BB71 - Analysis Paralysis

From the Blog Banter for this month:

Too Many Ships Spoil the Sandpit?
We all like important internet spaceships right? The more spaceships the better right? Or are we getting too many to be easily to remember them all. A Mastodon on scan? That the hell is that and what does it do? Oh! Never mind!
Are we getting too many ships. Is it too complicated to remember them all and what their traits are? Do FC's these days need an encyclopedic knowledge of ship types unless they want their fleet to DIAF. With more and more ships being released each year will we ever reach "too many" or do you think there can never be too many important internet spaceship types?

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There was a time in EVE's past where the number of effective combat ships one might run into was pretty low.  Rifter and Merlins for frigs, Thorax and Rupture, Hurricanes and Drakes, etc. Sure, you'd run into the occasional newb in a Condor or Vexor but overall the meta was pretty static, enough that I can't remember during that time if I ever saw more than one Bellicose in space.

It was not a great situation. It was too static and predictable, too stratified against newer players, and wasted numerous hulls that were lower tiers and passed over so easily with quick skill trains.

Tiericide was the process to rationalize the ships, especially tech 1 ships, and bring about more defined roles other than "Combat" and "More Combat", introduce tech I logistics ships (remember the Osprey/Exeq/etc were originally mining cruisers!), and generally make the progression from frigates to battleships more intuitive and balance out the vast gulf of difference between tech II and tech I.

It was widely regarded as a success and the number of ships you could run into in space on a regular basis bloomed three or four times.

But as part of the Crucible era atonement CCP hit upon the fact that players loved their ships, LOVED them! And always a big hit with players was adding more ships. Tier III Battlecruisers, Faction Battlecruisers, Mordu's Legion pirate ships, Navy Faction frigates, Tactical Destroyers, Command Destroyers, Sisters of EVE ships, ORE mining frigates, not to mention an ever-growing list of Alliance Tournament prizes, gift ships, Tech II Logistics frigates... did I miss anything?

Now in PvP situations many of these ships are rarely seen due to unsuitability with combat roles or simple rarity but the fact remains that the number of ships a player must know the basics of in order to make decisions on a consistent basis in PvP has grown three fold if not more in this time. And there are more on the way in the form of the new Force Auxiliary capitals.

That's the current situation. The question is if we have reached the limit of too many ships for an average player / Fleet Commander to keep them all straight in the head now, or if we are close to hitting that wall in the future.

No and yes.

No in the sense that an experienced and competent Fleet Commander should be able keep track of the basic abilities and threat levels of all possible combat ships with the notable exception of Alliance tournament ships which are rarely seen in space. As new ship types get added its expected that the current FC cohort consumes the new data and integrates it into their OODA loop. Similarly, experienced pilots should also do the same to make sure they are up to date on the possible battlefield conditions.

However, I say yes in the sense that for a new player and new aspiring Fleet commander, the current array of possible ship names, classes, and threat levels to assess is staggering and daunting. I have concerns that this is going to recreate the stratification effect we had to begin with and make it difficult for new players to get into PvP or commanding fleets.

The new overview with icons per hull class help a little bit, but only a little. You can tell a frigate from a cruiser, for example, but you can't tell a combat frigate from an exploration frigate from an assault frigate without knowing the ship names and their classes intimately.

What I think should be added is a one click button on the overview to get a ship info card (not the whole Show Info window) that gives the basic information on a ship: its image, Faction, size, role/class, and if applicable main weapon types. That would help a lot for newer players and even older players that got rusty (or are just bad).

One thing is for sure, more ships in the future is probably the rule of the land.

Citadel Blueprint Thoughts

After my recent windfall and discovery that the price of Utu frigates has climbed far beyond my means, I put the ISK aside to save for the coming of Citadel blueprints which is coming a lot faster than I expected. From the dev blog "The First Citadels: HELP UPWELL CONSORTIUM BUILD THE WORLD OF TOMORROW" we find out that some BPCs are coming very soon:

From January 26th, Intaki Bank’s special accounts manager Lee Brinalle, will accept contracts (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Contracts_guide) from capsuleers for the item ‘Research Component’ to help build the citadels in 5 locations in New Eden. To reward you for your efforts, each Research Component contracted to Lee Brinalle, will entitle you to one entry in to an Upwell sponsored prize draw. The lucky winner of the draw will receive a unique token that can be exchanged for 1, fully researched, Astrahus citadel BPC.   

But wait there’s more! Upwell would like to create 5 prototypes in different locations, so as capsuleers manage to provide the Research Component quota  needed for the first citadel, Upwell will increase the rewards for each additional prototype citadel:
Citadel 2: One additional Astrahus BPC
Citadel 3: Two more Astrahus BPC’s
Citadel 4: One more Astrahus BPC and Upwell Branded Apparel for every capsuleer who contracts a Research Component
Citadel 5: 1 Fortizar BPC
(All BPCs will be fully researched)  

So the more ‘Research Component’ items you contract to Lee Brinalle, the more chances you have of being selected during the prize draw.  There will be a draw for 1 Astrahus BPC after February 9th, where all capsuleers who donated Research Components will be automatically entered and in with a chance to win.  If all 5 are completed, the draw will be for 5 Astrahus BPCs and 1 Fortizar BPC. In addition, the top contributor plus all prize winners will have their names immortalized on the descriptions for the prototype citadels they helped construct.  As the prize draws will happen at the end, all entries from January 26th - February 9th will be a part of the draw for each reward.  

You can start collecting Research Components any time, but starting January 26th, remember to contract them to “Lee Brinalle”, for your chance to be in the running.

So at least one BPC will be rewarded on Feb 9th for a Medium Citadel (aka Astrahus) and maybe up to 5 of them, and possibly one Large Citadel BPC (aka Fortizar). I don't know for certain if the BPCs will be released close to that date or awarded once the Citadel expansion goes completely live, or what lead time they will have on BPOs will be.

Speaking of BPOs, I looked into the earlier dev blog "BUILDING YOUR CITADEL, ONE BLOCK AT A TIME" and found the relevant information there about costs and availability:

Regarding the blueprints themselves:
- Like all Tech I blueprints, they will be seeded from specific NPC corporations through various areas of space, including high-security areas.
- The price tag will be ten times the hull cost, thus 6b ISK for a Medium Citadel, 70b ISK for a Large Citadel and 700b ISK for an X-Large Citadel.

And further on:

Details on the Citadel blueprint themselves are available below:

So the Large Citadel BPO is definitely out of reach without completely liquidating my capital BPO collection and I have no interest in that at all. However, the Astrahus BPO is within the price range, low enough that I'm considering buying two and putting one immediately into ME research while building with the other.

Another alternative is to invest in some of the Structure component blueprints, or the more expensive service module blueprints like the Market Hub which is estimated at 7 billion ISK for the BPO.

Lots of places to fit in but its hard to determine where the most bang for the buck will be.

The Capital Changes are On The Horizon

Check out the video from Uriel Anteovnuecci showing the new Force Auxiliary capitals from Duality test server.

What Price The Prize?

Yesterday on twitter a conversation started about the upcoming Skill Point trading in which famous blogger Noisy said some things I disagreed with. Before I get into the conversation, Noisy is one of the best EVE bloggers and someone's whose opinion I value highly, so I was not trying to pick a fight or troll him. Not sure if twitter conversations capture the nuance enough to make that point.

To reiterate something I've blogged about in the past, I've come to feel that the skill points system is an unnecessary limitation that impacts negatively newer players and has virtually no impact on veteran players. So while I would prefer that skill points are removed almost wholesale, I'm not opposed to a system that allows newer players to get skill points if they so desire to reduce the negative impact imposed on them by the system. For the record, the Character Bazaar is a similar system but far more advantageous to veteran players since the skill point trading is done via an entire character and thus the costs per transaction are far higher.

Back to the conversation above. Noisy says that skill point trading is contrary to the purpose of the game which he defines as "to journey thru the galaxy developing your character in hopefully fun and/or interesting ways". That's a good purpose; in fact its an admirable purpose, but I disagree its the purpose of the entire game.

This is the meat of the disagreement here, a fundamental parting of ways on whether or not being willing to pay cash to skip parts of the game is an acceptable practice or not. Other people compared it to purchasing a max level character in World of Warcraft. Noisy is of the opinion that if you want to skip part A to get to part B, then you should just stop playing the game. But I'm of the opinion that if part B is considered enough value to you to skip part A, paying cash for it should not be a big deal and should be allowed. 

In EVE's case, there are multiple "grinds" aka limitations: the ISK grind, the skill point grind, and the ability/experience grind. My enjoyment primarily lies in testing my ability against other pilots in PvP as both a pilot and Fleet Commander. I've been in the game so long that I've past the ISK grind and skill point grind but I could imagine coming into the game, wanting to get into the PvP in a meaningful competitive way, and being frustrated by the ISK and skill point grind and wanting to get a boost past them. PLEX already offers a way for the former, and now Skill Point trading offers a way for the latter. 

Noisy seems to be a hardliner against any form of paying cash to skip any limitation presented by EVE and I can see his point of view, even if I disagree with it. I don't think we should allow someone to pay cash and get "gold bullets" or any other advantage over other players that cannot be obtained in any method except cash, for example. Nor do I think we need to allow them to skip progression entirely so that they skill up to perfect titan pilots in a matter of a few minutes and lots of credit card payments. I do think there is a middle ground to be found to allow those with more cash than time to find happiness in the game without unbalancing the game for those with the opposite.

Noisy's attitudes towards RMT may put him in one minority, but I'm sure my attitudes towards skill points (death to skill points!) puts me in a different minority. I hope the different perspectives help CCP continue to make a good game.

Missed Opportunity

Last week on twitter I speculated on how the Command Destroyers and their Micro Jump Field Generators were going to impact the next alliance tournament to which CCP Fozzie replied:

Currently we plan to disallow the MJFG module for CCP-run tournaments.

He followed up with:

If you or others want to argue in favour of us leaving it in I'd be very willing to consider your/their points.

And later in response to questions:

 The interaction between the MJFG and arena boundary are the issue. The ability to launch people outside the arena.

I've been mulling that over ever since and I want to respond.

This is a missed opportunity to shake up the alliance tournament format and breath some new life into the current tiers of teams.

There has always been a tenuous connection between the PvP that happens in space all the time and the PvP we see in the arenas during tournaments, but at least the arena size was roughly equivalent to the typical grid dimensions of your average fight and the activities that happen therein. The Micro Jump Drive of battleships and battlecruisers started to impact that dynamic a little but it was minor and localized on the pilot in the ship and had no dramatic affect on arena combat.

The MJFG of Command Destroyers has far more reaching implications since it impacts all ships in the area of effect and I can see why the initial reaction of CCP is to simply disallow it. But combat has changed a lot in space and we have larger grid sizes and the MJFG has expanded combat on the new grids in dynamic and sometimes hilarious ways.

So why leave the arena size at 250 km? What's so special about that size anymore?

I can see when the tournament first started years and years ago that a size of 250 km would be more than enough for combat of that era, containing all possible activities a fleet could do without including warpin/outs from off grid, but the reality has changed and I think the alliance tournament should change to reflect that.

I think CCP should consider increasing grid sizes to at least 3 times if not 10 times larger. Encourage less in your face brawling and more tactical maneuvering. Discourage ties via some mechanics tweaking, maybe add some warpable objects to encourage movement, but let's see what a larger arena combat including MJFG Destroyers looks like. It may still not be the same as random PvP you see in real space, but it would be closer.

Citadel BPO Fund

I was selling a Moros on the market as I do a couple times a month thanks to the output of Project Vulcan and it was sitting in a sell order for 2.65 billion ISK, cheapest in the Placid region. Due to a recent Moros BPO purchase my corporate wallet was down in under 120 million ISK so I needed the sale to get going on the next build.

I logged in Saturday morning to see if the order needed updating to remain competitive with the North Placid sellers and I see the dreadnought has sold. I check the wallet and became very confused.

"Why does my wallet only have 20 million ISK?" I said aloud with confusion written on my face.

I stopped. I counted out, "thousands", "millions", "billions"... and then changed my question to "Why does my wallet have 20 billion ISK?!"

Did I have a BPO for sale I forgot about that someone bought? No, they are not that much. Was it a donation from a shareholder or something? I quickly scanned my wallet transactions and found the culprit.

Ah ha! Someone bought my Moros for 20 billion ISK. I sent off an evemail asking if it was a mistake or leaving the game donation and they confirmed it was an extra digit mistake and they congratulated me on the windfall.

With this sudden influx of capital I was left considering options of what to do. After checking the market for prices of Utu frigates (100 billion?! Ah man....) I decided to save the ISK for the upcoming Citadel expansion and see if there is a chance to invest in a Medium Citadel blueprint and get in on the ground floor of the citadel land rush. 

Spring is coming.

Poisoned the Well

The Council of Stellar Management is in a bad place.

CCP developers seem ot have severely soured on player feedback in recent months and news out of the CSM has not been prevalent or hopeful. It seems we have gone in a short year from a cooperative and productive relationship between the two sides to one of hostility and suspicion.

Somewhere along the line someone poisoned the well.

Now it wasn't the entire CSM, either this incarnation or previous incarnations, that caused the rift to form and its worth noting that a good portion of the CSM membership work hard at their volunteer role and play by the rules. But you know that saying that when you do your job right no one notices but you screw up once and everyone remembers forever? That applies here.

Xander Pheona having to fight off NDS disclosure allegations, CSM White Papers getting updated without CSM input, Manfred Sidious getting turfed off CSM for allegded NDA leaks about capital changes, CSM members getting removed for simply being too inactive... each one a bit more poison in the well of goodwill between the CSM and CCP.

We've come to the point where it feels that CCP has lost the group-think willingness to work with the CSM in a serious manner. The focus groups CCP has used for T3 Destroyer Balance, Sovereignty, and Capital changes indicate a willingness to go directly to selected subject matter experts (aka SMEs) rather than the general representatives of the CSM, something I'm not a fan of because I find that sometimes SMEs are too focused and biased towards certain designs and decisions and not casting a wide enough net in the overall game design architecture. But that's a discussion for another day.

Another poisoning of the well is the occasional effort to elect "joke" members or obviously toxic members as a form of player protest against CCP via the CSM elections. Quite frankly, this is ineffective at passing any message other than how infantile they want to communicate. We get it, you don't take the CSM seriously, move along.

Personally, I think the CSM has run its course and the well is too poisoned to recover from. Its become too toxic for both the player and the company to continue and letting it fester is not doing either side much good at this point. I think we need to increase the involvement for focus group discussions and work towards helping CCP come up with a method for occasional groups for topic discussion that are not as soul-crushingly demanding as a CSM term and not as frustrating for CCP developers.

It should be shut down soon, before it becomes a debacle or a joke.

Finally!

I've been using the Magus exclusively since they came out and despite constantly leading fleets (thus lowering my chances for final blow on killmails) I finally secured my first Kill Mark:

On the port wing above the CREODRON label. Click to embiggen.

There are many like it but this one is mine.

Back On Track

Check out this awesome EVE song paradoy by Aideron Robotics pilot Billy Daniels.

Cautionary Tale

So I'm was loving my new ASUS PC when yesterday morning after some casual gaming before work an app opened up and notified me that there was a BIOS update available for my machine, did I want to install it?

Maybe I was distracted, maybe I was so comfortable with constant windows updates and the smoothness that my new PC was running for the past two months since I purchased it that I was lulled out of cautionary awareness into complacent dullness, whatever, but I clicked OK without a second thought.

"All done, you need to restart your machine," it prompted happily after a minute of work.

Computer shuts down, computer starts, power light comes on, internal fan spins...

And nothing else.

No beeps, no POST, no BIOS.

She's dead, Jim.

As much computing power as my PC has.

The worst part is I should have known better. I know BIOS updates are risky business, I know how badly a botched BIOS update can destroy your motherboard, I know. But I slipped up. I hit OK.

Now I'm entering the long torturous process of manufacturer tech support and product returns.

Project Vulcan - Fall Review

Back in September I solicited some shareholders and used the funds to move start a Moros production line alongside my Archon production line. I have built and sold 6 Archons and 4 Moros since that time and my investors have seen a total of 1.237 million ISK dividend payout on each 5 million ISK share. I don't honestly know if that is good or not, but my shareholders seem happy.

As part of my re-organized project I improved my spreadsheet tracking to track historical data as well as factory costs more closely and the result of that is that I can get a better idea of trends in costs and sell prices of my wares.

All four Moros sold for almost the exact same price on the markets of about 2.5 billion, but the total production cost varied from a low of 2.05 billion to 2.33 billion, with a resulting expecting profit of about 240 million. For the Archons the sell price varied more and the profit varied from a low of 127 million to a high of 270 million, typical expectant profit is currently pegged around 160 million.

Long story short, fall's total profit was 2,475,323,322 ISK.

Here is a graph showing the mineral buy costs in Dodixie of my Archons and Moros productions including the items currently in production.

Click for full size

I originally made a graph simply showing the price changes but its hard to comprehend that a small change in price of tritanium can have a far more powerful impact than a larger change in say, Zydrine for example. So I made this graph showing the total cost of minerals per ship over the fall period. That way you can see the massive impact that the price of Mexallon from 48 ISK on Sept 15th to 65 ISK two weeks later had on my bottom line, adding over 160 million ISK to the cost of a Moros. Another example is that we see tritanium costs for both Archons and Moros have been increasing significantly and steadily until December while high end minerals Megacyte and Zydrine have been decreasing the entire time.

I don't know if anyone finds this information as enthralling as I do but its my blog so there you go. :)

Coming up this winter and spring, I plan to continue production in the same rate until the capital changes get closer and we can evaluate the impact of them on the future market trends.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Thoughts

I finally got to see the new Star Wars movie on the holidays and I enjoyed it a lot. Its not a perfect movie but none of the previous six were (excepting maybe Empire Strikes Back).

I have some thoughts to share but they cannot be spoiler free so....

** SPOILER WARNING -- SPOILER WARNING **

Turn back now if you have not seen the movie.

OK, ready? Here we go.

Good:

- The pacing was much better than the prequels. I realize that Lucas was trying to fill in a lot of the rationalization of why there was an Empire and a rebellion, but the political backstory was very boring in the grand scheme of things when what we really wanted was Jedi versus Sith fighting.

- The acting was so much better, the dialogue was better. The characters were more realistic and less cardboard cutouts to act out George's fan fiction. No Jar Jar.

- The improved camerawork and less reliance on CGI was noticable and appreciated. The movie LOOKS amazing.

- I thought I would be annoyed to hell by BB-8 and his cutesiness, like a combined Jar Jar and R2D2, but I was pleasantly surprised he was much more low key than expected.

- I loved the Finn and Rey and Poe characters, I emphasized with them so much more than any of the prequel characters.

- The light sabre work was very nice and much more subtle, very enjoyable.

- The First Order Storm Troopers and star ships were top notch on the aesthetic side of things.

- The Light Sabre of Doom!

Bad:

- I realize we don't want to descend into the political chicanery of the Prequels but some explanation of the First Order, the New Republic, and the Resistance and their relationships to each other would have been nice. I looked it all up after the movie on the internet so I understand now but at the time I was very confused. Resistance, what are you resisting? (1)

- Similar note, why was there so many wrecks on Jakku? (See 1)

- Kylo Ren as the Bad Guy Stand In for Darth Vader (like Darth Maul, Darth Tyrannous) was not horrible, but failed to resonate with me. Seeing him start so evil at times yet so conflicted made him seem very non-threatening to me. It didn't help his helmet was unnecessary and he just looked too damn slim in his outfit. HOWEVER, I liked him a lot more after he killed his father Han Solo. Full Evil Kylo Ren much better than Emo Kylo Ren.

- Supreme Leader Snokes has a bad name, looks like a horrible Gollum clone, and evokes no menace to me.

- Starkiller planet was borderline too cheesy "Its even more deadly than a Death Star! OMG!!" but worked for me as a set location for the climax. And the parallel between the sun going out and Kylo Ren losing any light side he had left was well done.

- Captain Phasma got a raw deal. Awesome look, but no cool action, dialogue, scenes, and gets captured and used as a patsy to disable the shields like a weak idiot. FAIL!

- I did not like the Maz character. Not sure exactly why/ Too much like ancient Asian woman caricature maybe? Too much plot device? Hope she's dead.

- As much as I liked the Rey character, I think they overloaded too much ability on to her. Survive on harsh desert planet alone, altruistic droid saviour, force sensitive and able to mind trick a storm trooper right away, able to defeat (an admittedly badly injure) Kylo Ren in a light sabre duel, AND a freaking amazing pilot capable of taking the Millennium Falcon through near impossible maneuvers we've only see Han Solo and Lando Calrissian do? Just too much.

- Gah, J J Abrams, I hate you. In the Star Trek reboot, the thing that nearly killed me was Spock seeing Vulcan get consumed in the sky from that ice planet in another solar system. Like fuck me. And here in star wars he does it again when the Starkiller destroys those planets in the Hosnian Prime system while the characters at the resistance base on D'Qar see it happen, in the sky. Fuck me. I hate that shit.

- Need more Luke Skywalker!

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Overall, like I said, I enjoyed the movie and will watch it again when I get it on DVD. And I'm really looking forward to the next one in a way that the prequels never made me feel. So good job.


(1) - After the battle of Jakku where the New Republic and the remaining Empire forces had a large battle, the two sides signed a treaty of sorts with military limitations and such. The First Order rose out of the ashes on the imperial side of that treaty and started rebuilding breaking parts of the treaty, but the New Republic remained ignorant (in some cases willfully) of the transgressions to avoid new hostilities. The Resistance are those who do now want the First Order to get away with their transgressions and are resisting in First Order territory with some illicit aid of the New Republic.