Monthly Archives: May 2013

Mining Rights – A Proposal

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Thoughts about mining have been rolling around in my head for a while now, so I thought I’d get it out there.

The asteroid belts in EVE have always seemed a little out-of-place. Rocks respawning in exactly the same place, every single day. Sure, as a mechanic it makes sense, but from a lore perspective it really seems a bit whacked.

Then you get the issue of who actually owns the ore. Can you really imagine a world where a government doesn’t try to license everything, extracting its pound of flesh, demanding that you pay it for using a ‘public’ resource. That you ‘buy’ the right to mine. And can you imagine a world where large corporate concerns haven’t tied up all the rights they can?

Then there’s the problem of actually /finding/ decent rocks. Sure, there are going to be a lot out there. But how many of them are going to be useful, and how many are just going to be lumps of ice, carbon and silica, of no use to man nor beast? It’s not like they’re going to be radiating an energy signature which can be picked up.

So here’s what I’m thinking, and yes, I know it’d be a major shake-up:

High-Sec

The regular way

The rights to mine in highsec are, in most part, owned by the various NPC mining corporations. I would not include ORE in this (Hence why they moved out of High, into NPC Null)

This means, when you, as a PC, want to go mine, you’re subcontracting to them. This means: Mining Missions. They’ll give you coordinates for an ice/ore pocket, you’ll go and mine it, giving them a cut of it.

High level missions will give better ore, large asteroids and so on. But claim jumpers are more likely. It’d be nice if people could be flagged Suspect for ‘stealing’ ore in these sites, if they’re not in the fleet of the person who took the mission, but that might be a trifle complicated.

Possibly some of the mining missions will still be the ‘go kill people then mine’ ones. But I think the killing should be reactive, rather than proactive. You’re not claim jumping, in general.

Ore anomalies

These are pockets of asteroids in an orbit which makes them dangerous. So a beacon is added and Egger avarice is harnessed for the public good. Maybe add in an Ore that can be traded directly for LP. The ‘worthless’ rock that’s from an asteroid that was going to paste a station.

Prospecting

A longer term option. Invest in some system infrastructure, anchored somewhere (not a POS) and using a skill, to generate bookmarks for ore signatures. Chance based, with skills making it better, but taking time to generate. The lower the sec status, the better the signature (as the system isn’t mined out) Maybe one a day. Possibly sometimes sharing signatures, if it’s a high volume system. The first person/fleet/corp into the site gets the mining ‘right’. If they pay a fee to the Faction, reduced by standing, they get exclusivity, with others going suspect if they mine there.

Low Sec/NPC Null

Pretty much the same as high-sec, but with better rewards, due to the dearth of competitors. Prospectors get better and faster results.

Sov Null/Wormholes

Due to the lack of NPC agents, no mining missions. Due to the lack of a NPC central authority, no anomalies.

Prospectors get far better results. More powerful scanners can be used, allowing for chaining of signatures, rather than the larger delays of Low and High.

System Scanners

These are pretty much just replacements for Ore Prospecting Arrays. Just with no tie to the indexes, for the base level one.

Anchored anywhere in system, taking a few hours to online, they can be used to generate a bookmark to an Ore site (Quality is skill dependant) They then offline, and have to be put back online again. The skill of the person who onlines it determines the quality of site it’ll produce when triggered, and how long it takes to online. Higher level ones online faster, and produce better sites. If they’re triggered while the site still exists, they’ll link to the same site.

These cannot, at a base level, be scanned down. However, if you have two within a set distance (say, 2 AU) they interfere with each other, reducing the quality of site.

Upgraded versions, in Sov Null, can be scanned down and destroyed, with a short reinforced timer,if they have stront in them. No more than a couple of hours. Fairly cheap, I’d peg them around the 5 million mark for a basic one, with each progressive level making them more expensive. Probably no more than 100 million for a top of the line one, but someone with a better understanding of Sov Null would have a better clue on this. They’re /supposed/ to be disposable.

The Goal

The idea is to make mining a somewhat less passive activity. No longer ‘I undock, warp to my bookmark, target the nearest rock, receive bacon’.

Side Effects

Ratting becomes more complicated. No longer would you have asteroid belts to warp round. This could be mitigated by adding more sites. Refineries, colonies, factories, brothels and other such places. No longer would you have high up people in a criminal organisation, deciding to go and look at some rocks.

Not Quite So New Player Experience: NQS-NPE

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Catchy, no?

I can’t comment too much on the NPE, as I’ve been playing for a couple of years, and while not Community born, I have this very good friend called Google, who I talk to on a very regular basis. As such, I’d pretty much picked up the basics, by the time I’d worked through the existing tutorials.

NPE

That said, there are a couple of things I’d suggest for the NPE:

On the mining tutorial, don’t have them mine Veldspar. Pick one of the mission ores instead, so they don’t go to an asteroid belt and mine it there, then wonder why they can’t hand the mission in. It’s a minor change, but one that should relieve one frustration.

I would have mentioned exploration, but the changes should take care of most of the issues.

Add ‘medals’ for completing the tutorials. Have them being private by default, but easy to make public. A graduation certificate would be nice too. (Maybe one for the epic arc, Maybe a ‘Friend of the Sisters’ thing.) Everyone likes medals. And it’s a handy way to say ‘I’ve actually spent the time and learnt about the game’

 

Not Quite So New Player Experience

Then we get to the meat of this blog post. The Not Quite So New Player Experience. There are some things that the game really doesn’t teach. PI. Fleets. Invention. Research. Contacts. Standings. Logistics. Those things that you pretty much need to go to an out of game source to learn about. While I don’t want to get rid of those sources, I don’t like that you have to go to them. It’d be great if ‘advanced’ tutorials could be added. Some, perhaps, with videos showing what you have to do. That’d be handy for, say, PI.

Can you imagine a tutorial where you have to fly a Logi frigate, and keep an NPC repped up? Or an energy transfer on them. Lock it away so you can only start it when you have certain skills. It’s not as good as flying with another player, but it is a start.

Something that explains why ME research is important, and why you don’t need to keep researching something into the ground.

 

They’ll never be a replacement for learning from other players. But they can be somewhere to point people, so you have a clue that they have a basic grounding.

 

And certificates/medals you can give to anyone would be good. As well as corporation defined ones, for things like doctrine fits. So it’s easy to see what people are capable of flying. Just have public, private, corporation and standing defined viewing levels.

Once Crest access for the character sheet (read only) is opened up, I’m seriously considering writing up something to do just that, along with passcode based viewing. If I do, I’ll open source it, though I’d hope people would trust me to have temporary access to their sheets. (Only store the certs they have. Update when they access)

Manufacturing 201 – Tech 2

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Tech 2 manufacturing is a clickfest. If you don’t like having to do a great deal of clicking, just wanting  to installing jobs once a week, move on. You will be clicking a lot.

That said, the profits with Tech 2 manufacturing can be pretty good. They’re more sensitive to market conditions than many T1 products, but all that means is, check your numbers before you start.

Tech 2 BPOs

First, get the idea of Tech 2 BPOs out of your head. You will, likely, never lay your hands on one. They can make substantial profits, but they’re limited on throughput. They generally sell for several years of profit. Sure, they have a low time investment, but other than that, they’re generally not worth it. They’ll tie up a substantial quantity of capital, with a low ROI. There are one or two markets where you can’t compete with them. These are small markets, however. Ones where the BPO throughput is high enough to completely fill the demand. The majority of Tech 2 stuff, across all of New Eden, comes from Invention. And that’s pissed off a fair number of people with the BPOs.

Invention

This is where most people start with Tech 2 manufacturing. You can, sometimes, buy T2 BPCs on the market. They’re relatively rare, however, and expensive, compared to inventing them yourself.

Skills:

Required:

  • Science 5
  • At least one of the following. They’re requirements for the science skills.:
    • Engineering 5
    • Mechanics 5
    • Electronics 5
  • At least one of:
    • Amarr Encryption Methods
    • Minmatar Encryption Methods
    • Gallente Encryption Methods
    • Caldari Encryption Methods
  • At least 2 of the science skills. You’ll find these normally running in pairs, like Quantum Physics is common with Hydromagnetic Physics, or Nanite Engineering with Molecular Engineering.

Worth having:

  • The rest of the encryption methods.
  • A larger number of the science skills.
  • Laboratory Operations 5
  • Advanced Laboratory Operations 4. These two are just so you have more slots to work with.
  • Scientific Networking 1+. For when you move into a POS, or want to roam.

You may notice I’m not mentioning levels for a lot of the skills. That’s because you can work with them at 1. Higher is better, and will give you better results, but you can get started at 1. Plan to get them to 4, but it’s not a requirement to get started. Just take it into account with your math.

The invention process

Pick something to make. Exactly how you do this, is a whole different topic. The short version is: Think about what people use; then check the math (say, using my blueprint calculator)

Tech 2 BPCs are created from Tech 1 BPCs. In general, you want max run copies for modules (300), weapons(300), drones(1500) and ammo(1500), and single run copies for ships and rigs. The ME and PE of the Tech 1 BPC is irrelevant. 0 is absolutely fine. Mine tend to be better, but that’s because I also often manufacture from the BPO they’re copied from.

The skills you need to invent from the Tech 1 BPC are on the Bill of Materials Tab, on the Invention tab (big surprise). It can be worth checking the details for the resultant BPC as well, to make sure you have the skills to actually manufacture the module. Those show up on my Calculator.

The materials needed to do the invention will also show up on that tab. They will consist of:

  • A data interface.
  • 2 different kinds of Datacore.

The datacores will match the science skills required to invent the module. The interface will match the racial Encryption Methods skill. There are different interfaces for doing modules/weapons/ammo/drones, rigs and ships, per race.

The datacores will be used up, regardless of if you succeed or not. The interface will not be used up, and will be immediately available for doing another run. So if you’re doing this all in the one station, you only need one of each type.

There are also Decryptors that you can use. These are getting renamed in Odyssey, to a consistent naming scheme. For now, ignore them. They’re valuable when it comes to ships and rigs, but for most invention jobs, they’re a waste of money. I’ll cover them in a note below.

You can also use Meta versions of the thing that you’re inventing. This will affect the chance of success, depending on your skills. Higher skills = a better bonus from a Meta module.

The Method

  • Stick everything in the appropriate hangar. If you’re using a POS, the BPC can be in the corp hangar at the station, but everything else needs to be in the array.
  • Select the blueprint, right click it, and pick ‘Invention’.
  • Select the appropriate installation slot for actually doing the invention in.
  • Select the input/output hangars appropriately.
  • Pick the Meta module if you’re using one.
  • Pick the decryptor if you’re using one.
  • Pick the output type. Some things can turn into two different types. Like a Rifter can become a Wolf or a Jaguar. Most are 1 to 1 though, requiring no changes.
  • Hit ok
  • At this point, you’ll get a quote. If you’ve put everything into the appropriate places, you can hit accept quote.
  • When the job completed, deliver it. you’ll be told if it succeeds or fails. If it’s succeeded, you’ll have a T2 BPC.

The Math

You will fail when you do invention. You’ll fail a great deal. Suck it up, and put the cost into your calculations.

The chance of success, for invention, depends on your skills, the thing you’re inventing, the meta level of the module you’re using (if any) and the decryptor you’re using (if any). The formula is pretty simple, but to make life easy, I have a standalone calculator, as well as building it into the blueprint calculator (just click on Invention Material Requirements).

The Invention Formula

Base * (1 + (0.01 * E) ) * (1 + (S * (0.1/ (5 - Meta Level))) * D

  • Base – Base chance
    • Modules and Ammo have a base probability of 40%
    • Frigates, Destroyers, Freighters and Skiffs have a base probability of 30%
    • Cruisers, Industrials and Mackinaws have a base probability of 25%
    • Battlecruisers, Battleships and Hulks have a base probability of 20%
  • E – Racial Encryption Skill
  • S – Science Skills. Add them together.
  • Meta level – The metalevel of the module you’re using.
  • D – Decryptor modifier. Use 1 if you’re not using one.

So, a Tech 1 item (no meta level) has no effect. A meta 4 item, when you have both skills at 5 makes a huge difference.

When working out how much to charge yourself for each blueprint take the number above (it’ll probably be 0.something. 0.42, if you have the minimum skills needed. Divide the cost for one run (materials, slot costs, your time cost) by that number, and you’ll get the cost per blueprint. (divide that by the number of runs, for the cost per unit) Yes, I initially said multiply. Consider that a brainfart. The calculator does it right 😉

The Number of Runs you’ll get

In general, if you use a 1 run copy, you’ll get a one run copy back if you succeed. If you use a max run copy on modules/ammo/weapons/drones, you’ll get a 10 run copy back. If you use anything with ships and rigs, you’ll get a 1 run copy back.

The only way to change this is using a Decryptor.

The formula is:

MIN(MAX(ROUNDDOWN( (Input T1 BPC Runs / T1 Max Runs Per Blueprint Copy) * (T2 Max Runs Per Blueprint Copy / 10) ), 1)+ Decryptor Runs Bonus, T2 Max Runs Per Blueprint Copy)

Those numbers are all in the SDE. Specifically the table invBlueprintTypes

Manufacturing

Actually making Tech 2 stuff is pretty much the same as making T1 stuff. Get the materials, cram them into the right hangar and install the job.

The only real difference is /what/ those materials are. You’ll have a bunch which are construction components. These are made, in general, from things made from Moon Goo. Consider making them yourselves, as the profit margins on a bunch of them are pretty damn good. You will need the science skills for this too. Cost them at an appropriate isk/hr when you do all the math for the final product.

Notes

Blueprint Copies

These are the hardest thing to lay your hands on, when you’re getting started in invention. Empire copy slots tend to be filled up for days in advance, and you’ll need a bunch of copies to keep up with your manufacturing. Many T2 producers throw up a POS with an advanced lab or six, to keep themselves hip deep in copies, so they can move with the market. Consider low-sec stations for your copies. They’re low bulk, so something small and fast can shift them.

Decryptors

These modify your chances of invention, and the output ME/PE/runs of the blueprint. They’re used up when you do the invention, and tend to cost millions, so be careful what you’ll use them for. Make sure you’ll be making enough profit on an average run for them to be worth it. My calculator does /not/ take the cost of decryptors into account. Modules are generally not worth it. Ships and Rigs can be, especially with a boost to the number of runs you get back.

When you’re using a decryptor which modifies output runs, consider using max run copies for ships and rigs. These will give you 1 additional run, over a 1 run copy. With the higher copy time as the downside.

Did CCP nerf the invention chance with this release

No. Random is random. You will get runs of bad luck, just as you’ll get runs of good luck. These may coincide with a release. If you look at the figures, as a whole, they will average out. And you will remember the bad runs, more than the good runs.

Starting Capital

Have a lot. You’ll be burning through BPCs at multiple per hour, with a cost of >200,000 per run in datacores (successful or not). Then there are the materials for the modules. The margin is better than T1, but you’ll still need plenty.

The Problem with the new Launcher – Multiboxing

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Well, not strictly multiboxing. Running multiple accounts on the one computer.

To explain:

I have a single system with 3 screens. I run one account on each screen, so I can see all of them at once. (I also have a setting for one account across all the screens) I run these clients in fixed window mode, so I can have them all active at once, with no annoying bar at the top. To do this, I have to, in the graphics settings, set which adaptor each client is to use.

To make this work, I’ve created 2 junction points off the main Eve install, so I don’t have to have 3 totally separate copies of eve running. Eve pays attention to where it’s started from, using a configuration directory that contains that path. So, in junctioning it, when I start the launcher, in each of the ‘copies’, they each start with a different configuration, putting them onto the correct screen. I have the launcher set to not show, when no update is required.

So all I needed to do was:

  • Click on launcher one, wait for it to patch then hit play (unless it didn’t need to patch, in which case I just move on)
  • Click on launcher two.
  • Click on launcher three.

At this point, I have three clients, all with different settings, all patched up, waiting for log in.

Now I need to:

  • Click on launcher one, wait for patching. Log into it. Start the client. If I want to change character (within the same account) I have to log off, then on again. (Though I think I saw something about that being a bug)
  • click on a shortcut I’ve created to bin\exefile.exe in the second junctioned copy.
  • click on a shortcut I’ve created to bin\exefile.exe in the third junctioned copy.

This is because you can only have one launcher open, in a directory (or junctioned copies of it)

As long as the ability to start exefile.exe doesn’t go away, this will continue to work. If it does go away, then I’ll have to start the launcher, log in, start eve, close the launcher, start it again from a different directory (rince, repeat) and do it all over again when I want to change alt on an account. Which is more than a trifle annoying.

If I could keep multiple copies of the launcher open, each logged into a different account, with a different settings directory, that would be /perfect/. I really don’t want to waste diskspace and bandwidth for patches with multiple actual copies of Eve.

For a more detailed explanation of what I’m doing: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Multiple_clients#Vista.2F7_Steps

And yes, I know it’s not officially supported. But it’s a common thing to be doing. With the power of two promotion, and so on, it seems like CCP want people to have multiple clients at the same time.

Manufacturing 102 – Research

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Research is an important aspect of industry in EVE online, though it’s one that, initially, all you have to pay attention to is the output, rather than how to do it yourself. This is because there are plenty of people out there who are more than willing to sell you the fruits of their labours, saving you time and ISK when you’re just getting started.

All forms of research take up a slot. You can increase the number of slots you can use with the Skills Laboratory Operations and Advanced Laboratory Operations

The Forms of Research

There are three basic forms of research which you can perform. Copying, Material Efficiency research and Production Level research. The latter is also called Production Efficiency research, just to confuse matters; it has nothing to do with the skill. For now, we are totally ignoring Invention and Reverse Engineering. I’ll return to Invention in a later post. Reverse Engineering, well, I’ve not touched it yet.

These activities can only be performed on a Blueprint Original (BPO). Once you have a Blueprint Copy (BPC) the only thing you can do is manufacture from it.

The maximum time a job can run for is 30 days (Unless a single run would take more than that.)

Copying

This is as simple as it sounds. Install the job, get back the BPO and a number of copies with the same ME and PL.

  • Put a Blueprint Original in your hangar (or a corp hangar)
  • Right click on it, and select copy.
  • Select an installation to put it in
  • Pick the number of runs you want on each copy
  • Pick the number of copies you want.
  • get a quote
  • Install the job.

Blueprint copies are of severely limited utility. Most of the time, you’ll just manufacture directly from a BPO. You’ll use BPCs for invention (so many BPCs. So very many), where you want to give other people the ability to use your BPOs, without handing them over. When you want to sell them to people who are just starting out, and who don’t have the funds for buying a researched BPO.

Material Efficiency

  • Put a Blueprint Original in your hangar (or a corp hangar)
  • Right click on it, and select Material Research.
  • Select an installation to put it in
  • Enter the number of levels you wish to increase the ME by
  • get a quote
  • Install the job.

Material Efficiency research is important. Most blueprints have between 5 and 10% waste what’s controlled by this figure. However, ‘as high as possible’ isn’t the way to look at this. A general rule of thumb is: Each time you double the ME level, you halve the waste. It’s not quite true (The waste is multiplied by \frac{1}{1+me} ) but it’s close enough. This only applies to the ‘Base’ materials for a blueprint, not the ‘Extra’ materials. Research blueprints to the point there you’re not losing a lot of isk with every run. Don’t chase perfect, because it’s not worth it. You may find high ME levels sell better, even when they’re massively above the perfect value (Rigs are easy to get perfect. I’ve seen people selling them at 10 times the perfect level)

The biggest problem with ME research, is finding somewhere to do it. Most High-sec slots are booked solid a month in advance. Your options are: Wait (High opportunity cost) Put up a POS to do it (Expensive, and requires standings) Hire someone to do it (Check the sell orders forum) and finally, nip into lowsec and install the job there (Riskier. You could get exploded and lose the blueprint)

Consider the last one seriously. Low-sec isn’t to be feared. Taken with caution, sure, but not feared.

Finally: This adds to the ME level.

Productivity Level

  • Put a Blueprint Original in your hangar (or a corp hangar)
  • Right click on it, and select Time Efficiency Research.
  • Select an installation to put it in
  • Enter the number of levels you wish to increase the PL by
  • get a quote
  • Install the job.

Productivity research cuts down on the time wastage when you’re making something. It saves you a little ISK, by reducing the rental fees, but otherwise, there’s no direct boost to your profit. What you get is a better isk/hr, by producing more in the same time.

As with ME research, we’re talking diminishing returns. I’d suggest taking the vast majority of blueprints past PE 5 or 10 is a mistake.

As with ME research, this adds to the PL level, rather than setting it.

PE research facilities are generally fairly empty across Highsec, so finding somewhere to install the job is simple.

Notes

In general, T1 blueprints have no material requirements for these kinds of research. Just to make life difficult, there are a few exceptions, such as the Prototype Cloaking Device. When you’re doing the research on one of these blueprints, just ensure you have the appropriate materials, found by doing a show info on the blueprint, in the hangar where the research is taking place.

If you want to know where the profit balance points are for a blueprint, take a look at the blueprint in the calculator under tools on this site. I wrote it to make my life easier, so you may as well use it too.

Skills

There are a few skills which it’s useful to have when you’re doing research. Levels are less important than for Manufacturing. Train as desired. Science 4 is required to unlock Metallurgy.

  • Science: 5% reduction in blueprint copying time, per level.
  • Laboratory Operation: 1 additional Job per level.
  • Advanced Laboratory Operations: 1 additional Job per level (needs Lab Ops 5)
  • Metallurgy: 5% reduction to ME research time, per level.
  • Research: 5% reduction in PL research time, per level.

Ice Interdiction, Mark 2

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What if you could, if you can’t get at the enemy miners, cowering in their POS waiting for you to go away, work to eliminate what they’re wanting to mine?

So, there you are, arriving in the Enemy held system. And the only people there are a few miners who immediately hole up in their POS.

Now you’re just a small roving gang, without the time or firepower to take down a POS. Just hoping for a fight with a similar number of people. Right now, all you can really do is smack talk in local, and move on. Or hang around, just to annoy them.

On Earth, you could set to destroy the infrastructure needed to harvest the resources. As that’s the ships in Eve, that’s a trifle difficult to do, when they’re inside a somewhat impenetrable bubble.

What I’m suggesting is you can target the resources themselves. Shoot the ice. Assign a number of HP per unit of ice, reducing it each time a block is harvested. So shoot it, and do that much damage, and there’s a block of ice your enemy can’t harvest. Do enough, and your enemy has lost the entirety of that spawn.

What may be interesting to play with, is adjustments to the spawn timer, if blocks are damaged in that fashion, meaning it spawns less frequently. Though how you justify this from a lore POV, I’m less sure. Maybe the ‘destroyed’ blocks futz your sensors with bad readings, making it harder to locate the next spawn. So the more destroyed blocks you have, the longer the spawn is delayed.

This could also be extended to regular asteroids, with a smaller hp per unit.

Now, how this would be handled in high sec is a bit trickier. Due to the inability of people to attack others. At the very least, I’d think making the person go suspect. To stop people completely screwing up the market (for the lols), you may need Concord/Faction Navy.

You may have noticed. I like creating targets in systems. Things that it’s actually worth fighting over.

Renting Player slots – Reworking Industry

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Renting slots from players is something that came up in a forum thread I was keeping an eye on. And it’s an interesting one. The CSM has heard about it, but I thought I’d bring it to a wider audience, as it was a trifle off topic for the thread it was in. The person who brought it up has since posted a blog post on it. Go have a read. I’m not stealing the idea, just posting my own views on it. 🙂

 

Right now, a lot of industry, in Highsec, happens in NPC owned stations, in NPC owned slots. Some of us do production in POS, but that’s generally because we need slots which are not easily available. such as copy slots, and ME research slots. Anything other than those tend to be just because we’ve got space in the POS to stick things.

NPC services are, while a minor isk sink, not something I’m a major fan of. What is being suggested is:

The Pitch

Players/Corporations can make slots at their POS available for Public use, accessed through the normal station services. Materials will be moved back and forth by Magical Fairies. Well, by NPCs who you don’t see.

Prices will be set by the owners of the POS, with a little fee on top for NPC services to get the things back and forth.

Things to consider

There are a few things which need thought about. I’ll cover each in turn below.

  • What happens when a POS array with jobs is taken down/offlined/blown up.
  • Will people put up enough slots.
  • Griefing Potential
  • What speed do the slots run at

The slot goes away, while in use:

Blown up, taken down, offlined for more than X hours: The job is cancelled, and the materials are lost.  I’ll cover something else to happen in the Griefing section.

Offlined for less than X hours (over the entire course of the job): The job is delayed for that long.

Numbers of slots:

I don’t know about you, but I certainly would rent out slots, if I had spares; and the price should level out to something barely profitable, due to the invisible hand. I wouldn’t get rid of /all/ npc slots, initially. But I’d probably increase the price for them, so PC slots are better to use. There are 60,000 odd manufacturing slots in Highsec. That’s not such a good thing.

Griefing potential:

There is certainly potential. But there are ways to mitigate it, without entirely eliminating it. The main ones are:

  1. Add an uptime counter and a jobs run counter for the slot, reset on offlining. So someone can tell if it’s being bounced up and down.
  2. Add an escrow fees. You get paid when the job completes.
  3. Add a penalty escrow, based on the number of slots. So if jobs are cancelled by your actions, the people who installed them gets /something/ back. Have the escrow level displayed as well.

At that point, people have a way to determine if a slot is ‘trustworthy’ and they may pay more for that. Or cheap out, and risk having it lost.

Speed

I figure slots should run at the reduced speed. Possibly with a small bump on it for the delivery of materials to and from the stations. 30 minutes or so.

Conclusion

And of course, all of this should also work with Outposts. putting things into player hands is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’d prefer for it to be possible to break POS away from moons by the time this happens. Allows things to scale better. Deep space manufacturing ftw 🙂

New Decryptors – Odyssey

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Looks like we’re getting new and changed decryptors in Odyssey, along with a rationalized naming scheme. The first is going to be interesting for how they shake out price wise, and what they do to the marketplace. The second only makes sense. Having to look up ‘which one does what’ is a pain in the ass. Memorizing that kind of thing doesn’t make you better. Just better at memorizing.

The rationalization

All the decryptors now share a naming scheme. it’s [‘optimized’] + ‘racial name’ + ‘decryptor type’. The racial type matches that of the interfaces. So Occult for Amarr, Esoteric for Caldari, Incognito for Gallente and Cryptic for Minmatar. The decryptor are shared across all of them. And 2 have an optimized version which has slightly different stats.

The Decryptors

  • Accelerant: 120%, +1 run, +2 ME, +5 PE
  • Attainment: 180%, +4 runs, -1 ME +2 PE
  • Optimized Attainment. 190%, +2 runs, +1 ME, -1 PE
  • Augmentation: 60%, +9 runs, -2 ME, +1 PE
  • Optimized Augmentation: 90%, +7 runs, +2 ME
  • Parity: 150%, +3 runs, +1 ME (I think. no + against it) -1 PE
  • Process: 110%, +3 ME, +3 PE (updated)
  • Symmetry: 100%, +2 runs, +1 ME, +4 PE

The parity one I’ll want to double check, as it’s showing ‘1’ for the ME modifier. All the others are showing + or – before the number.

Also, right now, invention appears to be bugged, with the interface being consumed. I’ve submitted a bug for it. Sorted

The optimized versions are marked as ‘rare and valuable’ in the description, so I suspect the drop rate will be a lot lower. Probably decent true sec null only. They are significantly better, after all.

Process will be interesting to see as well. Hitting ME 0 is damn good for some runs. Right now, this decryptor puts you at -1 -1, rather than the 0 -1 it will in Odyssey.  Process is back the way it was.

CSM 8 Results

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Well, they’ve released the ballots for CSM 8, and unsurprisingly, I still haven’t won.

What you can get from the ballots, after processing them, is the following output.

So, there were a total of 17 rounds, With 31 candidates, and 14 being elected, this is pretty obvious stuff. With the way the Wright STV system works, one candidate is eliminated each round, then the entire election run again as if there had been no votes for them. When you have 14 candidates remaining, they’re all elected.

The order of elimination:

  1. DaeHan Minhyok
  2. Cipreh
  3. Kaleb Rysode
  4. Awol Aurix
  5. Artctura
  6. Ayeson
  7. PsychoBitch
  8. Roc Wieler
  9. riverini
  10. Travis Musgrat
  11. Unforgiven Storm
  12. Corebloodbrothers
  13. Steve Ronuken
  14. Psychotic Monk
  15. Greene Lee
  16. Banlish
  17. Nathan Jameson

Obviously, I’d have prefered, if not elected, to be eliminated in the last round. But round 13 isn’t too bad for someone with no track record. Sure, some people have heard of me, but my name isn’t ‘out there’.

There are some people who find the system too confusing. For them, I’ll give a /very/ layman version. For a little more detail, take a look at mynnna’s blog post on it.

Short version:

It takes \frac{Total votes}{Number of positions +1} to get someone elected. So, then someone is provisionally elected (You aren’t elected until it’s actually over.), you take the all the votes for that person, take all the people provisionally elected off the front of it, and reassign the votes to the next candidate on them. These votes are worth \frac{number of votes over what was needed}{number of votes for the candidate}

Once you’ve got a bunch of provisionally elected people, and all the votes have finished cascading, if you don’t have enough of them, you eliminate the lowest scoring candidate, scrub their number from all the votes and start all over again. If votes are exhausted (No candidates left on them) then they’re discarded and the numbers required are recalculated for that round.

It’d be annoying to do by hand, but a computer can chug through them fairly simply.

Most people had hit over 90% of voting power by the 5th candidate.

One interesting side effect of this. If it had been a 15 person CSM, rather than 14, Banlish would have got in, rather than Nathan Jameson (who was eliminated last). This is just because more would have trickled down from votes from mynnna and so on, as they’d have needed less to be elected.

I’ve seen some people saying that nullsec is overly represented. Some saying under represented. Both groups are wrong. Of the voting population, there is proper representation. Strategic bloc voting doesn’t give those blocs more power (Except by getting people to vote the full power of their ballot.) Now, I do wish more people had voted, but you can hardly complain about not being represented, when you didn’t vote.

Next year, I’m hoping CCP do more to promote the CSM to players who are hard for us to reach (without spamming the fuck out of them.) And while it’s not ideal, for a world where we have informed voters, I hope they set it up so you can set up links to prefill the ballot for people, without the need for bookmarklets.

Using the Eve Central API with PHP

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We’re going back to basics here. One thing that many sites, which are using the SDE from Eve, want to do, is access price data from EVE Central api. I don’t do this myself, having a EMDR relay, and consumer to provide my market data, but back when I was starting out, I did this. It’s a pretty simple thing to do, the only pain in the neck being the data structures that PHP wants to use, when you’re using XML. It likes throwing in arrays where you don’t think it should, which can be a bit of a pain. If you ever need to debug this, var_dump() will be your friend, showing you exactly how the data has been structured.

So, here’s a fairly basic bit of code. It asks eve central for the information for Tritanium, then prints out the so called ‘Percentile’ price. This is the price if someone was to buy 5% of the market, then average the cost out. It’s handy for ignoring the outliers, if not entirely accurate. The code is more complicated than it needs to be, but we’ll get to why in the second example.

$typeid=34;
$url="http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?regionlimit=10000002&typeid=".$typeid;
$pricexml=file_get_contents($url);
$xml=new SimpleXMLElement($pricexml);
$item=$xml->xpath('/evec_api/marketstat/type[@id='.$typeid.']');
$price= (float) $item[0]->sell->percentile;
$price=round($price,2);
echo $price;

Fairly simple, really. You get the type id for Tritanium, the url that will pull back the data from the forge, mash them together, then use file_get_contents to retrieve them. Please not, some PHP installs will stop this from working. There’s a more complicated version at the bottom which may get you round this; functionally identical but using curl instead of file_get_contents.
Once you have the output from EVE Central, you push it into the SimpleXML parser, grab the bit that’s just about tritanium (the XPath bit does this. This is the over complicated bit), then pull just the sell percentile out of it. The reason for the [0] is because the Xpath bit could have returned more than one entry. In this case it can’t, but the parser is taking the safe option and giving you an array. The (float) is there as without it, you’re dealing with a SimpleXML data type, which is a pain to do math with. (float) just converts it into a regular number.

Now for the more complicated version. Eve central allows for multiple items to be queried at the same time. This is why I put the xpath in there. It allows us to target a specific type being returned, rather than having to go through each in turn to see if it’s the one we want, before continuing.

    $typeids=array(34,35);
    $url="http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?regionlimit=10000002&typeid=".join('&typeid=',$typeids);
    $pricexml=file_get_contents($url);
    $xml=new SimpleXMLElement($pricexml);
    foreach($typeids as $typeid)
    {
        $item=$xml->xpath('/evec_api/marketstat/type[@id='.$typeid.']');
        $price= (float) $item[0]->sell->percentile;
        $price=round($price,2);
        echo $typeid." ".$price."\n";
    }

This time, instead of a single type id, we’re asking for multiple. We store them in an array, then mash that array into the url, with a join (or implode) which adds the right number of &typeid= to it. Then it goes on as before until just after the xml is parsed, where it goes and grabs each individual element out in turn, iterating through the array.

If you wanted to pull the minimum buy price, you’d replace the $price= (float) $item[0]->sell->percentile; with $price= (float) $item[0]->buy->min; and so on. It’s fairly simple.

Now, the curl version, of the first bit of code:

$typeid=34;
$url="http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?regionlimit=10000002&typeid=".$typeid;
$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
if($response === false)
{
    echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
}
else
{
    $xml=new SimpleXMLElement($response);
    $item=$xml->xpath('/evec_api/marketstat/type[@id='.$typeid.']');
    $price= (float) $item[0]->sell->percentile;
    $price=round($price,2);
    echo $price;
}

It’s a bit more complicated, but it gives you a way of dealing with a remote site not responding. Perhaps looking at a different site for price data, for example.

Remember, the more calls you have on remote sites, the slower your pages will be to load. Consider caching the price data locally, perhaps in a database, or if you have access to it, memcache (My preference. but it’s uncommon)