Updated Bill of Materials (BOM) SQL for the SDE

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Just an update for my previous post on SQL for blueprints using the SDE. Now you can generate a complete BOM with a single statement.

I now have a use for getting /all/ the numbers out in a single query and that is what you’ll find below. You could even, if you so wanted, join it in as another table, against a table of blueprint product ids, MEs and a set PE, along with prices with some sums, to generate a full costing for a number of blueprints.

This is written specifically for use with an interface that lets you use named parameters (DBI, PDO, JDBC) and requires :typeid as the id of what you’re making. :ME the ME of the blueprint :PE the production efficiency of the character making them. It also requires a greatest function, which MS SQL doesn’t have; so you’d need to replace that with an if()

    select typeid,name,sum(quantity)+(sum(perfect)*(0.25-(0.05*:pe))*max(base)) quantity from(
    select typeid,name,round(if(:me>=0,greatest(0,sum(quantity))+(greatest(0,sum(quantity))*((wastefactor/(:me+1))/100)),greatest(0,sum(quantity))+(greatest(0,sum(quantity))*(wastefactor/100)*(1-:ME)))) quantity,1 base,greatest(0,sum(quantity)) perfect from (
      select invTypes.typeid typeid,invTypes.typeName name,quantity
      from invTypes,invTypeMaterials
      where invTypeMaterials.materialTypeID=invTypes.typeID
       and invTypeMaterials.TypeID=:typeid
      union
      select invTypes.typeid typeid,invTypes.typeName name,
             invTypeMaterials.quantity*r.quantity*-1 quantity
      from invTypes,invTypeMaterials,ramTypeRequirements r,invBlueprintTypes bt
      where invTypeMaterials.materialTypeID=invTypes.typeID
       and invTypeMaterials.TypeID =r.requiredTypeID
       and r.typeID = bt.blueprintTypeID
       and r.activityID = 1 and bt.productTypeID=:typeid and r.recycle=1
    ) t join invBlueprintTypes on (invBlueprintTypes.productTypeID=:typeid) group by typeid,name
    union
    SELECT t.typeID typeid,t.typeName tn, r.quantity * r.damagePerJob quantity,0 base,r.quantity * r.damagePerJob perfect
    FROM ramTypeRequirements r,invTypes t,invBlueprintTypes bt,invGroups g
    where r.requiredTypeID = t.typeID and r.typeID = bt.blueprintTypeID
    and r.activityID = 1 and bt.productTypeID=:typeid and g.categoryID != 16
    and t.groupID = g.groupID) outside group by typeid,name

Not a nice query, with more selects in it than I like, but pretty much needed with how it works.

Blog Banter #47: How complex is too complex?

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My first banter! Time to make an idiot of myself.

From: http://www.ninveah.com/2013/07/blog-banter-47.html

So this month’s Blog Banter will gravitate around knowledge, specifically EVE knowledge. Some examples of topics to cover: Is EVE too complex for one person to know everything? Is it, in fact, too complex for one person to know everything about one topic? How do you maintain any knowledge or skills related to EVE over time with breaks and expansions? Does CCP do a sufficient job documenting the features of the game, and if not, what could they do better? How does one determine where the gaps in their knowledge even are?

EVE is a very complex. game. EVE has simple mechanics. The first statement is true. The second statement is mostly true. EVE is made up of many small, simple parts, which come together to create a monstrosity of enormous complexity. Consider Chess, or Go. Both games with a simple rule set (Go is incredibly simple) but the complexity of thought required to master the games is immense. Eve is similar. It just has a lot more independent rules.

Could one person understand all of Eve? If you exclude the players, I’d say yes, without too much difficulty. It would just take time, and a good memory. Of course, understanding and applying are very different. Being able to apply the understanding, that’s the difficult bit.

Take Industry. Learning how to do the basics of industry is simple. Once you’re comfortable with those, moving into T2 industry is just a case of getting to grips with Invention. Tech 3 is yet another step, just another increment on what you already know. Manufacturing Capitals is just Tech one manufacturing writ large.

Of course, then you have moon mining and reactions to take care of. But those could be quite happily left to someone else to take care of, until you’re in a situation to learn them and roll them into your vertical integration.

That is the core of the complexity of Eve. Lots of simple little things, all coming together to create a symphony of complexity.

Just look at the Rules of Eve. They’re all made to be broken, when and only when you understand why they exist. They hide the complexity behind simple rules of thumb, letting people operate at a reasonable level, until they can take off the training wheels. Sure, they may continue to stay upright, to continue the metaphor, but if they need to, they can bend the rules, taking a corner at a higher speed.

Anyway, to answer some of the questions raised:

Eve isn’t too complex for someone to know everything. But it is wide enough that most people aren’t interested in knowing everything. And knowing isn’t the same as ‘being good at’. Sure, I could run a fleet. I know what Eve provides to do that. I would be bad at it, however. Those soft skills are the limiter.

How do you maintain any skills and knowledge? Application and reading. You read the dev blogs and patchnotes. You try things out, on Sisi or on TQ if you can afford the losses, or need live opponents. It also helps to be plugged into a group who can answer questions – Remember it’s a two way street. Someone asks about something you know, answer them.

CCP do an ok job of keeping the documentation up to date. It’s not perfect, with the Wiki often being behind reality (see cruiser stats until recently), but it’s survivable. With a game that changes as frequently as Eve does, even if those are fairly small incremental changes, no documentation could be entirely up to date, without spending a lot of developer time on it. There are some situations where it’s nice not to know things for certain. Take the spew cans for exploration. It took some time for people to work out what was in each type of can. That’s complexity which makes the game more interesting. Allows for a separation between newbies and veterans. Where a level of personal skill or knowledge makes a difference.

Thankfully CCP has been removing some of the more annoying versions of this. Rote memorization of large quantities of information is a bad form of complexity. Now it’s easy to pick out the explosive damage Torpedo. Before, you had to know that it was a Bane Torpedo. Other ammo types weren’t so bad, as they didn’t change between size levels. Some people call it dumbing down the game. I call it removing pointless bullshit.

As for the final point, determining where there are holes in your knowledge, the big macro holes are simple. “I don’t know industry” isn’t uncommon. Or “I don’t know how to PvP”. The problem is when you know a little. That just casts what you don’t know into darker shadows.

A sidegrade to cloaking.

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First off, this is a pretty rough draft of some thoughts that I had while listening to the most recent hangout with @ali_of_space.  So there will be some edges to knock off.

People complain about AFK cloakers. People who can, due to power projection via Cynos, shut down a system for any PvE.

The cloaker isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that they can bring a whole bunch of their friends at a moments notice. Sure, you could go and do stuff anyway, but there’s no real counter.

So I had a thought, sparked by what some of the other people were saying.

When you’re trying to use combat probes to find someone, what are you searching for? And the big difference between a ship and an asteroid is their warp core. So here’s the suggestion for changes:

1: Cloaks no longer prevent detection by dscan and combat probes. They do, however, make it hard to exactly localise someone. Warping to the signature will get you to their grid, but it won’t get you exactly on top of them. Once on grid, dscan will allow you to find their approximate location, say within 20km. I.e. you get 3 people who can get a distance (+/- 10km or so)  and between them they can localise someone who isn’t moving erratically and actively trying to avoid them.

2: To stop being picked up be probes and dscan, and additionally to not show up on local, you can shut down your warp core. This stops you moving at all. Everything else can run, but no movement.

3: Restarting your warp core takes a while. Exactly how long I’m not sure (this would have to persist between logins. Not sure how viable that is atm) But we’re talking, probably minutes. Perhaps a module or skill (or both) can decrease that time. But still not a /fast/ operation. While it’s restarting everything else can happen as normal.

The net effect of this is that someone can set a trap with a powered down ship (with a cloak), but they have to be in position already. (Get to an anomaly, power down the warp core, fire up your cloak. Wait for a sucker to turn up. Turn off cloak, activate cyno)

Thus, shutting down an entire system isn’t viable with a single afk ship, against a group of organised players. But you can, still, fuck with people.

Importing price data into spreadsheets

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Importing up to date price data into your spreadsheets is a large part of being a successful manufacturer or trader in Eve online. Some bypass it by using tools, but the tolls will still have to do it.

I’ve posted about how to load the data from eve central into a web page, but I thought it was time to talk about how to do it, into a couple of different spreadsheet  packages. Namely Excel and Google’s spreadsheet. Open Office is quite a bit harder to do XML imports with, so I’m just mentioning one option right down at the bottom, which is a lot less flexible.

Your first choice is the source of your data. There are two main sources, Eve-central, and eve-marketdata. They’re pulling data from pretty much the same source, so there’s not a lot in it.

Eve Central’s API

This is fairly well documented at http://dev.eve-central.com/evec-api/start. The short version is:

  • Create a URL to pull the data you want.

This will look something like: http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=34&typeid=35®ionlimit=10000002

If you want more types, just add them to the url with &typeid=36 etc. The numbers are the typeIDs from invTypes.   Just grab an up-to-date copy from my data dump conversions when you can’t find something. It’s not a bad idea to include this, or a cut down copy consisting of typeid,typename,typeid in your spreadsheet on a separate worksheet, for use in vlookups.

Eve Market Data’s API

I’d recommend this one if you’re going to be pulling a lot of data, as it’s possible to pull the entire market in one go, for a particular station or region. Documentation can be found on their site

The url will look like this: http://api.eve-marketdata.com/api/item_prices2.xml?char_name=demo&type_ids=34,12068&region_ids=10000002&buysell=s

Just add the typeids to the comma separated list. Or remove &typeid=[stuff] from it, if you want everything. Change the character name to your own.

For Both:

If you want the station IDs: https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/latest/staStations.xls.bz2
If you want system IDs: https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/latest/mapSolarSystems.xls.bz2
If you want the region IDs: https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/latest/mapRegions.xls.bz2
If you want the typeids: https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/latest/invTypes.xls.bz2 or http://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/resources/typeids.csv

 

Excel

Be glad of heart, for Microsoft made this really simple. All of this applies to Excel 2007 and above. My screenshots are from Excel 2013 (Office 365 home premium is pretty good.)

On the Data tab

data

Pick ‘From Web’

import

Fill in the url you have, into the Address bar. Hit go. When it’s loaded, it’ll look like this. Hit import.

query

Just hit OK to this. It’s not important.

where

I normally put it into a new worksheet, to keep it out the way.

Once it’s loaded in, you can update the data by hitting the ‘refresh all’ option on the data tab. It /should/ refresh when it’s opened.

You now have market data in your workbook, that you can get up with a vlookup. See later for an example. You can download the example workbook here.

Google Documents

I’m not going to go into screenshots. You can find an example of how it’s done here. I thought this was probably the base way to do it.

Short version is:

Get the url, and use importXML() with it.

With Eve market data I suggest, instead, using importdata(), and the text format. It makes it a /lot/ easier to get everything you want out of it. The url is almost the same, except it’s txt, rather than url. you then split it on tabs ( char(9) )

Be aware, google isn’t great when you’re working with a lot of data. A desktop spreadsheet package works a lot more smoothly. Google will run into processing limits pretty quickly.

Vlookups

 

Learn to love this function. It’s very very useful for what you’ll be doing.

=vlookup(what you want to search for, where you want to find it, which column to return,if it’s not ordered data put true here)

so you could use =VLOOKUP(34,Sheet2!D:AT,34) to get, from the excel sheet above, the percentile price for Tritanium (typeid 34)

And you could use use =vlookup(‘Tritanium’,typeids!B:C,2,true) to get the typeid for tritanium from a worksheet called typeids, with typeid,typename,typeid as columns.

 

Open Office/Libre Office

Doing an XMl load into open office is a complete PITA, involving a lot more work. There are no screenshots, as I don’t have it installed any more. What I’d suggest doing is using the text option from eve market data.

Use ‘Insert’->’Sheet from file’

When it asks for a file, give it the full url (like http://api.eve-marketdata.com/api/item_prices2.txt?char_name=demo®ion_ids=10000002&buysell=s )

Hit open and wait. It’ll take a while to work the first time. Eventually, it’ll pop up the text import screen. Make sure tab is selected. Hit ok. It’ll take a while before it’ll become responsive, but eventually ‘sheet1’ should show up in the from file box. Make sure the link checkbox is ticked. Hit ok. You now have a sheet that should reload whenever the workbook is opened. It can be vlookuped in the same way as everything else.

 

 

T1 Industrials and the value of skills

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T1 Industrials are in the process of being rebalanced, and this is leading to significant discussion on the forums.

The root cause of this trouble, other than the Mammoth/Hoarder issue, is that some races have more Industrials than others. So either some skills open up fewer ship roles, or some ships are, still, pretty much useless.

What I’d suggest is that it’s fine to have some skills providing access to fewer ships, as long as those ships are more generally useful, than the ships which are opened up by another skill. That doesn’t mean that the ships are all round better, however.

What I’d suggest is that the Amarr and the Caldari, with 2 ships each, get:

  • one with the highest general cargo bay (40k m3 or so, after expansion)
  • one with a good tank (around 30-40k ehp seems reasonable.) Few lows, lots of mids. The Amarr armour tanking makes this troublesome.

The Minmatar should have:

  • one fairly large one (38k or so)
  • one tanky one (25k or so)
  • one fast aligning/high speed one.

The Gallente, with their annoyingly large range, should no longer have the largest general cargo bay (sorry Itty V) But they should have:

  • A Gas specific one. 50k gas bay
  • An Ore specific one. Maybe minerals too. 50k Ore bay (Itty 5 here?)
  • A Fleet support one. 5K Fleet hangar and refitting.
  • One not quite as large as the big Minmatar one (around 34k)
  • One not quite as tanky one. (20k or so)

 

That way, there’s a reason to get any of the skills (Amarr and Caldari are duplicates, so you wouldn’t get /both/, but they’re still useful) with best of breed in each. No skill is ‘useless’.

Probing – Now and the Future

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This is mostly prompted by a comment on twitter, about the player skill levels involved in probing. 140 characters isn’t enough, much of the time. To be clear, I’m talking primarily about site probing, rather than combat probing, which requires a slightly different method.

Now

I generally like the changes which have been made to probing. The primary changes are:

Launch all your probes at once

Sure, some people don’t like this, but it just wasn’t fun, sitting there and manually cycling your probe launcher. It added nothing except a minor annoying time sink. The only downside to this is for combat probing, as the victims have less time to catch the ship of the person launching them, before they cloak.

Auto recall on probes

As someone doing exploration, it’s all good. As a manufacturer, this is a little annoying. That’s the one downside. The probe market will have to adjust to fewer lost probes, so being smaller. However, RSS probes should become more popular. (due to not losing them any more)

Probe Formations

Oh god yes. This is probably the bit where people are saying ‘No skill any more’. The only real differences between now and the way it used to be is: No tedious moving probes into formation, and no needing to hold shift, resize probes, hold alt, move probes. It’s just move and resize in one action. Sure, it’s easier, but it’s hardly different skill wise. Just less tedious.

Notification of signatures, without needing to scan

Again, not a skill change. Just a tedium removal. No more ‘launch probes, shift to cover everywhere a signature might be, scan, get nothing, next system, rinse, repeat.’

8 probes

This does make life easier. It’s the one thing I’m less sure about. You’ll get better signature resolution, because you have more probes.

 

All that’s really been removed are the fiddly tedious bits. Localizing signatures takes all the same steps, with just a slight reduction in time required. The skills to do that, haven’t changed.

 

The Future

It’s all been a very good start. Some tweaking is required, however, to come close to ‘perfect’

Probe strength vs skill bonus

With the 8 probes, people with low skills just got a bump to their scanning ability. I’d suggest dropping the probe strength a bit, but increasing the bonus from Astrometrics.

Probe Groups

Right now, all your probes are treated as a single group. resize the group, and you resize all your probes. Ideally, with custom formations, you’ll be able to deal with groups. Say, 4 and 4, so you can resize just four, while leaving the other 4 to localise a different signature.

Custom Formations

Exactly how these would be defined would be interesting. I’d suggest leaving it entirely out of game, with an XML import. Doing it in game is a bunch of work, for a limited market, as the two basic ones are enough for the casual prober.

I’d suggest a format based on 3 coordinates per probe, with 0,0,0 being the centre of the formation, and the units used being in probe scan radius. So if you resize it, it doesn’t matter, everything keeping the same formation, at 0.25 au or 32 au. Leave the interface to create the formations to third party developers. It could be done fairly easily in a web site, using something like WebGL. And an XML file is simple to move around. Like overview files.

Single probe launch

For most of us, launching all the probes at once makes sense. But there are situations you may wish to launch them one at a time. So a toggle, or slider for ‘how many to launch’ makes sense. Stick it on a ‘advanced’ tab, to keep it out of our way.

 

With all of that in place, probing is pretty close to perfect. If I’ve missed something you consider important, give me a yell and we can discuss it. I’m always interested to hear about edge cases.

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

8 Replies

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.