Quick one this week, and late, too. I debated writing this one at all, as for the most part Sugar Kyle and Xander Phoena have said pretty much everything I want to say and the temptation to say “just check them out” is rather extreme. But Sugar sort of shamed me into at least putting something on paper this morning, so here we are.
Incidentally, Sugar Kyle and Xander Phoena have said pretty much everything I want to say, so just check them out. Special attention to the notes about the first CSM9 Town Hall (June 22nd at 1900), the fact that we’re planning to do another “Little Things” campaign sometime Soon™ so visit the thread and post your little things! If you’ve never seen or done this, be sure to check out CCP Karkur’s post about proper formatting first. Xander also catalogued the multitude of appearances this week; Sugar Kyle’s open Q&A on Eve Uni Mumble, Xander’s own appearance there later in the week, Ali Aras’ weekly space hangouts (which I made it onto this without crashing this time, hooray!), and Corbexx and Major JSilva along with CCP Leeloo and Falcon for an interview on Capstable, which is very much worth the listen. Or so I’m told, as I’ve only just once again been reminded that I need to throw it on my phone so I can listen.
For this week’s “what’s the CSM think about X?” I’m going to point at this post, allowing mining and reacting in 0.4. Overall reactions are pretty evenly split between “Oh god, moongoo prices will crash and our alliance income with it”, “Oh god, moongoo prices and thus Tech II prices and thus Tech II margins will crash”, and “Mwahaha, now I get to have cheap Tech II AND gloat over those evil moon owners losing isk.” There’s also a little bit of nonsensical conspiracy nonsense coming from the usual parties alleging that Goons dropped towers on those moons ahead of time. Could the accusing parties get in touch and let me know where, exactly? I don’t see any Goonwaffe towers on 0.4 moons, which makes it an altcorp, and that makes it someone who owes taxes!
Anyway, I’ll leave you to figure out who’s dumb enough to believe it (spoilers, I’m sure he’s “just trolling”) and answer the question. What do I think?
I’m fine with it.
“But mynnna, your coalition’s income hinges on moons and any new ones is a threat to that! Aren’t you supposed to be more selfish than that?”
*ahem*
Obviously I’m concerned about protecting moongoo prices – crashing moongoo prices means crashing Tech II prices, which runs the risk of lowering the raw isk to be made from building it, which would be… bad. Fortunately for reality, there are something like 170,000 currently mineable moons. There are about 11,000 moons that will become potentially mineable in Crius, which is an additional 6.5%. That’s not an additional 6.5% R64 moons, though – Lowsec regions realistically have about a third as many R64s as Nullsec regions, so it’s reasonable to figure more like two percent. Hard to get concerned over that number considering that it’s probably smaller than the demand increase that we’ll see from people trying out invention after the changes. Or to twist the knife, smaller than the increase in material requirements that Tech II blueprint owners are going to be seeing…
A few months ago I wrote a post rather crassly mocking all the “sky is falling” types predicting the demise of highsec industry by pointing out just how many job-hours goes into industry in the game. At the time I made an estimate for Tech II module production, but used ships only for my estimate, as I had numbers to back them up. The combined number, though, was something like 45,000 production-days per day, or about 3450 years of production every 28 day period. As it turns out, I was wrong about that – I was low, by almost 40%. Funny how being wrong can make you more right, isn’t it?
Anyway. Two more “just today” things. First, I made an unprompted, industry related suggestion that I hope gets picked up for Crius. I’d share, and since I suggested it, I’m pretty sure I’d be allowed to… but I’d rather it be a surprise. If they pick it up and use it, I’ll say then. And second, if you want to use a POS in highsec after the changes but are concerned about defending it, think about supporting this post.
Until next week~
The Third N 
To give a little detail on the ‘little things’ thing, Foxfour is currently coordinating an SSO trial which I, amongst a fair number of other 3rd party devs, am part of.
Once that’s up and running, I’ll be putting together a site to manage a little things/medium things submission and voting. Display will be on csm9.org, though anything authenticated it will be on fuzzwork.co.uk (so it’s properly protected with https.)
Initially it’ll be hooked up to SiSi for authentication, but as all you good folks are testing stuff on SiSi, that’s not a problem, right? :)
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“What’s the CSM think about X?”
That’s something I don’t think any CSM member has done before. Maybe that’s something you should do. To differentiate your CSM blog posts from that of others.
Take a hot-button topic (or any topic) and discuss it with your CSM people. Then turn it into post, explaining where all of the CSM stand on a particular issue. That should be doable without crossing any NDA lines.
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Maybe, I dunno. Would generally prefer to let them say where they stand, but if they’re okay with it, perhaps.
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You can always keep it in a format similar to those “CZ Minutes” that Xander does, so that they get to keep their words, without anything being edited in or out. (Even though I don’t really like that particular format, it probably works regarding “What’s the CSM think about …”)
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1
Suggestion: Add another ‘sort by’ option using “power slots”
Keywords: ui, inventory
Note: So new players can identify what items will fit in an empty slot
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I found it extremely frustrating that there was no easy way to sort low, mid and high power slot modules in a way that would help fit my ship…In fact, I believe alot of my poor fitting choices stemmed from not being able to visual my options beyond that which i had been used to fitting into certain slots by limited n00b memory.
2
Suggestion: Add another tab in station information showing agents residing there
Keywords: agents, info sheets
Note: so players can explore the complete options available at a station for services offered
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I found it strange that immersion could be enhanced so much by having agents be searchable via actually looking at the station information instead of the abstract ‘agent finder’ (now ingame not just grismar.net of olde)
254)
Suggestion: Audio notification when ore hold is full or mining crystal depleted
Keywords: audio, notifications
Note: self explanatory
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Nearly all other actions in game such as running out of charges or an asteroid being depleted announce themselves except for your mining lasers/strip miners deactivating due to a full hold or a mining crystal being consumed.
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Post them in the little things thread. :)
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did. i think i was 904th reply to that one
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With regards to high-sec POS defense, your suggestions clearly benefit corporations who have the man power to man the defenses during an attack. How do you propose helping smaller industrial corporations who either have less people or only a single time zone worth of coverage.
It seems to me that if you forgo adding an additional laboratory or array and instead put up defenses, those defenses should be useful in the event that the attack occurs while you’re sleeping, for example.
A comment from the same thread illustrates my point: “PoS defences are joke these days. You can easily take out a fully defended pos in HS these days little more then a small group of BS’s with next to no effort.
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So a couple of things. Someone taking down a “fully defended Highsec pos” with “just a small group of BS” is not doing it with “next to no effort”. They’re going to be there for hours, especially if it’s hardened, and if it’s got enough guns to count as “fully armed”, even in their current state, there going to be at their keyboards, with remote reps or logistics in attendance. The sort of pos you can take down with a small group and “next to no effort” isn’t armed to begin with, or is so lightly armed (3-4 guns?) that taking the defenses out is trivial.
If you do arm your tower, though, the even with the lock delay, it’s going to deter a a casual attack, and if they buff the EHP like I’d suggest, defanging the tower would be a bit harder. So, there’s that benefit. But ultimately, POS have a reinforced timer for a reason, and it’s to give you time to prep if it’s attacked while you’re asleep or whatever.
At the end of the day though, no one should get automated defenses that are just as potent as manned ones. A global stat buff is fine, though, since the gun AI doesn’t focus fire and swaps targets randomly already.
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