Industry Teams Removal: The New Precedent?

Rhea has a host of changes that could be examined closer but this latest statement regarding the phase out of Industry Teams I find most interesting. I for one thought of industry teams as a needless complication from the beginning and adapted the wait and see approach. It seems CCP has waited long enough and have decided to take the steps to phase out the industry teams feature.

First a quick background is in order. Industry Teams was first mentioned in this devblog spring of 2014 as part of the Industry Revamp. It was supposed to be the extra icing on the cake to change up industry game play I'm guessing? Either way the changes to POSes and blueprint changes have had a much more significant change on the industry landscape coming out of the Crius patch which landed in July 2014.

Fast forward to today and according to CCP's numbers manufacturing teams use is in the single digits and it isn't even used for research jobs. The feature in its current iteration is clunky at best and in my opinion adds a slight amount of add value at a cost of tedious time consumption. CCP had this to say about their plans for the Industry Teams feature going forward:

Our rollout plan for this would be to disable the seeding of new teams by the end of 2014, and to disable the UI features in one of the first releases of 2015. That being said, we want your input and feedback on what is ultimately a fairly unprecedented course of action for us. While we feel we have done our due diligence additional context from you is always appreciated.

-CCP RubberBAND

"A fairly unprecedented course" is right. Time will tell if other unpopular features released now and into the future are rolled back like the industry teams. I am of the opinion that if its not hurting anyone leave it be. I mean it only took ten years for a major industry revamp and if we have to wait another ten years why not leave teams be. If you want to take the time and isk to invest in them so be it.

Anyway lots of other eye candy and new space coming out in Rhea check out the development video for a quick recap of everything.

Operation: Market Consolidation

At the start of July I had active market orders from Tash-Murkon, Kor-Azor, and Domain regions up into the The Citadel and then back down into Essence, Sinq Laison, and Verge Vender. Feeling a little over whelmed and seeing that my operations where suffering from my market creep; I decided to consolidate my market orders.

Earlier this year I had expanded into the Amarr market and moved my main operations into the Domain region with big plans to set up a POS(Player Owned Starbase) industry operation in the area. Shortly after I made the move the industry change devblogs came out and I was soon changing my plans. I scaled back my ambitious POS plans and ultimately dropped my ideas all together as the industry change speculation was driving blueprint markets into the ground. After treading water and waiting for the industry changes I continued selling products in the above mentioned markets.

Fast forward to September as market volumes slowed and real life pressures set in I decided it was time to consolidate what I was doing. I stopped stocking orders in all regions and withdrew my operating assets from Amarr space. So as it sits now I have sold off most of my stocks and am sitting on a huge pile of isk. It is now ready to be reinvested in my next internet spaceship ventures whatever those might be.

Eve Online: Basic PI (Planetary Interaction) Video Guide

When I first started this blog the first guide I wrote was a PI guide so it's only fitting that my first video guide is on PI. Weighing in at 38 minutes long, it covers all the basic steps from skills to picking up your finished products at the customs office.

Check it out let me know what you think. If I get a good response I will make more of these longer in depth guides or shorter, again let me know. After putting in the time I have a real appreciation for anyone who makes YouTube videos and a bigger appreciation for people that put together good guides.

You can find the guide here, you can check out my YouTube channel Tactic Talisman here, and if you like what you see leave a comment or subscribe. So without further adieu I give you:

Eve Online: Basic PI (Planetary Interaction) Guide

If you are more into text guides check out the ones I have linked below.
Investment Guide: Basic Planetary Interaction
Investment Guide: Intermediate Planetary Interaction

Industry Changes Buff or Nerf?

I have been trying to place the Crius industry changes in my mind if they helped or hurt?

A lot of it depends on how you play the game. What angle you look at industry. Do you build capital ships? Are you a small operation? Are you just getting started? Have you been playing for years? Or just use industry on the side to fund other habits? As a result I think some of these areas have been changed for the better and some haven't.

My particular area of concern, not surprisingly, is in the new player department. Two types of industry players have been affected. Casual industry users, those whose main play time is spent doing some other activity, now have a quick and efficient way to build their own equipment or make some isk. Their interaction with the game world will increase and life will be great. The other player that is affected is the up and coming industrial tycoon. Players who spend most of their time focusing on industry. Players, who like myself and imagine many of you, wanted to build a sand castle instead of kicking them down.

The new industry player faces an even greater challenge than many of us did but why you ask? This new system makes researching BPOs(Blueprint Originals) quick and efficient doesn't it? Yes it does very much so. In fact too well, the BPO market was a testament to the required amount of time and money you had to have in order to gain a footing in producing items and making a profit. Simplification of the numbers and metrics was needed yes but the time requirement and system of researching was sound. Now producing efficient blueprints isn't time intensive or costly but wait why is this a bad thing? It seems great doesn't it we all have perfect blueprints now?

No it isn't a great thing at all and it is just starting to affect the markets. Products are going to have a mountain of supply. Over production has always been a problem in the game and always will be. You can produce things much faster than people can destroy them. The kicker is CCP just lowered the time on jobs, removed slot times and lowered minerals required to build items the greatest effect you can see is on T1 products.

Think of a simple supply and demand curve. As the supply becomes greater and greater the demand becomes lower and lower. Prices slowly drop lower and lower. In Eve's case prices become fixed eventually around mineral costs or other required materials. The profit is lost though as market equilibrium sets in very quickly with the change to build times. More supply equals less demand.

The even greater problem is the demand curve. Demand in our example would be defined as that of player activity in game. Demand increases if there are more players consuming goods. And right now there just isn't a lot of new players coming in or current players excited about the game to sustain this new industry model. If we had increased player activity(I mean large player increases year in year out) I am confident the new industry model would be an amazing success. As it stands you have a tough mountain to climb to gain entry into profitable manufacturing.

We were all so focused on the cost changes when we all realized that the time changes were the real nerf. The discussion is only getting started time will tell if markets even out or not.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Operation: Market Adjustment

If you have been following along with my posts over the past month or so you will know that I have been taking a break from Eve Online. Well not any more I am back and kicking. I was secretly hoping the markets would settle down and adjust. My hopes have partially come true and a lot of items have shifted into their new price points. Now what?

I found a lot of the items I used to make are not as lucrative as they had once been. Namely a lot of T1 modules I used to mass produce. These modules had very long build times so supply was limited to some extent. Before I was building 50 units a week with well researched BPOs now my numbers indicate 50 units only takes a matter of days. Couple this with the fact that their is no wait times on manufacturing slots. Equals a flood of these T1 items especially in market hubs. While I didn't expect the time changes to be this significant, I do hope CCP is keeping an eye on these changes(knock on wood). **Note this is build pricing changes aside.

I did half expect my T1 ventures to be unprofitable post patch and had already started retooling towards Tech 2 items and ships and that does seem to be an area with better prospects. Once more unto the spreadsheets. That is right I just made a play on a Shakespeare quote.

Crius by the Numbers(Quick Video)

If anyone is interested in seeing some of the new industry numbers scaling in action check out this video by Reload. He presents some interesting case scenarios when comparing jita build costs to other systems also a comparison of when teams are good and when teams may not be needed. Check it out here, or below.

How to Prepare for the New Industry Patch Launch

You might be asking yourself how do I prepare for all these wide sweeping industry changes? How do I best position my assets for such a large change? Now I can't speak for you so let me tell you what I have done. I had prepared everything I had located a new system I was going to operate out of. I had moved all of my BPOs and other gear out that direction as well. I had purchased a few other investments and had everything in place.

Then the industry changes were pushed back to July 22. I don't think I have quite mentally recovered from that initial push back. Why might you ask? Because of how I am currently preparing for patch day. The answer is I'm not. I put up all my manufactured goods on to the market, any other trades goods I was holding on to I set up market orders for as well, and then let my subscription fall off.

Why deal with patch day this way? The first reason that probable has more to do with it than my new feature woes is the slow markets during the summer. A lot of people take breaks from Eve and are on vacation during the summer so the game just tends to be unexciting during that lull. The second reason is after preparing for that patch and having it pushed back I realized real quick that nothing was concrete until the thing was live. So among other reason I decided to just sit back and watch the patch math from a distance. In a few weeks after the dust has settled I will get back in and try it out. I have a few other fun ventures I am pursuing in my spare time and Eve hasn't been fitting into those yet but hopefully some time soon.

New Development Video out for Crius Patch

CCP released a development video for the Crius patch. Its worth a watch nothing new was shown and no funny role playing like in some of the past videos.

Unsubscribbed

I am super causal when it comes to playing Eve. I play once every day or two with a healthy dose on the weekends if I can. I also take month long breaks every three or four months letting my subscription drop just because I can, I have this weird thing about controlling my life and not letting games control it but that's not what I want to talk about here. And its not like I don't have enough isk for PLEX or money for a subscription I just let it drop off. Taking a break you could call it.

What happens to your account after the subscription is up? You might think that is a silly question, I don't think its a silly question at all, in fact I think its an important question to understand.

Skill training stops, ok fair enough.
Any industry job whether manufacturing slot or research slot continues until finished ok...
All market orders stay active until their posted time ends which you can set to three months.

Why can you have active industry slots and active market orders(I get that you can't update them but three months is a long time) when you are not even paying to play the game? You would think a for profit company like CCP wouldn't allow you to do this sort of thing. Especially puzzling with the heavy market oriented aspect of Eve game play. Well don't have a few unsubscribed manufacturing alt accounts? If you can't beat them join them.

I mean seriously if you look at it from a market stand point of isk optimization I could subscribe every other month giving me 6 less PLEX a year I need to use on an alt account while at the same time using those 60 slots(3 characters times 10 manufacturing and 10 research) que out for a month. This only gets better as the slot que times will soon be removed.

Operation: PI Halt

A month or so back I decided to stop all of my PI(Planetary Interaction) production I was doing. It had just become a chore. I had a simple 5 planet system set up on two characters so 10 planets total with all the extractors set to 3 day cycle times. I don't have that much time to play so when it came to it spending 20 to 30 minutes resetting planets was just getting tedious.

Further more I was forgoing a lot of manufacturing production which has been far more lucrative than the 150 million I was getting out of PI production every month(in high sec). In short I had out grown my small PI production. While in the beginning days of my subscription it served as a great supplemental income source for things like blueprints and expensive skill books without cutting into my other market ventures. The current set up I had for PI needed to either be moved out to a wormhole operation or retooled to a more factory style system in hopes for better margins. Already operating on a time constraint I just decided to scrap it all together and opted to focus my time on manufacturing which I now had the proper capital to fund in large quinatites.

So the bottom line is if you don't enjoy doing something in a game that you are playing during your free time you should probable stop what your doing and find something better to do.

First Look Video of the Industry UI Changes

Check out this video covering a first look at the industry UI changes on the test server.

Or just link straight to the video on youtube here.

Operation: POS Full Stop

About two weeks before the industry devblogs dropped I was poised to set up my own small pos operation. I had purchased or built all my equipment that I would need fuel, starbase modules, etc. I had moved all my equipment to the system I was planning on setting up in. The only thing I had left to do was buy a corp with standings before I set it all up in space.

I had been busy all month and had this one Saturday to set everything up. So I hesitated thinking I wouldn't find time for everything, I finally decided to wait until I had more time to set up my operations. Two weeks later the industry devblogs started coming out and I put all my plans on hold. Until I can get a handle on all the changes I thought it was best to wait out exactly what would change, you know how much the markets can drop when these things are announced. So I watched and waited to better position my new investments.

I am still planning on going ahead with a pos operation but it's function has changed from that of a research set up, I was originally going to run, to an all around set up with both research and manufacturing elements. Also my planned system location has changed and probably will change again as we see more specifics with the team elements being introduced.

Just when I had adjusted my plans and was again preparing for the launch of Kronos on June 3 when, as you all know, the industry changes were pushed back to the July 22 release date. Now I am eager and waiting for the industry changes, as I am sure most of you are as well, so hang in there hopefully soon we can get on the test server and start playing with some of these new changes.

Freighter Pilots Fret

As a game develops and gets older there is those little quality of life things that are added. Better menus, removal of needless clicking, and of course faster travel around the game.  We have seen it with the addition of more jump clones and less time to use those jump clones. The other thing that usually develops over time is the removal of barriers to entry into certain types of game play. For example the devs hope that the industry changes will simplify the process and make it easier for more people to build stuff, as one recent example.

So I don't understand why the devs slowed freighters down in Rubicon, they were painfully slow already. I didn't understand why people weren't more upset then. But they are upset now. And why not? A freighter is going to have less cargo space, less ehp, and still be slow. You can get one or the other back with different rigs but then comes the added barrier to entry card.

If you want more people to become players in your mmo making the game more time consuming instead of less doesn't make sense. Making people pay, half again what the ship cost, to bring that ship up to speed for how it use to fly for all those years doesn't make sense.

So the solution is, as I have heard commented before, just use a shipping service or courier contracts. Which is what we will have to do even when the eventual shipping prices goes up. I still feel for you new industrialists out there I thought I had a hard time working up the ladder. You guys will have a mountain to climb once the industry changes hit in July.

Updated Re-balance for Freighters May 21, 2014

Keeping Up With Kronos and now Crius

If your like me you are all really busy and don't have a lot of time to keep up on all the changes coming up with the Kronos release. I wanted to create a summary of changes and touch on the impact this would have on the market. Several other people have already put together some really good articles that cover pretty much everything I wanted to touch on so I am going to point you their way.

The first thing is a summary of the changes you can find a good list over at K162space. With so many changes it can be hard to keep up with everything, it is nice to see a complete list for referencing and review.

The second is an article over at evenews24.com called Predicted Winners and Losers from the Kronos Changes. Danny Centauri did a great job covering a lot of the market speculation surrounding Kronos. Go over give it a read, take some notes, and keep running those calculations. Also check out his blog posts Unofficial Kronos Patch Notes and now Unofficial Crius Patch Notes

I have been going over the devblogs again this week doing some calculations. I had somethings I was going to cover but with the industry changes being pushed back until July 22, likely things will change.

Update: Also a new devblog is out explaining exactly what is going to be in Kronos.

What do I think of the Industry Changes?

Some of my dramatic notes about the changes will now follow:

We are on the eve of the greatest changes to industry ever. No pun intended.

CCP could have been quoted as saying: "All your spreadsheet are belong to us."

CCP has hit the rest button on all of our spreadsheets. This might as well be day one save for the amount of investment ready isk players have.

Its been a couple days since I wrote down my knee jerk reactions to the different industry changes. I am having a hard time swallowing the complete overhaul. I think if they would have spread out these devblogs over the past four months instead of the last two weeks the reaction of the industrial player base may have been sated some what. Instead we got a complete overhaul of the 3 levels of the industry system plus some extra all in a two week span.

Level 1 Refining: Reprocess all the things

Level 2 Blueprints: Researching, the Future

Level 3 Manufacturing: The Price of Change and Building Better Worlds and Industry UI

Extra Random Sauce: Team Up(Not actually teams just npc, isk sink, bonus things.)

I get it though, I get that refining needs some tweaks. I understand that blueprints needed some work. I realize the slot system and pricing fix were inevitable to better scale with the growth of the game. The teams thing just goes a little far into the realm of needless complication. Either way it just got a whole lot harder for a newbro looking to start into the manufacturing game. It will be tough to compete against well established manufacturing operations.

I do like the new UI though, the layout and design looks really nice.

Building Better Worlds by Destorying NPC Slots

If you haven't read through the industry changes, in this devblog, slated for the 2014 summer expansion release, you should go do so now. Where to begin? Here...

Allow Starbases to be anchored anywhere in high-security space and without standing requirements

At first glance I was like hey that's cool, kind of screwing over people that make corps with standings, but sounds good. Then I thought about it for a minute.

Remove the ability for players to use stations to safely store their blueprints without putting them at risk in Starbase structures. Players will still be able to start their jobs remotely (via the use of Supply Chain Management and Scientific Networking skills), but will now have to move their blueprints directly into the starbase structures that require it, like other materials.

What?! Wait... this will effect BPO and BPC producers if the slot changes compensate enough for research to be done in stations you won't need a POS(Thats a big if we'll wait for the numbers to make a call on that one.) Still though if running research in NPC stations is viable. Do you need a POS in high sec for research?

...most of the Starbases in high-security space use Mobile Laboratories to compensate for the lack of Material Efficiency Research slots in Empire space.

If all those research POS aren't needed what does this do to the ice market?(Not to worry though everyone can now throw POSes up.) Now we haven't seen the numbers yet so the only conclusion I can come up with is that using NPC stations for research and industry will mean fees are what comparable to running a POS?

Expect costs ranging from 0% to 14% of the base item being produced for the most extreme case.

The above quote references the new slot fee for NPC stations. Running ten jobs at 5% that would sure add up quick. I guess you might want a POS after all for manufacturing. So are we just trading POS researching for POS manufacturing?

Only the numbers will tell how the fees will scale.

Investment Guide: Quick Hauling

Your options here are pretty simple either you are picking up things and moving them to sell and make a profit or you're picking up someone else's things via courier contract and moving them for a profit. Your wanting to maximizes your profit potential by calculating the size of the cargo by the amount of isk you will earn by the time it will take to move. With this simple formula in mind lets take a look at your hauling options.

History
Before we get too deep it would be best to take a look at the skill changes and ship changes that have taken place the past several years in Eve. Before the skill changes you use to be required to skill up to high levels before you could use the larger industrial haulers that isn't the case any more you can use any industrial of any race as soon as you train the racial skill to level one.

Ship changes have created more variety among the different industrial ships allowing for more specialization. In my next guide I will cover the differences more in depth but for this basic guide we will stick to the smallest cheapest haulers that you are given in your career agent tutorials and the fittings and uses of each.

Skills
Gallente Industrial 3
Evasive Maneuvering 3
Mechanics 3
Jury Rigging 3
Astronautics Rigging 1
Warp Drive Operation 1
Hull Upgrades 2
Shield Upgrades 4
Tactical Shield Manipulation 4

Total time: 8 days, 11 minutes, 28 seconds(time based on no remap); Cost: 789,000

Ship Fit
[Nereus, Hi Sec]

Large Shield Extender II
EM Ward Amplifier II
EM Ward Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Amplifier II

Local Hull Conversion Nanofiber Structure I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I
Medium Cargohold Optimization I

Ship fit source: Nereus - UniWiki

The Nereus will give you a fast little hauler with a little more ehp than the old weaker haulers. Keep in mind don't fly what you can't afford to lose. This includes whatever your hauling in your cargo bay. As a rule of thumb if you haul anything over 100 million isk your going to start attracting unwanted attention.

At max skills you're only looking at about 8000m3 of cargo give or take a few modules. Its not that bad considering how slow freighters travel with the warp speed changes. I will cover specific haulers in the next guide as you follow along the Gallente line of haulers you will find lots of options. Whether you're working towards being an industrialist or looking to getting into hauling full time this is a great place to start.

Weighing in on Warp Speed Changes

It seems like a lot of people are overjoyed with the changes to warp speed increase. Its great right? Smaller ships are faster than ever. I was hopping they would at least leave freighters and capitals as bench marks and ships would move faster as they got smaller. Instead cruisers are the bench mark and save for a slight long distance speed increase to freighters(check graph) they have an increased time for warping(on the low end 1 AU to 50 AU). I do quite a bit of flying in my freighter, shipping things around, so what to do about it is the real question?

I think freighter services will go up in price because it is going to take a whole lot more time for these guys to fly around. So between flying even smarter shipping trips and using shipping services until the eventual price increase is the direction I will take to keep my time flying down.

As far as flying smarter your going to want to use all of the new rebalanced indy ships to your advantage now more than ever. It might be a fun experiment to see how much in terms of volume I could haul in comparision to the slower freighter. Even more things to plan and think about if your hauling.

And on the one hand maybe this will stop afk shipping because its going to take hours to fly across space if you afk a freighter.

Graphs:
Warp Speed Times Before The Expansion
Warp Speed Times After the Expansion

How to: A PI Guide

Before we start make sure you have the necessary skills to get started with Planetary Interaction.

1. Decide on what you want to make
Before I go any further I take a look at this handy PI commodities chart. I pick a few potential items and then cross check the market in game or over at Eve Central.

2.  Plan the Production
Understand what other commodities you need to buy or build planet side and what raw resources you will need to produce the PI commodity you choose.

Map feature showing my ability to remotely scan planets from a distance.

3. Picking Planets and Scanning for Resources

• Needs to have the raw resources required for the product you want to produce.
• Close to your area of operation or your home system.
• Have a low radius. Lower radius planets use less CPU to connect structures meaning more extractors.
• Have similar planets close by in system or one jump out so all your PI operations are close for ease of up keep.

Eveeye.com has an excellent database of system's planets and there sizes(radius).

4. Scan to find a spot for your Command Center
Find and choose a good location for your command center. If your extracting more than one resource try and place your command center between the two.

5. Get your equipment planet side
Time to get into space. Get your indy hauler out and buy the specific command center for the planet you want to colonize. If you have already chosen a location on the planet all you need to do is be in system with your hauler with the command center in the cargo hold. In planet mode, place the command center on the surface and hit submit.

6. Build your factories/route your products

 
7. Start your extractors(or drop off resources for a larger operations)
I run a 3 day cycle for my specific operations and using Google Calendar to keep track of when the cycle needs to be reset. I also have google calendar send me a reminder email.

8. Once a week pick up/ship to market
I pick one day out of the week for pick up and shipping.

Don't be afraid to dump a planet if the production just isn't there. Resources can change over time or maybe your skills just weren't that great when you first scanned down the planet. Also don't be afraid to retool to a different product if its going for higher on the market. Unless you have some sort of emotional attachment to what your building its ok to build something else for more isk.

PI Investment Guides:

Basic Planetary Interaction: covers the basic skills, ships and material costs for a simple 3 planet PI production. Total Investment Cost: 5,631,000 isk.

Intermediate Planetary Interaction: a more advanced version of the basic guide, this will show you what you need to maximize your PI production. Total Investment Cost: 6,431,000 isk. 

Reaction to Odyssey 1.1 Changes

Industrial Ship Changes - They have put the fun into a 14 day old pilots hands. Given you can't fly industrials during a trial account. I was an industrial player from the get go. I would make trip after trip hauling ore this way and that for a little profit.
These new specilized bays give power to new players and utility to old ones. You now have more options and more choices. Lets take a look at these ships and what they mean for you in terms of real utility.

Miasmos - Ore, Ice and Gas bay allows younger players and miners to get ore back to market hubs or refineries easier expect a lot more ore in trade hubs.

Epithal - PI bay the ship I am looking forward to the most. If you even run a causal amount of PI without deep skills into an industrial ship you know how frustrating it can be to move commodities back and forth when your managing 5 or 10 different planets across several characters.

Kyros- Mineral Bay same as ore bay increase movement in minerals around New Eden escpessialy for younger players.

Hoarder - Ammo Bay aside from the PI bay I think this has limited uses, its one more option and we have established choice is a good thing.

Iteron, Wreathe, Badger, Sigil - Faster AU ships I do a lot of my own hauling I except these to replace my Iteron V for quick trips here and there. I just don't have that much time to fly around space. The only thing better than having more options is saving time in game and these ships are a win win.

In other areas renaming and consolidating the layout of skills is a natural simplification that of course the blog Eve Simplified loves.

Lowering the timer for jump clones - Again a great option that makes an already powerful feature in the game even more powerful. Along with the option to create even more jump clones.

A great set of new features to what might seem like a simple patch. These are all the changes that caught my eye. Check out all the changes at the Features and Ideas Discussion Thread on the forums. Patch notes can be found here.