. Please try the reading thing again  |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
40
|
Posted - 2011.11.10 15:04:00 -
[9] - Quote
sukee tsayah wrote:Scrapyard Bob wrote:sukee tsayah wrote:[quote=Scrapyard Bob]
Hence the reason new players and small corps who base their living out of PI are getting nerfed. Thanks for the numbers. This is not the POCO whine thread. And this change will help small corps, because now small towers suddenly got a lot cheaper to operate. Which means you can put more of your PI materials on the market rather then spending it on your own POS fuels. (Complaining about the rise & fall of commodities in EVE is rather pointless. Look at ice prices, or mineral prices, or any other building component which tends to rise and fall based on demand or speculation. If it becomes less profitable to harvest a particular PI good, switch to a different market segment.) Since you're not in a small corp I would suggest you refrain from assuming what will or will not help us. Natural fluctuation in demand and speculation is fine. Artificially decreasing demand of one material to the benefit of big corps at the detriment of small corps is not fine. Since you're in a large corp, I'm sure you're fine with the change. Want me to go away? Tough.
I'm sorry but I just don't agree with that, and I'm in a small corp (seems to be a prerequisite for you to care for someones opinion). Yes, the demand on Robotics will decrease a bit, but the price has also been rising steadily to close to twice the price it was 2 months ago. It won't bottom out or anything because of this, or even just fall significantly. Also there are other "little guys" besides very new player (who are very new only for a short time). For example those running research and/or manufacturing and/or invention POS for themselves or small corps (which I occasionally do). Those are generally NOT large towers. They will be thankful for the 0.8 to 1.2 mil saved on fuel per day. On the other hand the towers of alliances are more often then not large and don't profit nearly as much from this change.
Don't forget either that producing and selling something like fuel blocks is something a few day old char can do. What they can make with this is unlikely to be epic, but certainly enough to make up for losses that might result from the expected fall of robotics prices. It's also not much work at all. Just a couple of clicks here and there for getting the ingredients and to initiate production.
The POCO change is a different story, but from the last dev post it seems like significant changes are being made before launch. So let's not go into full panic mode just yet, before we even know what changes are actually coming. It would also be the wrong thread for that :) |
Creat Posudol
Destined for Greatness Inc.
47
|
Posted - 2011.11.11 15:15:00 -
[10] - Quote
Mary Mercer wrote:I quit reading a few pages ago but I had an idea and if it's already shared I'm sorry. First, Why do we have to remove the current fueling option in order to have the new one? We are going to allow the towers to switch over which means they are already going to be coded to handle both fuels in the fuel bay. Expand on that. Fix the tower to burn both fuels. Have it check for fuel blocks every hour it cycles. If no blocks are present have it check for the old fuel types.
Fix the rate of water and liquid ozone on the tower even if they are going to use the old way of fueling keep the concept that the tower will now burn everything at a fixed rate.
(This is my favorite) Increase the burn rate of fuel by 10% when running under the old system. This offers WH guys the option of only hauling in water, Isotopes, and LO and not having to manufacture the blocks in the hole. Of course if they haul their PI to market and sell it, and buy the blocks they'd save a percentage on their fuel expense.
Incentive, with options. Think of it as 87 or 92 octane. 
Let me quote a line from the dev blog to answer why that proposal won't work:
Quote:The starbase system doesn't allow for multiple simultaneous fuel types, so we have to switch from one to the other during downtime.
And frankly I'd rather let them spend the time needed to implement this on something with a greater use to all of EVE |
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