Crius Industry Stream - June 11th - Initial Impressions

I cheated and dropped in on Ali Arias's day-of stream to get a first look before my first scheduled stream.  Thanks to Salpun and Ali, got to work through the biggest bugs.

The goal of this first stream was just to stretch out and try the new features.  No particular stress test, no grandiose goals... just see how it works, and jot down some first impressions.  Also, it's been quite a while since I've done any significant beta testing, so it was an exercise in getting notes set up out-of-game.

Bug Report

Being so fresh, everyone should expect the experience to be a little choppy.  I'm going to keep my report to the things that might stop you from testing something yourself, or is otherwise a glaring known issue.  To keep up on rollout, I suggest EVE Manufacturing's blog

Numbers Are Wrong

:Math: is not to be trusted right now.  Currently everything is in a "does it work" status.  I ran into a bunch of hilariously wrong numbers, but don't take those values as truth.  I expect that as the mechanics work themselves out, the devs will focus on the actual balance of stuff.  Also, I noticed things like POS bonuses were not applying, but that might be fixed sooner than the rest.

Also, it's worth noting the job cost equations are not properly seeded either.  I have an expectation that the "earn more geckos" event in May was to seed the internal databases with activity levels.  We should see "mostly right" numbers coming to Singularity.  I wouldn't cry fowl about the price of things being screwy due to Singularity prices being 100isk for everything.

Installing Personal Jobs Is Broken

There is a bug that personal industry jobs can't be installed due to wallet weirdness.  I expect this bug to be fixed very soon.

Teams Are Not Usable Yet

The Teams UI is in the industry tool, but bidding/acquiring/using teams is not enabled yet.  Also, utilizing Teams with the math is broken does not give us enough useful data right now.

First Impressions

The new UI is very pretty.  I think it's by-and-large a step up.  There are a lot of little weirdness that I can't tell if it's bug or feature, but I expect the mechanical portions of installing jobs to solidify rather quickly.  I am hoping they smooth out a lot of the asset update hiccups, because last night's build did not like moving things around.

Compared to the old UI, I'm extremely impressed.  Most of the 1-step kind of work is a much improved.  There is a lot of information available for the amateur or tinkerer.  I still worry that high activity industry is going to be obnoxious.  I want to push through the initial novelty and put the new UI through its paces so I can better judge how industry will feel in the long run.

Also, I'd like to put kudos out there for the facility selector.  I liked how it slurped in POS equipment, and shows everything everywhere with a pretty simple HUD.  Again, I am worried how it will play with heavy-activity work, but at first glance it's a big step up from the old UI.

As for things I didn't like; the job UI is huge.  It doesn't fit well in a minimum-height window layout, and will make industry on a laptop kinda obnoxious.  Also, I would like to see a few more readouts for price information.  They are currently hidden in mouseover tooltips, but I would prefer if the estimated value was displayed along with the charges.

Feature Requests

Didn't get a chance to push all of this to the forums like I intended, but I'll go ahead and post my notes.

• “In use” BP’s should filter to the bottom?
• Need better means to force refresh on the industry pannel
• Design Lab: Copy/Invent
• Research lab: ME/TE research
• Hyasyoda: ME/TE research
• Moving BPOs around is painful:
• Cannot start job with BPO in container
• Cannot update inventory when BPO moved to another hangar location
• cannot “drag and drop” BP’s around inventory
• Facility infopane:
• Don’t like the text being so small
• Also don’t like the spacing between icon/text
• Would like click to highlight in facility list
• Skill requirements:
• Shows green book when zero skills are required
• Does not show affect of skills on outcome (does on mouseover)
• T2 outcome selection
• Not a fan of drop down. Perhaps side-by-side icons?
• Would prefer if ME/TE adjustments happened in circle like the outcome probabilty
• Decryptor icons are ambiguous. Should show text in BOM window
• Skills should differentiate between ‘required” and “current”
• Jobs report: should show materials being used (help differentiate jobs)
• Jobs report: should still have text of output, not just BP icon
• Install delay is pretty long (>10s). Should be <1s
• Invention needs an “outcome” column
• No way to sort original/copies in blueprint view
• Would like sort-by-valid-activity
• Would prefer view to show both mfg/research jobs utilized/remaining

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Crius Industry Streams - Take2

Note: Dates are subject to change due to CCP release schedules or IRL conflicts

I know I fell off the wagon lately for streaming, but when CCP announced they were delaying the Kronos Industry Changes to Crius, I kinda lost the reasons to stream.  Now, with Crius test release strongly scheduled for June 10th, I can revamp the schedule and deliver direct commentary about the brave new world being released.

Again, the loose schedule is:
Mon: 0100-0300
Wed: 0100-0300
Fri: 0200?-0300
Sat -or- Sun: 1800-?

Officially, make sure to subscribe to the calendar below for any last-minute changes or conflicts.  Lately, I've been expecting to start EVE activities at 0200 rather than 0100, but I can rejigger my work schedule as long as there is content to actually stream.

Also, keep tuned to the calendar and my twitter (@hlibindustry) to see if I can score special guests or special theme nights.  I won't know the more specific schedule until I really get my hands around how much work there is to do.  Expect more information as it becomes available.

UPDATE: CCP Nullarbor has promised to be handy in the chat channel in the streams.

Tune in live at: http://www.twitch.tv/hlibindustry
Broadcasts will be available on YouTube after each stream



Calendar Ical
Calendar xml
Calendar API: sba58uk9hk74r2s9fuiaivnlrg@group.calendar.google.com

Reinventing the Wheel - Industry Tools

As I have repeated in my previous postings, EVERYTHING is changing in industry.  Though some of my existing tools could probably be re-kludged to work going forward, this is as good a chance as any to get off the crutches and move forward into a real sustainable tool.

If you don't believe me, it's worth watching the Industry and Economy panels together:

Bringing Lessons Forward

I am still immensely proud of my zkb.py module.  It remains a touchstone for me of how to design something that is actually maintainable and easy to drop into new projects.  I can easily drop KB scraping into any project, and spend time leveraging the data rather than fighting the API.  Going forward, I want to repeat this slim and modular style, so I can mix and match parts going forward.

I am terrible at learning these lessons on the first pass.  I usually opt for a "make it work" mentality over a "make it pretty" and I have paid for it over and over.  Thankfully I have a lot of good parts and (hopefully) enough experience to try and avoid the straight-path pitfalls that have left me with so much unsustainable, bloated, spaghetti code in the past.

The theme for the next set of tools will be "building blocks".  I've achieved a lot of these prototypes in my spreadsheets, and I need to be bringing those pieces forward rather than writing custom tools for everything.  The added benefit of modules rather than monoliths is recyclable code.  As and example, if I can get a sustainable BPO module class set, I can tie it together with kill data for "materials destroyed" reporting.

Fortune Favors the Bold

https://github.com/lockefox/EVE-Prosper/tree/master/Kronos

BPO Handler

As I said, the goal is "building blocks" and as such, I will first focus on rebuilding my blueprints handler.  The day-0 goal for Kronos is to replace my terrible kit builder, because the first need moving forward is accurate cost/material-quantity reporting.  Those two functions represent the largest player-time investments on my plate as an industrialist.  

Previously, I had tried to make a SDE scraper that could be run per-expansion and output a middle layer file that could be slurped into a bigger tool set.  I am not sure if this is still the most sustainable thing going forward, because a read-only DB should be relatively cheap... but with BPO material requirements becoming MUCH simplified, I may also include this method again.

System Handler/Teams Handler

The next immediate goal will be to accurately estimate install costs.  Since resources will be system-level, it will be useful to design a system object to track these inputs.  I expect to write both a gdoc JS script and a Python module for this data.  The men will be separated from the boys on quick, accurate, and reliable cost predictions.  

Teams will be largely manual in REV0, but I am hoping @RegnerBA lives up to his promises of an API dedicated to Teams.  I expect the initial prototype to be largely discarded for a more extensive REV1.

Front End?

Marcel has opened up Aideron Robotics tool development to corp members.  I am hoping to take a little time between getting a stable base tool and developing a front end to really hammer on some UI stuff.  I have an unnatural fear of UIs that I should really overcome, and D3JS + Bootstrap should allow me to finally leave the spreadsheet nest and upgrade my graphpr0n prowess outside of JMP.  But until I have some foundation and am able to spin up heavy industry to a point I like it, I doubt I will spend much time on front end stuff.

Kronos Streams: Schedule update

As of this morning, Kronos is not on Singularity yet.  Rather than repeat and speculate with nothing to show yet, I won't be streaming tonight.  Also, I have a conflict on Friday, so though I could probably make the originally promised 0200 broadcast time, it will be a tight fit.  I am also going to add a Saturday or Sunday stream for anyone who can't make the weekday streams.  I know these are a weird/late TZ for most.

NEW Schedule (dates are US): 

• Weds 5/7: CANCELED
• Friday 5/9: TENTATIVE 0200-0400
• Sunday 5/11: 1800-?
• Monday 5/12: 0200-0400
• Weds 5/14: 0200-0400
• 5/16-5/19: likely no streams

Adding a Google calendar so I can update the schedule without having to write a new blog post.  It's a hectic season IRL.

Kronos Stream Log - May 5th

For those who were not able to tune in, and don't really want to watch a ~2hr raw recap, I'm publishing stream minutes here as a TL;DR service.  The header will be sources of information (devblogs, eve-o forum, tweets, etc), the body will include minutes covered, and the post will conclude with opinions and a link to the raw stream.

Dev Blogs

• Reprocessing
• Manufacturing
• UI
• ME/PE/TE
• Job Costs
• Teams
• Ore Yields

Dev Posts

• ME Bonuses at POS
• POS Breakdown
• API For new data (Teams, job multiplier): Follow @RegnerBA

Stream Minutes

Kronos build was not released to Singularity yet.  Instead, I walked through each of the devblogs and my personal reactions.  Below are some boiled down explanations.  I tried to keep each section to 10mins.

Reprocess All The Things

This blog sets the tone for all the changes:

1. There will no longer be such a thing as "perfect" in any segment of industry
2. Every method/trick of industry will need to be reevaluated
3. Not every activity should be sustainable in every type of space - Grayscale

These are the points you should keep in mind when evaluating the industry changes as a whole.  Reprocessing stands to break "solo capital" building and much of solo mission running.  It also stands to boost most of traditional mining.  The new compression mechanics are the most interesting part; these will lead to a compressed ore market that functions only loosely based on the raw mineral market.

Building Better Worlds

The manufacturing changes are, again, a place that turns the entire industry paradigm on its head.  With the end to slots, factory needs become much flatter.  NPC space vs POS space will become a much more transparent choice, rather than a "if you want to do X, you MUST use a POS".  For more of my direct feelings see my post on the matter.

Industry UI

Honestly, I glossed over this devblog.  I have no business designing or talking about designing UIs, so I feel completely inadequate reviewing them without putting my hands on the process.  The interesting thing to note is any job installed can be reinstalled with one click.  Said another way, invention becomes much less of a click fest.

Though, I'd like to raise some argument against CCP's evaluation that traditional Science & Industry ("Building Things") is a purely solo activity.  I strongly believe that T2 manufacturing benefits from cooperative gameplay.  I am biased, having run two cooperative T2 corps in my tenure, but it's laughably inaccurate to not include at least a half-circle for T2 industry.

Researching the Future

If I may gush for a second, I REALLY like these changes.  Much like when Learning skills were removed from the game, I was hesitant at first, but I have really come around to the changes.  The mechanic fits better into the world, the math is far more transparent, and the quality of a BPO is now completely obvious.

It was pointed out in the chat room that a research/build/research cycle methodology is going away.  With exponential time per level, it will be a lot less prudent to research this way.  Also, with the levels getting longer, it presents a larger POS risk, since that +1 might cost 30 days, and it will be painful to cancel that kind of job.  On the other hand, NPC research is going to actually become a thing, so high-value research might return to NPC space, at a premium cost.

The Price of Change

This one is a doozy, and I'm going to need to fiddle with it live to completely solidify my ideas about it.  Simply put, EVERY job will cost something to install, and that cost will be related to the raw-material cost of that product.  It will behoove builders to spread wide away from hubs to save money on install costs.

The install equation should make lowsec capital producers cheer though.  With the "activity multiplier" being balanced against "system build resources", lowsec stands to have some wins in this equation over nullsec.  

Also, it was pointed out that this is a significant ISK sink.  I am no traditional economist, but this makes me worry slightly.  My calculations point to this being bigger than all the other sinks combined.  I agree that CCP needs more levers to destroy ISK from the game, but this stands to be a bludgeon, not a scalpel.  

Industry Teams

I know that a lot of the community was eagerly anticipating this to be a cooperative mechanic.  Instead, CCP delivered a rather weird modifier mechanic.  Again, since this is such a weird mechanic, I have to hold off full reactions until I get my hands on them.  I can sum up my reaction as: "I like them... but".

As they are proposed today, Teams stand to be weirdly leveraged at release.  Highsec people might have the largest bidding power, but nullsec will have the greatest utilization potential.  Through organization, the best teams will most likely be shipped out to nullsec, with middle/low teams being slurped up by really ambitious industrialists.

The iteration targets have me filled with hope, but the release as-is is a little lacking.  Without a means to have exclusive control, or to groom teams for my actual needs, these are going to be a weird mechanic to leverage in the short term.

Stream Notes

The theme I'll be beating into the ground on these streams is "Everything you knew is wrong."  The changes are so sweeping and broad, it's easiest to consider industry independently in Pre-Kronos vs Post-Kronos terms.  Trying to talk about these changes as "just tweak X and continue as normal" is not going to fly.  If you want to prosper going forward, you will need to redesign your industrial operation from the ground up.

This episode is just meant to be a top-level view of the changes.  Since we're treating the changes as a completely new process to industry, you can't optimize what you don't understand.  In the following episodes, we will dig down into specifics as they become available.  In my own notes, I am writing more specific schedules and priorities for the future streams up to release.

Where to Watch

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Stream Notes on Google Docs