“Instead of freezing industry as is, and taking their time to design a better POS and moon mining system, CCP should implement a series of small changes that will vastly improve this vital aspect of EVE!”
A shit storm is brew on the forums
CCP Unifex said, in the CSM minutes, “that what CCP did was spend effort and prototype what would make a good POS system. It would, however, only affect the group of people who manage POSes. Focusing that amount of time and effort on some small singular aspect of the game and delivering only that “is what will kill the business”.
Many understood that as if CCP is postponing POS changes or even scrapping them all together. And it seems that a majority of players would like to see a POS revamp. Whether that is true or not, and if CCP would change it mind and accelerate POS redesign, I think that it is unfair to freeze improvement to industry, while waiting for a POS and techtenium overhaul! Many smaller tweaks and fixes would greatly improve the lot of industrialist and the EVE player base in general, until CCP can find a solid overreaching design solution.
These are some of the changes I propose we all discuss. I tried to find the simplest, most easily applied changes:
1-Clickfest
Every time I start a manufacturing or invention job I click between 7-9 or even 10 times, just for one job. I usually start 10 manufacturing jobs per day and around 20 inventions. These numbers can go up to 20 manufacturing and 40 inventions easily (invention usually take 2.5 hours for modules…) that is like 2400 clicks per day!
The fix is very easy: Grouping. Instead of having to click on each BPC and starting it separately, one should be able to group the BPC and start them all together.
2-Industrial contracts
Introducing contracts, similar to courier’s, that consists of a player contracting a number of minerals/moon goo to another in exchange for finished products, guaranteed by a proper collateral, and a time limit. This single change will invigorate the industrial side of EVE, allowing many small and medium corps to offer their services easily and without complications.
3-High sec ME slots
These are pretty much filled for weeks, while PE, invention and manufacturing slots are pretty much available, rarely full and when full the wait is usually hours at most. The wait for ME research in high sec is around one month and 10-15 days in low sec. This is a problem, because it creates an imbalance, either all research slots should be rare, or not. The solution is not only by adding more ME slots, currently people consider ME slots as an ISK faucet, put your BPO in and forget it for a month or two, and cash it in at the end.
Research should either be a high end industrial activity (like invention, requiring lots of skills and an important financial cost, while yielding a significant return as a result. Or the whole process should be similar to manufacturing, open to all player with minimum skill or investment, but with small returns. Therefore, if CCP chooses the complex scenario then it will need to raise ME research cost per slot (both per hours and install cost, which are ridiculously low), and add skill requirements. On the other hand, if CCP choose to open research up, it should increase the number of available slots and the number of stations. I prefer the first solution.
4-High/low sec manufacturing/research differences, and the null sec player owned bases.
Currently, the only advantage of running research and manufacturing in low sec is the slight increase in ME slot availability (10-15 days wait period as opposed to 25-30 in high sec.) Low sec station should have an advantage over Hi-sec, more slots, maybe even an additional time advantage (like POS, where manufacturing and research take less time.) Incidentally, I am against nerfing high sec manufacturing, or research capability in order to make low sec more attractive.
Boosting low sec is a better and more sensible solution
5-Introducing chance to manufacturing
A system similar to invention but without the chance to fail a job could make the process a bit more fun and dynamic. A similar system to decryptors would be very interesting in manufacturing or ME/PE research. For example, using X decryptor has a chance to lower mineral cost by 1-2%, or lower manufacturing or research time by Y. Of course decyptors are expensive and using one does not guarantee a 100% advantage.
6-Change to mining (ore and ice)
This would also bring much needed dynamism to the repetitive nature of mining, and would better reward active miners. For example, when an ore asteroid is empty it vanishes, so sometimes a smaller roid filled with better/rarer minerals would emerge. However, if it is not immediately targeted by mining lasers it will disappear. Additionally, these special roids have a bigger chance of appearing in low sec and an even much bigger chance in null, with even better and more expensive minerals/ice.
For those who kept reading I congratulate you for your patience and thank you for your interest. These are just ideas, and I understand that they might not be fully adequate, and might create some imbalances. However, I tried to find the simplest more easily implemented fixes that could help industry, while CCP find a solution to POS and moon mining.
Seth
"This would also bring much needed dynamism to the repetitive nature of mining, and would better reward active miners."
an active mining system doesn't reward active miners. it simply punishes people with more than one account. i've said it once and i've said it again; if i have to be at my computer instead of being tabbed out watching a film i'm not doing it for 20m/hour mining. not to mention everything but my orca will be getting unsubbed because i'm not the octopus man and i can't actively mine on all of my accounts. infact, i'd probably get rid of the orca too because it's better isk/hour to mine with no boosts if you've only got one miner. do ccp really want lots of mining accounts to go inactive? i doubt it, therefore active mining is highly unlikely to see the light of day.
nope.