EffBee Primus
Caldari
DCS Ltd
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Posted - 2007.01.09 18:57:00 -
[1]
As said many times before this is an excellent thread.
However - when I play games like EvE I get uncomfortable when the game analysis reaches this level of detail. (Even though I do it myself!). My problem is that you are playing directly against the programming model coded into the game, rather than playing an economic simulation through the game, if you see what I mean.
However that aside, it seems to me that the critical thing to understand in this thread's arguments is the behaviour of the little 1/(1+X) function. It starts at one for x=0, and asymptotically tends towards zero at x=infinity. The result is a proportion. This proportion doesn't doesn't care if it is applied to a Titan or a Shuttle.
If I am a poor struggling producer just starting out with little funding, few resources and a cheap BPO producing high volume cheap goods, I might research the blueprint to leave me a percent or two of waste.
If I am a megawealthy industrialist with massive resources behind me churning out something vastly expensive then I might also research the blueprint to leave me only a percent or two waste. In absolute terms there is a vast, vast, vast difference in isk saved or wasted. But in relative terms the rich man and the poor man are probably wasting and saving the same. Relatively!
I think that things start to go wrong for industrialists in EvE when they start focussing too much on the absolute isk involved in these calculations without relating it to their overall wealth. They then start getting obsesed with the few ISK they are wasting rather than concentrating on the much larger number of isk they are saving. You could argue that it is worth spending all that extra time to optimize your profits - but you could start out and make a lot more isk doing something completely different in the game. It depends whether you are role playing a money grabbing tycoon or an anally retentive stamp collector.
In real life someone on social benefits might spend a morning shopping around the local shops and supermarkets to save a few dollars/pounds/yen or whatever. Similarly someone moderately well off might spend a morning studying online wine merchants to save a couple of hundred before buying his monthly wine supply. Both people are saving amounts of money that are significant to them, buying things that are important to them. The richer man wouldn't dream of spending a morning shopping around to save a little on groceries - it simply wouldn't be effective use of his time. The poorer man can only dream about being able to spend that much money on luxuries. In practice they might both be saving the same proportion of their total income.
In summary I think I suggesting that a fairly stress free way to get your personal PE and ME levels right is to mentally set a sensible level of wastage and research down to that level. Don't forget the Pareto principle.
Antway - as a new industrialist thats the way I need to do it otherwise I will become utterly obsessive about making every blueprint perfect for its own sake, losing track of the fact that a blueprint is a tool in the game to make things to sell and use for fun!
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