Cache Scraping – Worrying your Players and Third Party Developers

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First off, I’ll reference this post which removes a lot of the concerns which this raised. If you’re fully up on what’s going on, skip ahead to the suggestions I have made below. This means you, CCP <insert name here>.

The short version is: If you’re not doing anything else that’s banned, cache scraping will not have any action taken against it. This does a lot to relieve my concerns, but doesn’t entirely remove them.

For a little background information (skip ahead if you know what cache scraping is and what does it): Cache scraping is what software does, to get data from the eve client’s local cache, to do something with. It doesn’t alter any of the Eve files, but it does read them. This is commonly used to extract market data, which is then often uploaded to sites like Eve-Central, and the EMDR service. The cache scraper that’s probably the most used, is Evemon. It has a market cache uploader built into it, and has done for a fair time. This feeds to EMDR, eve central, and a couple of other end points, giving those sites a holistic view of Eve’s market, albeit one which can have a fair time lag on items which are less commonly traded. It’s commonly accepted as a valuable thing, powering such things as Eve-Kill’s ISK values for kills, my own blueprint calculator’s pricing, Eveopoly’s trade finder and so on.

The rules now state, explicitly, that this is a breach of the EULA. It’s been clarified that it’s one they won’t take action on, but still, there are at least some similarities between this and the cops not prosecuting people who go a few miles over the speed limit. Both are against the rules, and in an idea world, wouldn’t happen.

So what can be done about it. I have a few suggestions, ranging from the short-term fix, to a long-term solution.

Suggestions for CCP:

Short Term Fixes:

Take a market uploader that’s been open sourced, such as EMDU, Have a developer look over it for time bombs, and release it, without warranty, as an approved uploader. While this would cut down the volume of market data, due to a smaller number of people being willing to download/run it (Evemon users, in general, don’t know/care) it would allow for market data to flow.

Have a number of clients running at CCP, feeding EMDR with data via an uploader. Manually intensive, due to the need to restart them all each day. What gets uploaded can be controlled by the eve central request page. Then just request everyone stops.

Add an option to automatically export the market data to a directory when you look at it. At that point, the community can put together a new uploader to read that. Much like what happened before the cache reading, without all the RSI induced clicking on the export button.

Long term fixes

Introduce your own Market API. Possibly using Crest.

Feed EMDR with data yourselves, without running it through a client.

If CCP can do this, then we can do away with market uploaders, no longer skating in the grey area of cache scraping. While it’s said it won’t be enforced, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to do so when it’s explicitly against the rules.

The /main/ thing that CCP should take away from this is: be careful how you tell us things. Because the way it was initially written was:

Cache scraping is now a bannable offence. But we might not ban you for it.

That’s a hideous mixed message to give your customers. Especially as many of the ones it affects the most are your community of third party developers. We love this game. We put time in to make it better for everyone. Please don’t tell us that what we’re doing is wrong.

Manufacturing 101

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The basics of manufacturing in EVE are pretty simple at their core: Get a blueprint, get some minerals/components, put in a manufacturing job, deliver it when it completes.

But as with most things in EVE, there are little twiddly bits to take into account, various bits of maths it’s helpful to know.

This post is for T1 manufacturing. Later posts will cover the T2 process.

What this post isn’t going to cover is identifying what to make. That’s a whole post all to itself. short version: Make what people will use. Sell it close to where they’ll use it. Make sure it’s profitable before you start.

Rule One

Run the numbers before you buy anything. Blueprints, materials, whatever. Make sure it’s actually profitable to make, before you go and buy the blueprint. Don’t assume that Drakes are worth making (they aren’t, and haven’t been for a fairly long time) just because a lot of people fly them. For running the numbers, a blueprint calculator is your friend. But double check the numbers, just to be safe.

Skills

T1 manufacturing is fairly light on required skills:

  • Production Efficiency

This skill is used to reduce the waste of materials when you make things. Without it, you’re going to be needing around about 20% more materials than someone with it at 5. So as you can see, it can have a fairly major effect on your profitability. I’d recommend getting it to at least 4 before starting, with getting it to 5 in the near future. You can make ISK without it at 5, but you’ll be losing profit. A serious manufacturer will have it at 5. The only reason not to, is because you’re busy skilling up more slots, and can make more profit getting another slot, than reducing your waste. Go for 5 before Mass production 5, certainly.

  • Industry

Time is money. Reducing the time taken to make something, as long as it’s already profitable, increases your profit over a given time frame. Industry cuts down on the time it takes to make things. You’ll need it at at least 3 to get Production Efficiency and Mass production. 5 is good to get, but it’s not immediately vital.

  • Mass Production

You won’t get rich making one thing at a time. Mass production adds extra lines for manufacturing, which increases your potential profits. 5 is good.

  • Advanced Mass Production

As above, adding more lines. You’ll need Mass production 5 to get this. Taking it to 4 is generally as far as most people take it, before training alts.

For basic T1 Manufacturing, that’s about it. You might want to consider Supply Chain Management, so you don’t need to visit the station you’re actually manufacturing at (as long as the minerals and blueprints are there), but it’s far from needed.

Rule Two

The minerals you mine are not free. If you can only make a profit manufacturing something, by using the minerals you mine, you’re subsidising someone else with your minerals. You could have just sold them, and made more money.

Materials

Acquiring materials is simple. You go to the market and you buy them, before shipping them (either yourself or by a freight company like Red Frog Freight.  When working out if something is worth making, always look at the sell cost of your materials. Use buy orders to get them, if you want to, but price everything as if you were buying from buy orders. (Assuming that the prices are reasonable. Some materials aren’t sold for reasonable prices. But for T1 manufacturing, this can be ignored)

If you can’t make a profit on something using this guideline, look at making something else. There are many items in EVE, so don’t get too tied up in the “I make X” mindset.

Blueprints

Blueprints come in 2 types. Blueprint Originals (BPO) and Blueprint Copies (BPC). They’re pretty much the same except for the following differences:

  • Only BPOs can be researched. This includes making BPC from them.
  • BPCs have a limited number of production runs on them.
  • BPOs are bought from NPCs on the Market, or from PCs via contract.
  • BPCs are only available from contracts, or being found on NPC wrecks.

BPOs have two attributes which can be changed. BPCs have the same attributes, but they can’t be changed.

  • Material Efficiency (ME)

This governs how much inherent waste the BPO/C has. For most, this starts at 10%, and is multiplied by 1/1+ME, So ME 1 halves the waste. ME 3 takes it to a quarter, and so on. Some blueprints have a ‘Perfect ME’ which is meaningful (no waste) and achievable in a reasonable time. Many don’t, with their ‘perfect’ value taking years to attain, and saving a single Tritanium. 5 is reasonable. Use a blueprint calculator to see where it is worth taking it. A blueprint that is used for thousands of runs is worth researching more (or buying pre-researched).

  • Production Level (PL. Also known as PE, just to confuse matters)

This governs the time waste a BPO/C. Again, the time waste is divided, leading to diminishing returns. 5 is good target.

You want a researched Blueprint, at least on ME. Unfortunately, most slots for that research are backed up for weeks in highsec. when you’re starting out, sometimes buying researched BPC isn’t a bad idea, as long as you take them into account with your calculations, as they’re used up. BPOs, on the other hand, are assets, which don’t detract from your net worth, so can be mostly ignored in the manufacturing calculations.

Finding somewhere to make things

On the industry window, in the installations tab, you’ll find lists of places with manufacturing slots. If you can’t find any which are available, try changing region. The Forge, for example, generally doesn’t have many empty slots, and the ones it does have tend to be more expensive. Move to a different region, and you’ll find it far easier to get started.

Actually making something

  1. Get all the materials you need together with a blueprint, in your hangar (not a container in your hangar, not your ship), in a station with a free slot available.
  2. right click the blueprint, and select ‘manufacture’
  3. click the ‘choose installation’ button.
  4. Choose a slot on an installation. Pick one that’s free, as it will not auto shuffle you to an available one. You can pick one that’s in use, but your job will be delayed in starting. Hit Ok.
  5. Fill in the number of runs you want to manufacture.
  6. Hit OK.
  7. You’ll be presented with a manufacturing quote. have a quick look over it to make sure everything looks right.
  8. Hit ok.
  9. Go do something fun for the duration of the job, then return to that station.
  10. Bring up the science and industry window (alt+s if you’re not remapped it. or from the neocom). hit ‘get jobs’. Select your job. hit the ‘deliver job’ button that’s shown up in the bottom right of the window.
  11. The results of your job will now be in your hangar.

Rule Three

Until it’s sold, there’s no profit. Pick an appropriate market for your goods.This may be Jita. It may be a mission runner’s hub. Jita generally has smaller margins, and needs more baby sitting of orders; but it has high market velocity. Other places can take a lot longer to sell things, but for higher prices. People are lazy. They’ll pay a bit more if they can get everything they want in one place.

Notes

Consider using the Bulk Trade mailing list. It’s not as good as selling things yourself, but better than dumping to buy orders. There’s also the RvB bulk trade list which is similar.

Production Efficiency only affects materials in a blueprint’s Basic materials, and extra materials which are also in the basic materials. ME waste only affects basic materials.

Suggested Ballot: CSM8 trail

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Well, me at or near the top of the ballot sheet would be good.. That’d be good.

As for the rest, well, I like to think that the people who are going to vote for me don’t need to be told which way to vote for anyone else. That they’re the kind of people who have considered their options, using sites like CSM Vote Match 2.0 or the CSM 8 votOmat, then interviews, like the ones on Crossing Zebras or Voices from the Void.

Well, that makes this a very short post. So to make it somewhat larger, I’m going to let you know how I’m planning on voting. It’s not a recommendation, but just something to think about. I’m not voting for a balanced card, because that’s a dumb thing to do, I’m voting for the people I’d be comfortable representing my interests.

  1. Me. Because I’m not stupid
  2. Chitsa Jason
  3. Mangala Solaris
  4. Greene Lee
  5. Roc Wieler
  6. Malcanis
  7. Unforgiven Storm

After that, I’m less sure. Still mulling it over. Mynnna seems to be a decent and sane candidate. But they really don’t need my votes. I seriously doubt they won’t get in before the first elimination.

I’ll probably come back and revise this ballot at some point. Still thinking it over.

Possible new contract types

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This isn’t a CSM post. Though if I do get in, I’d certainly be suggesting them.

There’s been a suggestion in past CSM minutes that they’re going to be looking at the contract system, adding new contract types into it. I’ve had a few thoughts on this, in part spurred on by a discussion with someone over a mineral compression service.

So, exercising my hopefully well-known ego, a few thoughts:

Manufacturing Contract:

A fairly simple one this. The person putting up the contract puts a bunch of materials into the contract, with a requirement for the delivery of specific set of items at the end of it. Modules, rigs, ships, etc.

The person accepting the contract has to put up a collateral. If they fail to deliver at the end, it’s forfeit. This way, both the buyer, and the manufacturer have some sort of guarantee that the other will follow through.

Of course, there’s nothing to say that the person putting it up has to put in enough materials.

Supply Contract:

Almost identical to the one above. In fact, it’s the same, except no materials are added. It’s a WTB Contract, that the supplier can know won’t go away before they deliver (as long as they stay within the time limit).

Reverse Auctions:

These are common in the real world for supply contracts. People will bid against each other, reducing the price they will accept, to get the business. This is more a modifier for the other contracts. It would need a short duration for the contract itself. Works well for courier contracts too. Want to avoid dead heading? How low are you willing to go to get that work?

Mercenary Contracts:

Destroy a specific thing. Do a specific quantity of damage to the opposing corporation. Ideally with some kind of sliding payscale.

 

Loan Contracts:

Put up collateral, get ISK (from another player). Don’t repay the ISK, lose the collateral.

Lowsec – CSM8 trail

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The question a lot of people who start EVE ask is, what’s low sec?

And once they’ve heard the answer, they ask ‘Why in gods name would I want to go there?’

Right now, unless you’re in Faction Warfare, I don’t have a particularly good answer for you. And that’s not a good thing. Lowsec /should/ be an engaging place. Where people want to go, for reasons other than ‘I want to shoot people’. Because without those people, the number of people to shoot is pretty damn low.

Right now, Lowsec (outside of faction warfare) is like NPC nullsec, but with sec hits and gate guns.

While it’s not the focus of my campaign, I don’t like that. I have a few ideas, mostly spit balling as I’ve not talked with many denizens of Low.

Step one: Limited Cyno Jamming. Carriers and Dreads are fine. Supercaps are less so. Adding a blapable structure (Probably in a size limited plex) to turn it off a limited jammer for a while, would make this less of an issue, while not totally crippling logistics. When I say limited Jamming, it’s bad terminology. Light all the Cynos you want, but only ships below a certain size can jump in.

Step two: Local. As an intel source, it’s too powerful. So it needs replaced with something more flexible, were you have to take an action to check if there’s anyone else in system. Or, perhaps, making it delayed. So you have to be in system for a while, before it picks you up. Maintenance is a bitch, after all. and who cares about funding lowsec? 😉

Step 3: POS anchored somewhere other than moons. A POS at a moon is asking to be reinforced, then blapped, with minimal effort in locating it. Shifting them off moons makes it harder to find them. Though I’m thinking a new scan method will be needed. Something a little more time intensive than combat probing.

Step 4: Even out the restrictions on lowsec space. Lowsec is lowsec. 0.4 shouldn’t be special.

Step 5: Station ‘ownership’. I’m not entirely sure how to take this forward, but a kind of mini sov. you don’t own the system, and can’t block people out of the station, but you can get some fees from it, if you take it. Anchored modules near the station, perhaps. Something to ‘Take it hostage’. Or taking out specific NPCs. ‘Protection’ missions?

Step 6: Something to draw people in. Needs to be profitable enough to pay for lost ships. Industry won’t do it, which means resource gathering. Ring mining would be good. More exploration sites (which are easier to find) too.

There are other options. And I’d love to hear your opinions.

Highsec PvP – CSM8 trail

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Non-Consensual PvP is part of Eve, and I would not see it gone. While I prefer not to have people do violence unto me, they have the right to try. Just as I have the right to make myself as unappealing as is viable.

If you check my Corp’s war history, you’ll see one war on it (As the time of writing). No deaths on it, but not because I didn’t log on for a week. I was waiting. They didn’t undock. Probably because there was no benefit for them doing so. One guy in a BC isn’t exactly a great incentive, after all. And the war had already paid for itself by then. Next time, the POS stays up and becomes a dickstar, rather than being stolen when it unanchored. Well played. A learning experience.

Ganking is doing fine and well too, it would seem. Plenty of people who don’t follow the simple ‘No more than a Billion or so in a freighter’ guideline. And plenty of people who mine in high risk regions of Highsec, without even the most rudimentary tank. No, a small shield booster is not a tank. If you’ve been ganked, and are offended, the close tab button is up there. HTFU.

Some candidates appear to want to make high-sec less safe. I don’t agree with them there. But I /certainly/ agree it shouldn’t be made any safer.

That’s not to say changes aren’t needed, however.

A war where one side stays docked up, or doesn’t bother logging on, is no fun for anyone.

You can’t /force/ someone to fight. They just wouldn’t bother logging on. What that leaves is making them /want/ to fight. Now that’s harder to do.

Anything that can adjust the cost of a war has the potential to be gamed, leading to a new dec shield. One thought that rattles round my head is having, depending on the size of the corporation, various bandings of kills and losses adjusting either the cost of the next inbound war, or the duration of a ‘safe’ time.

So a 3 man corp losing a billion isk in ships, is then safe for, say, a month (from the end of the last war. Wars are automatically ended. Maybe. This seems gameable. Maybe just a cost boost, for that period of time.)

A corp the size of Eve University has no changes.

So small corps then have a reason to go lose isk in a fight. And maybe even kill the enemy.

Hard caps are, of course, required to stop it from being hideously gamed.

I’d want to see statistics on high-sec wars, to be able to flesh out numbers to something that makes sense. There’s a suggestion I saw on Poetic’s site about bounties and warfare, which looked interesting, but I’m not sure it speaks to the people who would hide away. A benefit, even if they lose, is another matter.

Another thing to do is make it easier to swap into a clone without expensive implants. Maybe just in the station you’re in (with or without a medical station, no standings). No jumping across the cluster. This might be a step too far, however.

tl;dr:

  • Fighting is good
  • Ganking isn’t evil
  • Hiding in stations is bad
  • Giving people reasons not to hide might fix it
  • Stuff blowing up is good for my bottom line.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Heckling?

My first lie, on the CSM8 Trail

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Well, I’ve done it. Thrown my hat in, for the elections for CSM 8

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=215204

And the lie?

It’s not a particularly nice hat. It’s one of those caps known as a train drivers cap. Not a big floofy one, just one which looks a bit like a baseball cap, but not so hemispherical. Similar to cap

Please don’t trample it anyway? It keeps the top of my head from getting sunburnt, here in sunny Scotland.

Everyone’s free, To upgrade their clone –

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Yes, it’s a bad parody =D And there are chunks I couldn’t think how to redo.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ‘115.
Upgrade your clone.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, good clones would be it.
The long-term benefits of clone upgrades have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…
I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the speed and agility of your frigates; oh never mind; you will not understand the speed and agility of your frigates until you get pointed.
But trust me, in 2 years you’ll look back at your kill reports and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fun they really could be…

You’re not as bad as you imagine.

Don’t worry about your skill plan; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to jump a carrier through a gate.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind.
The kind that a dev implements in a dev blog you didn’t read.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Fight.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s ships, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Gank.

Don’t waste your time on revenge;
Sometimes you’re ahead,
Sometimes You’re behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults;
If you fail in this, put a bounty on them.

Keep your old kill mails, throw away your old loss mails.

Duel.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your Life.
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of ammo.

Be kind to your structure, you’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Maybe you’ll mine, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll station trade, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll fly a titan, maybe you’ll hit jump instead of bridge.
Whatever you do, don’t Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your ship, Use it every way you can… Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people Think of it,
It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own…

Dance… even if you only dance in triangles.

Do the tutorials, even if you don’t remember them.

Do NOT read battle clinic, it will only make you get podded.

Get to know your CEO, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your corp mates;
They are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were a newb.

Live in Null Sec once, but leave before it makes you hard;
Live in high Sec once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, theCSM will lie, you too will get bitter, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, the CSM did what they were told and newbs respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to trust you.
Maybe you have a tech moon, Maybe you have a some plex; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your clone, or when you post on the forums, you’ll look dumb.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the clone thing…

Market Data API – What I’d like

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There’s been a bunch of posts on the forums about how cache scraping is bad and against the EULA and how CCP Sreegs hates it. Now, it’s been said by some GMs that it’s ok, so that’s not something I’m going to go into.

Sreegs did say that, while he doesn’t like scraping for market data, he’d prefer to see that in an API. This is something I heartily agree with. We need a source of market data, available outside of the game. There’s a few things which I’d want from it, however.

  1. The data, while accurate, shouldn’t be ‘perfect’.
  2. To make 1 work, this means you don’t get to ask for data for a particular item, in a particular region, at the current time. No requests for specific data.
  3. It should, however, be timely. For common data, I should be able to get it fairly up to date.

The thing is, right now, I have a source just like that. It’s EMDR. And it’s pretty much perfect. A firehose of market data, to do with as you please.

It’s not an ideal source for use with spreadsheets. You’ll need something listening to it 24×7, and then processing it. But that’s what eve central does right now. It’s what I do right now. I do provide exports of the data, for use in spreadsheets, which quite neatly takes care of this.

So, the actions I think CCP need to take:

  • Define a rarity list of items and regions. Common items and regions should be updated often. Rare ones less often. So if you’re listening to it, you should get the mineral prices in jita every 20 minutes or so. Imp navy large emp smart bombs in 760-9C, however, should be maybe once a day
  • Set up a zeromq (or similar. No real queue, just a stream) end point for people to subscribe to. Maybe add an IP level filter to allow people to subscribe to it with their eve accounts, with an ip address. It’s not suitable for the general person, but it’s perfectly good for the enablers (such as myself)
  • Sit back and watch the data stream out.

Yes, it’s not a minor job. But it should reduce the number of characters who just sit in a market hub requesting market data once every 2 seconds.

And it totally removes the possibility of people poisoning the data (unless they provide a service themselves)

Reactions Tool

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The first thing I want to say is:
Ugg. It’d be nice if CCP actually put all the information for reactions into the SDE.

Anyway, what with the NOTEC thing, and Mynna suggesting that people might want to do some alchemy, I thought I’d look into the numbers myself. And hence, I give you: http://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/reactions/

It’s a fairly simplistic tool, and it doesn’t do any kind of sorting. But it will give you some quick figures on ‘this might be worth running;. Bear in mind, the simple reactions need 3 silos and a simple reactor. The complex ones need 3 silos and a complex reactor. You’re going to want at least a medium POS. So that’s around 200 million per month, just to break even. http://eve.1019.net/pos/ can give you an idea of what you need. One simple reactor and 3 silos will take up a chunk of that medium POS.

I was interested to see that, if you are to believe the market could absorb it, you could make more isk just selling the platinum and technetium directly, rather than reacting it into platinum technite.