Crius - Industry teams... worth their weight in Megacyte? (TLDR - yes!!!)

One of the major new introductions to the industry process into Eve with the Cruis update is the appearance of Teams into the game.  Initially, upon hearing the word “team” mentioned, my corp mates and I thought that it could mean some way for multiple characters to work on a research or manufacturing project collaboratively.  The reality was very different.

In Crius, CCP have added the notion of actual people having to be hired to operate research labs and manufacturing plants, whether this be at a POS in the hidden depths of a wormhole, or in a gleaming Amarrian Station a couple of jumps from the Amarr home world.  To expand upon this further, CCP has also added the ability to bid for a specialised team to come and live in a particular station and offer their services.  Of course, there is a cost for this too.

The bidding process is pretty simple.  You go to the Industry window, choose the Teams tab and click on chartering to bring up the list of teams and various filters such as location (system / region etc.) and speciality.  Teams consist of 4 members, each of which bring something different to the table.  Once you’ve found a team you like where the auction is finishing sometime soon, you can bid on them.  If you’re successful then you get a notification from Concord and the team magically arrives in your selected station.

One really important thing to note is that multiple people can contribute to a bid.  When you bid, if your chosen system is the same as another person’s existing bid, your bid adds to the total for that system.  Strangely, once the minimum bid has been met, other people can then bid low amounts.  For example, I bid 500k on one character and 110k on another for one system, and then when I went to bid with a third character for a different system, it told me the minimum bid was 130k.  I tried again with a fourth character bidding for yet another system (Rancer this time lol), the minimum bid was 150k.

Although it might sound like it’s broken, actually it allows for a group of players to agree to each bid and contribute to winning a team, although it seems that each bidder will be forced to bid at a higher level than the last, so if you each want to contribute 200k ISK, looks like you won’t be able to do so.

The overall beauty of this system is that you can bid from one place for a team to be located in another, so if you operate a regional (or universal) manufacturing empire, you don’t have to be in the target station to bid for the team to go there.  Below you can see that I’ve successfully hired three different teams to come to my Outpost to help:

As you can see, all three teams are for manufacturing and so will not affect other activities such as researching material efficiency.  Also, each team has four distinct effects that can be used for specific blueprint types, and also a salary commensurate with how big an effect they have.

So let’s see what they do.  My first example is going to use the bottom team from Caldari Steel, and I’m going to make some Medium Nosferatu’s

So here we are with 100 runs up on the clock and no team selected.  The first thing to notice is that it shows which members of the available teams could contributing on this job, and what their contribution, and salary, would be.  Below you can see the difference when the team is added to the process:

The first thing to notice here is that both highlighted team members have had an impact.  You can see that the estimated material price has dropped from 15.25 million ISK to 14.41 million ISK, a saving of 834,820.48 ISK.  Not too shabby at all.  The job cost has increased from 263,652 ISK to 284,744 ISK, i.e. only 21,092 ISK more, giving us a total saving of 813,728.48 ISK.

So a saving of over 800k ISK from only a single job? At this point it’s pretty obvious that the bidding for teams with popular characteristics will be pretty fierce, and will no doubt run into many millions of ISK.  This, however, is a bit of a concern once again for me, as it will probably mean that the larger industrial groups will be able to spend big to get the best teams and spread their cost out over lots of jobs, again reducing their unit cost, whereas the smaller operator will not be able to compete on the bidding and will, as a result, have a overall higher unit cost and be less profitable.

Anyway, back to the team information.  You can also hover over the “Job Duration” and “Total Job Cost” display to show a very useful breakdown.  For these, I used the other teams with a couple of different blueprints.  Firstly, to show the Job Duration information, I switched to making a Dragonfly:

It’s another Caldari Steel team, but this time I’m getting a 1% reduction in materials and a 6% reduction in time.  You can see above without the team that I’m enjoying quite a good reduction in time taken already.  Below, you can see the team adding their effect:

I’ve achieved a further 6% reduction, but in this case it’s only reduced it by 8.5 hours, which isn’t really anything to write home about (although in 8.5 hours you could write home several times I’d expect!).  Also noticeable is the fact that it’s increased the job cost by 1.89 million ISK.  However, I can happily confirm that the 1% reduction in materials in this particular example has reduced the estimated cost by 18.09 million ISK, giving a total cost saving of 16.19 million ISK allowing for the team’s salary payment.

Below you can see the cost information breakdown for the above job with no team:

The system cost index is worryingly red, but I’m guessing that’s because on Sisi, I’m probably accounting for a reasonable percentage of the universal industry activity as there’s probably not exactly thousands of us testing the interface out right now.  I also decided that I wouldn’t tax myself.  Below is the final screenshot, this time using a Survey Scanner blueprint and the final team:

With this you can see that the team’s 11% salary has been added to the total job cost.  In this case the team only affects the duration of the production, and so this is probably not a particularly worthwhile addition to this particular job, although as you should be able to make out from the screenshot, the team affects the material cost of other things, and so would most likely have been bid upon for those attributes instead.

So… are teams worth their weight in Megacyte?  The answer is that they probably will be, as long as you can get the right team for the right price and then make sure that you use them properly and regularly.

I have no illusions that bidding on some teams will be very competitive, and as with any auction it is something you should calculate the value first before you bid, to make sure you don’t spend too much.  It will also mean that you will need to plan your activities more carefully if you are bidding, or adjust them accordingly if you’re sharing a team with somebody else who bid.

One thing is for sure with Crius, industry in Eve will not have a fixed cost any more, and if you’re serious about being as competitive as possible, you simply cannot ignore teams.  I think that CCP has done a really good job with how teams will work, and their addition to New Eden is something that all industrialists in Eve should be looking forward to with fingers poised over the “bid” button at the 8 seconds left before auction ends mark, just like on eBay!

The real question here is whether Crest will allow for offline bidding, leading to the Eve edition of BidSniper?

 

 

 

 

 

Crius - Industry teams... worth their weight in Megacyte? (TLDR - yes!!!)

Crius - Increasing costs of T2 manufacturing

Listed in part of the patch notes, it states that:

Most Tech I materials have been removed from Tech II blueprints

• More precisely, minerals that are not morphite and components that are not Advanced Components or Advanced Capital Components have been removed


• This does not apply to Tech I items required for Tech II manufacturing, those are staying and still have exceptions to the Material Efficiency and skill bonuses so that, for example:In some cases blueprint requirements have been modified to make sure price is not fluctuating too much

This innocuous statement has not necessarily translated brilliantly if you’re doing Tech II manufacturing.  As an example, I compared the manufacture of a ME -4, PE -4 Cruise Missile Launcher II blueprint on Tranquillity now to it’s post-patch equivalent ME -7%, TE -14%.  Look below for the results:

Firstly the Tranquillity version.  This BPC takes 1 day 7 hours to produce it’s 10 runs.  Next, let’s look at the Sisi version:

With what was the same BPC, you can see that the manufacture time for 10 runs has reduced to only 8 hours 55 minutes 18 seconds, and the new ISK sink mechanic has resulted in us “donating” 184,931 ISK to Concord or some other anonymous bureau to the privilege of using our own BPC in our own Outpost in our own sovereign space.

What is striking, however, is that this shows us two things about the new manufacturing system.  Firstly, to make 1 run of this on Sisi uses 2 R.A.M. Weapon Tech, 1 T1 Module, 11 Quantum Microprocessors, 11 Morphite and 9 Robotics, so 1 Morphite less than the current TQ version shown above, but 3 more Microprocessors and 1 more unit of Robotics.  Also, put aside the R.A.M. usage as that has been covered in the Dev Blog about x100.

Now look at the Sisi screenshot above for 10 runs.  Notice that the R.A.M. and Robotics haven’t multiplied up.  This shows that by manufacturing a multiple of the unit, instead of just 1, the BPC didn’t require 2 complete R.A.M. or 9 complete units of Robotics, so by producing in one lot of 10 instead of 10 individual runs, we’ve enjoyed a cost saving.

However, the main thing to recognise here is that the cost of manufacturing is going to be less straight-forward to calculate.  To build a Quantum Microprocessor currently costs 15 Titanium Carbide, 5 Phenolic Composites, 2 Nonlinear Metamaterials and 2 Nanotransistors, regardless of the run length.  On Sisi, the same BPO (which shows -10%, so is “perfect”), uses 17 Titanium Carbide and 6 Phenolic Composites, with the other two items remaining the same for 1 run, but if I put in 1,000 runs that scales up to 14,996 Titanium Carbide, 5,293 Phenolic Composites, 1,765 Nonlinear Metamaterials and 1,765 Nanotransistors.

Life for the industrialist is going to be significantly less straight-forward.  Do you just make what you need for that run (as I do at the moment), or do you keep a stockpile of components and top them up when you get to a minimum level?

It will come down to ISK available for working capital, and if anything will make it even more difficult for the smaller operator to compete with a larger operation who will be more likely to have a greater level of working capital and therefore be able to keep larger stock levels of materials and components, reducing their unit cost.

All I know is that my spreadsheets for manufacturing will be essentially useless post patch, as all the manufacturing costs will have changed in some way or another.  Looks like I have some work to do!

Crius - Increasing costs of T2 manufacturing

Crius - Reprocessing

Before Crius arrives on the 22nd, I decided to log on and conduct some tests at some Outposts.

If you haven’t looked through the patch notes in detail, I’d suggest you do so by clicking here, things are changing quite a bit to say the least.

Firstly, you should know that the new interface is gorgeous – it has nice animations when you click on things, although it can suffer a little bit from lag if you have lots of blueprints and locations to view. If you were here when the unified inventory was introduced, you can probably get the idea, although it’s nowhere near that bad and can only get better through CCP’s ongoing polishing.

Reprocessing:

Firstly, let’s look at what used to be called refining, and is has now been called reprocessing. Firstly, I’d like to hold my hands up here and say that I’m a little confused as to why it’s now called reprocessing rather than refining. The Oxford Dictionary description of reprocessing is “Process (something, especially spent nuclear fuel) again or differently, typically in order to reuse it” and for refining it is “Remove impurities or unwanted elements from (a substance), typically as part of an industrial process“.

Ok, so in Eve you actually use the same menu option to both refine, ore and ice for example, and reprocess, mission runners reprocessing modules looted from mission wrecks or the mineral compression favourite 425mm Railgun I. However with how yields are changing, the amount of modules and things other than ore and ice that will actually be reprocessed should drop sharply, as even with maximum skills you will get a very poor return of minerals from those invested in building the item. However, refining ore and ice will actually yield more minerals than previously in specific situations, such as using one of the reprocessing arrays at a POS or with an upgraded Minmatar Outpost.

I decided to use the most simple example in the form of Veldspar for my tests. I went out and mined 10,000 units of the stuff on Tranquillity, and purchased some at 100 ISK per unit from the seeded market on Singularity at an Amarr Factory Outpost in null sec space. For reference, my skills in reprocessing aren’t perfect… well actually for the current way of working they are perfect, as I have both Refining and Refinery Efficiency to 5, and all of the ore specific skills to 4. I also usually have a 4% implant in slot 8 that covers any gaps.

So, on Tranquillity I went to a Minmatar Outpost that has been upgraded to level 1 and refined my Veldspar. The result, rather unsurprisingly, was 30,000 units of Tritanium. Hooray, the system works. Next, I logged onto Singularity and acquired Veldspar, 2% and 4% reprocessing yield implants and got to work.

The image above shows the amount I got, with no reprocessing implant plugged in, at the Amarr Outpost. The image also shows the nice UI and demonstrates how you can have multiple things selected for reprocessing. This is, obviously, less than the amount you can get now – well actually it’s infinitely more, as an un-upgraded Amarr Outpost currently can’t refine anything.

I then plugged in a 2% implant and tried again, which yielded 28,916 units of Tritanium, and switching to a 4% implant gave me 29,483. Even with an implant I couldn’t get to the current “perfect” level, and if I were to train all of the ore specific skills from 4 to 5, I’d need to invest 178 days of training time to do so. If I did though, I’d achieve 30,029 Tritanium in an un-upgraded non-Minmatar Outpost. Not too shabby.

Next up is the Minmatar Outpost, which in this case has been upgraded 1 level for reprocessing.

The above result is without an implant, and already shows that we’re getting more than we previously could have. Adding a 2% implant takes us to 31,229 and the 4% yields 31,841 Tritanium. If my ore specific skills were at 5, that would give a maximum of 32,431, which is 8.1% more than we currently can get. In fact, if you had a fully upgraded Minmatar Outpost with maximum skills and the 4% implant, you’d be able to get 36,034 units of Tritanium, which is a massive 20.1% more than we currently get. Although the ISK investment is massive, if you do serious amounts of reprocessing then the payback won’t take too long at all.

This could be a serious driver for conflict in the future, and if you rent space then expect these Outposts to either have a high tax imposed on them; a high rental value; or both.

Now the bit I’m not a huge fan of – the reprocessing arrays that can be anchored at a POS. They come in two flavours: normal and intensive, with base reprocessing values of 52% and 54%. Immediately this seems rather unfair – you’ve spent billions of ISK buying and deploying a Minmatar Service Outpost in the nether regions of known space, and some upstart plants a small POS at a moon in hi-sec and gets the same refine rate than you do. You spend several billion ISK more only to find out that he’s swapped it to a different POS module that, once again, matches your massive space installation.

This to me, is simply wrong. I tested both arrays out, and the results, with my skills and testing the implants, demonstrated the point. Unless you plan to spend tens of billions of ISK deploying and upgrading a Minmatar Outpost to level 2 or higher, you might as well try and get into either a Caldari or Amarr Outpost instead and just use an Intensive Reprocessing Array at a POS. I personally think this is a shame, but CCP probably have good reasons, and those reasons are probably aimed purely at the hi-sec industry groups, however as somebody who’s spent lots of time in hi-sec (and pretty recently too), manufacturing in null sec is not without its own costs and, as CCP’s mantra goes, risk = ISK.

TLDR – lovely interface; upgrade those Minmatar Outposts now; reprocessing arrays are unbalanced

Crius - Reprocessing