CCP Greyscale has been reading your feedback on his recent starbase management blog, and brings you news of changes based on that feedback. Check it out here, and please leave your feedback and thoughts as always.

P.s. Oh, and it's now 6 days until Crucible!

What is the m3 of each fuel block please?

It... uh...

LOOK! A THING! OVER THERE

Ok check the blog again it totally lists the size there too.

Where exactly are the blueprints for the fuel blocks going to be seeded?

P.s. Oh, and it's now 6 days until Crucible!

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...

It... uh...

LOOK! A THING! OVER THERE

Ok check the blog again it totally lists the size there too.

Blocks will be 50m3 each.

It... uh...

LOOK! A THING! OVER THERE

Ok check the blog again it totally lists the size there too.

blog says - is this right?

so for one tower 50*40*24*7= 33600m3 of fuel for one week

GÇóFuel blocks are now 5m3 rather tha 50m3

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

blog says - is this right?

so for one large tower 50*40*24*7= 33600m3 of fuel for one week

Would really love these blocks to be smaller otherwise there is no real change to the time for us haulers

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.

Will the sov reduction still work with the new smaller blocks?

...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

I feel like Captain Obvious pointing this out, but...

1) Go ahead with the November 29th as-is. No need to mess with code, no feature changes.
2) Let players build up supplies of fuel blocks from the newly seeded BPO's.
3) Cancel the fuel change-over 2 weeks after Crucible.
4) Take your time writing and testing a switch-over script. It's not exactly a complex task, just a case of iterating through each POS in the database and replacing X fuel with Y blocks.
5) Test it to destruction with QA time after the main patch is done and dusted. Deploy in the New Year.

Everyone now has nice stocks of the new fuel ready, doesn't have to rush around just before the holidays manically saving towers, and is generally happier.

You seem you determined to push out the entire change ASAP at the expense of forcing thousands of players to expend many hours in unecessary work. This isn't a trade-off between QA time versus other features - it's a trade-off between putting out a new feature RIGHT NOW, or pushing out a new feature properly in a manner that accomodates players.
There is little benefit in pushing this change in a sea of chaos before Xmas over doing it in a sea of calm after Xmas.

Take your time.

or simply howl from known space, and therefore instead of howling just ice products I have to howl everything.

Just want to add my part of story which is probably true for most people running POSes in WH space

This does NOT simplify anything. It complicates things for me.

Firstly I believe most people in WH space do use their planets for PI to cut costs on running POS and to CUT the amount they need to howl.

With this "feature", I either have to add additional step of producing those cubes

or simply howl from known space, and therefore instead of howling just ice products I have to howl everything.

Word you're looking for is haul. But yes, this is more work. Plus, you have to haul extra HW and LO3 volumes too.

Thanks for removing some unnecessary complexity, CCP!

we'd still have to prioritize testing the upgrade over testing other stuff, which would still mean cutting a bunch of features to get this in

Why, what features do you have planned for January?

to be honest, 5 minutes instead of 10 is simply no change.

I mean what is the point in introducing the need for manufacturing in the first place? why before you did not have to manufacture anything to fuel a starbase, and now you have? what kjnd of nerf is that?

If this is supposed to be a usability upgrade (instead of a usability nerf as it is now), just make this conversion free, or take some symbolic time, like 1 minute for 400 cubes.

With what it is now, we'll have all the high sec manufacturing facilities taken by only the fuel cubes production for years to come.

You might just say so if you wanted to nerf high sec manufacturing, not disguise it as a 'boost' to starbase management.

(Rehash of what I wrote up earlier in another thread.)

The only towers at a risk of costing slightly more are large towers. The cost savings on small/medium towers far outstrip the amount of ISK added back to the 30-day fuel costs by increased HW/LOz needs.

For the Amarr Large Tower, they would have saved 24M per 30 days under the new fuel pellet ingredient list. If you were not using all of your CPU before this, you would still save about 8M/mo. If you were not using all of your PG, then you'll end up paying about 21M more per 30d.

All that pushing the testing* into the future achieves is to add more uncertainty and risk, unfortunately. We'd still need to spend a significant amount of testing time on making sure the script works, we'd still have to prioritize testing the upgrade over testing other stuff, which would still mean cutting a bunch of features to get this in - and it still probably wouldn't be worth it. It's not a case of "having time available", because we had "time available" for this expansion - it's a case of "being worth spending the time on this rather than something else".

*Anyone saying that writing the script should be trivial is, uh, not speaking from a position of authority, but it's the testing time that's the real workload, because every time we want to test if it works (which we need to do at least once and potentially two or three times to test fixes for problems caught in earlier runs) we have to actually run the upgrade on a copy of TQ, which takes a large amount of setup and prep time. (And before anyone says "surely that's really simple", it's not, and that's really all there is to say about it :P)

And without a volume adjustment, I think it is a serious PITA for WH operators. I brought this up before; others have brought it up, too. That, I think, you could take care of in a single stroke; you'd spend more time discussing the exact value than implementing and testing.

I think you've fallen in love with both the feature and the schedule. I think you need to back off and not rush this.

As it is, I would MUCH rather just not have it, and continue with the status quo. If you want to make my life easier, just reduce the volume on the ice fuels. Save yourselves a bunch of QA work.

I spend FAR more time hauling fuel, than I do calculating how much of each fuel. The complexity really doesn't bother me. The volume does. The volume of these blocks is FAR higher than the volume of ice fuels alone, which is all I current have to haul.

Can we get you, CCP Omen, and a bunch of other devs to go live in a WH for a couple months? It would be both fun for you, and educational.

to be honest, 5 minutes instead of 10 is simply no change.

I mean what is the point in introducing the need for manufacturing in the first place? why before you did not have to manufacture anything to fuel a starbase, and now you have? what kjnd of nerf is that?

If this is supposed to be a usability upgrade (instead of a usability nerf as it is now), just make this conversion free, or take some symbolic time, like 1 minute for 400 cubes.

With what it is now, we'll have all the high sec manufacturing facilities taken by only the fuel cubes production for years to come.

You might just say so if you wanted to nerf high sec manufacturing, not disguise it as a 'boost' to starbase management.

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.

In fact, the *only* thing being made simpler is buying completed fuel, and putting fuel into the tower/managing inventory *within* the tower.

Overall, this is making things MORE complicated; exactly the opposite of your goal.

I vote for just dropping the whole idea. Sorry to rain on your parade. I know that feels like crap; I've had some bad ideas get knocked down after spending shiploads of time on them.

But I think it's the right thing to do.

Just to be clear, we would, of course, make the fuel at our POS. Hauling fuel blocks is obviously stupid.

But getting the array brought in, set up, the BPOs, researched, and going through the extra step -- not one BIT of that makes my life simpler. It is 100% extra PITA.

In fact, I'd haul ice to our hisec tower over fuel blocks, too, for exactly the same reason. The main issue is m3, leading to lots of hauling, NOT complexity.

2. Consider switching your PI over to high value P3 and P4 products to export, buy pellets for import. Yeah, it may be annoying to switch the PI networks over, but if you run the numbers... well, I'm seeing overall profit potential that's rather attractive.

To be clear, I'm not saying "the complexity and risk of a switchover script makes a switchover script not worth doing", I'm saying "the complexity and risk of a switchover script makes fuel blocks not worth doing", at least for this release. We rejected doing this sort of upgrade because it would take so much QA time to test it properly that we'd have to cut a whole stack of other features to get it in, and while we like fuel blocks we don't think they're important enough to justify cutting all the ship balancing we're doing, for example.

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.




Basically, no - see previous point :)

(Doing this would entail significant code changes to the way starbase fuel works, which would push the complexity sufficiently high that it would mean cutting the entire feature.)

My apologies, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on the degree of added difficulty this provides us in wormholes. There are, as I'm certain you're aware, two main schools regarding fueling pos's in holes... those who do PI for fuel and those who don't. Regardless of the path you wander, you're still required to bring in ice drippings for the fuels PI can't provide (in addition to PI fuels if you don't make your own).

So let's look at the first group, those like myself that make our own PI pos fuels. I'm not sure who, if anyone, actually has all their ammo assembly array and/or component assembly array slots filled up 24/7... I've certainly never come close... so for many I assume it's not a question of slots available (unless you're a non-industrial type... that's another story). So, yeah, we have an extra step in the processing, but it's not that big of a deal really. When you get the BPO, make a couple copies, start some less-than-fully-efficient pellet making while you research the BPO, then use the BPO (or better copies) exclusively.

Those that don't do PI for fuel actually have it easier... all they need to do now is fill the hold with pellets and they're good to go. No calculating robotics vs. liquid ozone vs. mech parts vs... well, you get it. Pure fuel importers get a break.

Non-industrials... those that don't manufacture but make pos fuels from PI... there's a couple options opening up now, and they're actually pretty interesting if you consider it...

1. Lrn2Produce. OK, OK, not everyone wants to manufacture. They're spending skill points where they want them, so this won't be attractive to many. So I present Option 2.

2. Consider switching your PI over to high value P3 and P4 products to export, buy pellets for import. Yeah, it may be annoying to switch the PI networks over, but if you run the numbers... well, I'm seeing overall profit potential that's rather attractive.

Yes, it looks on the surface like there's great PITA potential, and there is... but only if you let it.

Oh, as an aside, someone calculated the volumes of the fuels and the blocks and it turns out there's a bit of compression happening... the pellets take a bit less space than the volume of their parts.

If you have to push it out this way, why are you only allowing 2 weeks?

My alliance has many hundreds of POSes, some that we only visit once every 3-5 weeks to fuel, based on sov, tower type, etc.

Why could you not consider pushing the final switchover to 4-6 weeks off? This means that when we go to re-fuel the POS, we can use fuel blocks and we don't have to rush to re-fuel every POS within a 2 week time period.

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

The only benefit to these blocks is that they remove the need for a spreadsheet.

They do not make logistics easier, they make it harder.

The changeover plan is a good one. I support leaving it as-is.

I love how when a CCP plan gets a lot of negative feedback (like this one), out march supporters of whatever it is, that have never posted before. CCP-Alt much?

My apologies, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on the degree of added difficulty this provides us in wormholes. There are, as I'm certain you're aware, two main schools regarding fueling pos's in holes... those who do PI for fuel and those who don't. Regardless of the path you wander, you're still required to bring in ice drippings for the fuels PI can't provide (in addition to PI fuels if you don't make your own).
.....

2. Consider switching your PI over to high value P3 and P4 products to export, buy pellets for import. Yeah, it may be annoying to switch the PI networks over, but if you run the numbers... well, I'm seeing overall profit potential that's rather attractive.

Yes, it looks on the surface like there's great PITA potential, and there is... but only if you let it.

Oh, as an aside, someone calculated the volumes of the fuels and the blocks and it turns out there's a bit of compression happening... the pellets take a bit less space than the volume of their parts.

This. Please. Those of us that conserve fuel (and effort) now have no reason not to switch off the toys when we go to bed. Folks that ran their towers at full CPU/PG throttle won't see a change, but those of us that ran EFFICIENT POS operations are left simply to pay for more fuel. The "complexity" that some folks are seeking to remove allowed us to operate at a higher level.

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.

ZaBob, I'm wondering what you would do if you hauled Ice to a Highsec POS instead of pellets? You can't fit a refining array on a highsec POS, and the m3 of a block of ice is far higher than the Ice fuels you get out of it once refined. I think you might have not thought that one through quite fully.

m3 = i do believe several have done the math and the cubes for the same amount of time now compared to ice / pi fuels of an equal time the cubes come out roughly smaller anyway... not by much no but there is no EXTRA hauling here... even for those that manufacture the pellets, you had to haul the fuel in to begin with... so you either haul the ice like you always have or you haul the pellet... no change here really~

As it stands now, the blocks add more work, not less. They're adding an additional step to manage.

The problem with fueling towers is the trips you have to make back and forth to manage them. The cost in jumping this fuel around is also something not factored into the sov bonuses. Making the fuel blocks smaller will make a LOT of people's lives who are slaves to this game easier.

The blocks don't help us unless they're smaller M^3.

m3 = i do believe several have done the math and the cubes for the same amount of time now compared to ice / pi fuels of an equal time the cubes come out roughly smaller anyway... not by much no but there is no EXTRA hauling here... even for those that manufacture the pellets, you had to haul the fuel in to begin with... so you either haul the ice like you always have or you haul the pellet... no change here really~

We're always working on something

Am I blind, or has there been no CCP response in this thread to the loss of sovereignty bonuses? And if there hasn't been, could we please get one?

Yes.

I really think you shouldn't whine about people whining, when you haven't even bothered to understand what they're talking about.

Compare the m3 of the *ice fuel alone* (which is all we need haul) to the m3 of the fuel pellets.

I gave hard numbers way back when.

Maybe instead of flaming and whining yourself, you could engage in constructive dialog? Reading and thinking before writing might be a good place to start.

Spacenumbers.
Large tower, 40blocks of 5m3 per hour: 200m3/hour
Current fuel, without stront, at max usage: 228.5m3/hour

I surely hope CCP forsees the increased traffic in the high-sec systems with Thukker Mix stations and place them on reinforced nodes for a few days after the expansion

1) You are making PI harder/more expensive

3) You are using the BP aspect to try to (once again) force people to do faction warfare or incursions.

4) In many stations manufacturing slots are already at a premium, so now you are going to make that situation WORSE? FOREVER?

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?

?

when it comes to actually fueling the tower its much easier its a gallente tower i need x amount of gallente blocks, not x amount of 8 different fuel types so this part i really like just for making it easier.

All that pushing the testing*

*Anyone saying that writing the script should be trivial is, uh, not speaking from a position of authority, but it's the testing time that's the real workload, because every time we want to test if it works (which we need to do at least once and potentially two or three times to test fixes for problems caught in earlier runs) we have to actually run the upgrade on a copy of TQ, which takes a large amount of setup and prep time. (And before anyone says "surely that's really simple", it's not, and that's really all there is to say about it :P)

So, will the BPOs and so forth for fuel pellets be available with the launch of Crucible, so that POS owners have about 2 weeks to buy or produce pellets before the fuel switchover?

Am I blind, or has there been no CCP response in this thread to the loss of sovereignty bonuses? And if there hasn't been, could we please get one?

While for face value this update to POS's looks great, but when you dig down a bit, I do hope you aren't pulling what the NGE did to SWG. Please don't dumb to game down to drawn more players. Companies have tried that, and failed miserably.

Generally speaking, we want to keep the deep complexity in core systems that make the game mechanically interesting, but we also want people to spend as much time as possible interacting with other people (because they're the most interesting "content" we have avaliable). We'd generally like to find ways to spend less time on mechanical tasks - through streamlining or, where acceptable, simplification - so they can spend more time dealing with people.

Then let more then 1 pilot anchor/online/offline modules so it isent a solo thing, make it a group effort. But keep it so only 1 pilot can manage 1 module at the same time.

"
starbase tweaks: an update
reported by CCP Greyscale | 2011.11.23 13:14:14 | NEW | Comments
You may remember from the earlier blog (hint: read that blog if you haven't already) that we're making some adjustments to starbases in Crucible. Based on discussion in the feedback thread, we have made some changes to our plan, which will be detailed here.


We recommend ensuring that you keep enough old-style fuel in your tower to last three days past the scheduled switchover patch - so that, in the unlikely event that the patch runs into a technical glitch that prevents deployment, your towers won't go offline - and fill the rest up with fuel blocks. This should ensure a smooth switch-over. "

my oh my...
if you want to make your own fuel, you will still need x numbers of 8 different fuel types - guess some of us will learn that the hard way
it is completly different matter if you are lazy and want to buy already manifactired fuel blocks - you will have to pay extra, beacuse someone has done it for you and he would want to be paid for that

Overal this change is bad for the ones willing to make the fuelblocks themselves and good for the ppl with deep pockets, who will not mind paying say 10% more but save themselvs some brain effort.

And i want to make something clear - there is nothing wrong if CCP wants to make our life miserable. It may even be regarded as good thing, because fighting new challenges is what makes us not lose interest. But saying "guys we want to help you on this one" and implementing feature that actually makes things worse - that is wrong.

lol maybe you should take your own advice bout not posting when you dont know what your talkin bout

Sheesh, can't you read????

Large tower, *ice fuel*, at our current usage, 161.1 m3/hr. Now becomes 200 m3/hr.

That's a pretty significant expansion!

ICE FUEL. Not total fuel. The planetary fuel is already right there. We only need to bring in ICE FUEL. ICE FUEL.

ICE FUEL.

Generally speaking, we want to keep the deep complexity in core systems that make the game mechanically interesting, but we also want people to spend as much time as possible interacting with other people (because they're the most interesting "content" we have avaliable). We'd generally like to find ways to spend less time on mechanical tasks - through streamlining or, where acceptable, simplification - so they can spend more time dealing with people.

You know, it's nearly 2012, we do have storage snapshots, virtualization snapshot, even i can take a snapshot of my gf, just to keep a nice copy of her :)

Here is the really tricky part... if you put the new BP in and tell it to build some fuel blocks it will TELL you exactly how many of them you need. This confusing game mechanic will occur whether you build your fuel blocks in the station you purchase the raw materials in, haul them to another station for construction, or wish to make a note of the totals and then go acquire the materials in other ways to build at your own POS facilities. It's diabolical, I know, but I guess you will figure out how it works "the hard way". Oh my.

ICE FUEL. ICE FUEL.

ICE FUEL.

It's fine and dandy for folks playing with virtual machines at home to say, "Hey, it only takes five minutes to rewind to a snapshot of my Windows XP virtual machine, I don't see what's so hard". Sadly, even with modern technology a snapshot of a 100GB database still weighs in at about 100GB. Once you test the script to alter fuels, you've made changes to the database and must reload the snapshot.

armor hacs?

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.

While for face value this update to POS's looks great, but when you dig down a bit, I do hope you aren't pulling what the NGE did to SWG. Please don't dumb to game down to drawn more players. Companies have tried that, and failed miserably.

It seems CCP takes the easy way out of some issues, such as the ECM Exploit you had with Magnatar systems in WH space. When will this issue be resolved. Instead of fixing the issue, you simply removed the advantage to the system altogether.

What about faction towers? You had said their drop rate was far too frequent, rather than fixing that up front, you simply remove them from dropping at all. When will they be reintroduced into the game?

When will you give CEO's and POS managers better control over who can access what? If I give someone access to High Slot 1, they can access High Slot 1 on every CHA within the pos. The only way to change this, is to require Config Starbase equipment or fuel manager. But even then, you can only divide up the access so far.

When will we have the ability to divide up the SMA like we do the CHA, to prevent theft among the corp members.

When will we have better logs on who is doing what within the POS, to allow us to catch thieves in the act?

When the additional POS upgrades come along I hope they are spectacular so we finally get more for our isk than a big pi+¦ata in space to attract Capital/BS & Logi blobs

Agree with this point completely!

As far as the rest of it goes, I Like! these changes. It does make it easier for my hauling monkeys to just "stuff as many gallente blocks into a Gallente/Serpentis tower as possible."

As far as the whining about hauling ice, why are you hauling ice? I haul compressed! ice! That is, if i don't mine it in system or next door. There's this wonderful new ship called the "Rorqual", might want to check it out...

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?

And WHY would Thukker bother making fuel blocks for other races ... ok maybe they would still help Gallente but surely they would delay and avoid making similar product for Enemy races just to get their people a technological advantage

While for face value this update to POS's looks great, but when you dig down a bit, I do hope you aren't pulling what the NGE did to SWG. Please don't dumb to game down to drawn more players. Companies have tried that, and failed miserably.

Wiki page is up with new changes and a list of prices and where to get them.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/CustomsOffice

Yeah for mining the ice in Lo sec or Null sec (not WH) then Rorqual is great (we can make em so more business for us!!) and that would likely be feeding POSs in Lo and Null sec.

Doesn't work so well in a WH and in Empire! Many R&D corps would mine or buy close by and haul once to POS.

In General I like the block idea IF there is a benefit to offset the extra work in :

*Less Hauling

*Lower or no change in cost

This "upgrade" provides generally an increase in cost and more hauling!

Many ppl here are engaging mouths b4 brains and saying "Oh the fuels blocks are less hauling" tho they don't come out of thin air and if they THINK about the production cycle and costs involved they may realise it's gonna cost them more in isk and hauling somewhere in that process. They either get to haul less and pay more or pay less and haul more.

The HW/LO portion should have been set at a lower amount than the maximum possible to be consumed at present as I'm sure that a very large number of POSs don't have CPU and PG running 24/7 maxed out. For many this will represent a haul more and pay more scenario. CCP should be able to run the numbers or maybe they have and just decided inflation is good.
Maybe they should be politicians!!

I think the portion should have been more like 100/100 to make it more balanced and easier to calculate (4 Empire ice blocks for the LO and 2 for the HW). That way there would still be an increase in Ice Product business and also less of a cost increase for POS owners.

Especially as this is closely following the PI changes with increases in costs ... double tax in Hi sec and more than tripple in lo sec on the Interbus PCOC's (17% rate on SISI currently)


PS - Tip for posters ... COPY ya post b4 ya PREVIEW lol

For all panicing high-sec bear-POS owners

Please quit panicking...please. your costs are going to go DOWN. here is a breakdown currently on standard minmatar towers (most relevant to me - racial iso has no bearing in this argument)

BTW - this assumes 100% CPU and 10% PG usage (for all of you "efficient" POS owners)

Large Tower - Current Cost/30 days = 347mil ISK. New Cost = 363m ISK (equal at 50%PG usage)
Medium Tower - current = 202mil ISK. New = 182mil ISK
Small Tower - current = 129mil ISK. New = 91mil ISK

PS - if you aren't using all the PG and CPU you possibly can, then you aren't being efficient. the cost of all the other materials dwarfs the cost of LO/HW on all tower sizes and you should be ashamed that you weren't putting those other mats to good use by employing the maximum possible heavy water and liquid ozone usage. Also - small and medium towers are getting a cost reduction even at 0% usage of PG AND CPU

PPS - for the m3 people calling for reduced size to represent roughly 80% PG and CPU usage - they already did that.

228.5m3/hr at 100%
204.5m3/hr at 80%

Whoa. What an excellent idea. An audit trail of who has removed what, and from what CHA's. Assinging a CHA to one member, or a particilaur group of members, so that not everyone who has access to ANY CHA can steal my shinies from it. Further, wouldn't it be nice to do the same thing with SMA's so that only 1-2 (or more, on your tastes) can steal the corp freighter, instead of anyone? And not just at POS's. The audit trail for Corp Hangars in stations would be nice too.

PPS - for the m3 people calling for reduced size to represent roughly 80% PG and CPU usage - they already did that.

228.5m3/hr at 100%
204.5m3/hr at 80%

Size of blocks are to big still, and iots no change to houling amaount wath wie ned to to do, total size need to be for large tower so that its posible bring it with one houler not 10 haulers total m3 need to be 25k m3 per 30 days. curently it is like more than 100k m3 for 30 days calculate your self.

40 per hour 5m3 per block, hour usage is 200m3
per day that is 200 x 24 = 4800 per day
per week 4800x7= 33600
per month 33600x4=134400m3

i wuld lowe that that decreased 10 times one block need to be 0,5 m3 not 5m3 that wil inpact our POS fueler live not make it misireble how it is now.

and decrerase a fuel bay size to on this mader thati ts posible to trow in it 14000 for large tower.

Ader ways that make no change atall ok lees brain ting but the same houling amount.

Fuel block BPOs still not seeded on Singularity. Definitely not showing up at Thukker Mix factories (not even the Minmatar Fuel Block BPO).

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/npc/Thukker_Mix/stations

(Research time for ME/PE research is 3h 20m as a base, which looks correct. Same ME time as the various Ammo BPOs such as EMP L. Base waste factor on the fuel block BPOs is 5% with a 300 max runs per BPC.)

Several posts continue to mention doing ME research on the Fuel Block BPO. ME research does NOT reduce the amounts needed of planetary interaction derived materials on any BPOs. I presume it will reduce the amount of ice products required though.

..

To address most of the rest of the discussion, we're not reducing the volume on fuel blocks at this time. Sorry.

Thx for your reply.

i like the bold part...

you obviously did not read my post

You obviously didn't read mine !

And yeah I am talking Large R&D POS
And I also have had experience with Mediums and Lo sec Large and WH Large (why even risk putting up anything other here !?)

Hi sec we only really use HW for Labs so LO use is pretty minimal 50 to 60 p hr
Others vary depending on the climate and objective of the week pretty much.

And this is kinda like deciding to tax everyone at the highest rate cause we feel like a change ... it that happened then you bet ppl would protest and it would get nasty !

Sure it's not real $$ tho as per my calcs we have faced 3 fold increases already in fuel costs with CCP's cool new FeaturesGäó it's more time and effort that needs to be put into chores that would rather go on fun stuff that they to encourage us into.
And I'm sure it won't just be us passing on the increased costs so I'm just thinking along the chain to the PVPers who already moan about how much boring stuff they have to do to afford the cool ships that are just going up and up in price.

Am I blind, or has there been no CCP response in this thread to the loss of sovereignty bonuses? And if there hasn't been, could we please get one?

To address most of the rest of the discussion, we're not reducing the volume on fuel blocks at this time. Sorry.

- This change is not intended to address volume issues in logistics, it's intended to address specific inventory management/manipulation headaches in the current system.

- I appreciate that this changes the status quo for wormhole towers, but running long-term towers in wormholes has never been a "supported feature", in the sense that we haven't explicitly designed for it in either positive or negative ways. The existence of long-term occupation of WH systems by players is an emergent behavior of the system, that we very much applaud, but don't have an explicit design policy for. Until we sit down and decide how to properly "balance" this aspect of gameplay, we're generally tending towards not explicitly designing with wormhole towers in mind, and assuming that the player ingenuity that got these towers up and running in the first place will deal with any minor curveballs we throw at it. Insofaras we have even a proto-policy about settled wormholes, I'd say "it's not supposed to be easy" is near the top of the non-list

Insofaras we have even a proto-policy about settled wormholes, I'd say "it's not supposed to be easy" is near the top of the non-list

but meh... wh dwellers are made of more resilient stuff i guess

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.

To address most of the rest of the discussion, we're not reducing the volume on fuel blocks at this time. Sorry.

- This change is not intended to address volume issues in logistics, it's intended to address specific inventory management/manipulation headaches in the current system.

- I appreciate that this changes the status quo for wormhole towers, but running long-term towers in wormholes has never been a "supported feature", in the sense that we haven't explicitly designed for it in either positive or negative ways. The existence of long-term occupation of WH systems by players is an emergent behavior of the system, that we very much applaud, but don't have an explicit design policy for. Until we sit down and decide how to properly "balance" this aspect of gameplay, we're generally tending towards not explicitly designing with wormhole towers in mind, and assuming that the player ingenuity that got these towers up and running in the first place will deal with any minor curveballs we throw at it.

Insofaras we have even a proto-policy about settled wormholes, I'd say "it's not supposed to be easy" is near the top of the non-list

Your able to get info on all online towers and get the average LO and HW consumption on it? I'm curious on the difference
compared to the 150/150 it will be @ the fuel block

...
The only towers at a risk of costing slightly more are large towers. The cost savings on small/medium towers far outstrip the amount of ISK added back to the 30-day fuel costs by increased HW/LOz needs.

I appreciate that this changes the status quo for wormhole towers, but running long-term towers in wormholes has never been a "supported feature", in the sense that we haven't explicitly designed for it in either positive or negative ways. The existence of long-term occupation of WH systems by players is an emergent behavior of the system, that we very much applaud, but don't have an explicit design policy for.

Confirming this, but it's just because the seeding hasn't been done yet. Shouldn't be anything to worry about.




To address most of the rest of the discussion, we're not reducing the volume on fuel blocks at this time. Sorry.

- This change is not intended to address volume issues in logistics, it's intended to address specific inventory management/manipulation headaches in the current system.

- I appreciate that this changes the status quo for wormhole towers, but running long-term towers in wormholes has never been a "supported feature", in the sense that we haven't explicitly designed for it in either positive or negative ways. The existence of long-term occupation of WH systems by players is an emergent behavior of the system, that we very much applaud, but don't have an explicit design policy for. Until we sit down and decide how to properly "balance" this aspect of gameplay, we're generally tending towards not explicitly designing with wormhole towers in mind, and assuming that the player ingenuity that got these towers up and running in the first place will deal with any minor curveballs we throw at it. Insofaras we have even a proto-policy about settled wormholes, I'd say "it's not supposed to be easy" is near the top of the non-list

Not trying to be rude but it doesn't matter if years ago you anticipated long-term POS use in wormholes or not. You have known for years that they are, so frankly what you are saying (to me) is a cop out in the old (or not so old) CCP style, not the new 'we care about you' way. I really hope I am wrong, but this thread and the 'new and improved' PI thread are worrisome with their old school tone.

You obviously didn't read mine!

And yeah I am talking Large R&D POS
And I also have had experience with Mediums and Lo sec Large and WH Large (why even risk putting up anything other here !?)

Hi sec we only really use HW for Labs so LO use is pretty minimal 50 to 60 p hr
Others vary depending on the climate and objective of the week pretty much.

And this is kinda like deciding to tax everyone at the highest rate cause we feel like a change ... it that happened then you bet ppl would protest and it would get nasty !

Sure it's not real $$ tho as per my calcs we have faced 3 fold increases already in fuel costs with CCP's cool new FeaturesGäó it's more time and effort that needs to be put into chores that would rather go on fun stuff that they to encourage us into.
And I'm sure it won't just be us passing on the increased costs so I'm just thinking along the chain to the PVPers who already moan about how much boring stuff they have to do to afford the cool ships that are just going up and up in price.

To address most of the rest of the discussion, we're not reducing the volume on fuel blocks at this time. Sorry.

- This change is not intended to address volume issues in logistics, it's intended to address specific inventory management/manipulation headaches in the current system.

- I appreciate that this changes the status quo for wormhole towers, but running long-term towers in wormholes has never been a "supported feature", in the sense that we haven't explicitly designed for it in either positive or negative ways. The existence of long-term occupation of WH systems by players is an emergent behavior of the system, that we very much applaud, but don't have an explicit design policy for. Until we sit down and decide how to properly "balance" this aspect of gameplay, we're generally tending towards not explicitly designing with wormhole towers in mind, and assuming that the player ingenuity that got these towers up and running in the first place will deal with any minor curveballs we throw at it. Insofaras we have even a proto-policy about settled wormholes, I'd say "it's not supposed to be easy" is near the top of the non-list

this change benefits far more people than it hurts - why are you highsec "efficiency" people so short sighted and selfish? And how did you wh people who are complaining even manage to hold on to your system if this ruins your parade?

failing that - there is compressed ice available which you should really look into to compensate for your increased hauling requirements...