Invention, Tiericide and Unlimited Skill Queues

Invention and Reverse Engineering are one

On November 4th Phoebe is going to be released and it will bring a second wave of industry changes, this time focusing on Invention and Reverse Engineering, which will be merged into one industrial activity. Both activities are very similar: they take some items (initiator, modifiers) put them into a lab, and give Tech II or Tech III blueprint copies as a result. Because of these similarities, CCP decided to put it all together:

phoebe-inventionAs you can see from the graph, Data Interfaces are being removed. CCP Ytterbium said that they don’t provide any interesting gameplay (besides you need to obtain them if you want to start doing Invention). All Data Interfaces will be reimbursed when CCP removes them from the game. If I were you, CCP, I would leave them in game as more less useless collector items, but that’s just me: “These units used to be essential for Invention in the early days of capsuleer industry, but since every laboratory in the cluster has them built in now, they’ve become obsolete”.

Another change is Meta Items, which will not be used for Invention after Phoebe. Instead, CCP will add additional Teams, just like the ones introduced in Crius, but these new ones will affect Invention input instead (=reducing Datacore cost).

The formula which governs the succes rate has been changed and will now give arbitraly 50% at max skills.

Base * ( 1 + (Science 1 + Science 2)/50 + (Racial Encryption)/100 )

This means about 20% lower chance if you used Meta 4 items, and about 40% less for Reverse Engineering. While this seems an obvious nerf, combined with the multiple possible outcomes and some datacores returned for failed attempts, it does not seem so bad.

What are the multiple outcomes? Invention currently has two possible outcomes: an outstanding success, which results in a ME2/TE2 BPC, or a complete failure, which results in, well, nothing. This will change after Phoebe, as more possible outcomes will be introduced (chances for maxed skills):

  • 2,52% chance  – Success (exceptional): gives a ME +2 and TE +3 to the resulting BPC
  • 5,04% chance  – Success (great): gives a ME +1 and TE +2 bonus to the resulting BPC
  • 10,08% chance  – Success (good): gives a TE +1 bonus to the resulting BPC
  • 32,76% chance  – Success (standard): basic unmodified BPC
  • 32,24% chance  – Failure (standard): returns 50% of datacores
  • 9,92% chance  – Failure (poor): returns 25% of datacores
  • 4,96% chance  – Failure (terrible): returns 10% of datacores
  • 2,48% chance  – Failure (critical): no datacores returned

Having multiple outcomes is more lifelike, but as a result, you will obtain different ME/TE BPCs, which will affect the ability to plan exact material consumption. Tools like LMeve will have to use average material amounts instead of definitive amounts like they do now. Fortunately, percentage difference is so small, that additional logistics resulting from this change is negligible.

With the percentages above, Tech II manufacturing materials should be calculated using ME 0,2 (0,998 * material amount)

The required Datacore amount will also be modified, because on average, 38,5% of datacores will be returned (0,615 * datacore amount)

CCP is also going to do a big cleanup in the Science Skills and Datacores required to invent items, in order to distribute Datacore usage more evenly (right now Mechanical Engineering and Electronic Engineering are the dominating ones). I’m sure you’re interested in details, so I will point you to the original dev-blog by CCP Ytterbium.

Removal of meta items from Invention is not a random thing

It is connected to another set of changes: Module Tiericide that has been partially introduced in Oceanus, and is described in detail in this dev blog by CCP Fozzie. While I like the idea of item rebalancing, and the general direction Fozzie’s team took is generally ok, the yet-another-renaming of modules is in my opinion a terrible idea. But let’s have a look at the new names first:

  • Upgraded – for named modules where no specialization is possible
  • Compact – for named modules that specialize in reduced fitting cost
  • Enduring – for named modules that specialize in lower cap use or otherwise longer running time
  • Ample – for named modules that specialize in extra capacity (damn, I never used Ample as an adjective except for… you know what :x)
  • Scoped – for named modules that specialize in longer range
  • Restrained – for named modules that specialize in reduced drawbacks

First, there is gigabytes of information stored in EVE blogs, third party programs, saved fittings and player-written guides. When modules are renamed en-masse like this (and in the past), all this information becomes obsolete. Ship Fittings stored on websites and blogs won’t import anymore (despite the great feature introduced in Oceanus, which allows one to copy & paste ship fittings between EVE and websites or third party apps).  Not to mention the ability to find anything on the market. Previously, when I was searching for a specific Stasis Webifier I would just enter “X5” into the search window. After the Module Tiericide I will enter “Compact”… and it will give me thousands of results, instead of the single Webifier I’m looking for. Not to mention a large part of the game flavour (different item names, just like in real life) will be gone.

Dear CCP, Tiericide is great, but seriously, please reconsider the new naming scheme. Even a compromise like “Compact ‘X5 Engine Enervator’ Stasis Webifier” will be much better than the bland names proposed in the dev blog.

Unlimited skill queue

This is one of the changes I’m looking forward to most. As my play times have been greatly reduced in the past couple of years, I not always have the time to log on every day to add skills to training queues. With the ability to train all three characters on the account at once it’s become even more of a problem. CCP realized it can be an issue for the players, so they are going to remove the artifical 24h cap on the skill queue. EVEMON skill plan import from clipboard coming next?