[Now] Crius Industrial ME/PE Changes

According to the Dev Blog post: Researching, The Future, CCP has decided to mess around with the BPO system.  Note: These changes have been bumped from Kronos on June 3rd to Crius on July 22nd.  I am going to paraphrase and try to condense this down to the most important points.

There are two major changes, CCP Greyscale announces.

1. Copying times are going to be much shorter

2. They are changing how ME/PE mechanics work

Copy Times

As far as copying, CCP is changing the base copy time on all items to be the same as the build time.  The industry skill will give a maximum build time reduction of 20% and with the science skill giving a maximum copy time reduction of 25%.  Overall, this will make copying about 6% faster than build times.

There are some other details in the copying/inventing stuff, but above is the jist of what is going on with BPCs.

Here is the kicker, the ME/PE changes

A bit of semantics, production efficiency (PE) will be renamed time efficiency (TE) 

CCP is looking to reclassify research and make it a more 'skill-based' activity.  There will be a fixed number of research levels that give the same bonus, but will take longer to research as you progress through the levels.  They state that the current system is 'unintuitive'.  They also state that because figuring out your potential savings in minerals or time is on the side of onerous and they want to simplify it.  After the release instead of a 'waste factor' they will be increasing the base cost of all BP's by 11%.  ME will then reduce build costs by 10% of that new base level, which they state brings us back to where we started..

Once all of this has taken place, the new system will look something like this.  ME will now have 10 steps.  Each step of ME researched will reduce the material requirements by 1% and each step of TE researched will reduce the manufacturing time on blueprints by 2%.  In an example, a blueprint with ME at step 6 will have a mineral requirement reduction of 6% and a TE at step 6 will have a manufacturing time reduction of 12%.  This will be shown as ME 6% and TE 12%.  

The new base research times are as follows (for a rank 1 blueprint)

level	seconds	approx total
1	105	1m 45s
2	250	4m
3	595	10m
5	3360	56m
10	256000	3d

I have no idea why I can't center this table - sorry.

Skill bonuses will reduce these times as stated.  This will give a hard number target for when a BPO is considered fully researched unlike the current system where it is all over the place and nearly arbitrary.

They will also be unifying nearly every blueprint and converting it to the new system.  There will be a few rare occurrences, but the majority of blueprints will be as laid out above.  

You may have noted on the chart that the time scheme was for a rank 1 blueprint.  They are adding ranks to the blueprints to give them a sort of difficulty level.    The ranks are as follows:

"T1 ammo will be the rank 1 baseline.  These blueprints all currently have a base research time of 6,000 seconds.  ...To determine ranks of other blueprints, the current plan is to simply divide their research times by 6,000, maintaining the research ratios currently present.  This means T1 modules are generally rank 2, T1 frigates/cruisers/battleships are 20/40/60, and the highest rank is Titans at 3414."

Now for the critical info.  What happens with the researched blueprints you already own?  Here is the low down.  

ME/TE 1 blueprints will become ME 5% / TE 10% ones.  

ME/TE 5-9 would become ME 9% / TE 18% ones.

anything over ME/TE 10 will max out at ME 10% / PE 20%

Everyone's blueprints will basically remain the same or even get better.  The big uproar is that people with researched blueprints will end up losing their advantage over other manufacturers and this could also bring an influx of competition on the market making everyones already narrow profits shrink and cause them to "go out of business".  I don't know about that, but I still have my reservations.  

Take advantage of the extra month of pre-change manufacturing because the fundamentals will change and I only see things getting more competitive.  Luckily T2 and T3 manufacturing is a lot more skill-intensive and could give that leg up over those who don't want to spend months training them all.  What is your take?  

perPLEXing Commodities

I'll put this out there first and foremost.  I am not a PLEX trader.  I have bought some in the past, but generally, I steer clear and make my ISK with manufacturing.  That being said, PLEX is big business.  If you don't know, PLEX is a pilot license extension.  You turn it into CCP on your account and are given 30days of play time in lieu of paying the 14.99 fee for your subscription.  This allows people to play for free if they use ISK to purchase game time.  A great idea, right?   Well, yes and no.  Let's review.

PLEX is a great way for people who don't have a large portion of their income to pay for subscriptions.  As CCP allows for multiple accounts, it can be a great way to defray the costs of multiple accounts or use them to completely pay for your subscriptions.  PLEX are a commodity that you are able to buy and sell on the market place.  They are not seeded by CCP normally so all the PLEX on the market have been purchased as a RMT.  There has been some that were gifted, but 99% of them are player purchased.

Being a commodity, they are subject to supply and demand.  Their price ebs and flows with the supply.  Some markets are less expensive than others and places like Jita and Dodixie have a high sales volume.  This is all pretty damn cool.  I don't know of another MMO that allows you to trade your cash using PLEX as a proxy.  The problem is it is expensive, a good target for gankers and it caused an influx of available ISK.  This by itself isn't horrible, what it proliferated was new players in bling ships who get ganked.

I've seen it all to often.  New players quickly train up to battleships, buy faction ships, fit them with faction modules and wander haplessly into low sec or get ganked in space and lose hundreds of dollars of real life cash.  The problem is that PLEX promotes the misguided use of things that veterans might not do.  I've seen killmails that would make any pirate drool over.  Deadspace/Officer/Faction fit Vindys with 6bil killmail losses, capitals in the 10's of billions and on and on.  Being new players, they may not realize yet how to properly fit a ship or know where not to fly it.  

I'm all for PLEX, don't get me wrong, but if you are a new player, I would highly encourage you to learn the basics first, join a corp of helpful people and ask questions before you drop some hard-earned cash on PLEX.  

That's my take.  If you want a more specific look at PLEX and CCP's thought process on it, check out this blog post by Danny Centauri  PLEX Price Control is Serious Business.

Burn Jita 3.0 Wrap-up

As reported by Jester on his blog Jester's Trek: Burn Jita 3.0 Wrap-up

Every so often, Goonswarm members hold an event called: 'Burn Jita'.  Basically what happens is that the Goons effectively blockade the Jita system and go out of their way to gank anyone in a industrial, mining barge, exhumers, transports, freighters and jump freighters.  As we all know, Jita is the largest trade hub in New Eden and as such, there are masses of people moving in and out of Jita on a minute by minute basis.  Jita is normally a dangerous place, even though it is in High Sec.  Gankers are always trying to pop a hapless capsuleer.  What is even more interesting is that the Goon's declare a 'Bun' event well in advance.  It never ceases to amaze me the absolute slew of killmails on industrial ships and shiny PVE fit hulls.  The forewarning and Jita's typically chaotic daily activity is not enough to keep people away.

You can see a great post by Jester, where he gives a disturbing tally of the losses.  I suggest you go check it out. Burn Jita 3.0 Wrap-up

I just wanted to make one more point.  If a 'Burn' event is announced, be smart and find another activity or another trade hub for a while.  Don't autopilot and pay attention and as always, fly safe-ish.

Kronos Is Now Available on Singularity

From EVE Online, by CCP Falcon
"We are happy to announce that as of today, May 14, the Kronos release is available for testing on our Singularity test server."

That means you can go try out the new additions to New Eden (other than the industrial changes).  

If you don't know how to access the Singularity server, you can view the instructions here
Setting up Singularity

It's really easy and you get to enjoy all the new things in EVE without fear.  Maybe I will see you there and as always, fly safe-ish (unless on Singularity - be reckless)

Dev Blog: Tiptoe Through the Tooltips

I had been briefed by some of my EVE friends that tool tips where a hot issue last night so I was prepared for an onslaught of annoyances.  I jumped online to do some industry stuff and noticed the new tool tips.  They weren't too much of a bother for me, but I am not doing anything special or requiring a lot of concentration.  I did see the dev blog on it this morning though.  

You can find it here: Tiptoe through the tooltips

What I did like was that on your overview, if you hover your mouse over an object, it will tell you what class it is.  Like 'frigate', 'planet' or 'station'.  To me, it effectively adds one more column to your overview for free.  I guess I am just easy.  I didn't explore every tool tip, so knowing the law of averages, there are at least some that would aggravate me. Anyway, fly safe-ish.