...I know it wont happen cause someone over at ccp think flying freighters are awesome....

Any chance we can get the BPOs seeded on Sisi?

Although I am glad you listened to the concerns about block size and faction towers, there still remains one significant issue, which is the fuel consumption.

Riptard Teg covered it in a blog post, if you aren't running a full grid/full cpu tower (as in probably 90% of towers out there) there are significant changes to cost since you aren't allowing for fuel variance in the ice products.

I want to say this again, I love the idea of fuel blocks.

I don't love the idea that fuel isn't variable based on CPU/Grid usage.

I mean really, you think after all these years it would be so hard to make a fuel block of all the static fuels and just have to measure Ozone and Heavy Water?

Fuel blocks should combine the PI materials and the Isotopes (all static measured fuels today), and then the ozone and heavy water should be variable (as it is today) based on usage.

It's not that complicated. It's also not 75-IQ stupid, which means it requires thought and planning, things that EVE is known for (in a good way).

Fuel blocks would still be racial due to the isotope inclusion.

Please?

EDIT WTF? I can't link the damn url. BBCODE failure??

The changes to the cost to produce reactions at POSs are very sensitive to operating costs, as our percentages are slim. I speak as someone who doesn't get the moon goo for free.

The original blog said the block BPOS were going to be in Thukker Mix stations. Does that include their highsec/lowsec stations, or will it only be in 0.0 stations?

Check Thukker Mix stations.

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.

When will the bpo's go up for sale, so that we can start getting ready...?

Faction tower fuel savings was addressed. Does this mean we will also get a fuel use bonus for Sov?

w00t... thanks for saving that faction fuel bonus and pushing back the deployment of the new fuel blocks... I was worried that there wouldn't be enough time to get ready...

Note: They're only giving us 2 weeks to load the towers up with new fuel blocks. So by Dec 13th, you will need to have prepared at least a few day's worth of new fuel pellets (or buy off the market).

I suggest doing a few days of ME research on your fuel BPOs starting on Nov 28th, producing a week's worth of fuel pellets, then go back to ME research for another few days. Make another week's worth of fuel pellets, then go back and finish out a few more days of ME/PE research on the BPO.

By Dec 11th-12th - you will want to have loaded at least 5-7 days worth of fuel pellets into all of your towers, but leave the rest of the fuel bay filled with the old-style fuel types. This is the so-called half-n-half approach. After the switchover happens (supposedly on Dec 13th), go out to your towers, remove the old-style fuel types, fill the tower up with the new fuel pellets.

The original blog said the block BPOS were going to be in Thukker Mix stations. Does that include their highsec/lowsec stations, or will it only be in 0.0 stations?

The 5 minute manufacturing time is still terrifyingly high; two manufacturing slot hours will be occupied for every individual large tower's operational day in Eve. There are an estimated 40,000 control towers up and running, which translates to 67 NPC stations worth of factory slots (50 slots each station), occupied 24 hours a day, 7 days a week just to keep up with the demand for POS fuel.

That sounds like a bit of an extreme, brand new source of demand for factory slots, don't you think?

Just to reiterate on what I said in earlier blogs; in principle I support this change and am glad you're making the sums easier for POS operators (although there is an extra step now with fuel block production).

Please consider iterating/overhauling POS VERY SOON though, especially by breaking up their functions into other structures, with differing fuel requirements. POS should not be the swiss army knife structure they currently are, IMHO and I'd like to see you have a range of structure with differing attributes for the differing functions (such as moon mining, reacting, T3 production, Labs, Capital production etc etc etc).

Cheers.

Although I am glad you listened to the concerns about block size and faction towers, there still remains one significant issue, which is the fuel consumption.

Riptard Teg covered it in a blog post, if you aren't running a full grid/full cpu tower (as in probably 90% of towers out there) there are significant changes to cost since you aren't allowing for fuel variance in the ice products.

I want to say this again, I love the idea of fuel blocks.

I don't love the idea that fuel isn't variable based on CPU/Grid usage.

I mean really, you think after all these years it would be so hard to make a fuel block of all the static fuels and just have to measure Ozone and Heavy Water?

Fuel blocks should combine the PI materials and the Isotopes (all static measured fuels today), and then the ozone and heavy water should be variable (as it is today) based on usage.

It's not that complicated. It's also not 75-IQ stupid, which means it requires thought and planning, things that EVE is known for (in a good way).

Fuel blocks would still be racial due to the isotope inclusion.

Please?

EDIT WTF? I can't link the damn url. BBCODE failure??

Any chance we can get the BPOs seeded on Sisi?

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.

The 5 minute manufacturing time is still terrifyingly high; two manufacturing slot hours will be occupied for every individual large tower's operational day in Eve. There are an estimated 40,000 control towers up and running, which translates to 67 NPC stations worth of factory slots (50 slots each station), occupied 24 hours a day, 7 days a week just to keep up with the demand for POS fuel.

That sounds like a bit of an extreme, brand new source of demand for factory slots, don't you think?

Doing a thorough revision is on our to-do list.

We're of the opinion that the extra interestingness of the separate LOz and HW doesn't justify the increase in complexity. We understand your position, but we don't agree that keeping this extra complexity in this system is good for the game as a whole.

If this turns into a major issue we'll do something about it, but with the ability to build in starbases etc we want to see how it pans out before taking action.

i think the biggest problem here is not the price, but the volume ; it will be a big change for people doing the hauling on nullsec, as ozone and water are close to 50% of the total volume of product needed currently.
so for tower having very few modules onlined, this change will almost double the volume needed to haul the fuel.
well in fact it would be more like 40-60% more, given blocks are a bit smaller than fuel items, but that's still a big change

Evel, keep in mind, 5 minutes is the base amount. After industry V it's 4 minutes, and at a POS array, it's down to 3 minutes. Add in a bit of PE research, and you get it down to 2m30s easy enough.

So one hour to assemble a month's worth of fuel. And building at component arrays, you can fit 10 assembly arrays at a small tower, 100 lines total. Should be easy enough to manage.

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.

I'm pretty sure you meant to say "one day to assemble a month's worth of fuel".)

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.

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.

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.

in the unlikely event that the patch runs into a technical glitch that prevents deployment