In favour of region wide buy orders

I had a question on my last post :  For region wide buy orders how will you deal with minerals in low sec stations?

I am currently using region wide buy orders for veldspar (and expanding into other high sec ore), refining the results, and hauling the minerals back to somewhere with demand for them.

I do not mind occasionally getting ore in lowsec stations:

• I don't play when the pirates play.  For all my whining about having shutdown during my peak game play time, I collect orders when the majority of players (including pirates) are not on.  
• I don't play where the pirates play.  What is the number 1 trade center? Jita.  If I was a lowsec camping pirate, I would chose the border worlds of a Jita to lowsec route.  I simply don't play there.
• My collections are ad-hoc; small orders are left for later; moderate size for when I am in the area, with only large orders being collected with any urgency.  Large generally means more than 50% of my largest ship's cargo hold (Iteron IV).  You would be a very dedicated camper to pick when I am heading to lowsec.
• Only fly what you can afford to lose.  My Iteron IV costs about 900K ISK in Dodixie.  3 Expanded Cargohold II's @ 750K each.  A few other negligible cost modules, and I have a ship costing about 3,200K ISK.  My losec hauler has replaceable implants and a clone with sufficient skill points.  Using a cheaper ship or modules reduces this even further but has reduced cargo space.
• Not many Velspar miners operate in lowsec.  It happens, but not often.
• Fly to low sec when the risk is worth it.  Buying cheap Veldspar, refining and turning it into a cargo load of Tritanium to sell at average prices nets me about the same in profit as the ship is worth.
• Never fly lowsec away from keyboard or with autopilot.

One day my time will be worth more than hauling and I will use a hauling company.  I am not there yet.

Losing a ship on the way to picking up my cargo would be annoying.  I will be a sad hauler when I am ganked with a full cargo load of Tritanium on my return leg.  I am certain it will happen.

Given that I am yet to even see another ship in the lowsec systems I am flying in, at the times I am hauling, I am prepared to take these risks.


A problem region wide buy order is that your orders may be filled in an 'out of your way' system, and has a significant opportunity cost.  My opportunity cost worries my more than the ganking that is yet to happen.

These are not the standings you are looking for

Woo hoo - I have my standing at 5 for both Gallante and Minmatar.  I wasn't quick, but despite spending a fair amount of time in Eve, a lot is /afk (away from keyboard) due to out of Eve priorities.  In terms of time in front of a keyboard it was quick enough.

• Social 4 (standing increase per mission completed), 
• Connections 4 (effective standing improvement for friendly NPC factions, corps, and agents)
• Starter Career agents - up to 10 missions / agent; 5 per system; 3 systems / faction; 2 allied factions; (I think? I have one more starter career system that I can do - not sure)
• Lost that bet mission series
• 1 level 2 storyline mission
• Data center missions :
• 4 graduate certificate missions
• 3 x copper tag missions
• 3 other tag missions

With the exception of the exploration chain the starter career agent missions are quick enough to do.  For the exploration chain once you have found the cosmic signature sites; get enough certificates for as many exploration missions as you are likely to want to do (3 of each for a faction; another 3 for an allied faction; plus more if you want to run your opposing faction / alts).  Also buy up and reprocess any starter reward ships being sold for less than their reprocessed mineral value.


After all of this, I was at standing 5.1 with Gallante, and 5.0 for Minmatar;  should be enough to get a significant discount on my refining (6.67 standing and you no longer lose minerals to the refining stations - depending on refining skill and station level). Umm.   No.


Maybe I was told and didn't understand it.  Maybe I didn't understand what I was reading.  Just because a faction loves you, doesn't mean that their corporations will give you a discount on refining.  Faction standing gives you nice things, but not a refining/reprocessing bonus.  Corporation standing gives the refining bonus.

Corporation missions gives corporation standing.  Faction standing gives you better quality agents (hence better corporation missions).  For an agent to give you a mission; it appears that you must have, with the agent, corporation or faction the following standing:

• Anyone who can get into a station can do level 1 agent missions.
• 1.0 standing allows level 2 agent missions. 
• 3.0 allows level 3 agent missions.
• 5.0 allows level 4 agent missions.
• 7.0 allows level 5 agent missions.

Finding definitive answers to what standings are required was harder than I expected - it appears that there was a standing rules re-write making some older websites obsolete (either that or I am totally lost).  However http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Missions had an explicit table.


The missions I have completed are not wasted; they have given me 4+ standing for some corporations that I wanted anyway, and I now have access to about 80 level 4 distribution agents.

I can not chain the L4 distribution missions as easily.  My Iteron IV can only hold the cargo for 2-3 L4 missions and the agents are not that close to each other.  I will most likely play with chaining L3 distribution missions and compare it to doing single L4 distribution missions.  Gut feel says L4 is better but I should confirm it.



For the record I have been told that you can tag along with some else's L4 missions, but for frequent AFK play - it doesn't work so well for either party.  Plus a lot of players have a mild preference for solo play.

My research was faulty and I did not get the 'reward' (cheap refining faction wide) that I was looking for.  As a consolation I do have access to L3 & L4 distribution missions and cheaper refining at a few stations.

At the moment I am choosing less traveled regions (i.e. not Jita), placing dirt cheap region wide buy orders on minerals until I spend most of my ISK.  I am part way through training 'margin trading', allowing me to have more in 'buy' orders than I can cover in one hit, relying on ongoing sales to replenish ISK. 

p.s. part 3 of server maintenance is not forgotten - just coming soon.

Server maintenance part 2 - technical fix

My last post whined about server shutdowns.  My game time is interrupted enough by real life; so I don't want the server to have it's own interruptions.

'Come back in a few minutes' message at least leaves anticipation.  You are still in the real world and can do real world things. 'Good bye' in the middle of a gaming session throws you out of your immersive experience, throwing you back into the real world; often ending your day's play on a sour note.



On a conceptual level - Eve shutdowns do more than just annoy us.  They really are the equivalent of a maintenance for your car.  It's annoying to be without your car, and it costs time and money to do.  CCP (or any other game company) would not have server shutdowns if there was an easy way around it.



I am simplifying concepts when I can.  There will be specifics that I get wrong; but it is the big picture that I am looking for.  I am showing I 'get' the problems; establishing my credentials to show I also 'get' solutions.  Simplifications include but are not limited to:

• Program includes procedure, function, and system calls.
• Computer resources includes memory, disk space, semaphores.
• Server includes physical machines, virtual machines, and services.

The problem

Programs use computer resources (mostly memory but others too).  They grab resources when they want to do something, and are meant to release them when finished.   However not every program is as well written as you would like - and those resources are not always released when a program finishes.  Then there are the programs that crash part way through, never even having the opportunity to clean up.  These are very easy to clean up as part of a restart; and very hard to clean up at any other time.

We all want to get our data quickly.  Your data might be your skill list, your inventory list, a market, or even how much damage your weapons do.  These are stored in databases (or structured lists of items).  Now imagine you have a notepad listing all your inventory.  At first you add the data in a date received order, and cross out anything you sell or destroy.  After a while it gets painful to find your widget x, so you copy it to an alphabetical list and leave blank space for new inventory.  Then even that gets painful.  Now imagine you are managing this list for not just your inventory but for every player, every mail, inventory, skill, market in the game.  This is the the database problem. Indexes speed the search but insertions and deletions cause trouble.  It is easiest to clean up an index when no-one is using the system.


Frequently, the server software changes.  It is much easier to install new software when no-one else is using it.  Sometimes the client software changes.  Having servers to cope with two (sometimes incompatible) client versions is a pain.  Server shutdowns allow a clean break between old and new, making things simpler.

A solution

There are ways to do all of the above without shutting a server down regularly.  Nuclear power plants, life support equipment all do so.  Generally this involves having a complete copy of your system, and switching your software over so quickly that the end user doesn't see anything more than a blip.  Of course you do want your game fees to double don't you?  No?  Then live with shutdowns.

But you can have staggered shutdowns; not all the servers shutdown all at the same time.  With the strategy below - you will always be able to do something on one of your characters, even if the total disruption time is longer.  It is about ensuring you can do most activities in most locations (almost) all of the time. (The default current situation is that you can do all activities in all locations most of the time).

There will be servers to process:

• User login
• In game mail - both sending and receiving
• In game chat
• Markets (we already know these are divided by region)
• Inventory (probably has live characters active, with offline characters stored away).
• System movement and combat (we already know these are system based, and can be dynamically allocated according to system load).

Where a game client update is required - then everyone is booted out at normal maintenance times.  (There are ways to work around this requirement but lets get the easier to fix issues done first)

Restart each region individually.   Some regions go down early and come back up early, most go down normally and come back up normally.  Some regions go down late and come back up late.

• You can not move into a region that is down (or possibly is about to go down).  
• If you are active in a region that is down - then you get disconnected from that character but not from the character selection screen.
• You can only work a market for a region that is up.

There would still be a maximum single session login time.  Currently this is a little less than 24 hours; and could remain.  There will be (at least) 2 inventory servers. When you login, and when you change regions your current inventory/stats/standings etc (for most purposes 'you') are allocated to an inventory server. Offline character data maintenance can be done whenever.


While the mail servers are down, you can not send a mail and you won't get new mail.  However it may be possible to allow you to see existing mail (depending on the mail implementation).

Split the chat software up into multiple parts; local; player to player; and general.  Local chat would retart during regional server restarts.  Player to player and general chat channels would restart on different timers.
When the login server is down - you obviously can't login , but would have no other impact.  If there was one server you would make high availability (i.e. extra redundancy) this would be it.


As far as I know, one or more system movement and combat servers are allocated to systems.  These could be restarted when the relevant region is restarted.

The player experience.

The ideal player experience is one where a player does not have to deal with server shutdowns.  The next best thing is one where you can do what you want 'somewhere' even if you can't do it everywhere whenever you want.

With the outline above, apart from when the actual login authentication servers are down, users will be able to logon to the game and play somewhere (unless they have all 3 alts in one the same game timezone).  When a shutdown is about to start, instead of being told that you are about to be booted, instead you are told that this region is about to be rebooted and be told where you can play instead. 


I would recommend that at least one newbie system has a different restart time than the others; Newbie retention is the hardest part of the game, and you would much prefer it to be as available as possible.  Newbies would be 'suggested' by the game to start in timezones that fit their preferences (either implicit by when they login or explicit as part of account creation)

When newbies and veterans of differing experience learn what parts of the universe are available at different times, they will gravitate towards the areas that are up when they are, minimizing their gaming disruption.

Game availability - while not entirely zero-sum is still a winners and losers game.  Given all other things remain equal; for me to have access to a patch of the universe when I am awake probably means that others do not have access to that same patch when they are.

Fortunately Eve lends itself to player determination very well.  What timezones get access to what parts of the universe is a topic for another post.

Server Maintenance part 1 (aka the whine)

One of the reasons I avoided EVE for so long was the daily server maintenance. 

My natural gaming availability is 8:45pm to about 10:30pm, and ad-hoc times apart from that.  I might log in; tinker; get called away; come back again.  Timing has also restricted my WoW raiding, with the family resigning to be largely one member less on a Friday night for my raid.   In a game without a pause button, one thing that does lend itself well to ad-hoc playing is crafting and auctioning.  I think that is where my I started my goldmaking career - finding an activity to suit my availability.

EVE's scheduled shutdown starts at 9pm local time (Australian Eastern Standard time).  Having a scheduled 1/2 hour every night not being able to play during my peak game time put me off.

I find it annoying being kicked off when I want to play; but the actual downtime is rarely the full half hour; with this evening being more like 15 minutes.  I have in part rescheduled some of my available time to fit into the game time.  It isn't as disrupting as I feared, but it is disrupting.

One thing that MMO's do is encourage you to log in regularly, and give you things to do to stay logged in.  Server maintenance disrupts that.  Eve gives players in our timezone a disadvantage.  Then when Daylight savings comes around, it disadvantages a different set of players.  (There are also advantages but today I am whining)


Imagine you were an MMO player who has a preferred playtime was during WoW's regular shutdown - you simply would choose a different game other than WoW.  In Eve: for the adults on the Australian eastern seaboard; the players in Hong Kong (and probably the teenagers in Western Australia New Zealand), we are encouraged to choose a different game. (edit: it helps if I get my east and west and what that means for timezones sorted)

Now I work in I.T.  I fully understand the requirement for restarting servers, and in theory understand some of what they do during shutdown.   I also dislike whining for the sake of it.

Today's post describes what my problem is.  Future posts (coming soon) describe:

• technically what happens during a (generic) shutdown, and how to work around it; and 
• how to sell it to an Eve population.

Claim your gifts

Thanks to the goblinworks channel in Eve for heads up on this one.  (It might be in the Eve loading screen but if so, I missed it.)

Login to the community website http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28620, and choose one of these sets.

• Fire All Lasers (with Dignity) - Omen and Maller (Cruisers) + Medium Energy Turret and Amarr Cruisers (Skill Books)
• Duty, Honor, State (and Missiles) - Caracal and Moa (Cruisers) + Assault Missiles, Medium Hybrid Turret, Heavy Missiles, Caldari Cruiser (Skill Books)
• Deadly Elegance (Drones Extra) - Vexor and Thorax (Cruisers) + Medium Hybrid Turret and Gallente Cruisers (Skill Books)
• Heavy Iron (Rusted) - Stabber and Rupture (Cruisers) + Assault Missiles, Medium Projectile Turret, Heavy Missiles, Minmatar Cruiser (Skill Books)
• Plug and Play - Full set of +2 Attribute Implants (Limited Ocular Filter Beta, Limited Neural Boost Beta...etc...)
• Refine Your Skills - Memory Augmentation Standard and Cybernetic Subprocessor Standard (Implants) + Scrapmetal, Ice and all other ore Processing (Skillbooks)
• Drill Bits - 10x each ore mining crystal I's (10x Arkonor Mining Crystal I, 10x Bistot Mining Crystal I...etc...10 x Veldspar Mining Crystal I)
• A Paxist Treasure - Pax Ammaria - Collector's Item

After you have selected your gift, you will get a new 'Redeem Item' option on the character selection screen the next time you login.

I am always somewhat ambivalent about in game freebies (I had been making some ISK selling some of the above - a market that is temporarily squashed), but that won't stop me taking some advantage of the above.  Failing anything else, you can sit on your choice (and possibly pick up some with cheap buy orders) and sell it later.

 To join the goblinworks channel, right click on the chat icon open channels and search for it.

The current Goblinworks message of the day follows:

Upgrades

There is a lot of ISK to be made selling flavour of the month weaponry and their consumables.  I have made a lot of (WoW) gold catering to those markets. Knowing what players are equipping and when those recommendations change is valuable.

I am not in a position (yet) to seriously chase equipment and supplies sales as I am still on my faction standing grind, but I did find the dev blog's article about the Jita burn event.

It was an interesting read.  I could never imagine Blizzard encouraging the loss of the undereducated's battles (e.g. the breaking of WGClean).  An unnamed CCP senior producer's response was "f*cking brilliant" (direct quote from the dev blog article above).  This isn't carebear school anymore.

But the most valuable item for me to read was the section titled Metrics; listing the top 20 damage done and shots fired.  Sure, I have found recommendations about equipment at Battleclinic; but seeing what was actually consumed was good.  Established PVP'ers would generally already know this information.  As someone who is unlikely to fire many PVP shots, this took "I think" and turned it into "This happened"

Standing up

Do a google search for "eve grind faction standing", and you receive a lot of advice; mostly about grinding missions and storyline missions.  Do 16 missions of a certain level and you get a faction's storyline mission giving you faction standing.

I was trying to follow this advice with L2 distribution missions.  I have received better advice, both in game, and as a comment on this blog; especially for a newbie player with low standing.

Is what you are doing earning a decent standing with your required faction, corporation or agent?  Character Sheet -> Standings -> right click and show transactions for who you are trying to raise standing with.

Data Centers

Data center missions can be found at http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Data_Centers.
Per faction, there are 3 graduate certificate missions, and a series of Keeping Crime in Check missions requiring you to gather pirate tags.  You can do all 3 graduate certificate missions, and one follow up series.  From the previous link - Caution: Farming 10 tags can take over a week. Do not accept the mission unless you have enough money to buy the tags.  Personally I would recommend not even talking to these agents until you have your tags.

The starting agents are in space.  I had been trained to look for agents in stations and spent some time not even finding a station.  Warp to the data center and then you can find your agents.

Place buy orders for tags when you realise you might do the missions.  There appears to be a very wide spread between buy and sell prices.  You also may do better buying tags outside the zones (e.g. Serpentis copper tags were being sold for 400,000 in Galente regions, but 40,000 in Minmatar regions)

Edit: Despite there being 3 copper tags missions; it appears you can only hand them in once per faction.  Also the copper tag missions require 3 tags, the rest require 20 tags.

Cosmos Agents. 

Doing the data center missions above you have started some Cosmos agent missions; but there are more.  Eve wiki has pages for each faction's cosmos agents.

Starter missions

You should have completed these once already.  I let a couple of mine lapse thinking starter missions can't be worth that much.  The starter ISK is useful; the standing boost is fantastic.  There are 3 of these per faction.

A list of starter missions, their rewards,  and the source systems is at http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Tutorial_and_Career_Agents_in_Eve

Also, just in case - if a mission calls for a civilian widget and you have a real widget; strip your real one and put the civilian one in.  On one of the missions (sorry I don't remember which one), I could not scan? decrypt? salvage? with the real unit and had to dock and fit the civilian equivalent.  For all subsequent missions - I just use the civilian options where available.

For newbie ISK, place low bid orders for the rewards (also on the link above).  Many players (including newbies) will sell to the most convenient seller.  I have purchased many ships well below unskilled reprocessed value.

These missions are also much easier to do in a Destroyer than a Frigate; the additional high slots help.

Allied Faction

Do the missions for your allied faction (eg Gallante/Minmatar); there is derived standing gain from doing your allied faction's missions.  For me currently this is about 60% but the number is changing based on something  - but there are slowly diminishing returns. 

When doing the starter missions for your allied faction - either learn Frigate 2 for that faction, or take a couple of surplus frigates with you; some missions want you to blow up your current ship.  You may also want to take some Velspar, Tritanium, Cap Booster 25, Mining lasers, weapons and ammunition.   My original Gallante starter system was well supplied on the Market.  My first Minmatar starter mission system was far less so.

Conclusion

I  still spend to long per faction standing point, but playing smarter not harder has worked.