Wednesday, May 8, 2013

My Little Corner of the Cluster

So ice changes, they are a coming.  Not sure how this is going to shake out.  Jester wrote an interesting take on why it might be a good idea to remove ice from high sec in the long run, and why it's ok for prices to go up.  I disagree.

First there is the problem of POSes.  For small group and industrial groups working in non-null space, the cost and effort of maintaining POSes is not insignifigant, and any real consideration of running one has to balance the cost of fuel against the potential profits from running said POS.  For a medium or large, this is already a bit of a constraint for some players, at least from an initial setup and first few months of run time.  Especially if you live in HS or LS.  In high sec you can only do so much at a POS, and in low sec you have to manage the supply chain of getting the damn blocks to your towers.  You don't have the same intel channels and blue donut protecting you.  You also don't have the same level of juicy targets to distract would-be attackers.

Second, you have the issue of inflation or across the board price increases, and the resulting impact on players who want to do research and invention.  Raise the cost of doing business, and everything else goes up in cost.  This brilliantly follows Malcanis's Law that any changes hurt new players more than old players.  Those who have a POS, an industry chain, and/or an income stream can probably just tweak prices.  For newer players, you have just raised the bar to entry on the POS, via fuel, and many of the income sources for players, by making the ships and modules that facilitate isk making more expensive.  Especially for new players who do not have access (via skills and standings) or money for the missions and ships that can easily print money.  Increased POS costs will result in increased invention costs, which will result in increased T2 costs for hulls and modules.  Overall, this will serve to depress new player ability to engage in PvE or PvP, or at least slow down the process of gearing up and moving on to the next step of the missioning/mining/exploring efficiency equation.

I understand that the price of ice affects many things going on in null and low sec, such as strategic POS placement, null industry (hee hee), cap production, and anything involving jumping ships through cynos.  So by increasing the cost of POSes, you can increase the cost of caps and super caps moving around the cluster.  This second thing may be good, I'm not sure.  But if you want to make cynos more expensive, maybe the fuel for cynos and the fuel for POSes should be two different things?

If the goal is to slow down the cynos of veteran players, maybe there is a solution that doesn't make the game comparatively more difficult for those who don't use cynos, or don't care to get involved in the affairs of null or low sec.  That group that doesn't care, they are the largest player base in Eve.  They live in high sec, low sec, and wormholes.  Let's not make the game harder on the majority just to address the minority.

1 comment:

  1. ok, lets break this down for everyone.

    First:

    A small POS will cost around 80-90M per month in fuel.
    Small: 10 blocks / hour, 7200 / 30 days

    A medium POS will cost around 150-175M per month in fuel.
    Medium: 20 blocks / hour, 14400 / 30 days

    A large POS will cost around 300-350M per month in fuel.
    Large: 40 blocks / hour, 28800 / 30 days

    The Volume per block is 0.01m3

    Faction towers require somewhat less fuel overall than a non-faction tower of the same size.

    Mining your own ice, specific to the faction of control tower you own, and manufacturing your own fuel blocks can reduce fuel expenses by about 40 percent. With a decent refine skill set, good mining skills and a well fit Hulk this should only take you a handful of hours per month. When the new changed hit that time to mine that will be halved. There in no problem here.

    Second:

    This change is not to hurt new players. This change is to balance the game. If you want a quick read you can go read my blog about this but to make things easy for you this is not the first time CCP has made changes to the Ice in game. They did in the past and it was for the good of the game and so is this change.

    Also, new players are not into putting up POS's and running the T2 hulls because they lack the skills to do such things. By the time they can build the hulls, properly use the pos, heck even really USE the POS they are no longer a new player. There is no entry bar for new players to the POS path.

    Finally,

    If you can afford a super cap you already have the POS's setup and everything else you mentioned is a moot point.

    How do I know this?

    My corp, GetCo, this is what we do. We are not in a super block. We are not in a WH alliance. We are private. All we do is Ice and all the related logistics with that process. We see all these changes are good things. The current process needs to be changed and this is a very good second step in that process.

    And for those that are TL:DR
    CCP would not intentionally do anything that would break the ICE mechanics in the game. This change NEEDS to be done. The can easily LATER correct POS fuels IF THEY NEED to with simple changes to the fuel block BPO. As for the super caps they can do the same thing, change the fuel consumption to adjust for the markets. There are many ways to make everything work. You just need to try to see the larger picture is all.

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