EVE’s Industrial Revolution
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| What if prospecting for new, special ores was interesting? |
At some point in the near future, once all of the sov mechanics and FW stuff has been given a good booosh, there is an industrial revolution coming to EVE. That statement isn’t based upon any ‘inside information’ that I have, it’s just something I firmly believe is on the horizon. There are too many people that want to see positive changes and interesting game play applied to that part of EVE and I am one of them.
On last weekend’s ‘Lost in EVE’ debate, toward the end of the show, Two Step came out of nowhere to ask me directly what my thoughts about mining and industry are. It may have been meant and, admittedly answered with a bit of humor, but my mind shifted gears and I started to ~talk~, which can sometimes be pretty dangerous. Following up on that, on Monday I published a blog detailing some of my thoughts about this issue and making a commitment to Fight for Industry in the future of EVE. While there are a couple people running for CSM 7 that have decided to talk a little about this subject, or just focus on mining to the exclusion of all else, no one else with my varied background has stepped forward.
Combined with several forum posts on the subject, it seems the message has gotten out that I’m actually serious about following up on this and the reaction has been rabid. At first it was just a few eve mails, but it’s snowballed past that now. Over the past few days I have been invited to talk on three different Teamspeak servers to players that previously had little interest or faith in anything CSM-related at all. One of these was a Czech mining / production corp of about 80 players that had never once given a shit about the CSM and had all but given up on ever seeing anything come their way. I think I managed to change some minds about the CSM and, at the end of that particular discussion, walked away from it with about two pages of hastily scribbled notes that represent a small part of the laundry list of issues plaguing the builders of EVE.
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| How… exciting? |
What follows is going to be a bit disjointed as it represents a lot of different ideas covering many of the problem areas in this aspect of the game. Apologies ahead of time if it feels like I’m jumping around a bit. 
Make Pretty!
One of the most common themes I have heard over and over is how completely lifeless industry in EVE is / feels. For example, when you are working in PI or installing a job in a factory, there’s very little or no visual feedback that helps a player feel like they are actually accomplishing anything. One of the best analogies I’ve heard is that when you are flying your ship and shooting your guns, you have an instant sense of gratification – you can see what is happening, what your ship is doing and the results of that. What do you have with any U.I. facet of industry in EVE? Countdown timers? A few spreadsheets? I would love to see what would happen if CCP Punkturis and her friends would be turned loose on helping create a more immersive and enjoyable experience for all aspects of industry.
Planetary Interaction is another example of a feature that obviously had much more potential but remains far behind where it should or could be. You have no way to ‘pee in another player’s pond’ or do anything that even resembles conflict. Don’t bring up DUST 514 about this; both I myself and EVE Players I talk to think there should be some form of conflict activity (however minimal) directly related to PI for us in EVE.
Less Button Clicking!
In terms of making things simpler for production, the less button clicking the better! I’ve always wanted to be able to do ‘batch installs’ of similar, multiple factory jobs. Like, I have seven blueprints that all need to go into ME research for ME 60… BAM! I have 5 invention jobs that all use this decrypter and this kind of BPC… BAM!
Another big want of mine is being able to ‘chain’ blueprints together for more complicated manufacturing processes. The way it works now is nothing but a time vampire that requires you to log in to essentially repeat the same actions. As an example, you want to build a Carrier – you grab the Carrier BPO and all of the requisite component BPO’s, the new and improved and amazing looking factory U.I. tells you the total mineral requirements, then you ‘batch’ install them as a single group job. How epic would that be??
What if you could create a ‘shopping list’ that took into account your BPOs and BPCs properties? You could group together multiple blueprints, everything from frigates to capital ships and their component blueprints; the system would then analyze those blueprints and you would get a mineral requirement: “You need to go buy this.” Then, as you buy the minerals off the market, those amounts are reduced on your list.
Working Together
I’ve already touched on some of the things I’d like to see happen with the mining profession in my previous blog but I want to clarify one other point: at its core EVE is a social game. I understand that there are some people that just want to log into a game and play with themselves (pun intended) but I believe the game should encourage and reward more social activities. Achieving a goal with other people in EVE has always felt more rewarding than anything I’ve done on my own.
I strongly support the development of dynamically generated content that throws a few curve balls into established patterns of play. We’re people, not robots, and as such should be required to think our way through even PVE situations from time to time. This also has the side effect of helping eliminate bots / macros, etc… which I loathe with a passion I can barely put into words.
Large Scale Cooperation
I want to see an emphasis placed upon people working together to achieve common, large scale goals. Let me step back in time a bit to frame my thoughts on this and I’ll use a common ‘large scale’ example: building outposts.
In some respects, the financial aspects of this are something that aren’t really appreciated today. When outposts were first released, 20-25 billion ISK was an IMMENSE sum of money that had to be pooled by dozens, if not hundreds of players. More importantly, in terms of actual construction, you could not load the outpost construction eggs with a freighter – you had to use a small fleet of normal Industrial haulers. From finances to the physical effort of construction, it required a level of teamwork that’s been missing from EVE at all levels of play for years. Once it became essentially a ‘one man job’ to actually deploy and finance an entire dock-able space station, null sec outposts became as common as trees in a forest and we lost a vital part of what made null-sec feel like ‘frontier space’. I believe it is possible to establish this feeling again and not just for people living in null-sec.
Work for the Unemployed
One more thing: industry contracts. I’ve spoken many times about the ‘Treaty’ system that I worked on right before I left CCP. One aspect of this was to be a new contract system which had the potential to be expanded upon to touch many areas of EVE. One thing that I was most disappointed to see not happen was the advent of possibly creating an actual ‘job market’ for industrialists in EVE. It is probably easiest to explain like this:
You are a corp facility manager. You can set up ‘job contracts’ that need doing and they go into a queue. The prerequisites for these jobs are auto-calculated so no one without the skills to perform them can accept them. You can then set a job payment for acceptance and completion of the contract and, once completed, the finished products pop out into whatever hangar you wish.
This job contract can be set to be available at the corp, alliance or public level. Obviously the person that accepts the job cannot cancel it because it is locked. As a factory or blueprint owner, this allows you to farm out work in a much more efficient manner and, at the public level, this system gives more possibilities for the “small guy” who doesn’t run four extra accounts with production alts on each character to do major industry and make some space bucks!
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| Whale hunting! |
I want to respond directly to a comment on my previous blog made by ‘Anonymous’. This individual seems to make a lot of comments on different blogs; quite a busy person it seems! Anyway, this was the comment:
“It will be more then a year before CCP will devote an entire expansion to industrial improvements… you are not promising anything that can be accomplished in the CSM7 term.”
In order for something like this to happen, it is going to take more than just a team or two working a few sprints – it’s going to require a concentrated effort of manpower and resources; IMO, a full named expansion. That means as this year goes forward, the people in favor of seeing a proper overhaul of Industry are going to have to be as vocal and driven on this issue as possible.
There are a lot of things that CCP has on the drawing board which would help re-vitalize interest in what I believe to be one of the most neglected and unappreciated areas of the game. This is something that I’ve wanted to see happen for YEARS. I grew tired a long time ago of hearing CCP talk about an ‘industry expansion’ and then nothing ever came of that talk. Now CCP finally has the resources to finish and expand upon the null sec and FW stuff and still tackle a full fledged make-over of industry. The potential is there, they are willing to listen and, with your help and your vote, I plan to be one of the leading voices on this.
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Seems to me the only safest way mine is to do it deep in NULL sec with the current suicide ganking tactics. All mining in HI SEC has more risk just like everything else in Eve ( including Incursions
hahahaha no.
Either you have never lived in null, or you are a goon renter. But null is hella dangerous.
Goons don't have renters pubbie.
As far as mining in null vs Highsec, null has intel channels, null has a local that is not filled with dozens of neuts/missioners/whoever to clog it. Also, anyone who is not a total idiot also has voice comms and a rorq pilot who is watching intel channels for pings in nearby systems. So yes, null is safer but it takes far more effort and coordination than your typical highsec miner or mining corp is used to.
Verifying, Goons have no renters.
"You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts." Bill Maher, 2010
Alternatively, ORE could, I dunno, design an appopriately-tanked mining ship.
Something like a pocket veldnaught. Something that had enough tank to survive.
But if they did that, gankbears would whine, and if there is one thing CCP cannot abide, it is gankbear tears.
^^ That.
The trick comes in keeping them out of the hands of the mining botters that will fill the drone lands when they lose the drone poo loot drops.
QUOTE: Said the Bittervet, "But if they did that, gankbears would whine, and if there is one thing CCP cannot abide, it is gankbear tears"
???? GANKBEAR ! ! !
Mining is definitely soul draining, hes dead right there
Mining more interactive? YES, THANK YOU!!! I think that last big thing for mining was the Hulk and Orca.
Large Scale Cooperation was my favorite section. I don't think we can go backward now, but going forward, it should be possible to implement new large scale cooperative stuff.
In general, industry does need an overhaul. Less button clicking more interactivity, be it with processes or people.
And why do mining ships have so damn little structure. A barge should have a real big structure, little armor and a moderate shield. And a much bigger cargo hold, please. A desty should NOT be able to take out a barge.
Its like a swiftboat attacking a freighter in the real world. See the USS Cole news stories for comparison.
You obviously haven't heard of the swiftboats that the pirates use to intercept and capture freighters off the coast of Somalia. Also, a small gunboat or torpedoboat are quite enough to sink any freighter.
Does Industry really need the revamping that say mining does? Seems to me that there is no real lack of any items except those 'officer' & faction ones that can't be produced anyways only ships you can't find/buy in eve are those won in Tournaments ( the 'Unique' ones ).
Side note: Shouldn't the owner of an elite ship be able to reverse engineer a gift ship to put some in the marketplace?
Having them exist in the ship database is such a waste because the rarest ships hardly ever get flown.
Maybe copies could be slightly 'flawed' and mose some bonuses to keep them from being too influential in the game mechanics.
IMHO the industrialists get the short straw all the time. You can rat in a carrier but God forbid you make you so can mine in a Rorq or an Orca. And why the heck not? What is wrong with creating capital mining lasers? And make it so they have to use scripts for different ore types. And WHY does gas and ice mining cycles have to be so damn long? The focus has been on the pew pew fighters for far too long! CAPITAL MINING LASERS NOW!
Nohohoho dood.. New mining ships and a new mining "game" would be nice tho
Guys, be careful what you ask for. Introducing a new mining ship that has a bigger m3/s without increasing the demand for minerals means those minerals will be worth less
NOt if drone regions get bounty and no more alloy drops
i'd really enjoy a carrier size type hulk….my gawd….i might even then mine!
although it would really be a ship for the sake of a new ship, it would be nice, you got the large hulk pilot blobs in high-sec industry and you get large carrier-type pilot blobs mining away in null-sec.
could make for some nice killmails >.>
…..
i'm dreaming vOv
man i would love to suicide gank one of those
This is what ruins the game. In the real would, would suicide ganking be profitable?
I've heard that pirating off the coasts of Somalia is profitable…
Those people pirate because the local warlord is holding their family hostage. The only people profiting aren't the ones on the boats
There are a lot of things that CCP has on the drawing board …unfortunately.
Sort the bots = solve the problem basically, yeah it would lead to a temporary rise in prices as there would be a mineral / ice shortage, but then maybe just maybe, the 2 very different sides of eve might start working together. The industrialists will not be seen as the scourge of society, as they will once again provide a valuable contribution to the game, but this of course would need reprocessing loot to be looked at, along with drone alloys, and an attitude change from the PvP'ers who love to shoot easy supplies of carebeartears
Eve has changed drastically over the last 2-3 years, I started as a miner, we had a corp that ran regular empire mining ops, and apart from the odd can-flipper, we were left in peace, built stuff and sold it on the market. Now you face suicide gankers making that kind of life difficult and not worth the hassle for the meagre rewards available.
As mentioned, 0.0 mining is looking tempting, hell even to mineral compress and ship down to empire ^^
You can say it looks tempting but all you end up doing is gaming the system to pump out the most ABC's you can and it isnt even worth the time to compress them – just refine and JF then back to empire. This is ONLY 'tempting' to someone with 3/4+ hulks multiboxed to make it even worth the time.
I actually kind of like the idea of PI.
Yeah it needs a massive reduction in the amount of clicking needed.
But at it's core, setting up a planet, starting a job, letting it run while you do something more interesting, and ninja-ing a hauler out of dangerous but ore rich space is really nice.
Spreadsheets online
gay
While I understand the "eve is social" aspect and I do almost everything with my corp, there are those times when I just want to do my own thing on occasion that may be considered "mindless" or "soul-training". Mandating that I play a mini-game or always have to cooperate to to play eve is just another way of making people play the game the way you think it should be played.
tl;dr sometimes I like shooting rocks/ice just the way it is now…don't take that away.
A bot owner would say that, y'know.
depends on how many clients you have running. I can stay busy running 4. constantly switching to dump ore.
Thanks for voicing an asinine comment without using an actual name. An anonymous coward would do that, y'know.
I'm not going to argue that mining is risky, but it certainly deserves a buff. And the best way to accomplish this would probably involve removing alloys from drone NPCs.
It's been previously announced that this (replacing the NPC alloy drops with bounties) is going to happen either before or by Inferno.
It has been a long time coming.
Best article on EN24 in ages. The point about Outpost creation originally requiring dozens of haulers is a good one. In general, making people work on something simultaneously–rather than just in the same supply-chain (which is serial)–is probably a Good Thing.
HTFU: Hurry The Fun Up
Is there a legitimate reason why mining laser cycles are measured in minutes? Reduce the timer and amount mined by 1/10th (Same amount over time, just faster cycles) and improve the speed of the ice and gas harvesters.
Technology should steadily improve over time, so why doesn't it in eve?
yeah, my miner pretty much hit the wall in the skill department, they should figure out a way to keep getting better
Isn't that to reduce the server load? I can imagine it was more of an issue before the updates to the network and server set ups but almost everything they've introduced for a while over the recent past (4-5 years) have appeared to have longer and longer cycle times, meaning less calls between the server and the client.
I don't think changing cycle timers on gas and mining lasers is necessary anyway.
If you want to stop the lasers, you get all you'd have mined up till that point. The only issue it presents is if there isn't a full 'cycles worth' to be mined so you might waste a minute or two mining what is an empty rock (if you don't scan the roids).
Insta-popping for roids that are actually empty would finish that problem for ever.
Mining in world of warcraft or any other game is more fun than EVE. Good job CCP. they will never buff or fix industry. They would rather suck on all the raging boners of elite pvpers.
that might work until there's noone left to make their death machines and they are all blobbing in rookie ships. I'd love to see that.
That's why botters are actioned once a year and 1% of them are banned.
Translation: We can't be bothered to make an integral part of the game even remotely fun so we'll just let people skirt our EULA to do it instead.
I istened tho that show Seleene has linked and was just as surprised as he probably was about the question, and even more surprised about the answer. Go Seleene, the new ex-bitter-vet champion of the industrial player base. While I am not really an industry player, I always had a soft spot for them (heck I play with many of them) I find it great that you get so much feedback from them and that you are willing to take on their cause. All the best to you.
Most people don't know it, but Seleene was always a big indy / mining guy.
In the very beginning of Eve, there was only mining and ratting, and rats only paid up to 15,000 isk for a bounty. Money was rare, so mining was an easier way to make ships.
Very old players (like first-year players) tend to miss the days where mining was really a great way to build things, and I think we can ALL agree the current system is not fun enough / game-like enough / fun enough / or profitable enough in higher risk areas.
Remove allows and your prices will skyrocket. No matter what anyone wants to say, but mining sucks donkey balls and nobody wants to do it except for bots. High prices = less fights = less pvp = boring as shit.
That's my two cents.
Really boring article about the most boring part of the game for boring people.
Read between the lines. PL candidate wants destructible stations and the ability to create "conflict" in industry in increase content for griefing bitter vets.
Its three o'clock in the morning, you've been on site for eighteen hours and counting, the drugs are coursing through your system to keep you awake, and you're nearly at the sixteen hundred.
The play had its genesis years ago when you had the hint of the tip of the idea that this area looked like White Tiger – but this isnt White Tiger, its the near-surface crap that will keep you going while you look for White Tiger.
You've got one hand on a century old document that describes what the blokes next door went through, layer by layer it's all corresponding, and you're close to the payzone. This side of the fence was never drilled, and back in the day the blokes next door did a hundred and ten barrel a day, and thats roughly a cold ten gees a day, which means this whole operation could run at two week payback.
The only problem is we appear to be running fifteen feet low to prognosis, but we might get lucky and we might be able to pull this off.
The rig foreman is coming to you with an illegal smile and a small canvas bag full of stuff, and suggesting you take a chew. What he has isnt chewing tobacco, and its not any other drug – its broken up rocks from the bottom of the drill, and we're going to do the quickest, dirtiest and most primitive test in the books.
We call this shit 'light sweet crude' for a reason.
It tastes like hydrocarbons.
We've definitely hit the payzone, and we'll need to spend some more money and flow-test this fucker to find out if we have ourselves a mine.
Eve Online Mining. More boring than real-life mining.
Oh yeah, and we were fifteen feet low to prognosis, and that meant we hit the water layer. Dry hole. We did our money.
Eve Online Mining. More boring than real-life mining, and less risky.
if they made is so that i could fit capital sized mining lazers onto a dread and got a siege bonus to it I would definatly get some and do that once or twice. Some fighter sized mining drones would be nice too.
"that does not mean CSM 6 was not consulted"
Consultants tend to be the people large companies utilize to justify their own (often terrible) actions and agendas. So… nothing to be proud of.
As a bit of an industrialist myself, i also agree mining is hella boring, there needs to be an alternative to it. Keep traditional mining though, but add in something new…
I think a "T2" PI interaction may be the way to go with this, set up command centres who are tasked to go out into the solar system and mine ore automatically, and bring it back to the T2 launchpad.
Have the cycle times very short (like 1 hour) so no one can AFK mine to a large degree. Do this and you have an hour to go out and PVP or whatever you want. Keep the mined amounts small (about 25,000 M3 per hour?) so it doesn't creep onto a corp mining op.
As for production jobs, i think adding a little "Character Creation" engine into it may be a way to go: keep every step visual, step by step and easy to comprehend. instead of sliding through eyebrows or whatever, you slide through available/taken slots. Selecting skin colour becomes the type of job (manufacturing, copy, ME, PE etc).
Most of the coding would have been installed already so not a lot of work would be needed to get it done, in both cases.
Here is an ideea for mining: "faction items for mining" let's say u are mining in a hidden belt, and rats spawns. A different type of rats, like a new ships models (far away dream) or something alike hulks but with guns. We already have the carier/transporters spawns in those belts, that drop minerals, but thediference is that these rats drop faction modules, faction implants for mining, faction mind links and what ever is outthere necesarlly for mining or even bpcs. These modules should have better properties like the ones used in combat. The ideea of a capital mining barge I don't belive is that good couse of the boters, that would mean insane amounts of ore for them that leads to infinite isk wallets
Mail me if u whant to hear more about it Riverrini.
Cheers
Yeah, why the fuck CAN't barges mount some weapons? As it is now, a million ISK frigate can kill a 200 MILLION isk Hulk,
Why is that? Not much risk for the ganker, a miner must be brave or stupid.
Job contracts is the best part of this article. It would work great for corps/alliances that have a full fledged indy side. The corp wants to build capitals, set up contracts for your members who fill them in between CTAs and OPs. The corp gets the parts it needs while keeping people away from important items and the players get extra ISK for ships that they can get blown up. Would love to see this in the game.
Mining working as intended – nerf drone loot and people will stop complaining about mining because it will be valubble again.
Thumbs up!
I would really like to see an industrial remap..
I.E.: I always found it stupid, to 'invent"… like you have to re-invent the wheel, FOUR bloody times to get tires under you card… I mean: wth!?
The only idea i like is the ability to create contract to spread the work load an pay people for there efforts
I think your right Industry part as a corp must be looked in to. i agree with you on most parts
1# a corp member with <apropriate rights> should be able to borrow corp BPO/BPC and build stuff in a Alliance station or Corp Pos (if i got a slot over and the BPO is laying around go for it). You can't move it but you can build with it. what i want to push for here is helping new players get in to industry work. i whouldn't lend a new player a BPO but i might give him a BPC with this i don't have to i just have to make my BPO available for use by the corp.
2# a player should be able to batch build building ie: 10x BPC 10 run each Trauma Furry Heavy Missiles. Batch work saves time … i like to save indy time so i can blow more stuff up.
3# a player should with the help of his corp beable to preOrder building requirements for building larger things. IE setting up a PreOrder for a Carrier there will be contracts to the corp setup to build the apropriate items required to build that carrier. with <apropriate rights> the isk value for the items comes from the corp wallet. once all the preOrders are met the construction begins. what i want to push for here is for cooperation and making bigger things easier.
4# corporation orders should be more like normal sell orders not like market orders. my alliance needs 200 drakes i can make 20 i should get payed directly for thoes 20 drakes while other player builds the rest. What i want to push for here is the cooperation inside the corp for the greater good.
5# Mining Gas/Ice why not make the cycles faster with a failure chance or multiply the resources needed by 10 to refine the products while decreasing size by 10 and harvetsting time by 10 …
other stuff i want CCP to look in to Exploration as a new character.
C'mon you don't got the skills to probe sucessfully and they don't give you a ship with bonus to probing for the inital mission last night i started a new char did the tutorial missions to get a grip on this and Honestly it took me over 60minutes to get a 100% lock in first site i should find.
it all boils down to A# not having skills high enough to sucess and b# no ship with bonus.
My sugestion on this is simply two folded
1# give all new chars a booster that work for 14days (and only work for the first 30days of a pilots life) that add an aditional +10 to probing.
2# in first exploration mission give out an apropriate boat for scanning, a Navitas is NOT a decent probing boat.
both of thoes fixes whould give new players a way to complete the tutorial for exploration faster.
you can do the other 4 tutorials in less then 2h and thats over 40 missions while on exploration your still stuck at mission 2 after 1h …. somthing have to be done.
UI -exploration:
I would like to see a 3dStudio/Maya style viewport when probing i want to see the screen split in 4
X,Y / X,Z / Y,Z / rendered view. that way i can place the orbs perfect.
then buy a heron or something as thats wat eve is about is bettering yourself and upgrading to better ships