Dev Blogs: Research

TLDR;

• A change to the way Production Efficiency research works; now in 10 steps, with ever increasing times per step.  
• There will be some 'refund' of PE time (similar to a training queue bonus)
• A change of name from Production Efficiency to Material Efficiency (maybe; some comments suggest rethinking this)
• No more Extra materials
• The existing Material Efficiency skill is being re-purposed (TBA)
• Some tweaks in numbers.  (To make unresearched BPO's more expensive to build from but we get that back with researched BPO's?)
• An easier to explain ME process (but retaining the very long time for perfect rule.)
• No blueprint will be harmed by this process - well apart from time efficiency nerf on fuel block BP's.  This means that some less researched BP's will have 'caught up' to your perfectly researched BP's.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/researching-the-future/

This is post 1 of 2 today.  I will come back to this post and others in a day or two to chase up on the latest dev posts.


https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4522105#post4522105
With Summer 2014 we are introducing major changes to Industry in EVE Online; this includes blueprints and research.

The maybe biggest change is the introduction of a ten-step system to blueprint research and a cap of maximum 10 research steps at both material and time research. Of course currently research blueprints will be transitioned accordingly. Additionally the base copy time of blueprints will be the same as the base manufacturing time.

Read all about these exciting improvement and changes in CCP Greyscale's latest blog Researching, the Future!

We most welcome your constructive feedback.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4522597#post4522597
Q: Research in progress will be likewise converted
A: Yes

Q: Adjusting the maximum number of runs on Cap Component BPC's
A: Yes

Q: Researching a battleship to max ME will take 180d
A: Yes (feedback sought)

Q: Already Perfect BP's (eg small rigs);  Research wont do anything for these?
A: Essentially, yes. Where there's no saving to be had even at 10% reduction, the research doesn't do anything. There's no obvious solution to this, other than capping max level on a per-blueprint level, which probably causes more problems than it solves.

Q: Regarding the maxruns, please do NOT change the current effective limits on BPOs. Currently we can install unlimited number of jobs from maxrun BPOs as far as it fits into 30d
A: Can you explain more clearly what a bad change would be here? I think I understand the situation you're describing but I'm not sure what the thing you're worried about is. Would kicking the maxruns number up be a bad thing?

Q: ... If  I have a BP that is currently perfect at ME4, will I need to re-research it?
A: If it's perfect currently, it'll be perfect after the change without further research. ME4 currently gives you an 8% waste reduction, so it'll be converted to ME 8% in the new system. If it was effectively perfect at ME4 before, it'll be effectively perfect at ME 8% after.

Am I explaining this clearly enough?

A: confirming
Current ME2 = future ME 6%
Current ME3 = future ME 7%
Current ME4 = future ME 8%

A: Yes, starbase modules should now be researchable as we're getting rid of extra materials
We're working out a solution for research jobs in progress right now, with the same broad goals as other blueprints, ie everything you have in research should end up as good or better after the change.

Q: Can BPC's be sold directly on market?
A: Unfortunately no, we aren't quite at that point yet. We'd have to have a separate DB type for every combination of ME and TE research, which proliferates our blueprint count rather badly (ie 100x more blueprints).

A: We're not planning on letting any BPCs be researched right now, and we don't have a concrete plan in place regarding the future of T2 BPOs right now.

A: I'd have to make a public-ready spreadsheet for this, and honestly it's probably easier for you to do it yourselves :) Take the current ME research time in seconds, divide by 6000, and that's the rank for that blueprint.

A: Right, because we don't know what you'd want - which is why we're asking! We could just come up with something and say "this is what we're doing", but without having a clear understanding of what people like you would actually find fair compensation for long-researched blueprints we'd just be stabbing in the dark.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4522633#post4522633
Plans if invent-to-sell expands: nothing concrete, it would depend on what exactly happened, where things settled and how much of a problem we felt it was. The potential problem with this outcome is that the invention market crashes - the concern isn't that players are smart, it's worry that they might be opposite ;)

We're very un-keen on making any blueprints worse as a result of this change, that feels far more painful than "wasted time" and a better blueprint.

Time credit is something we could investigate, although it potentially requires a lot of work to allow you to cash it in.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4522650#post4522650
... The stations that do have copy facilities will no longer be capped. Yes you may need to do some flying around.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4522677#post4522677
Blueprint stats are easy to adjust. You want longer max runs on T1 rigs?

(Regarding internal spreadsheet)
I have one but it's a bit of a mess as it's got all kinds of misc math scattered all over it :/ With the info in the data dump it's pretty easy to calculate it though, I'm sure someone will be along shortly with a complete reference.

(Can someone be along shortly with a complete reference?)

Q ... it's only module bpos that are used in invention where you have to be careful about increasing max run size
A: Yeah ok, gotcha. We'll keep an eye on this.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4522740#post4522740
Q: T2 BPO are OP. Nerf T2 BPO. The world is ending (Foo's comment : I may have paraphrased more than normal; and no I dont own T2 BPO's)
A:  It's a 6.25% throughput increase on the BPO, assuming you were building from BPOs rather than copies before (ie, you're not insane). It makes slightly more profit per hour but doesn't change the profit per unit at all. It doesn't seem like it's obviously going to kill off invention as a result.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4525876#post4525876
Problems with this:
- If the table you're suggesting is the old->new translation, a bunch of people get screwed because their blueprints just got way worse (ME5 currently gives a 5% reduction)
- Without changing the base build costs at all, this means a 10% reduction in all build costs because we're no longer using waste
- If we do change the base build costs to current base+waste, all build costs decrease by 1% at max ME; not a huge issue but it's changing the balance math

The reason the changeover is complex is because the current system is complex, and we need to jump through a bunch of hoops to force it into a simpler system without messing with the balance too much.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4526576#post4526576
I thiiiiiink that jobs lasting more than 30 days are fine provided they're single-run. Certainly that works for manufacturing, otherwise it'd be impossible to build titans already. In any case, we're going to make sure that long single-run jobs work fine :)

As to people with ME10 Titan BPOs, that's ~4 years of research time under the current system. I'll go check if any exist, but I doubt it.

All dev/csm/gm posts on this
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=search&topic=Dev+blog%3a+Researching%2c+the+Future&devbadge=1&gmbadge=1&csmbadge=1