As per your privacy policy please remove all personal details about me from your records. I am no longer comfortable with your information security following the announced RealID changes. I understand and accept that it means I will not in future be able to reactivate my old World of Warcraft account. Please also provide me with details of any third parties you may have released my personal information to.
This is a response to your statement:
If, for any reason, you are concerned about the way in which we collect your personal information, if you wish to access, amend or correct it, or if you want us to delete it from our servers, please contact Blizzard Entertainment SAS, TSA 60 001, 78143 Vélizy Villacoublay Cedex, France. You can also contact us by telephone or by e-mail at: webmaster-en@blizzard.com. Please note that the deletion of your data will lead to the termination of your account and applicable services.
http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/about/privacy.html
[Name]
Account: [Account name]
Friday, 9 July 2010
Thursday, 8 July 2010
WoW: RealID
Blizzard announced yesterday an extension of its RealID. Now instead of being able to post on the official forums as Stabs or some other game nickname you'll be required to use your RealID, as verified by the name on the account, to post there.
CM Bashiok was so confident that he gave the forums his real name, Micah Whipple. Within 5 minutes WoW fans were laughing at him for living with his Mum and ringing his house. Within a few hours it was reported the family was no longer answering their phone. Oh and to start with they got the wrong Micah Whipple who must have been rather baffled by the sudden attention from thousands of random geeks.
Arguments have since raged back and forth whether it's acceptable for Blizzard to reveal customers' names.
The main defence has been that with real names people will behave better on the forums. This is almost certainly true. It won't hurt the civility level that half the players will never post again either.
But it’s not really about the forums at all. This is part of a long term plan to monetise their player base’s privacy. Games like Farmville make most of their money through lead generation, targeted advertising that allows advertisers to identify, say, thrash metal fans then send adverts to them.
Google already does it, adverts you see on Google are influenced by your previous search behaviour. Someone who had searched a lot of Christian themes would see a different set of adverts if they typed the word “Eve” than a gamer would.
It will be a fundamental part of Blizzard’s future business model now that they’ve agreed a deal with Facebook. In addition to selling you games, collecting subs, having one-off cash items like the sparkle pony and server transfers they will now also collect money from marketing people wanting to target their players.
The current advocacy of being open about your name by Blizzard staff is corporate think. The top management are enthused about it and trying to justify it on broader grounds than “we want extra money” and so it’s become a moral issue, an anti-troll issue. It really isn’t, it’s just a cash grab.
OK, so what's the big deal if they make some money? Targeted adverts? So I see an ad for something I want instead of singles or Evony? Sounds great!
There's a few problems:
Longevity
The internet never forgets
Richard Bartle recently said:
I print off physical copies of every academic paper I read, on the grounds that the only things of any permanence on the Internet are those embarrassing private details you want to disappear forever. Things you want to keep have a habit of just vanishing.
Many many people do embarrassing or dumb things at some stage in our lives. As Richard says, if it's something you want to disappear forever it won't. As a 17 year old student you might be comfortable saying and doing things that as a 45 year old bank manager you wouldn't. But guess what? When you apply for that bank job in 28 years time the personnel officer will be watching your machinima WoW gay pride video to help her decide whether you have the gravitas and respectability to run their bank.
I actually went for an open day with London recruitment firm Badenoch and Clark a couple of weeks ago. I was told it's normal for people who are headhunted to be googled. At a professional level you are normally interviewed by a panel of people, usually a couple of people from the specific profession you're in plus a personnel manager. It's the personnel manager's job to assess how you would fit in.
And it's not only recruiters. Break up with someone and guess what, everyone may be admiring your intimate photos on facebook just like this lady.
So that's one of the key things about internet privacy. Once breached you can't change your mind. Ever. If it's bad enough - like this poor lad who needed therapy after this video was uploaded - it will never go away. He actually sued and won his case and his video is still fricking everywhere.
In Eve Online, Goons CEO Remedial stole the corp's titan fund and is believed to have e-bayed it for around $10 000. Guess what happened next:
>the other Goon directors are pretty pissed. FirstName LastName, infamous EVE goon, starts working on his revenge. Eventually he tracks Remedial to a swinger site, AdultFriendFinder, and either cons Remedial into thinking he is a woman interested in a threesome or just pulls pictures Remedial posted off the site. Either way, FNLN now had pictures of Remedial and his wife naked.
Which ends up posted fucking EVERYWHERE.
Remdick.jpg is faxed to his law office with the cryptic message "FirstName LastName always gets his."
Anyone care to lay odds that that highly embarassing jpeg file is still on hard drives (or whatever replaces them) in a hundred years time?
Accuracy
Anyone can say anything about you. Gank and corpse camp someone? Next thing you know there may be claims on your Facebook page that you roger under-age hamsters and help old ladies under the wheels of oncoming trucks. If it goes viral you will never get that completely taken down - your only recourse is to track down each site individually and ask them to take down your personal details (and they can say no). If they do say no you have the ability to take them to court - but good luck getting judgements against a million sites all over the world.
Sometimes of course it's possible to win - this businessman successfully sued an old school friend for defamation - but even after winning the lies might still be out there in google caches and mirror sites. Also the liar was pretty dumb to do it from his own PC.
Security
Given your real name and the fact that you play WoW people can start to crack your internet security. You may reveal details in your posts that help them. Now of course there are thousands of other sources of people's real names but RealId will combine the dangerous elements of identifiability with outrage. How you behave towards other players in game and on forums will sometimes provoke outrage. Pvping someone, undercutting their auctions, kicking them from your guild or raid will get people really furious. Here is a very not safe for work Youtube recording of an encounter between Eve pirates and one of their victims. Listen to this, to the real life threats, then tell me it's a good idea for players to be able to track each other down?
In addition to regular players getting cross with each other sexual predators can use the internet as a means of finding victims. From the Guardian article on Peter Chapman:
He created the fake profile on Facebook and used pictures of a boy in his late teens, the court heard.
"The photograph is not of him. It is of a bare-chested and good-looking boy who is apparently in his late teens," Reeds said. "The defendant is a somewhat plainer looking man who could pass for being rather older than his 33 years.
"The prosecution case is that the defendant used this handsome alter ego to entice 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall into meeting him. When she met him, on 25 October last year, he kidnapped, raped and murdered her."
Here's a not safe for work video of a WoW player who got rather cross with her former guildies. Think it's a good idea to let her find out where they live?
Guild management
WoW will see a substantial proportion of its players opt out of running guilds. There is some correlation between effective guild managers and people who have real life responsibility. Think those doctors, teachers and lawyers want everyone to think that sometimes they sound like this?
In a game that's short of raid leaders and officers causing half the people playing to be ineligible for those roles because they won't use Friends lists or the official forums is not helpful.
So even if you're ok with revealing your personal information you better also be willing to step up to recruit for your guild and run their raids when the guys doing it now stop doing it.
The slippery slope
I think what concerns me most is not that we will be required to use RealID to use full Friends list functionality, I can play WoW without a friends list. Not that we will be required to use RealID to use the forums, I can live without posting.
What concerns me is that there is clearly an attitude that is inspired by corporate greed that has become a moral theme. It's wrong to oppose RealId, some people say, you should be more honest. Got something to hide?
By making it a moral issue it become inevitable that this will be extended, perhaps eventually becoming impossible to play Blizzard video games without putting your details out there. And who knows, maybe other companies will follow suit.
Personally I'm quite torn. I know that I should hold to my principles and refuse to play another Blizzard game until they climb down. And I'm comfortable with refraining from buying Starcraft 2. I'm less comfortable with not buying WoW. And I very much want to buy Diablo 3, I loved the previous versions.
I suppose for me the opt-out solution is to create a new account with a false name. You don't need a credit card to buy these games, you can buy a WoW box in shops and buy game cards for cash. Diablo 3 will certainly be in the shops and probably won't even have a monthly sub.
Or you can play games with your names. For example James Hugh Callum Laurie, the actor, uses the name Hugh Laurie professionally and no one calls him a lying liar. He could certainly, if he played WoW, post as James Laurie without people realising who he was but without lying about his name. Actor Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto, known as Roger Delgado, could like most Portuguese use a number of combinations from his name quite legitimately. Married women have the option of using their maiden name or their husband's surname. Authors like George Eliot and J. K. Rowling have used gender-neutral versions of their names to get published without actually lying or implying they're female.
So we may be moving into a time when without any normal people really wanting it we lose the right to anonymity because of corporate greed. And rather than fight it it's easier to simply sacrifice one's principles and use a fake "real name".
CM Bashiok was so confident that he gave the forums his real name, Micah Whipple. Within 5 minutes WoW fans were laughing at him for living with his Mum and ringing his house. Within a few hours it was reported the family was no longer answering their phone. Oh and to start with they got the wrong Micah Whipple who must have been rather baffled by the sudden attention from thousands of random geeks.
Arguments have since raged back and forth whether it's acceptable for Blizzard to reveal customers' names.
The main defence has been that with real names people will behave better on the forums. This is almost certainly true. It won't hurt the civility level that half the players will never post again either.
But it’s not really about the forums at all. This is part of a long term plan to monetise their player base’s privacy. Games like Farmville make most of their money through lead generation, targeted advertising that allows advertisers to identify, say, thrash metal fans then send adverts to them.
Google already does it, adverts you see on Google are influenced by your previous search behaviour. Someone who had searched a lot of Christian themes would see a different set of adverts if they typed the word “Eve” than a gamer would.
It will be a fundamental part of Blizzard’s future business model now that they’ve agreed a deal with Facebook. In addition to selling you games, collecting subs, having one-off cash items like the sparkle pony and server transfers they will now also collect money from marketing people wanting to target their players.
The current advocacy of being open about your name by Blizzard staff is corporate think. The top management are enthused about it and trying to justify it on broader grounds than “we want extra money” and so it’s become a moral issue, an anti-troll issue. It really isn’t, it’s just a cash grab.
OK, so what's the big deal if they make some money? Targeted adverts? So I see an ad for something I want instead of singles or Evony? Sounds great!
There's a few problems:
Longevity
The internet never forgets
Richard Bartle recently said:
I print off physical copies of every academic paper I read, on the grounds that the only things of any permanence on the Internet are those embarrassing private details you want to disappear forever. Things you want to keep have a habit of just vanishing.
Many many people do embarrassing or dumb things at some stage in our lives. As Richard says, if it's something you want to disappear forever it won't. As a 17 year old student you might be comfortable saying and doing things that as a 45 year old bank manager you wouldn't. But guess what? When you apply for that bank job in 28 years time the personnel officer will be watching your machinima WoW gay pride video to help her decide whether you have the gravitas and respectability to run their bank.
I actually went for an open day with London recruitment firm Badenoch and Clark a couple of weeks ago. I was told it's normal for people who are headhunted to be googled. At a professional level you are normally interviewed by a panel of people, usually a couple of people from the specific profession you're in plus a personnel manager. It's the personnel manager's job to assess how you would fit in.
And it's not only recruiters. Break up with someone and guess what, everyone may be admiring your intimate photos on facebook just like this lady.
So that's one of the key things about internet privacy. Once breached you can't change your mind. Ever. If it's bad enough - like this poor lad who needed therapy after this video was uploaded - it will never go away. He actually sued and won his case and his video is still fricking everywhere.
In Eve Online, Goons CEO Remedial stole the corp's titan fund and is believed to have e-bayed it for around $10 000. Guess what happened next:
Which ends up posted fucking EVERYWHERE.
Remdick.jpg is faxed to his law office with the cryptic message "FirstName LastName always gets his."
Anyone care to lay odds that that highly embarassing jpeg file is still on hard drives (or whatever replaces them) in a hundred years time?
Accuracy
Anyone can say anything about you. Gank and corpse camp someone? Next thing you know there may be claims on your Facebook page that you roger under-age hamsters and help old ladies under the wheels of oncoming trucks. If it goes viral you will never get that completely taken down - your only recourse is to track down each site individually and ask them to take down your personal details (and they can say no). If they do say no you have the ability to take them to court - but good luck getting judgements against a million sites all over the world.
Sometimes of course it's possible to win - this businessman successfully sued an old school friend for defamation - but even after winning the lies might still be out there in google caches and mirror sites. Also the liar was pretty dumb to do it from his own PC.
Security
Given your real name and the fact that you play WoW people can start to crack your internet security. You may reveal details in your posts that help them. Now of course there are thousands of other sources of people's real names but RealId will combine the dangerous elements of identifiability with outrage. How you behave towards other players in game and on forums will sometimes provoke outrage. Pvping someone, undercutting their auctions, kicking them from your guild or raid will get people really furious. Here is a very not safe for work Youtube recording of an encounter between Eve pirates and one of their victims. Listen to this, to the real life threats, then tell me it's a good idea for players to be able to track each other down?
In addition to regular players getting cross with each other sexual predators can use the internet as a means of finding victims. From the Guardian article on Peter Chapman:
He created the fake profile on Facebook and used pictures of a boy in his late teens, the court heard.
"The photograph is not of him. It is of a bare-chested and good-looking boy who is apparently in his late teens," Reeds said. "The defendant is a somewhat plainer looking man who could pass for being rather older than his 33 years.
"The prosecution case is that the defendant used this handsome alter ego to entice 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall into meeting him. When she met him, on 25 October last year, he kidnapped, raped and murdered her."
Here's a not safe for work video of a WoW player who got rather cross with her former guildies. Think it's a good idea to let her find out where they live?
Guild management
WoW will see a substantial proportion of its players opt out of running guilds. There is some correlation between effective guild managers and people who have real life responsibility. Think those doctors, teachers and lawyers want everyone to think that sometimes they sound like this?
In a game that's short of raid leaders and officers causing half the people playing to be ineligible for those roles because they won't use Friends lists or the official forums is not helpful.
So even if you're ok with revealing your personal information you better also be willing to step up to recruit for your guild and run their raids when the guys doing it now stop doing it.
The slippery slope
I think what concerns me most is not that we will be required to use RealID to use full Friends list functionality, I can play WoW without a friends list. Not that we will be required to use RealID to use the forums, I can live without posting.
What concerns me is that there is clearly an attitude that is inspired by corporate greed that has become a moral theme. It's wrong to oppose RealId, some people say, you should be more honest. Got something to hide?
By making it a moral issue it become inevitable that this will be extended, perhaps eventually becoming impossible to play Blizzard video games without putting your details out there. And who knows, maybe other companies will follow suit.
Personally I'm quite torn. I know that I should hold to my principles and refuse to play another Blizzard game until they climb down. And I'm comfortable with refraining from buying Starcraft 2. I'm less comfortable with not buying WoW. And I very much want to buy Diablo 3, I loved the previous versions.
I suppose for me the opt-out solution is to create a new account with a false name. You don't need a credit card to buy these games, you can buy a WoW box in shops and buy game cards for cash. Diablo 3 will certainly be in the shops and probably won't even have a monthly sub.
Or you can play games with your names. For example James Hugh Callum Laurie, the actor, uses the name Hugh Laurie professionally and no one calls him a lying liar. He could certainly, if he played WoW, post as James Laurie without people realising who he was but without lying about his name. Actor Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto, known as Roger Delgado, could like most Portuguese use a number of combinations from his name quite legitimately. Married women have the option of using their maiden name or their husband's surname. Authors like George Eliot and J. K. Rowling have used gender-neutral versions of their names to get published without actually lying or implying they're female.
So we may be moving into a time when without any normal people really wanting it we lose the right to anonymity because of corporate greed. And rather than fight it it's easier to simply sacrifice one's principles and use a fake "real name".
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Eve: PI Economics, part 3 Stockpiles
The PI market is hugely skewed because of stockpiles of planetary products that players were able to buy cheaply before the Tyrannis patch.
To understand the scope of this we need to look at the history of these commodities in Eve.
Eve was derived from old single player games like Elite. It inherited a trading system where you could buy, say, 1000 units of antibiotics in one system for 200 isk each then fly them to a system 10 jumps away where the game would buy them for 250 isk each. The basic purpose of this system was to provide a way for players to make easy isk although it was quite time-consuming and profit was low.
By the time I started playing in June 2009 this system had almost entirely fallen into disuse. This is because most of the game had been affected by inflation but this system was more or less untouched since the game's earliest days. So as time had passed these trips had become not worth making. 10 jumps for 50 000 isk profit simply wasn't worth doing - courier missions were almost the same but paid more.
Now the game had been constructed to occasionally reward players with these NPC goods as loot. They drop during missions and also were handed to players for courier missions which were not always completed allowing the goods to remain in the system. So for a few years these goods were supplied to players without it really be worth anyone's while to cart them off to a NPC trader to turn back into isk. Some would have been sold back of course but for most players we all had a small amount of this somewhere around in an item hangar or two that we never bothered to do anything with.
When Planetary Interaction was announced most people weren't very sure what it would involve but there was speculation that these NPC goods would be used. This meant that the handful of traders still hauling them to NPC vendors dried up almost completely because there was a chance that this very low value material might one day be worth something.
When PI was launched on Sisi people realised that this stuff was pure gold. They could buy a NPC's stock of Robotics and be guaranteed that it would later be worth more than the NPC sell price of 7000 isk.
So several months leading up to Tyrannis all NPC goods vendors sold out every day, mission loot planetary products were bought and stockpiled. In May for instance over a million units of Robotics was traded on nearly every day with a high of 3.2 million trades on 13th May. All of that headed for stockpiles.
When Tyrannis launched PI wasn't in yet but the goods made by PI could be reprocessed. As Letrange explained, this meant people could buy a structure, reprocess it to get p4 products. The p4s could be made into more expensive structures and sold back to the NPCs. CCP quickly removed the buy orders but not the sell orders and people frantically converted the p4s into structures anticipating CCP deliberately breaking them. This they did, those p4s generated by that loophole now only convert into Tritanium but not before yet another stockpile of structures was quickly and easily built up.
So let's conclude. We have years worth of NPC goods found as mission loot and purchased in the feeding frenzy just before Tyrannis. We have a spike in structure supply caused by the clumsy implementation of Tyrannis. We have an ongoing trickle of planetary products from missions: things like Robotics, Coolant etc all still occasionally drop when you blow up structures in missions. And we have a PI system which as yet doesn't really consume a vast amount of resources.
All this means that certain PI materials are oversupplied and will be oversupplied for some time.
To get a picture of the ratio of oversupply to consumption here's a very rough example. SBUs use 560 Construction Blocks each. In The Forge (approximately 60% of the Eve market) about 2 per day are traded. We can assume that most of the SBUs traded are consumed rather than re-traded (flipped, etc). Let's assume too that SBUs consume about 20% of planetary products used. So about 5600 Contruction Blocks per day will be consumed by the market.
Well over a million Construction Blocks have been traded most days going back a year. On 4th of July there were 2 095 311 Construction Blocks traded. Those trades were speculators selling to each other and new PI players testing the market as well as mission runners converting loot to isk. But those 2 million blocks is enough to keep the market supplied for over a year if my estimate of 5600 consumed per day is right. Even with no one making them for profit the supply of Construction Blocks from stockpile liquidation, noobs trying out PI and mission runners selling loot is likely to fully supply the market for years.
This means that it is unlikely that Construction Blocks will reach anything close to the natural level for a P2 item as determined by production costs. Anyone producing them using PI will be undercut by the many other sources of supply.
This will apply to every planetary product that existed in Eve as a NPC good before PI. Here's the list:
P0 - all new
P1 - Oxygen, Silicon, Water
P2 - Construction Blocks, Consumer Electronics, Coolant, Enriched Uranium, Fertiliser, Genetically Enhanced Livestock, Livestock, Mechanical Parts, Miniature Electronics, Polytextiles, Rocket Fuel, Silicate Glass, Superconductors, Synthetic Oil, Transmitter, Viral Agent,
(ie all except Biofuels, Microfibre Shielding, Nanites, Oxides, Polyramids, Supertensile Plastics, Test Cultures, Water-cooled CPU)
P3 - Guidance systems, High-Tech Transmitters, Planetary Vehicles, Robotics, Transcranial Microcontrollers, Ukomi Super Conductors
P4 - none
So all those P2 and P3 listed are things which should be cheap, will be kept cheap by over-supply, and are not worth producing when you can buy them cheaply instead.
To understand the scope of this we need to look at the history of these commodities in Eve.
Eve was derived from old single player games like Elite. It inherited a trading system where you could buy, say, 1000 units of antibiotics in one system for 200 isk each then fly them to a system 10 jumps away where the game would buy them for 250 isk each. The basic purpose of this system was to provide a way for players to make easy isk although it was quite time-consuming and profit was low.
By the time I started playing in June 2009 this system had almost entirely fallen into disuse. This is because most of the game had been affected by inflation but this system was more or less untouched since the game's earliest days. So as time had passed these trips had become not worth making. 10 jumps for 50 000 isk profit simply wasn't worth doing - courier missions were almost the same but paid more.
Now the game had been constructed to occasionally reward players with these NPC goods as loot. They drop during missions and also were handed to players for courier missions which were not always completed allowing the goods to remain in the system. So for a few years these goods were supplied to players without it really be worth anyone's while to cart them off to a NPC trader to turn back into isk. Some would have been sold back of course but for most players we all had a small amount of this somewhere around in an item hangar or two that we never bothered to do anything with.
When Planetary Interaction was announced most people weren't very sure what it would involve but there was speculation that these NPC goods would be used. This meant that the handful of traders still hauling them to NPC vendors dried up almost completely because there was a chance that this very low value material might one day be worth something.
When PI was launched on Sisi people realised that this stuff was pure gold. They could buy a NPC's stock of Robotics and be guaranteed that it would later be worth more than the NPC sell price of 7000 isk.
So several months leading up to Tyrannis all NPC goods vendors sold out every day, mission loot planetary products were bought and stockpiled. In May for instance over a million units of Robotics was traded on nearly every day with a high of 3.2 million trades on 13th May. All of that headed for stockpiles.
When Tyrannis launched PI wasn't in yet but the goods made by PI could be reprocessed. As Letrange explained, this meant people could buy a structure, reprocess it to get p4 products. The p4s could be made into more expensive structures and sold back to the NPCs. CCP quickly removed the buy orders but not the sell orders and people frantically converted the p4s into structures anticipating CCP deliberately breaking them. This they did, those p4s generated by that loophole now only convert into Tritanium but not before yet another stockpile of structures was quickly and easily built up.
So let's conclude. We have years worth of NPC goods found as mission loot and purchased in the feeding frenzy just before Tyrannis. We have a spike in structure supply caused by the clumsy implementation of Tyrannis. We have an ongoing trickle of planetary products from missions: things like Robotics, Coolant etc all still occasionally drop when you blow up structures in missions. And we have a PI system which as yet doesn't really consume a vast amount of resources.
All this means that certain PI materials are oversupplied and will be oversupplied for some time.
To get a picture of the ratio of oversupply to consumption here's a very rough example. SBUs use 560 Construction Blocks each. In The Forge (approximately 60% of the Eve market) about 2 per day are traded. We can assume that most of the SBUs traded are consumed rather than re-traded (flipped, etc). Let's assume too that SBUs consume about 20% of planetary products used. So about 5600 Contruction Blocks per day will be consumed by the market.
Well over a million Construction Blocks have been traded most days going back a year. On 4th of July there were 2 095 311 Construction Blocks traded. Those trades were speculators selling to each other and new PI players testing the market as well as mission runners converting loot to isk. But those 2 million blocks is enough to keep the market supplied for over a year if my estimate of 5600 consumed per day is right. Even with no one making them for profit the supply of Construction Blocks from stockpile liquidation, noobs trying out PI and mission runners selling loot is likely to fully supply the market for years.
This means that it is unlikely that Construction Blocks will reach anything close to the natural level for a P2 item as determined by production costs. Anyone producing them using PI will be undercut by the many other sources of supply.
This will apply to every planetary product that existed in Eve as a NPC good before PI. Here's the list:
P0 - all new
P1 - Oxygen, Silicon, Water
P2 - Construction Blocks, Consumer Electronics, Coolant, Enriched Uranium, Fertiliser, Genetically Enhanced Livestock, Livestock, Mechanical Parts, Miniature Electronics, Polytextiles, Rocket Fuel, Silicate Glass, Superconductors, Synthetic Oil, Transmitter, Viral Agent,
(ie all except Biofuels, Microfibre Shielding, Nanites, Oxides, Polyramids, Supertensile Plastics, Test Cultures, Water-cooled CPU)
P3 - Guidance systems, High-Tech Transmitters, Planetary Vehicles, Robotics, Transcranial Microcontrollers, Ukomi Super Conductors
P4 - none
So all those P2 and P3 listed are things which should be cheap, will be kept cheap by over-supply, and are not worth producing when you can buy them cheaply instead.
Eve: PI Economics, part 2 SBUs
Build cost of a SBU based on current Jita prices:
Capital Construction Parts: 5 * 7 000 000 = 35 000 000
Broadcast Node: 13 * 1 600 000 = 20 800 000
Integrity Response Drones: 9 * 1 670 000 = 15 030 000
Nano-Factory: 19 * 340 000 = 6 460 000
Organic Mortar Applicators: 19 * 957 000 = 18 183 000
Recursive Computing Module: 13 * 939 000 = 12 207 000
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 13 * 1 895 000 = 24 635 000
Sterile Conduits: 19 * 695 000 = 13 205 000
Wetware Mainframe: 9 * 1 200 000 = 10 800 000
Total = 156 320 000
The actual price of the cheapest SBU sell order is: 191 000 000
SBUs were introduced with the Dominion patch in November 2009. They have been available in unlimited supply on NPC vendors until June 2010. Many players will have planned future use and stockpiled wisely. Those are not the players we're trying to sell to.
The people buying SBUs from the market are nullsec admirals who didn't plan ahead plus speculators. Both are likely to be willing to pay more over the next 6 months because the supply from PI and from speculators cashing in should be considerably below the demand created by sov war and speculators accumulating. Many of the expert Eve players who will have seen this coming will not be inclined to cash in as they may be involved in sov war themselves.
We don't yet know how effective PI will be in supporting the SBU market. However because it's not a massive profit (191 million sell price for a manufacture based on 156 million's worth of materials) there won't be a gold rush at this time.
I would conjecture that PI will be a long time sorting itself out into a viable supplier of SBUs. It's like one of those dinosaurs which, if bitten on the tail, jumped a week later because the nervous system took so long to send the message to the brain.
What will happen to start with is PI will be producer-oriented. PI producers will tend to make what is convenient for them, so for example p3s which can be entirely manufactured on a single planet. Most people (me included) have gone for the comparatively inefficient method of producing from start to finish rather than, say, filling a planet with Higher Processors and importing P3. The market will correct errors in supply over time by making oversupplied materials cheap and undersupplied materials expensive. However if there's a big war, then a spike in SBU prices it takes a long time for the change in market prices to cause people to entirely uproot their carefully planned out PI networks and replace them.
There are a number of factors that give inertia to PI networks. It is an investment of a lot of time and isk to destroy all your PI networks and replace them. People are often proud of their networks and feel that they have cleverly worked something advantageous out like a spot with very high base extraction or whatever. And the market distortions will cause some producers to get burned out because they planted the wrong crop.
And even if people uproot and find new planets with the correct resources it will take time for those resources to be processed all the way up into SBUs. This means even if SBUs spike to 10 million people won't necessarily switch production because it's a spike and they won't be quick enough to catch that spike.
A number of other factors constrain the SBU market. High sec carebears lack awareness of the 0,0 sov system and nullsec industrialists might feel uncomfortable placing SBUs on the market that might be used to conquer their space.
So here's a detailed breakdown of SBU production:
Asteroid minerals:
Isogen 250 265
Megacyte 525
Mexallon 343 080
Nocxium 7 575
Pyerite 464 195
Tritanium 384 326
Zydrine 1330
P4 products
Broadcast Node: 13
Integrity Response Drones: 9
Nano-Factory: 19
Organic Mortar Applicators: 19
Recursive Computing Module: 13
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 13
Sterile Conduits: 19
Wetware Mainframe: 9
P3 products
Biotech Research Reports 54
Camera Drones 78
Condensates 114
Cryoprotectant Solution 54
Data Chips 78
Gel-Matrix Biopaste 54
Guidance systems 78
Hazmat Detection Systems 54
Hermetic Membranes 78
High-Tech Transmitters 78
Industrial Explosives 114
Neocoms 78
Nuclear Reactors 78
Planetary Vehicles 54
Robotics 114
Smartfab Units 114
Supercomputers 54
Synthetic Synapses 78
Transcranial Microcontrollers 78
Ukomi Super Conductors 114
Vaccines 114
P2 Products
Biocells 700
Construction Blocks 560
Consumer Electronics 560
Coolant 560
Enriched Uranium 560
Fertilizer 560
Genetically Enhanced Livestock 260
Livestock 560
Mechanical Parts 560
Microfibre Shielding 520
Minature Electronics 560
Nanites 440
Oxides 560
Polyramids 520
Polytextiles 560
Rocket Fuel 260
Silicate Glass 520
Superconductors 560
Supertensile Plastics 700
Synthetic Oil 560
Test Cultures 440
Transmitter 700
Viral Agent 560
Water-cooled CPU 440
P1 products
Bacteria 16760
Biofuels 14560
Biomass 12160
Chiral structures 18040
Electrolytes 11040
Industrial Fibres 12800
Oxidising Compound 12800
Oxygen 14560
Plasmoids 21120
Precious metals 14560
Proteins 11040
Reactive metals 16760
Silicon 12800
Toxic metals 13440
Water 16760
There is also a very interesting point of game design. Three p4s are easier to make than the others, requiring 2 P3s + a P1 instead of the 3 P3s the others need. Those three "easy" P4s are the ones that SBUs use most heavily (19 each). So CCP seem to have anticipated that there will be an issue of supply here and designed to mitigate it.
Capital Construction Parts: 5 * 7 000 000 = 35 000 000
Broadcast Node: 13 * 1 600 000 = 20 800 000
Integrity Response Drones: 9 * 1 670 000 = 15 030 000
Nano-Factory: 19 * 340 000 = 6 460 000
Organic Mortar Applicators: 19 * 957 000 = 18 183 000
Recursive Computing Module: 13 * 939 000 = 12 207 000
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 13 * 1 895 000 = 24 635 000
Sterile Conduits: 19 * 695 000 = 13 205 000
Wetware Mainframe: 9 * 1 200 000 = 10 800 000
Total = 156 320 000
The actual price of the cheapest SBU sell order is: 191 000 000
SBUs were introduced with the Dominion patch in November 2009. They have been available in unlimited supply on NPC vendors until June 2010. Many players will have planned future use and stockpiled wisely. Those are not the players we're trying to sell to.
The people buying SBUs from the market are nullsec admirals who didn't plan ahead plus speculators. Both are likely to be willing to pay more over the next 6 months because the supply from PI and from speculators cashing in should be considerably below the demand created by sov war and speculators accumulating. Many of the expert Eve players who will have seen this coming will not be inclined to cash in as they may be involved in sov war themselves.
We don't yet know how effective PI will be in supporting the SBU market. However because it's not a massive profit (191 million sell price for a manufacture based on 156 million's worth of materials) there won't be a gold rush at this time.
I would conjecture that PI will be a long time sorting itself out into a viable supplier of SBUs. It's like one of those dinosaurs which, if bitten on the tail, jumped a week later because the nervous system took so long to send the message to the brain.
What will happen to start with is PI will be producer-oriented. PI producers will tend to make what is convenient for them, so for example p3s which can be entirely manufactured on a single planet. Most people (me included) have gone for the comparatively inefficient method of producing from start to finish rather than, say, filling a planet with Higher Processors and importing P3. The market will correct errors in supply over time by making oversupplied materials cheap and undersupplied materials expensive. However if there's a big war, then a spike in SBU prices it takes a long time for the change in market prices to cause people to entirely uproot their carefully planned out PI networks and replace them.
There are a number of factors that give inertia to PI networks. It is an investment of a lot of time and isk to destroy all your PI networks and replace them. People are often proud of their networks and feel that they have cleverly worked something advantageous out like a spot with very high base extraction or whatever. And the market distortions will cause some producers to get burned out because they planted the wrong crop.
And even if people uproot and find new planets with the correct resources it will take time for those resources to be processed all the way up into SBUs. This means even if SBUs spike to 10 million people won't necessarily switch production because it's a spike and they won't be quick enough to catch that spike.
A number of other factors constrain the SBU market. High sec carebears lack awareness of the 0,0 sov system and nullsec industrialists might feel uncomfortable placing SBUs on the market that might be used to conquer their space.
So here's a detailed breakdown of SBU production:
Asteroid minerals:
Isogen 250 265
Megacyte 525
Mexallon 343 080
Nocxium 7 575
Pyerite 464 195
Tritanium 384 326
Zydrine 1330
P4 products
Broadcast Node: 13
Integrity Response Drones: 9
Nano-Factory: 19
Organic Mortar Applicators: 19
Recursive Computing Module: 13
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 13
Sterile Conduits: 19
Wetware Mainframe: 9
P3 products
Biotech Research Reports 54
Camera Drones 78
Condensates 114
Cryoprotectant Solution 54
Data Chips 78
Gel-Matrix Biopaste 54
Guidance systems 78
Hazmat Detection Systems 54
Hermetic Membranes 78
High-Tech Transmitters 78
Industrial Explosives 114
Neocoms 78
Nuclear Reactors 78
Planetary Vehicles 54
Robotics 114
Smartfab Units 114
Supercomputers 54
Synthetic Synapses 78
Transcranial Microcontrollers 78
Ukomi Super Conductors 114
Vaccines 114
P2 Products
Biocells 700
Construction Blocks 560
Consumer Electronics 560
Coolant 560
Enriched Uranium 560
Fertilizer 560
Genetically Enhanced Livestock 260
Livestock 560
Mechanical Parts 560
Microfibre Shielding 520
Minature Electronics 560
Nanites 440
Oxides 560
Polyramids 520
Polytextiles 560
Rocket Fuel 260
Silicate Glass 520
Superconductors 560
Supertensile Plastics 700
Synthetic Oil 560
Test Cultures 440
Transmitter 700
Viral Agent 560
Water-cooled CPU 440
P1 products
Bacteria 16760
Biofuels 14560
Biomass 12160
Chiral structures 18040
Electrolytes 11040
Industrial Fibres 12800
Oxidising Compound 12800
Oxygen 14560
Plasmoids 21120
Precious metals 14560
Proteins 11040
Reactive metals 16760
Silicon 12800
Toxic metals 13440
Water 16760
There is also a very interesting point of game design. Three p4s are easier to make than the others, requiring 2 P3s + a P1 instead of the 3 P3s the others need. Those three "easy" P4s are the ones that SBUs use most heavily (19 each). So CCP seem to have anticipated that there will be an issue of supply here and designed to mitigate it.
Monday, 5 July 2010
EVE: PI Economics Overview, part 1 Demand
I'm splitting my review of PI economics into parts. Today I'll look at how the nature of what PI materials are used for will shape the PI economy. To understand the future price trends of the market we need to first look at where these materials are used.
POS Fuels
Not actually manufactured, but an intermediate planetary product. Usable immediately as POS fuel
* Coolant
* Enriched Uranium
* Mechanical Parts
* Oxygen
* Robotics
T2 parts
Most T2 manufacturing uses a PI good. Mainly P2 and P3.
* Construction Blocks
* Consumer Electronics
* Transmitter
* Guidance Systems
* Robotics
* Miniature Electronics
* Super Conductor
Miscellaneous
Created with Blueprint and PI products
* Nanite Repair Paste
Sovereignty Structures
Created with Blueprints and P4 products.
* Infrastructure Hub
* Sovereignty Blockade Unit
* Territorial Claim Unit
Starbase Structures
Created with Blueprints and P4 products.
* Assembly Array
* Control Towers
* Corporate Hangar Array
* Cynosural Generator Array
* Cynosural System Jammer
* Electronic Warfare Batteries
* Energy Neutralizing Array
* Hybrid Turret Batteries
* Jump Bridges
* Laser Turret Batteries
* Missile Batteries
* Mobile Laboratory
* Moon Harvesting Array
* Projectile Turret Batteries
* Reactors
* Refining Arrays
* Shield Hardening Arrays
* Ship Maintenance Arrays
* Silos
* System Scanning Arrays
(credit to Eve University)
POS fuel is likely to be supplied by the owner of the POS or a member of his corp. This is simply because POSes are a more advanced stage of the industrial game and PI is easily accessible. Most POS owners will not want to rely on the market for their fuel.
Nanite Repair Paste is a marginal item. It is used by pvpers to repair overheated modules when it's not safe to dock. Docking is cheaper and more convenient. That's a fairly limited demand and there are large pre-existing stockpiles.
T2 manufacture mainly uses P2s that drop as loot in missions. This means that supplying the market for these goods is subject to competition from mission runners who will cheerfully sell cheap to get whatever they can for this incidental loot. There are large pre-existing stockpiles of mission loot. Also, as with POS fuel, T2 manufacture is done by advanced industrialist players most of whom will do PI for themselves.
Therefore structures are where most of the money will be spent buying PI goods. There may be a particular crunch on Sovereignty Structures as they are used by people who don't make them. Stockpiling SBUs and then timing your supply of them to markets that support nullsec players who become involved in major wars should be a very viable tactic. For instance next time the Northern Coalition gets invaded you should be able to sell a lot of SBUs in Vuorassi since that is the closest high sec system to the NC staging post at H-W.
SBUs are used both offensively and defensively and are consumed by use. Many more of this structure will be used than of the other two sov structures. This is the materials list for a SBU:
Capital Construction Parts: 5
Broadcast Node: 13
Integrity Response Drones: 9
Nano-Factory: 19
Organic Mortar Applicators: 19
Recursive Computing Module: 13
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 13
Sterile Conduits: 19
Wetware Mainframe: 9
Note that the quantities are quite uneven. The P4s where 19 are needed per SBU are likely to spike in price during times of major nullsec war.
POSes are very widely used and have a similarly uneven pattern of P4 use. Large control towers use:
Capital Construction Parts: 8
Broadcast Node: 18
Integrity Response Drones: 32
Nano-Factory: 26
Organic Mortar Applicators: 28
Recursive Computing Module: 18
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 18
Sterile Conduits: 28
Wetware Mainframe: 12
All races uses the same materials; medium towers use half as much and small towers approximately one third as much.
So we can project the market's demand for PI materials as being quite skewed. Nano-Factory, Organic Mortar Applicators and Sterile Conduits will see more heavy demand than other p4s, especially in time of heavy nullsec fighting.
In my next post I'll be looking at the supply to the market which will also be skewed.
POS Fuels
Not actually manufactured, but an intermediate planetary product. Usable immediately as POS fuel
* Coolant
* Enriched Uranium
* Mechanical Parts
* Oxygen
* Robotics
T2 parts
Most T2 manufacturing uses a PI good. Mainly P2 and P3.
* Construction Blocks
* Consumer Electronics
* Transmitter
* Guidance Systems
* Robotics
* Miniature Electronics
* Super Conductor
Miscellaneous
Created with Blueprint and PI products
* Nanite Repair Paste
Sovereignty Structures
Created with Blueprints and P4 products.
* Infrastructure Hub
* Sovereignty Blockade Unit
* Territorial Claim Unit
Starbase Structures
Created with Blueprints and P4 products.
* Assembly Array
* Control Towers
* Corporate Hangar Array
* Cynosural Generator Array
* Cynosural System Jammer
* Electronic Warfare Batteries
* Energy Neutralizing Array
* Hybrid Turret Batteries
* Jump Bridges
* Laser Turret Batteries
* Missile Batteries
* Mobile Laboratory
* Moon Harvesting Array
* Projectile Turret Batteries
* Reactors
* Refining Arrays
* Shield Hardening Arrays
* Ship Maintenance Arrays
* Silos
* System Scanning Arrays
(credit to Eve University)
POS fuel is likely to be supplied by the owner of the POS or a member of his corp. This is simply because POSes are a more advanced stage of the industrial game and PI is easily accessible. Most POS owners will not want to rely on the market for their fuel.
Nanite Repair Paste is a marginal item. It is used by pvpers to repair overheated modules when it's not safe to dock. Docking is cheaper and more convenient. That's a fairly limited demand and there are large pre-existing stockpiles.
T2 manufacture mainly uses P2s that drop as loot in missions. This means that supplying the market for these goods is subject to competition from mission runners who will cheerfully sell cheap to get whatever they can for this incidental loot. There are large pre-existing stockpiles of mission loot. Also, as with POS fuel, T2 manufacture is done by advanced industrialist players most of whom will do PI for themselves.
Therefore structures are where most of the money will be spent buying PI goods. There may be a particular crunch on Sovereignty Structures as they are used by people who don't make them. Stockpiling SBUs and then timing your supply of them to markets that support nullsec players who become involved in major wars should be a very viable tactic. For instance next time the Northern Coalition gets invaded you should be able to sell a lot of SBUs in Vuorassi since that is the closest high sec system to the NC staging post at H-W.
SBUs are used both offensively and defensively and are consumed by use. Many more of this structure will be used than of the other two sov structures. This is the materials list for a SBU:
Capital Construction Parts: 5
Broadcast Node: 13
Integrity Response Drones: 9
Nano-Factory: 19
Organic Mortar Applicators: 19
Recursive Computing Module: 13
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 13
Sterile Conduits: 19
Wetware Mainframe: 9
Note that the quantities are quite uneven. The P4s where 19 are needed per SBU are likely to spike in price during times of major nullsec war.
POSes are very widely used and have a similarly uneven pattern of P4 use. Large control towers use:
Capital Construction Parts: 8
Broadcast Node: 18
Integrity Response Drones: 32
Nano-Factory: 26
Organic Mortar Applicators: 28
Recursive Computing Module: 18
Self-Harmonizing Power Core: 18
Sterile Conduits: 28
Wetware Mainframe: 12
All races uses the same materials; medium towers use half as much and small towers approximately one third as much.
So we can project the market's demand for PI materials as being quite skewed. Nano-Factory, Organic Mortar Applicators and Sterile Conduits will see more heavy demand than other p4s, especially in time of heavy nullsec fighting.
In my next post I'll be looking at the supply to the market which will also be skewed.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Games as art: economic implications
People have been talking rather a lot recently about whether video games are art. Roger Ebert, a film critic with very little knowledge of games, told everyone that they weren't. People got rather cross with him. Gabe at Penny Arcade pulled rank. And now Ebert's revisited the issue saying they're still not art but he wishes he'd never told anyone.Which Lum found funny.
In all the excitement one aspect that everyone seems to be missing is that there's a lot of money to be made in being considered art.
In the UK films get money because they are "art". They get tax breaks:
# For films with a total core expenditure of £20 million or less, the film production company can claim payable cash rebate of up to 25% of UK qualifying film production expenditure;
# For films with a core expenditure of more than £20 million, the film production company can claim a payable cash rebate of up to 20% of UK qualifying film production expenditure;
They are eligible for grants: from the Film Council alone there's a film making fund, a printing and advertising fund, a training fund, regional film funds and like any business they may be eligible for other grants like the European Regional Development Fund. They may also be eligible for National Lottery money some of which supports sport and the arts.
Games development companies on the other hand are considered businesses of no intrinsic cultural value. An attempt to stimulate the industry here was promoted mainly on economic grounds rather than cultural grounds.
Our research shows that Games Tax Relief over a five year period should create or protect 3,550 graduate level jobs, increase or safeguard £457 million in development expenditure and encourage developers to adopt new business models and create new Intellectual Property.
Recently the Con-Lib government decided not to go ahead with their predecessor's plans in this area to the dismay of the industry.
Ebert is wrong, games are art and their creation is of great cultural value to the nation. The best way forward for the British industry is to keep this issue burning and address the entertainment divide where the entertainment that some people enjoy is subsidised but the entertainment other people enjoy is not. Oxford Economics estimates that film tax relief generates £13 GDP for every £1 invested. Is it not time we pressed again the issue of game tax relief? Not only because games celebrate and explore our culture. But because as a country WE NEED THE MONEY!
In all the excitement one aspect that everyone seems to be missing is that there's a lot of money to be made in being considered art.
In the UK films get money because they are "art". They get tax breaks:
# For films with a total core expenditure of £20 million or less, the film production company can claim payable cash rebate of up to 25% of UK qualifying film production expenditure;
# For films with a core expenditure of more than £20 million, the film production company can claim a payable cash rebate of up to 20% of UK qualifying film production expenditure;
They are eligible for grants: from the Film Council alone there's a film making fund, a printing and advertising fund, a training fund, regional film funds and like any business they may be eligible for other grants like the European Regional Development Fund. They may also be eligible for National Lottery money some of which supports sport and the arts.
Games development companies on the other hand are considered businesses of no intrinsic cultural value. An attempt to stimulate the industry here was promoted mainly on economic grounds rather than cultural grounds.
Our research shows that Games Tax Relief over a five year period should create or protect 3,550 graduate level jobs, increase or safeguard £457 million in development expenditure and encourage developers to adopt new business models and create new Intellectual Property.
Recently the Con-Lib government decided not to go ahead with their predecessor's plans in this area to the dismay of the industry.
Ebert is wrong, games are art and their creation is of great cultural value to the nation. The best way forward for the British industry is to keep this issue burning and address the entertainment divide where the entertainment that some people enjoy is subsidised but the entertainment other people enjoy is not. Oxford Economics estimates that film tax relief generates £13 GDP for every £1 invested. Is it not time we pressed again the issue of game tax relief? Not only because games celebrate and explore our culture. But because as a country WE NEED THE MONEY!
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Eve: PI in practice
Having worked out my strategy I've spent a week implementing it and rather enjoyed it.
It's not for everyone. It's complicated for the sake of being complicated, fiddly and rather time consuming to start with. I'm sure it's not made me anything like as much as the same time spent running level 4 missions would have.
You need to start off by working out roughly what your structure will look like. I went with the layout used in this Eve Uni video: a launchpad with a ring of processors around it near my extractors. They call it a single hub star network.
As explained in the video you need to position yourself near where your resources spawn. So the first thing you need to do is work out, based on your production aims, how much of each resource you will need.
On my Ocean planet I want to produce Test cultures, Fertiliser and Livestock. This will require the following P0 inputs:
Carbon compounds
Complex organisms (twice)
Micro organisms (twice)
Aqueous liquids
These P0s, when processed, make the P1s that go into the P2s I am trying to make.
I start my scanning by looking for a spot where a good complex organisms spot is near a good micro organisms spot. There are a couple of possibilities so I check the other resources and eventually find a spot where all 4 resources are nearby.
I had an interface issue at this stage. I found it very hard to get the slider in the Scan view to move. It is quite fiddly, just make sure you have your mouse pointer in the rainbow coloured section and you should be able to slide it from left to right. Eventually I worked it out and was able to adjust my scans so that they showed small white peaks for high resource concentrations. You sometimes need to adjust it as you move from one resource to another - if you see a huge swathe of white move the slider to the right to get smaller peaks.
I began my harvesting by putting down 6 extractors: one carbon compounds, two complex organisms, two micro organisms, one aqueous liquids. I didn't worry too much about the varying output - all my extractors are on white peaks so they all produce reasonably well. My best is 1526 and my worst is 1373 which is close enough. If I had had a terribly low spot I might have had to double up one of the weaker ones.
Each extractor is routed to the launchpad and I built up a nice little store of P0 resources a few hours later. It's quite easy to miss a routing so check that everything you expected to see has turned up.
Around my launchpad I placed a basic processor for each P1 product and an advanced processor for each P2 product.
Each Basic processor needed two routes: an outgoing route to the launchpad and an incoming route bringing the P0 resource. I didn't see any way to set this up in advance, I had to wait until I had a stockpile of P0 resources in the launchpad before I could route it to the processor.
So after a few hours I was able to set up my P1 production chains:
Carbon Compounds > Biofuels
Aqueous liquids > Water
Complex organisms > Proteins
Micro organisms > Bacteria
I left it a few more hours then set up my P2 production chains. Each P2 requires 3 routes each. You will later be able to check your P2 processors are working by opening the Routes view and checking it has all 3.
What I found was that where a resource was required by two competing processors once I had routed it to one I was unable to route it to the other processor that needed it since my stockpile had vanished out of my launchpad.
So, as much by luck as by judgment I set up
Proteins and Biofuels > Livestock
Bacteria and Water > Test cultures
The next day I was able to set up
Bacteria and Proteins > Fertilizer
If I had set up the fertilizer first I would have had to wait for both the other two.
My Advanced Command Centre has 17000 MW power grid and I wasn't using it all. After a couple of days I decided to put down another Basic processor as I had stockpiles of some P0 resources built up. That was due to using short duration extraction cycles that produce more and to being a little slow to get the processing started. It was useful in the first week but I'll remove it after I write this post as it isn't doing much now that I've switched to 23 hour cycles.
Your stockpiles are your indicator of whether everything is set up right. If you are stockpiling a p1 or p0 product that should be being processed into something higher you need to check your set up. Click each processor, choose the route window and count the number of routes. Every basic processor should have two routes and every advanced processor should have three routes.
After leaving it a few days to settle down I decided to spend the rest of my grid on this planet. I had enough surplus grid to put down an extra Complex Organisms, an extra carbon compounds extractor. I was just short of the grid I needed to drop an extra processor for another resource in the white spots. However by dropping a processor right near my launchpad and consequently being able to use a very short link I did have enough to drop an extractor in a sub-optimal place. Well better than leaving the grid unused - I set up an aqueous liquid extractor by my base. It produces 1346 per cycle instead of 1524.
I've just turned to the issue of the grid I am freeing up by deleting by extra basic processor. I had 871 grid free. A micro organisms extractor costs 800. 71 grid really isn't a lot to play with. I control clicked my launchpad and moved the link towards my micro organisms spawn. Not enough to get even near the red but even on green it's worth something. I guesstimated 71 grid and plonked my processor down. It's actually 65 grid's worth of link away from the launchpad which is close enough. It produces 883 per cycle, a lot worse than the 1500 I get from most of my extractors but better than nothing.
The stored goods are looking really efficient. The only thing I have in my launchpad are Fertilizer, Test cultures and Livestock. I have no P0s or P1s building up at all! 100% efficiency. 1717 m3 out of 10000m3 room. I also have some storage (500 m3) in my command centre which is not linked to anything.
At some point I will launch my p2s and use them to make p3s on one of my other planets. Looks like it will be a few weeks before I need to worry about that.
So that's my Ocean planet. I also have 4 other planets and in about a month will add a 6th. But you get the idea of my methodology, the same methods but for different resources apply to my set-ups on the other planets. So far I have only done P0 to P2. Eventually I'd like to be producing P4 down there and perhaps even have a POS down there and be manufacturing POS parts.
It's not for everyone. It's complicated for the sake of being complicated, fiddly and rather time consuming to start with. I'm sure it's not made me anything like as much as the same time spent running level 4 missions would have.
You need to start off by working out roughly what your structure will look like. I went with the layout used in this Eve Uni video: a launchpad with a ring of processors around it near my extractors. They call it a single hub star network.
As explained in the video you need to position yourself near where your resources spawn. So the first thing you need to do is work out, based on your production aims, how much of each resource you will need.
On my Ocean planet I want to produce Test cultures, Fertiliser and Livestock. This will require the following P0 inputs:
Carbon compounds
Complex organisms (twice)
Micro organisms (twice)
Aqueous liquids
These P0s, when processed, make the P1s that go into the P2s I am trying to make.
I start my scanning by looking for a spot where a good complex organisms spot is near a good micro organisms spot. There are a couple of possibilities so I check the other resources and eventually find a spot where all 4 resources are nearby.
I had an interface issue at this stage. I found it very hard to get the slider in the Scan view to move. It is quite fiddly, just make sure you have your mouse pointer in the rainbow coloured section and you should be able to slide it from left to right. Eventually I worked it out and was able to adjust my scans so that they showed small white peaks for high resource concentrations. You sometimes need to adjust it as you move from one resource to another - if you see a huge swathe of white move the slider to the right to get smaller peaks.
I began my harvesting by putting down 6 extractors: one carbon compounds, two complex organisms, two micro organisms, one aqueous liquids. I didn't worry too much about the varying output - all my extractors are on white peaks so they all produce reasonably well. My best is 1526 and my worst is 1373 which is close enough. If I had had a terribly low spot I might have had to double up one of the weaker ones.
Each extractor is routed to the launchpad and I built up a nice little store of P0 resources a few hours later. It's quite easy to miss a routing so check that everything you expected to see has turned up.
Around my launchpad I placed a basic processor for each P1 product and an advanced processor for each P2 product.
Each Basic processor needed two routes: an outgoing route to the launchpad and an incoming route bringing the P0 resource. I didn't see any way to set this up in advance, I had to wait until I had a stockpile of P0 resources in the launchpad before I could route it to the processor.
So after a few hours I was able to set up my P1 production chains:
Carbon Compounds > Biofuels
Aqueous liquids > Water
Complex organisms > Proteins
Micro organisms > Bacteria
I left it a few more hours then set up my P2 production chains. Each P2 requires 3 routes each. You will later be able to check your P2 processors are working by opening the Routes view and checking it has all 3.
What I found was that where a resource was required by two competing processors once I had routed it to one I was unable to route it to the other processor that needed it since my stockpile had vanished out of my launchpad.
So, as much by luck as by judgment I set up
Proteins and Biofuels > Livestock
Bacteria and Water > Test cultures
The next day I was able to set up
Bacteria and Proteins > Fertilizer
If I had set up the fertilizer first I would have had to wait for both the other two.
My Advanced Command Centre has 17000 MW power grid and I wasn't using it all. After a couple of days I decided to put down another Basic processor as I had stockpiles of some P0 resources built up. That was due to using short duration extraction cycles that produce more and to being a little slow to get the processing started. It was useful in the first week but I'll remove it after I write this post as it isn't doing much now that I've switched to 23 hour cycles.
Your stockpiles are your indicator of whether everything is set up right. If you are stockpiling a p1 or p0 product that should be being processed into something higher you need to check your set up. Click each processor, choose the route window and count the number of routes. Every basic processor should have two routes and every advanced processor should have three routes.
After leaving it a few days to settle down I decided to spend the rest of my grid on this planet. I had enough surplus grid to put down an extra Complex Organisms, an extra carbon compounds extractor. I was just short of the grid I needed to drop an extra processor for another resource in the white spots. However by dropping a processor right near my launchpad and consequently being able to use a very short link I did have enough to drop an extractor in a sub-optimal place. Well better than leaving the grid unused - I set up an aqueous liquid extractor by my base. It produces 1346 per cycle instead of 1524.
I've just turned to the issue of the grid I am freeing up by deleting by extra basic processor. I had 871 grid free. A micro organisms extractor costs 800. 71 grid really isn't a lot to play with. I control clicked my launchpad and moved the link towards my micro organisms spawn. Not enough to get even near the red but even on green it's worth something. I guesstimated 71 grid and plonked my processor down. It's actually 65 grid's worth of link away from the launchpad which is close enough. It produces 883 per cycle, a lot worse than the 1500 I get from most of my extractors but better than nothing.
The stored goods are looking really efficient. The only thing I have in my launchpad are Fertilizer, Test cultures and Livestock. I have no P0s or P1s building up at all! 100% efficiency. 1717 m3 out of 10000m3 room. I also have some storage (500 m3) in my command centre which is not linked to anything.
At some point I will launch my p2s and use them to make p3s on one of my other planets. Looks like it will be a few weeks before I need to worry about that.
So that's my Ocean planet. I also have 4 other planets and in about a month will add a 6th. But you get the idea of my methodology, the same methods but for different resources apply to my set-ups on the other planets. So far I have only done P0 to P2. Eventually I'd like to be producing P4 down there and perhaps even have a POS down there and be manufacturing POS parts.
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