CSM9: Week Five

Another short one this week. First thing – the elephant in the room, so to speak. Nothing I can say is going to change anything about events of this week. I don’t have anything to gain by taking CCP to task, either, and in fact believe I’ve more to gain (especially when criticism is required) by engaging CCP privately and professionally – not publicly. You’re welcome to disagree, but if you’re hoping to see such criticisms, you will nevertheless have to go elsewhere.

Kronos dropped on Tuesday, which means it’s been a relatively quiet week on the development front. Our meetings have been far more interesting. Early in the week we met with CCP Seagull about the development process of EVE. I can’t say a whole lot about it, as is often the (frustrating, yes) case, but we’re collectively pretty excited.

One of the other meetings I can talk a little bit more about. It was with Team Space Glitter. They’ve been quite frank at fanfest & other venues that the tools available are… lacking… and one of their primary mandates is fixing that. No one expects it to be an easy task, but it is one very worth doing. In the meantime, though, they’re looking to echo the work of CCP Karkur and her endless and laudable annihilation of “little things”. While I think a more formal manner of gathering these is something necessary for the future, we’re all going about it our own ways for now. I have a general feedback form on my blog here, which I invite you to use. “Little things”, in context, would be something like “This 3/10 complex has a MWD restriction” or “This mission doesn’t drop the loot it’s supposed to. For my own part, I’d be particularly interested in hearing about ratting anomalies. If one type of anomaly or another in your part of space seems considerably more difficult, time consuming, or less valuable than what should be another anomaly, let me know why.

Moving forward, Kronos is launched, and while some of the teams will undoubtedly be working out any kinks or bugs, the rest are forging onward to the release of Crius, just over five weeks away. The content of the patch is pretty much locked at this point (no, angry PL posters of that thread, you’ll have to wait a couple months for the complete invention overhaul and yes, it WILL happen) but plenty of testing remains. Crius will be deployed to SiSi on June 10th, so I strongly encourage anyone interested (newly or otherwise) in industry to get on and try everything out.

On that same note (speaking of “angry PL posters of that thread”) – what Crius is is an overhaul of the research and industry system that is primarily focused on Tech I production. What Crius is not and at this point, cannot be (see aforementioned “locked” post) is an Invention overhaul. Invention is getting some attention, yes, but it’s primarily by-products of attention at the Tech I level:

• Tech I copy times were reduced below Tech I build times across the board to give Tech I producers additional ways to optimize their cashflow, but it allows Invention to be made less “clicky” by increasing build and especially invention times without affecting overall throughput.
• Furthering the above, Invention will only consume a single run of a BPC now, rather than max runs, which further reduces its reliance on copying.
• Extra materials have been eliminated, because they’re not affected by Material research, which makes them confusing. The nature of negative levels of Material Efficiency means Invention would be hit especially hard, thus Invention is being rebased to produce BPCs with positive ME.

But to reiterate: that’s not everything planned for invention, and the teams working on Industry now move to Invention next. Feel free to be as cynical as you want. That Guardian article, as florid as its storytelling may have been, does demonstrate why there’s reasonable historical reason to feel that way. On the other hand, working with CCP over this past year has left me with little reason to doubt the claim “the invention overhaul is coming next.”

See you on sisi!