Nerd rage

Not mine. But the EGA stuff that's been hitting the news wires. There are all sorts of reactions going around. Both from inside and outside the EVE community. From the shock of people who don't play EVE at the virulence of the reaction to the (few) who are quitting EVE over it (can I haz your stuffz???).

I realize that a bunch of you are up in arms over the development plan and what's been going on. From a certain point of view it's justified. And it must be said that CCP to a certain degree has made their own bed over this one. However comparisons to SWG's NGE debacle are probably premature. There are a bunch of reasons for this.

1) This is not about ripping things away from players.

SWG's mistake was removing working content and mechanics without substituting equivalent content/mechanics. CCP has avoided this sweeping type of mistake. Their big problem is they have this vision of where the game should be and they have a whole bunch of content that are approaching completion and they are over focussed on that atm. If CCP suddenly removed a whole ship class or 5 - like say HACs - then that might cause something like the SWG's NGE.

2) There (still) is nothing else like EVE out there.

One of the other reasons that this has a good chance of blowing over is that EVE has no competition in it's domain. There are no other PvP/Sandbox/Economic/MMOs out there that even try to do anything remotely like EVE. On the fantasy side you've got Darkfall (not really familiar with it, but from what I've heard) and that's it... Heck it's production and economics game play is complex enough that spreadsheets are not optional to game play for those of us who get into it (how many pages is your main production spreadsheet up to? Mine is at 21 sheets). Welcome to the hardcore. There are no fluffy pink kitties here.

3) We are the hardcore, we hold CCP to a higher standard.

The reality is that we DO hold CCP to a higher standard than other developers. Sometimes they can be hard of hearing, and need to be reminded of it. The reason is that for all it's flaws we can see just how great EVE could be. When it's working well and "a plan comes together", there's absolutely nothing else out there like it. Nothing. This provides CCP with both an advantage and a dis-advantage. On one hand they won't be loosing too many players over this. I mean where would we go? Most other MMOs are bland and tasteless compared to EVE. It is like a technicolor show in the days of black and white. On the other hand you'll get incidents like the threadnaught on that voting page when we feel that CCP is making serious mistakes.

4) Part of the problem is historical.

Right up to Apocrypha there was constant improvement in the lag situation, while good working new content was brought to the table. Everyone agrees that Apocrypha was probably the greatest EVE expansion to date. The wheels came off the cart after that. Lag started to get worse. Even more problematic it got asymmetrical (i.e. attackers got worse lag than the defenders on any grid). It's been getting progressively worse in the two main expansions after Apocrypha. All of this just after CCP was boasting about "Excellence". That right there is the reason for most of the nerd rage. Don't go boasting about excellence when the situation is getting worse. Welcome to getting hoisted on your own petard.

5) The real rock and a hard place

The problem is that the features that CCP is working on and have promised to deliver are things they've been working on for the last 3/4 years. It's been going on so long that it's starting to resemble vaporware (I'm Canadian, as you can see by my unfailing politeness there). So regardless of the nerd rage going on, they ARE going to have to deliver some form of full body avatar soon. Their plan showed that. The problem is they still over allocated resources to the detriment of exiting code. There comes a point where you seriously need to work on your basic infrastructure. Because if it's shaky it does not matter how many new features you put out there, people are going to notice the cracks in the pavement.

Having a vocal player base is a disadvantage in that you occasionally get the rose glasses ripped off your face. The advantage is that you get those rose glasses ripped of your face. At least CCP now knows it needs to re-focus a bit. And although they can be a bit hard of hearing, at least they are not deaf (like the SWG developers were during the NGE thing).

Now I'm not CCP. However I would advise them to seriously consider forming a permanent "balancing" team (or two) who's job is to make sure that fixes and adjustments go out every update (not just every expansion). The backlog of stuff to address is big enough to justify permanent teams (side note: the teams are permanent - the personnel in them do not have to be). Also just because you plan to revise an entire area of the game does not mean that interim fixes on that area should not be done. With your development cycle on revising stuff running multi-year backlogs, it's worthwhile to get smaller fixes out there until the big ones can be done properly.

Another problem is with the Agile method they've been using. It's very good for making sure things are getting delivered. The problem is the "unfinished" feel it leaves behind if there is no follow up after the initial delivery. This is not necessarily a call to abandon Agile. It is a call to make sure there is follow up.

It's per planet.

Well the completion bug is per planet. Since I only have one production planet, it took proving that extractor submits caused the bug not to show up. Once I did that, I set up one planet at 3:55 eve time to have the bug by doing all processing submits last. Then I did my other 4 planets extractor submits and the results came in this morning.

Instant completion on all production during downtime.

At this point there's not much left to prove about this mechanic, except to test it outside of the narrow time band I'm currently testing it with. Which I'll do over the weekend. At least I've moved off starting my tests at ridiculous hours in the morning.

Aside to CCP: Originally PI derived blue prints were a) research-able and b) the items they built were reprocess-able. You originally screwed this up by a knee-jerk reaction to the reprocess debacle you engineered by your screwed up deployment plan (CCP Chronotis I'm looking at you and/or whoever you were listening to). Are you ever going to move those BPO items off the type of material definitions they currently have back to the type that have waste and are reprocess-able?

p.s. a knee-jerk reaction is best described by removing the word knee...

Next experiment

Ok, now to see if doing the extractors as the last submit before downtime has any effect on the instant completion.

setup 3 separate schematics in the 6 advanced processors
get all the materials in place.

Stagger the starts.
3:29
3:36
3:39
And lastly I get the extractors scanned and cycling at:
3:41

Now we wait for after downtime to see what the results are...

and at 12:42 eve time, I can confirm that none of the production plans got instant completed. So the bug/exploit is only kicked off by the most recent submit. Tomorrow we test if this is per planet or per character.

Incidentally I would have expected to see some material losses by now. It may be that CCP has fixed that (possibly causing the instant completion bug). Would have been nice if they had let us know if this is the case. Otherwise I've just been lucky with my start times....

This time

I almost got to use one of my Vagabonds last night... We had a Cyclone in Chaos Central. Unfortunately by the time I had fleeted up, he had exited the system. Ah well, can't win them all.

For the next test I am going to try to re-prove that only the latest submit on a planet gets the bug. So I setup a 20h job and a 40h job. 4 processors setup All materials there. This time I start both jobs one after the other. First the 20 h job. Hit submit. Then the 40h job. Started at 3:53 and 3:55 respectively. No further submits happen on character. We'll see what happens. I also intend to only log in after 12:00 eve time and hopefully I will cause the system to be loaded at that time. Here's what I'm hoping the results will be:

20h job on track but with 1 cycle gone poof (the destroyed materials bug)
40h job finished completely.

Lets see what we get...

12:05... extended downtime ... again ... time for a shower...

(incidentally all times I state are EVE times - in case that was not made clear).

Ok I did get the 40h finishing off at downtime - as expected and the 20h not finishing. Someone else caused the system to load so I was not able to get a positive result for that part of the test (the theory that the loss is related to the system loading...)

This at least confirms that the actual hour before downtime is irrelevant (I'm still setting it up withing the 15min before the hour though) and the bug shows up based on the most recent submit (no idea if it's for that planet or for the character though). Tomorrow's test will be to see if the submit for the extractors also causes the bug not to show up.

Back to testing

Man these 24h testing cycles are crazy.

Anyways, still trying to test whether this bug/exploit handles multi-day instant completion. I'll get to trying to nail down specific parameters that make it not occur once this is done. So without further adieu, here is today's experiment:

3200 x Proteins
3200 x Biofuels
1600 x Industrial Fibers
1600 x Silicon

2 x Advanced Industry Facility with Livestock Schematic installed
2 x Advanced Industry Facility with Microfiber Shielding Schematic installed

All materials in place and routes setup and ready to hit submit by 10:42.
Submit hit at 10:50

Now just need to wait for downtime...

11:58 hits and bingo - got:

200 x Microfiber Shielding
400 x Livestock

in the storage shed.

This confirms that if you set up multiple day runs they WILL get finished off in 40 minutes. Sweet.

In other news

In preparations for changed in the month of September, I have taken down the tower of my high sec research corporation.

I can see everyone going "wait a sec... what high sec research tower?".

It works like this: I've blogged on the workings of towers and high sec research towers in specific before. So subject covered. This time around I decided that operational security demanded that I not reveal anything about it's existence out side the obvious. So for over a year I've had some alts up in high sec quietly researching and copying my entire blue print collection (currently at 822 BPOs). True if you knew what to look for you'd have found it quite easily. Any spies who spotted it (we're pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of EVE so its unlikely large alliances we have sent too many spies our way) congratulations. Pat yourselves on the back. If not, *shrug*, it's not like it matters now, does it?

Now for the major reason for taking it down: It used to be that researching at a tower, IF you could keep the slots fully occupied, was not only faster than research at high sec/low sec slots, it was actually cheaper. Now it is just faster (both in the literal per job sense and in the wait sense). Fuel prices have increased to the past the tipping point. I also reached end of the projected research needs for the foreseeable future. All my current ship BPOs have reached ME:20 (30 in the case of the Typhoon). All rig BPOs have been researched to perfect ME/20 PE. Just about all modules, ammo, and deploy-ables have been researched to 20 ME/20 PE. I've made massive "copy sets" for deployment to POS'es to enable them to be "self supporting" in T1 gear (damn handy if you don't want to risk your BPOs in wormhole space).

The point here is that the amount of PI necessary to support the tower, while not excessive was a bit too much considering I was reaching the end of what I want to research. Sure there's more PE research I could do, but CPP Chronotis never pushed through his desire to make PE more relevant. So time to close down the shop pending a pile up of serious research.

Of my 3 research alts, two of them are able to run 10 slots each of plain Jane research jobs, with the 3rd also at 10 slots but with a few necessary science skills thrown in to handle research on items needing science skills (Prototype Cloaks anyone?). Not up to T2 levels but that would be the next plan. These 3 guys are spread over two accounts, but hey can't have everything.

Moar results

Woke up Sunday at the correct time (barely) to get the experiment setup. Still had a bauble due to some materials being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bauble revealed some interesting things however.

Here is the setup prior to waking up and logging in. Including the mistake. There are 4 relevant processors attached to my storage and in the storage I have the following:

1600 x Proteins
1600 x Biofuels (the mistake - lucky I had over 1600 Bacterias in a nearby spaceport)
3200 x Reactive Metals
3200 x Precious Metals

2 processors setup for Fertilizer
2 processors setup for Mechanical parts.

So I log in with 5 min to go (told you it was a little close to downtime). Rush to route the inputs. Have a problem with the biofuels not being accepted. Look at the configured schematic. Realize the Biofuels are wrong. Need Bacterias. Lucky enough bacterias are nearby. Hit submit for the existing routes which starts of the 40h of mechanical parts processing on two processors. Then I expedite the Biofuels out of the storage and the Bacterias into the storage. Route those and it submit a 2nd time. Lucky with 2 minutes to spare before downtime. So 40h reaction started at 10:56 and 20h of reactions started at 10:58...

Then I log back in at 11:35 to check what happened. Interesting the 40h reaction is proceeding as planed - currently with no losses. The 20h reaction however got insta-completed. From this I deduce that the instant completion on downtime bug is related to the most recent submit button. Whether it's relative to downtime or simply the most recent submit button is undetermined (more shit to test out - Yay!). However this is the 4th downtime where this effect has been observed when I setup the routing just before downtime. I'm beginning to suspect that it's related to the most recent submit button before downtime. Is this per planet or absolute per character? No clue (again more testing).

Again I still do not have enough of a handle to submit a bug report. Too many questions remain unanswered... Although the repeatability of the effect leads me to believe I'm getting closer to correctly understanding the mechanism.