Balatro on the iPad is Perfection
20 hours ago
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Turbulence
Just warning you guys that my posts (not to mention my presence in game) will be iffy for the next 2-3 weeks - vacation - friends over from out of town - etc... etc... etc...
Monday, June 28, 2010
Weekends in wormholes
The guys from Thursday stayed around for friday. After confirming that the one guy we had a bead on was still in system, we eventually setup a bait hauler. Sure enough he bit (addressing the question in local: yes I was insulting your intelligence, but you bit anyways, amazing that...). So coz switched ships and warped in a hurricane onto the Arazu. Sure enough, Falcon and Pilgrim uncloak and strangely enough I managed to warp the bait hauler out (that did surprise me). They did however get Coz good and solid. Unfortunately we did not have the forces (pilots and ships setup for anti-Falcon work) at that moment to go after 3 cloaky recons. So the plan was to work on that the next day. They had left by Saturday evening though.
Got a newbie over the weekend. Since we live in wormhole space his learning curve just hit vertical. On the flip side we're providing pitons and ropes so it's not quite so insurmountable. "These are sleepers - they hit hard". Extra eyes and tackle frigates are always appreciated.
Progress (with ongoing material losses nach) is being made on the P4 front. I finally managed to pop two POS hardeners in some high sec manufacturing slots and this morning managed to get them and ship them to my POS. So my first end product made out of PI materials have been manufactured. I didn't get a lot of sites done last night but that's cool, I need to get some more PI worked out on my alts. That will be the objective this week.
Got a newbie over the weekend. Since we live in wormhole space his learning curve just hit vertical. On the flip side we're providing pitons and ropes so it's not quite so insurmountable. "These are sleepers - they hit hard". Extra eyes and tackle frigates are always appreciated.
Progress (with ongoing material losses nach) is being made on the P4 front. I finally managed to pop two POS hardeners in some high sec manufacturing slots and this morning managed to get them and ship them to my POS. So my first end product made out of PI materials have been manufactured. I didn't get a lot of sites done last night but that's cool, I need to get some more PI worked out on my alts. That will be the objective this week.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Ganked - yawn.
I got ganked in w-space last night in one of my Covetors. Interesting, you get over 6mil for an un-insured Covetor now. I approve. Amusingly this is actually the first Covetor I've ever lost. Admittedly I wasn't paying enough attention. And I'm pretty suspicious that the guy had pre-scanned the grav belt. Dual pointed Arazu that waited for the hauler to be warping in before ganking both the Covetor and the hauler. Ex-goon so no real surprise he destroyed the wrecks and the jet cans. Patient so and so.
The fun may continue since I confirmed he was still in in system. We'll see.
Meanwhile. Although I still haven't actually built any item with P4, I've now got around 70% of my initial 4 P4 items built - 3 of which will be used for the first pos modules I am planning to build (some hardeners). The losses due to the downtime material blasting bug continue un-abated. Some people are reporting massive losses of PI materials due to the extended downtime. Good thing I planned around it.
The fun may continue since I confirmed he was still in in system. We'll see.
Meanwhile. Although I still haven't actually built any item with P4, I've now got around 70% of my initial 4 P4 items built - 3 of which will be used for the first pos modules I am planning to build (some hardeners). The losses due to the downtime material blasting bug continue un-abated. Some people are reporting massive losses of PI materials due to the extended downtime. Good thing I planned around it.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
And someone dropped the web server
TQ is moving today. The original schedule had the web site coming back up at 15:00 UTC. It's 15:01 at the moment and the site shows 16:00 as the time for the website to come back up... After a full blown outage of a few minutes...
So, who do you think was the butterfingers who dropped the web server on the way over?
(Incidentally for the humor challenged - that was sarcasm - not a serious guess as to the delay)
So, who do you think was the butterfingers who dropped the web server on the way over?
(Incidentally for the humor challenged - that was sarcasm - not a serious guess as to the delay)
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Ok, so one of the problems IS downtime related
So, using an alt I setup a high sec test bed and decided to do some robotics production from materials I got out of wormhole space. Here is the starting position:
At start
For these purposes we can ignore the extractors feeding the storage that feeds the basic processor that feeds the starport. The important part is that there is raw material in the NE storage (YT-UXT). These are routed to 4 advanced industrial facilities. Two are making Mechanical Parts. The other two are making Consumer Electronics. All the outputs are routed back to the storage. These are in turn routed to the fifth Advanced Industrial Facility to make Robotics. These are then directly routed to the starport. There are enough materials for 20 full cycles of the entire system. All 20 cycles worth of material start off IN the storage.
After Starting it up
This is after everything is kicked off. Note that there are enough materials for 18 cycles in the storage. The 4 advanced industrial facilities producing the P2 materials have a cycle in production and a cycle in the input hoppers. So far all cycles are at least accounted for.
This is the situation just before downtime. 11 cycles of material in the storage. 1 in the 4 P2 processor's production, 1 in the 4 P2's input hoppers, 1 in the P3 production cycle and 6 cycles worth of final P3 output in the starport. Again at this point all materials are accounted for.
Now this is a different situation. It's a half hour after downtime. This is about 3 h and definitely 3 cycles later. Note that we have 8 cycles of materials in the starport as expected. The Production cycles and input hoppers account once again for a total of 3 cycles of material. However there are only 7 cycles at the startport! There should have been 9!... This means that two entire cycles worth of materials have been blown away entirely.
After all cycles have finished
Sure enough there we go at the end of the production run we are missing two entire cycles of output! Thanks CCP!
My guess is that if an output cycle happens exactly when TQ is down the ouput is "lost", but the input is consumed correctly. TQ these days seems to be down for only about 1/2h And you need to be exact about when the cycle hits. This may be why when I started a cycle 5min before downtime it was fine and with no loss. When the next cycle it that time TQ was up. This time I seem to have nailed it.
At startFor these purposes we can ignore the extractors feeding the storage that feeds the basic processor that feeds the starport. The important part is that there is raw material in the NE storage (YT-UXT). These are routed to 4 advanced industrial facilities. Two are making Mechanical Parts. The other two are making Consumer Electronics. All the outputs are routed back to the storage. These are in turn routed to the fifth Advanced Industrial Facility to make Robotics. These are then directly routed to the starport. There are enough materials for 20 full cycles of the entire system. All 20 cycles worth of material start off IN the storage.
After Starting it upThis is after everything is kicked off. Note that there are enough materials for 18 cycles in the storage. The 4 advanced industrial facilities producing the P2 materials have a cycle in production and a cycle in the input hoppers. So far all cycles are at least accounted for.
Before Downtime
This is the situation just before downtime. 11 cycles of material in the storage. 1 in the 4 P2 processor's production, 1 in the 4 P2's input hoppers, 1 in the P3 production cycle and 6 cycles worth of final P3 output in the starport. Again at this point all materials are accounted for.
A half hour after downtime
Now this is a different situation. It's a half hour after downtime. This is about 3 h and definitely 3 cycles later. Note that we have 8 cycles of materials in the starport as expected. The Production cycles and input hoppers account once again for a total of 3 cycles of material. However there are only 7 cycles at the startport! There should have been 9!... This means that two entire cycles worth of materials have been blown away entirely.
After all cycles have finishedSure enough there we go at the end of the production run we are missing two entire cycles of output! Thanks CCP!
My guess is that if an output cycle happens exactly when TQ is down the ouput is "lost", but the input is consumed correctly. TQ these days seems to be down for only about 1/2h And you need to be exact about when the cycle hits. This may be why when I started a cycle 5min before downtime it was fine and with no loss. When the next cycle it that time TQ was up. This time I seem to have nailed it.
Poof
More stuff. Well I was once again unable to reproduce the "destroy the materials" in the production chain on purpose. BUT I was able to get a screen shot of materials disappearing when shipping up to orbit.
What do you mean I don't have enough?!?
Immediately after this shot I moved the 1060 back to the spaceport column and it changed to 1040 and the volume changed. Then I shipped the other two up. Waited 10 and shipped the 1040 up without a problem. But the 20 got plain old blasted to smithereens. WTF CCP? I can understand the existence of the message. In case there was an outgoing route that cycled just after this was pulled up. Slight problem, there is no other outgoing route... So something else is reporting false quantities or some correction algorithm is deleting good quantities when it should not. Either way, this is bad.
What do you mean I don't have enough?!?Immediately after this shot I moved the 1060 back to the spaceport column and it changed to 1040 and the volume changed. Then I shipped the other two up. Waited 10 and shipped the 1040 up without a problem. But the 20 got plain old blasted to smithereens. WTF CCP? I can understand the existence of the message. In case there was an outgoing route that cycled just after this was pulled up. Slight problem, there is no other outgoing route... So something else is reporting false quantities or some correction algorithm is deleting good quantities when it should not. Either way, this is bad.
Monday, June 21, 2010
More clues to the PI bug.
Once again I had some missing materials. Due to something I was checking prior to the losses registering, I think I have a clue as to what is happening. I also had an extraction cycle re-set it self in mid cycle. I.e. I had the planet doing a 23h extraction cycle on all extractors on the planet. I then did something last night and this morning when I went to do the extractors, they showed exactly 11h left to go when they should have been dead. The thing is that what I had done was setup a route for one of 3 materials to a high tech processor. Then before submitting it I hit cancel. Which should mean there would have been no effect. However, this morning, that specific material had 1 cycle of materials missing... After I had exported something else out of storage it was residing in...
This is building up to be a sequence of events to check to see if I can reproduce this event reliably. The good news is that at least after every loss I'm getting closer to being able to reproduce the bug. This is good. The fact it's tricky to reproduce explains how it got missed in development. So careful with that cancel button.
This is building up to be a sequence of events to check to see if I can reproduce this event reliably. The good news is that at least after every loss I'm getting closer to being able to reproduce the bug. This is good. The fact it's tricky to reproduce explains how it got missed in development. So careful with that cancel button.
AT8
I'd like to congratulate Pandemic Legion [-10.0] on their victory in the 8th alliance tournament. I'd also like to congratulate Hydra Reloaded on their 2nd place, and all participants for a great show. Circle of two for having more balls than brains (admittedly humongous balls). If you could get a Freki off the market for 30bil and you wanted to buy one with plexes and you estimated 300mil per plex and 34.99 US$ for each two plexes this works out to around 1750 US$ per Freki. They lost 3. Balls... This tournament made my Matari heart proud. Many good Matari centric squadrons were fielded and they once again proved to be highly effective.
As a side note, One of the reasons we see a lot of matari setups in the alliance tournament and not as many on TQ is a testament to the fact that matari ships are trickier to fly. They tend to need more skills. If you noticed there were both armor and shield setups well represented on the winning side of battles. There's also the fact that there tends to be plenty of mixed weapons systems with rather flexible ships and you get a situation where you need high SP and highly skilled pilots both. The tournament has plenty of highly skilled high SP pilots, so we end up seeing plenty of matari setups. We suffer in PvE and we suffer when we're low SP compared to the other factions but it pays off eventually.
There was also plenty of T3 representation. This is good for my T3 production since the tournament definitely showcased the flexibility of the T3 hulls. There were plenty of original uses and off-standard fits of both the Lokis and the Proteus. The Tengu suffered from it's usual "super Drake" syndrome. A little more originality would be needed there. And the Legion showed it's not as weak as people make it out to be if used properly. Mind you that was Pandemic Legion using it and they've proven they can bring just about any setup to a fight and win.
So once again, congratulations to the winners.
As a side note, One of the reasons we see a lot of matari setups in the alliance tournament and not as many on TQ is a testament to the fact that matari ships are trickier to fly. They tend to need more skills. If you noticed there were both armor and shield setups well represented on the winning side of battles. There's also the fact that there tends to be plenty of mixed weapons systems with rather flexible ships and you get a situation where you need high SP and highly skilled pilots both. The tournament has plenty of highly skilled high SP pilots, so we end up seeing plenty of matari setups. We suffer in PvE and we suffer when we're low SP compared to the other factions but it pays off eventually.
There was also plenty of T3 representation. This is good for my T3 production since the tournament definitely showcased the flexibility of the T3 hulls. There were plenty of original uses and off-standard fits of both the Lokis and the Proteus. The Tengu suffered from it's usual "super Drake" syndrome. A little more originality would be needed there. And the Legion showed it's not as weak as people make it out to be if used properly. Mind you that was Pandemic Legion using it and they've proven they can bring just about any setup to a fight and win.
So once again, congratulations to the winners.
Friday, June 18, 2010
18th Blog Banter
Once again it is time for a blog banter. As is my wont, sometimes I participate, sometimes not. Depends on the question.
Well yes my play style has considerably evolved. From those tentative premature steps into low sec before I was ready (in a hauler - don't ask), to the current wormhole existence (Lokies included), my play style has considerably evolved. All players are guaranteed this. The reason is simple. Your options are rather limited in the beginning when you are restricted to frigates. Things grow from there. The thing to remember, is that once you max out your skills on a particular vessel, it makes you no more nor no less capable in other vessels. But over the years, as skills pile up skill plan by skill plan you unlock more and more capabilities. These never go away. So you always keep your old capabilities as you add layers on layers.
There is also the attitude shift as you progress through the game. From the indignation of getting your ore stolen for the first time to "what is that miner doing not paying attention to the space around him? *squish*". First you must make "peace" with the concept of "write off the ship before you un-dock". Then you must get your mind around the "small corp/alliances can't get involved in big things" and there's nothing wrong with joining a large organization. Also a corp of just newbies is fine in something like a theme park MMO, but not necessarily optimal for EVE. Then there is "Politics count".
Finally there is more combat oriented aspects of the game where you must learn about tracking, tackling, shield vs armor tank, etc, etc, etc. In places EVE is a deep and subtle game. Knowing when to switch from Barrage M to Nuclear M is an acquired skill (which incidentally takes planning to use since you have to be smart enough to make sure your ship has supplies of both to pull it off). Your acquisition of skills, your growing knowledge of the game mechanics, your connections within and without the game. They all feed on each other to change your experience as you go along. How you handle the first big burnout, how you play after that etc etc etc...
One thing that helps enormously is that EVE continues to evolve. I can distinctly remember making the comment a few years ago that "until they let us build towers and stuff like that, they aren't serous about this player run market thing". I'm currently making the items required to manufacture towers. Incarna (whenever gets here) is poised to change things again. The balance between the ships is better than it's been in years. Still some adjustments to make but things are coming along. I look forward to the Rocket fix. I look forward to the assault frigates getting their 4th bonus. Formations, T3 frigates and modules, lag fixes. As each of these additions to the game happens they will continue to change the way we play, newbies and veterans alike.
At some point this fall, I will have reached the milestone where I've played the game for exactly half the amount of time it's been live. Not to mention 50mil skill points at some point soon (I'm at 47.8 atm). In all that time, the game has changed and how I've played it has changed. It keeps it from being stale. It will be interesting how DUST 514 integrates.
Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you've started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance - say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!
Well yes my play style has considerably evolved. From those tentative premature steps into low sec before I was ready (in a hauler - don't ask), to the current wormhole existence (Lokies included), my play style has considerably evolved. All players are guaranteed this. The reason is simple. Your options are rather limited in the beginning when you are restricted to frigates. Things grow from there. The thing to remember, is that once you max out your skills on a particular vessel, it makes you no more nor no less capable in other vessels. But over the years, as skills pile up skill plan by skill plan you unlock more and more capabilities. These never go away. So you always keep your old capabilities as you add layers on layers.
There is also the attitude shift as you progress through the game. From the indignation of getting your ore stolen for the first time to "what is that miner doing not paying attention to the space around him? *squish*". First you must make "peace" with the concept of "write off the ship before you un-dock". Then you must get your mind around the "small corp/alliances can't get involved in big things" and there's nothing wrong with joining a large organization. Also a corp of just newbies is fine in something like a theme park MMO, but not necessarily optimal for EVE. Then there is "Politics count".
Finally there is more combat oriented aspects of the game where you must learn about tracking, tackling, shield vs armor tank, etc, etc, etc. In places EVE is a deep and subtle game. Knowing when to switch from Barrage M to Nuclear M is an acquired skill (which incidentally takes planning to use since you have to be smart enough to make sure your ship has supplies of both to pull it off). Your acquisition of skills, your growing knowledge of the game mechanics, your connections within and without the game. They all feed on each other to change your experience as you go along. How you handle the first big burnout, how you play after that etc etc etc...
One thing that helps enormously is that EVE continues to evolve. I can distinctly remember making the comment a few years ago that "until they let us build towers and stuff like that, they aren't serous about this player run market thing". I'm currently making the items required to manufacture towers. Incarna (whenever gets here) is poised to change things again. The balance between the ships is better than it's been in years. Still some adjustments to make but things are coming along. I look forward to the Rocket fix. I look forward to the assault frigates getting their 4th bonus. Formations, T3 frigates and modules, lag fixes. As each of these additions to the game happens they will continue to change the way we play, newbies and veterans alike.
At some point this fall, I will have reached the milestone where I've played the game for exactly half the amount of time it's been live. Not to mention 50mil skill points at some point soon (I'm at 47.8 atm). In all that time, the game has changed and how I've played it has changed. It keeps it from being stale. It will be interesting how DUST 514 integrates.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
And now we find out
NPC goods sales order just went bye bye for anything related to planetary interaction.
Let the market games begin!
Let the market games begin!
Frustrating
More material losses - still not able to nail the circumstances. That's getting frustrating. In the meanwhile I managed to do some trading within the alliance for some Industrial Fibers. I'll definitively be able to keep production going trading between the wormholes.
I'm beginning to suspect it's not related to what the user does but is some random housekeeping mechanism some crazed developer has setup in the PI code. Whatever it is it's causing very strange results. It turns out I did get some problems yesterday, I just didn't know it until yesterday evening. It also turns out that what ever caused the problem with lost materials also caused a reset of the extractors so that they ran 9 hours longer.... on all my planets!!! WTF CCP?
It's the totally random nature of the problem that's getting to me.
I'm beginning to suspect it's not related to what the user does but is some random housekeeping mechanism some crazed developer has setup in the PI code. Whatever it is it's causing very strange results. It turns out I did get some problems yesterday, I just didn't know it until yesterday evening. It also turns out that what ever caused the problem with lost materials also caused a reset of the extractors so that they ran 9 hours longer.... on all my planets!!! WTF CCP?
It's the totally random nature of the problem that's getting to me.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Quiet - time to get things done.
Last night was a quiet. Alliance plugging away at what it wants to. No intruders in Chaos Central. Trerana still too busy to log on regularly (ya managed to sneak on 2h on Saturday while I wasn't around I see). etc etc etc...
So I took the momentary tranquility to get a lot done. I ripped up and replaced 4 of my 5 Control Centers. I took the opportunity to test out some controlled production on the planetary facilities. This time I had gotten all the scanning of resources out of the way before I did any routing of industrial stuffs. Interestingly enough I have had no losses so far in these batches. So the testing for the cause of the material loss goes on. Further testing: Routing to and from the same storage for the production. Setting up production stuff THEN scanning for new raw materials on the extractors. We'll see if THAT causes any issues. Meanwhile by tomorrow morning I should have all the material for my first P4 run. This should net me 9-10 Nano-Factories.
While waiting on the factories to progress a bit I managed to get a Magnetometric site that another pilot had scanned down but not run cleaned out. 7 Melted Nanoribbons and 7 Wrecked Relics out of that site. Not bad.
I also continued on with reacting gasses to make Polymers. I only have the PPD and the Scandium left to do. PPD is bubbling away as I type and you read.
Speaking of T3, Cozmik finally got all the 38 melted nanoribbons necessary for a full Loki and fit out. So I gave him a list of salvage he would also need to supply and a list of Polymers we were short of and sent him to fetch the missing polymers. I had the rest in stock so was able to sell him those as well as all the blue print runs. I also had him pick up 10 Wrecked Weapon Subroutines so I could reverse engineer the missing T3 Weapon BPC. Luck was with us overnight and I was able to get everything cooking this morning. 1 day 10 h until Cozmik joins the T3 brotherhood. The subsystems of course are done (Subsystem Assembly Array - my tab if you want to pick em up Coz).
So, all in all a pretty calm but industrious evening. I've also decided that the 2nd Loki I've made for myself will be a scout/exploration Loki. When I get around to making the 3rd that one will be pure PvP.
So I took the momentary tranquility to get a lot done. I ripped up and replaced 4 of my 5 Control Centers. I took the opportunity to test out some controlled production on the planetary facilities. This time I had gotten all the scanning of resources out of the way before I did any routing of industrial stuffs. Interestingly enough I have had no losses so far in these batches. So the testing for the cause of the material loss goes on. Further testing: Routing to and from the same storage for the production. Setting up production stuff THEN scanning for new raw materials on the extractors. We'll see if THAT causes any issues. Meanwhile by tomorrow morning I should have all the material for my first P4 run. This should net me 9-10 Nano-Factories.
While waiting on the factories to progress a bit I managed to get a Magnetometric site that another pilot had scanned down but not run cleaned out. 7 Melted Nanoribbons and 7 Wrecked Relics out of that site. Not bad.
I also continued on with reacting gasses to make Polymers. I only have the PPD and the Scandium left to do. PPD is bubbling away as I type and you read.
Speaking of T3, Cozmik finally got all the 38 melted nanoribbons necessary for a full Loki and fit out. So I gave him a list of salvage he would also need to supply and a list of Polymers we were short of and sent him to fetch the missing polymers. I had the rest in stock so was able to sell him those as well as all the blue print runs. I also had him pick up 10 Wrecked Weapon Subroutines so I could reverse engineer the missing T3 Weapon BPC. Luck was with us overnight and I was able to get everything cooking this morning. 1 day 10 h until Cozmik joins the T3 brotherhood. The subsystems of course are done (Subsystem Assembly Array - my tab if you want to pick em up Coz).
So, all in all a pretty calm but industrious evening. I've also decided that the 2nd Loki I've made for myself will be a scout/exploration Loki. When I get around to making the 3rd that one will be pure PvP.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Shower: good for figuring things out...
Correction to the previous entry. I just figured out this morning that the problem is not with downtime. It's with the submit button in PI. Of course I figured this out IN the shower, right before I go to work so I can't test my theory right away.
The problem is whatever is causing all the cycles of a planet to synchronize. I still haven't been able to test it reliably but I just last night had a job where I put in exactly 1 cycle worth of P1 and got zero product. I suspect it has to do with the submit button resetting things or at some point after the submit the synchronization happens which causes existing production to blow up and new raw materials to be sucked into the processor.
More as I test this later tonight...
Man this new PI is buggier than a 3 month old corpse.
It also shows the way towards a workaround. I'll need to synchronize by having any route changes and res-scanning of resources all happen at the same time in a single submit. That might be the solution to avoiding the losses of materials. Need to test...
The problem is whatever is causing all the cycles of a planet to synchronize. I still haven't been able to test it reliably but I just last night had a job where I put in exactly 1 cycle worth of P1 and got zero product. I suspect it has to do with the submit button resetting things or at some point after the submit the synchronization happens which causes existing production to blow up and new raw materials to be sucked into the processor.
More as I test this later tonight...
Man this new PI is buggier than a 3 month old corpse.
It also shows the way towards a workaround. I'll need to synchronize by having any route changes and res-scanning of resources all happen at the same time in a single submit. That might be the solution to avoiding the losses of materials. Need to test...
Friday, June 11, 2010
Methinks I have spotted a ... bug
Crazy busy night last night. Give me a sec to put my thoughts in some form of coherent order...
Planetary Interaction
Ok, I'm setting up my main's PI layout in wormhole space to be: Harvest all possible types of resources, one planet is my advanced/high tech production world. Only ship down what is needed for the manufacturing plan (except of course for the two resources ON the planet - those can stay there until needed for production or shipping up to market).
While doing this over the last two days I've noticed "losses". I ship down 800 units of two P1 materials. Setup a process in an advanced processor. and 20h later I get 95 instead of the 100 of the P2 result I was expecting. Last night when I started the process and checked before logging off the math for P1/40 + P2/5 + 1 (producing) + 1 (loading) worked out to 20. This morning it worked out to 19... What I suspect is happening is that downtime causes the loss of a cycle of output. I will need to test this to confirm it and then file a bug report (pretty easy to test - start two jobs - i.e. start the processors fed from storage bins with limited resources - one that finished before downtime and one that finishes after downtime. Compare results.
Intrusion
While all of THAT was going on I had Intruders in CC - and it happened JUST at the point in time where I had incomplete information on the entire system. Brilliant. You try working out interception on people warping to places you don't have bookmarks too. All while the static high sec wormhole was at the end of it's life and moving just to make things more fun. So then it was a question of nailing all the sites (the intruders having disappeared by now). Mixed in with this was Cozmik buying his new Sleipnir and waiting for the new wormhole location before begining his trip. Then arriving litterally 5 seconds too late to catch a (assumed) transiting Scorpion and Helios.
CK
While all of the above was going on, Trerana finally put in his application (with mandatory 24 hour wait for dropping of previous roles). Welcome in 12h or so by the way. I wasn't even bothering finding out what was going on with the rest of the alliance at this point.
More construction
Did I mention that another pilot in the alliance was setting up a tower in this wormhole? Oh yea and I was helping with that as well? Just a little overloaded. Wheeeeeeeee...
Planetary Interaction
Ok, I'm setting up my main's PI layout in wormhole space to be: Harvest all possible types of resources, one planet is my advanced/high tech production world. Only ship down what is needed for the manufacturing plan (except of course for the two resources ON the planet - those can stay there until needed for production or shipping up to market).
While doing this over the last two days I've noticed "losses". I ship down 800 units of two P1 materials. Setup a process in an advanced processor. and 20h later I get 95 instead of the 100 of the P2 result I was expecting. Last night when I started the process and checked before logging off the math for P1/40 + P2/5 + 1 (producing) + 1 (loading) worked out to 20. This morning it worked out to 19... What I suspect is happening is that downtime causes the loss of a cycle of output. I will need to test this to confirm it and then file a bug report (pretty easy to test - start two jobs - i.e. start the processors fed from storage bins with limited resources - one that finished before downtime and one that finishes after downtime. Compare results.
Intrusion
While all of THAT was going on I had Intruders in CC - and it happened JUST at the point in time where I had incomplete information on the entire system. Brilliant. You try working out interception on people warping to places you don't have bookmarks too. All while the static high sec wormhole was at the end of it's life and moving just to make things more fun. So then it was a question of nailing all the sites (the intruders having disappeared by now). Mixed in with this was Cozmik buying his new Sleipnir and waiting for the new wormhole location before begining his trip. Then arriving litterally 5 seconds too late to catch a (assumed) transiting Scorpion and Helios.
CK
While all of the above was going on, Trerana finally put in his application (with mandatory 24 hour wait for dropping of previous roles). Welcome in 12h or so by the way. I wasn't even bothering finding out what was going on with the rest of the alliance at this point.
More construction
Did I mention that another pilot in the alliance was setting up a tower in this wormhole? Oh yea and I was helping with that as well? Just a little overloaded. Wheeeeeeeee...
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Flying Dangerously
So I get the PI stuff done early and proceed to scan things down. The class 1 next door is un-inhabited and has plenty of sites. Between kicking off some resource sites (means warping to the sites so that 20 min later the sleepers spawn) in Chaos Central (the new WH my corp is operating out of) and doing a single combat site in the class 1 the night began pretty good.
While I take a break to go have some food, I'm just finishing when I hear over audio that Coz is getting ganked but not to come because they've got him dead to rights. After a bit of time while he lists off what is killing him, I determine that killing the Rook would probably stabilize the situation and I decide to intervene anyways. Quickly jumping in a stealth bomber, I redline the nuclear engines. Immediately on arrival I uncloak and target the rook to take a bit of pressure off. Let loose a few volleys and warp off as I get targeted. On my way back the 2nd time I hear we've got a Tengu and a 2nd Drake adding to the fray for the other side. But uncloaking a 2nd time I manage to kill the Rook. Warping off a 2nd time, I'm on my way back when I hear an Onyx has landed. Get de-cloaked on landing, try heading out of the bubble, firing at the Sacrilege as I go, but no joy. I get killed and podded.
In the end - our losses were expected. PvE Sleipnir and a Hound vs Sacrilege, Rook, Drake, Drake, Tengu, Onyx was not going to come out to a happy outcome. On the other hand we did manage to take out the Rook, so the Sleipnir did not go down without extracting it's pound of flesh. Killing a Rook while loosing a Sleipnir and a Hound is better than loosing a Sleipnir for with no enemy kills. 32 jumps later and a fresh body (with updated medical clone) I was back in the Chaos Central. Before I decided to engage, Cozmik and I had written off his Sleipnir. I decided to intervene knowing I'd probably loose the bomber but a) bombers are cheap and b) odds were good we'd get at least one kill and sometimes you need to go into a fight knowing you'll loose in order to make sure the enemy doesn't just walk all over you. Not particularelly happy with the slippy's loss but it's always better to go down fighting than just letting them walk all over you. Had they not gotten reinforced by the Tengu, Drake and Onyx, there is very good odds that killing the rook would have changed the outcome. Worth the try anyways.
Meanwhile I'm getting a handle on PI. Going to change the layout of certain planets, but I'll wait for the weekend to see what needs to change. Now that I'm getting a better feel for things.
While I take a break to go have some food, I'm just finishing when I hear over audio that Coz is getting ganked but not to come because they've got him dead to rights. After a bit of time while he lists off what is killing him, I determine that killing the Rook would probably stabilize the situation and I decide to intervene anyways. Quickly jumping in a stealth bomber, I redline the nuclear engines. Immediately on arrival I uncloak and target the rook to take a bit of pressure off. Let loose a few volleys and warp off as I get targeted. On my way back the 2nd time I hear we've got a Tengu and a 2nd Drake adding to the fray for the other side. But uncloaking a 2nd time I manage to kill the Rook. Warping off a 2nd time, I'm on my way back when I hear an Onyx has landed. Get de-cloaked on landing, try heading out of the bubble, firing at the Sacrilege as I go, but no joy. I get killed and podded.
In the end - our losses were expected. PvE Sleipnir and a Hound vs Sacrilege, Rook, Drake, Drake, Tengu, Onyx was not going to come out to a happy outcome. On the other hand we did manage to take out the Rook, so the Sleipnir did not go down without extracting it's pound of flesh. Killing a Rook while loosing a Sleipnir and a Hound is better than loosing a Sleipnir for with no enemy kills. 32 jumps later and a fresh body (with updated medical clone) I was back in the Chaos Central. Before I decided to engage, Cozmik and I had written off his Sleipnir. I decided to intervene knowing I'd probably loose the bomber but a) bombers are cheap and b) odds were good we'd get at least one kill and sometimes you need to go into a fight knowing you'll loose in order to make sure the enemy doesn't just walk all over you. Not particularelly happy with the slippy's loss but it's always better to go down fighting than just letting them walk all over you. Had they not gotten reinforced by the Tengu, Drake and Onyx, there is very good odds that killing the rook would have changed the outcome. Worth the try anyways.
Meanwhile I'm getting a handle on PI. Going to change the layout of certain planets, but I'll wait for the weekend to see what needs to change. Now that I'm getting a better feel for things.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Once again CCP with feelings this time
I would like to congratulate CCP for messing up the markets and leaving a production exploit, not once but TWICE now with Tyrannis.
Pro tip from the exploiters:
Pro tip from the exploiters:
- Setup a barren planet with only advanced production facilities and space ports (20 and 2 should do it).
- Buy Mechanical Parts and Consumer Electronics from the NPC Sell orders on market.
- Ship the materials down to the planet.
- Manufacture Robotics.
- Ship them off the planet
- Sell Robotics the still existing BUY ORDERS!!!!
- Profit!
Some figures of note for PI
144000 Units of P0 = amount of P0 material converted in a Basic Processor to a P1 material. I.e. if you have 1440 m³ of raw material (P0) you have 24h of production in reserve.
960 Units of P1 = amount of a single P1 material converted in an advanced processor to a P2 material. I.e. if you have 364.8 m³ of each P1 material you have 24h of production in reserve.
I started off shipping everything to the production planet. I'm setup with 4 extraction planets and 1 manufacturing planet and I'm finding the planetary storage to be a bit of a limitation. I'm thinking of storing most of the P1 stuff off planet at the POS and only ship down what I plan to produce in 20h batches in order to streamline the procedures a bit. Once I get a hang of it I may go to 44 or 92h batches. 4h swing so things finish producing before I want to start the next batch so there's much less drift (i.e. couldn't start a new batch because the previous batch only finishes 1h after I go to bed). We'll see.
960 Units of P1 = amount of a single P1 material converted in an advanced processor to a P2 material. I.e. if you have 364.8 m³ of each P1 material you have 24h of production in reserve.
I started off shipping everything to the production planet. I'm setup with 4 extraction planets and 1 manufacturing planet and I'm finding the planetary storage to be a bit of a limitation. I'm thinking of storing most of the P1 stuff off planet at the POS and only ship down what I plan to produce in 20h batches in order to streamline the procedures a bit. Once I get a hang of it I may go to 44 or 92h batches. 4h swing so things finish producing before I want to start the next batch so there's much less drift (i.e. couldn't start a new batch because the previous batch only finishes 1h after I go to bed). We'll see.
Insert swearing here.
1) War Dec.
Due to the moves of a new director and an alt corp CEO that was a little too eager and panicky AMC now has a war on the cheap with some other alliance that seems to have gotten kicked out of 0.0. I need to check. I think these guys just want to extort tower owners in Emolgranlan. We'll see how this progresses - should be messy one way or the other.
2) Planetary Interaction
Grrrrr, stupid storage sheds that won't take more than 5 different items without bugging out. Don't know if it's a visual bug but when you try to send 3 different raw materials AND 3 different P1 materials to the same storage shed, One of the raw materials doesn't show.
Due to the moves of a new director and an alt corp CEO that was a little too eager and panicky AMC now has a war on the cheap with some other alliance that seems to have gotten kicked out of 0.0. I need to check. I think these guys just want to extort tower owners in Emolgranlan. We'll see how this progresses - should be messy one way or the other.
2) Planetary Interaction
Grrrrr, stupid storage sheds that won't take more than 5 different items without bugging out. Don't know if it's a visual bug but when you try to send 3 different raw materials AND 3 different P1 materials to the same storage shed, One of the raw materials doesn't show.
Friday, June 4, 2010
More lessons from others
Once again we reinforce previous lessons I have expounded upon. Do you remember that little post I did some time ago giving some tips about using scanning alts and the skills they should have? Here for the lazy. We get another sterling example of how not to do it.
Some background first. We get a class 1 connected to our new system (hereafter referred to as Chaos Central - CC). So I scout it out and discover that it is un-inhabited. Yes they still exist. So I get scanning and bookmark a few sites of interest. A few combats, some gas, some asteroid and ooo a Mag site we actually don't have documented yet. So I start in on the slaughter. With the industrial modules all setup at the new POS it's time to lay in a supply of minerals for in-situ manufacturing. Kick off the grav and a ladar and hit a combat site while the spawns come along. Salvage that all up. Get some bookmarks to a corp mate that just logs on and head back with the retriever (Covetors and Hulks won't fit) to do a bit of targeted mining (need a mix of all minerals so I can manufacture ammo and modules as quickly as possible). Another corp mate gets on and joins the fray. I have my corp mates nail the combat sites while I'm busy mining.
Just as one of the pilots is about to finish up for the evening I spot a Probe and a sisters core probe on scan. "Enemy Probe on scan!, Get safe! Get safe!". Myself and my alt get the hauler and the retriever back to the POS and my alt jumps into a scanning boat and burns back to the wormhole. The other two pilots burn for combat boats. At this point I actually flub it as my main was supposed to switch to a Vagabond but with the overload of running 2 accounts it doesn't happen correctly. The alt however is doing fine. He gets back into the class 1. Motors away from the wormhole, launches combat probes, and cloaks up.
I make sure the other pilots stay on the CC side of the wormhole while I narrow down the enemy. Note that a) I'm a little surprised I can still see him on D-scan and b) it takes me 3 scans to nail him to 100% (lucky guess allowed me to go straight to 1 AU setting). "Jump Jump". My alt then gang warps the guys (Vaga and Worm) onto the Probe. They land 80km from the Probe and the Vaga burns onto it and gets the kill. Missing the pod.
The usual question of "why?" comes up. Um... dude... Miners are vulnerable - they will be defended. If you see a scout, always assume there are combat forces it's scouting for. You'll only be wrong half the time and it's always better safe than sorry. Not to mention if he'd been blue he would not have gotten shot.
The next question was unasked but answered anyways. Dude was trying to do a rolling safe using an afterburner. The fact that my guys landed 80km from him was more my fault. I should have re-scanned just before the gang warp. I didn't. The Vaga however guaranteed that the kill was made none-the-less....
Ok. Let me make this clear. A rolling safe is done with an INTERCEPTOR using an MWD. NOT an ASTROMETRICS FRIGATE using an AFTERBURNER! FIT A CLOAK!
Grrrrrr....
Anyways. After things settled down the pilot who was logging - logged. I ran the Mag site that was un-documented, documenting the spawn patterns and ship mixes. Did a trip to market to drop off some blue loot, pick up some datacores and get the refining array and the experimental lab going.
Busy night all told.
Some background first. We get a class 1 connected to our new system (hereafter referred to as Chaos Central - CC). So I scout it out and discover that it is un-inhabited. Yes they still exist. So I get scanning and bookmark a few sites of interest. A few combats, some gas, some asteroid and ooo a Mag site we actually don't have documented yet. So I start in on the slaughter. With the industrial modules all setup at the new POS it's time to lay in a supply of minerals for in-situ manufacturing. Kick off the grav and a ladar and hit a combat site while the spawns come along. Salvage that all up. Get some bookmarks to a corp mate that just logs on and head back with the retriever (Covetors and Hulks won't fit) to do a bit of targeted mining (need a mix of all minerals so I can manufacture ammo and modules as quickly as possible). Another corp mate gets on and joins the fray. I have my corp mates nail the combat sites while I'm busy mining.
Just as one of the pilots is about to finish up for the evening I spot a Probe and a sisters core probe on scan. "Enemy Probe on scan!, Get safe! Get safe!". Myself and my alt get the hauler and the retriever back to the POS and my alt jumps into a scanning boat and burns back to the wormhole. The other two pilots burn for combat boats. At this point I actually flub it as my main was supposed to switch to a Vagabond but with the overload of running 2 accounts it doesn't happen correctly. The alt however is doing fine. He gets back into the class 1. Motors away from the wormhole, launches combat probes, and cloaks up.
I make sure the other pilots stay on the CC side of the wormhole while I narrow down the enemy. Note that a) I'm a little surprised I can still see him on D-scan and b) it takes me 3 scans to nail him to 100% (lucky guess allowed me to go straight to 1 AU setting). "Jump Jump". My alt then gang warps the guys (Vaga and Worm) onto the Probe. They land 80km from the Probe and the Vaga burns onto it and gets the kill. Missing the pod.
The usual question of "why?" comes up. Um... dude... Miners are vulnerable - they will be defended. If you see a scout, always assume there are combat forces it's scouting for. You'll only be wrong half the time and it's always better safe than sorry. Not to mention if he'd been blue he would not have gotten shot.
The next question was unasked but answered anyways. Dude was trying to do a rolling safe using an afterburner. The fact that my guys landed 80km from him was more my fault. I should have re-scanned just before the gang warp. I didn't. The Vaga however guaranteed that the kill was made none-the-less....
Ok. Let me make this clear. A rolling safe is done with an INTERCEPTOR using an MWD. NOT an ASTROMETRICS FRIGATE using an AFTERBURNER! FIT A CLOAK!
Grrrrrr....
Anyways. After things settled down the pilot who was logging - logged. I ran the Mag site that was un-documented, documenting the spawn patterns and ship mixes. Did a trip to market to drop off some blue loot, pick up some datacores and get the refining array and the experimental lab going.
Busy night all told.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Allmost there
The industrial core of the new POS installation is almost done. T3 manufacturing and wormhole manufacturing are about to kick off again. This time around I suspect I will be concentrating on manufacturing from the market (i.e. once I get going it'll be buying materials from Jita and doing the manufacturing with intention of selling on the market instead of for alliance or personal consumption).
We're currently in the silly season of this update. PI has still not kicked in. I'm really curious as to the reason for the 2 week delay. Oh well, we'll find out on the 8th. Got an entire weekend to get through first.
Some interesting days ahead of us I think.
We're currently in the silly season of this update. PI has still not kicked in. I'm really curious as to the reason for the 2 week delay. Oh well, we'll find out on the 8th. Got an entire weekend to get through first.
Some interesting days ahead of us I think.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Headshot
You remember that little post I made a few days back? here? Looks like the next stage of their "fix the error in the most explosive way possible" landed this morning. Once again early access to Sisi was critical in trying to avoid loosing billions.
Lets look at this in sequence shall we?
- First the PI stuff is deployed to Sisi and we get a look at the mechanics of how the raw materials go from useless to usable in 4 tiers (hereafter refered to as P0 - raw materials- through P4). This is all we can look at for the longest while and goes through a few iterations.
- At some point close to the 26th (what? 4, 3, or 2 weeks before - I forget), we finally see the use of these P4 items. They go to make Control Towers, Starbase modules, Sovereignty Structures and Outpost materials. Oh and there's a random BPO for Nanite Repair Paste. This is what is going to cause the PI stuff to be relevant to capsuleers.
- Testing continues, and although no one remarks on it publicly (or publicly enough) a few people say they spotted that things built with P4 materials were still flagged as re-processable. Due to the price of stuff on Sisi the impact of this was probably not immediately evident to most people. Those it was evident to probably simply kept quiet under the assumption that this would be a non-issue if either it was removed by patch day or if the npc goods sales orders were removed.
- Prior to the 26th the deployment plan was changed, throwing the probably carefully crafted deployment plan for this stuff into the wind.
- Parts of PI were seeded on the 26 - including the ability to reprocess existing POS structures. The npc goods sales orders were not removed.
- Rather quickly this was spotted. Various people jump buying cheap modules that have the right mix of P4 stuff to make more expensive products and the market goes berzerk.
- On the 28th Chronotis gives cryptic notification not to sink more isk into this error on CCPs parts.
- On the downtime of the 29th NPC sales order for reprocessable goods are removed. Temporarily.
- A patch is spotted on Sisi (Tyrannis 1.0.1). Broken P4 goods are spotted. Mass dumping and starting of manufacturing runs to dispose of the acquired P4 goods are done by those who put serious isk into trying to exploit the error.
- On the 2nd the patch goes thru and sure enough, all existing P4 goods on TQ are transformed into their broken equivalents and a bunch of NPC buy orders for broken P4 parts are setup (refines to 10k trit, buy orders for 25k isk).
- The only question is whether CCP will kill any and all existing production runs that were started using the P4 goods or whether they will let those fly (at this point). GMs can kill production runs.
Now the solution taken, while draconian, is well within the rights of CCP as far as I can tell. The problem is what about those who bought plexes in order to invest in this error? What about the people who payed cold hard cash to buy pos modules, reprocessed them (which was "legal" at the time) and then had CCP kill their value by fiat on the 2nd? I suspect we may see some real world legal action on this front. ESPECIALLY SINCE AT NO TIME DID CCP DECLARE THIS AN EXPLOIT.
Personally I'm not affected by this issue. For fun I melted a General Silo (what the heck is the use of those things? drug production?) that I had sitting around. So I have 2 broken P4 pieces now. I am worried about some of the more mulish pilots in my alliance who are going to get badly affected by this - especially if the manufacturing jobs also get destroyed by GMs.
From my point of view it looked like an exploit and should have been treated like an exploit WITH FORMAL NOTIFICATION THAT IT WAS CONSIDERED AN EXPLOIT. I don't have a personal problem with the solution taken. I do have a problem with CCP giving cryptic instead of clear warnings. I have a problem with not declaring the use of this as an exploit prior to treating it like an exploit.
Lets look at this in sequence shall we?
- First the PI stuff is deployed to Sisi and we get a look at the mechanics of how the raw materials go from useless to usable in 4 tiers (hereafter refered to as P0 - raw materials- through P4). This is all we can look at for the longest while and goes through a few iterations.
- At some point close to the 26th (what? 4, 3, or 2 weeks before - I forget), we finally see the use of these P4 items. They go to make Control Towers, Starbase modules, Sovereignty Structures and Outpost materials. Oh and there's a random BPO for Nanite Repair Paste. This is what is going to cause the PI stuff to be relevant to capsuleers.
- Testing continues, and although no one remarks on it publicly (or publicly enough) a few people say they spotted that things built with P4 materials were still flagged as re-processable. Due to the price of stuff on Sisi the impact of this was probably not immediately evident to most people. Those it was evident to probably simply kept quiet under the assumption that this would be a non-issue if either it was removed by patch day or if the npc goods sales orders were removed.
- Prior to the 26th the deployment plan was changed, throwing the probably carefully crafted deployment plan for this stuff into the wind.
- Parts of PI were seeded on the 26 - including the ability to reprocess existing POS structures. The npc goods sales orders were not removed.
- Rather quickly this was spotted. Various people jump buying cheap modules that have the right mix of P4 stuff to make more expensive products and the market goes berzerk.
- On the 28th Chronotis gives cryptic notification not to sink more isk into this error on CCPs parts.
- On the downtime of the 29th NPC sales order for reprocessable goods are removed. Temporarily.
- A patch is spotted on Sisi (Tyrannis 1.0.1). Broken P4 goods are spotted. Mass dumping and starting of manufacturing runs to dispose of the acquired P4 goods are done by those who put serious isk into trying to exploit the error.
- On the 2nd the patch goes thru and sure enough, all existing P4 goods on TQ are transformed into their broken equivalents and a bunch of NPC buy orders for broken P4 parts are setup (refines to 10k trit, buy orders for 25k isk).
- The only question is whether CCP will kill any and all existing production runs that were started using the P4 goods or whether they will let those fly (at this point). GMs can kill production runs.
Now the solution taken, while draconian, is well within the rights of CCP as far as I can tell. The problem is what about those who bought plexes in order to invest in this error? What about the people who payed cold hard cash to buy pos modules, reprocessed them (which was "legal" at the time) and then had CCP kill their value by fiat on the 2nd? I suspect we may see some real world legal action on this front. ESPECIALLY SINCE AT NO TIME DID CCP DECLARE THIS AN EXPLOIT.
Personally I'm not affected by this issue. For fun I melted a General Silo (what the heck is the use of those things? drug production?) that I had sitting around. So I have 2 broken P4 pieces now. I am worried about some of the more mulish pilots in my alliance who are going to get badly affected by this - especially if the manufacturing jobs also get destroyed by GMs.
From my point of view it looked like an exploit and should have been treated like an exploit WITH FORMAL NOTIFICATION THAT IT WAS CONSIDERED AN EXPLOIT. I don't have a personal problem with the solution taken. I do have a problem with CCP giving cryptic instead of clear warnings. I have a problem with not declaring the use of this as an exploit prior to treating it like an exploit.
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