Tag: eve online

Posts about a massive multiplayer online game EVE Online by CCP hf.

LMeve Installation Guide

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Programming , , ,

Preparation

You will need a host with:

  • access to crontab (so most likely to shell as well).
  • MySQL 5 or above
  • PHP 5 or above
  • about 250MB of free disk space (for icons and EVE Static Data Dump)
  • EVE Online corporation API key(or keys)

First, go to https://github.com/roxlukas/lmeve/releases and download the latest stable version.

The trunk code is unstable and shouldn’t be used in production.

Warning! The guide below is deprecated, see readme.md on LMeve GitHub page for the most recent one!

Setup instructions

There is no installer currently, so there is some setup work to get LMeve to run

1. Initial setup

index.php and the website itself is in ./wwwroot/ directory. If you can set up your webserver root to this directory, please do so.

  • Go to ./config/ directory, copy config-dist.php to config.php and set it up according to your host
  • Set up a random new $LM_SALT value in config.php, then generate admin password hash by using php ./bin/passwd.php
  • copy the password hash to clipboard
  • Download current Types and Icons from EVE Online Toolkit page:http://community.eveonline.com/community/fansites/toolkit/
  • unpack all PNG files from Types to ./wwwroot/ccp_img/
  • unpack all PNG files from Icons to ./wwwroot/ccp_icons/

2. Database setup

  • Import ./data/schema.sql file to MySQL database before using LMeve. Remember to set the db config options in ./config/config.php
  • If in ./data/ there are any delta schemas, import them as well (up to the version you’re installing)
  • Import latest static data dump (can be in a different db schema for clarity, for example you can import lmeve db to lmeve schema and static data in sde_rubicon. LMeve will always use SDE schema set in$LM_EVEDB variable in config.php file) You can download latest static data from Steve Ronuken’s website:https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/dump/
  • If necessary, change table names to lowercase using script ./data/sde-rename-lowercase.sql
  • Access the database using phpmyadmin or other tool, go to lmusers table
  • Edit record for user admin
  • Paste the password hash from clipboard in the pass field afterwards you will be able to login as admin/admin . Password should be be changed in Settings as soon as possible.
  • Add corp API key (or keys) to cfgapikeys table. keyID goes to keyID, vCode goes to vCode
  • Full corp API key works best, but the app will adjust the amount of visible information according to the rights it has been given.

3. API Poller setup

  • Set up API poller in cron to run every 15 minutes*/15 * * * * [path-to-php]/php [path-to-lmeve]/bin/poller.php

Credits and copyrights

  • LMeve by Lukasz “Lukas Rox” Pozniak
  • LMframework v3 by 2005-2014 Lukasz Pozniak
  • rixxjavix.css skin by Bryan K. “Rixx Javix” Ward

Thanks!

  • TheAhmosis and Razeu – it’s their idea that I had the pleasure to wrap in code
  • Crysis McNally – for excellent ideas and thorough testing
  • Aideron Technologies – for excellent closed beta
  • CCP Games – for making such a great game and providing API for us, developer kind, to tinker with

A quick technical post regarding ship skins

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , ,

After yesterday’s dev-blog about ship skins, most players again discuss the micropayment issues. Others discuss the technical aspects – instead of introducing 8 ship skins, maybe it should be possible to create your own, unique color sets?

Remember the game Homeworld? Even though it’s several years old, it allowed changing the colors of the stripes on all ships in the fleet. Would that be possible to do in EVE Online? Could corporations have their own “stripe colors”?

The answer is YES, technically it’s not very difficult*

* – I know for sure it’s possible to do in CCP WebGL, but I do not have enough knowledge about EVE Online client code

When me and T’Amber talked about CCP WebGL, I remember we’ve discussed ship shaders being text files. What does it mean? Each CCP WebGL ship skin is simply an XML plaintext file that says which files contain the 3d model, what textures to load and all the other parameters (hue, specular, effects etc.) are set there as well, all in plain text.

How does that apply to fully customizable ship skins? Some parameters could be dynamically changed at runtime, for example Diffuse Color (hue). You wouldn’t be freely able to change the entire textures, or shape of the ship, but you would get the Homeworld-like ability to change the colourable parts of the hull to any shade you want. Like Punkturis’ neon pink? Change the hue to pink (#FF00FF) and set saturation to max. Like matte black? Change the saturation to zero and luminosity to low, and you’ll get your black.

As an example, below is the color for Gallente ships from Tristan’s .red file:

<MaterialDiffuseColor>
<name>MaterialDiffuseColor</name>
<value json="true">[0.2901961,0.3764706,0.3843137,1.0,]</value>
</MaterialDiffuseColor>

for those who want to test, here’s the same colour as HTML ( 0.2901961 * 255 -> convert result to hex )

#4A6062

What does it give us? Instanced ships items (i.e. unpacked ships) would have to contain a few more numbers, that are then used by the game client to replace the default Diffuse Color a moment before rendering the ship on screen. Would that put a lot of strain on GPU? A little bit, yes, because client would have to keep many more shaders at runtime, but the amount of actual texture files would be exactly the same.

Here I replaced the default Gallente color with this:

#FF4CFF

 

And this is the result (requires WebGL compatible browser):

Tristan ‘CCP Punkturis’ Edition
tristan-pink

Now that I’m not a CCP developer, I don’t know if EVE Online client works exactly the same way as CCP WebGL. But I bet CCP knows that already 😉

TL;DR: Hull colors are numbers, saved in plain text. You can easily change them a moment before displaying ship on the screen.

Jove ship models soon to be removed from EVE client

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , , , ,

Jovians are the fifth, technologically superior, elusive race of New Eden. For years their ships were in the game, even despite the fact that the race is non-playable. Sometimes one could see them, when CCP Actors were flying Jovian ships during live events. According to these two tweets below, Jovian ships will soon be no more:


Sarmatiko found jovian ships removed
CCP Explorer confirms

Technically it’s possible to download ship 3D assets from CCP CDN and preserve them on external server, which means it would always be possible to view them in 3D using CCP WebGL. Unfortunately there is also some legal implications (this is CCP’s intelectual property after all, and they would have to explicitly allow copying these ship assets to a third party website). If the answer was ‘yes’, I would be more than happy to run and maintain such “virtual museum” for EVE ships.

What are we talking about? Of course about these little fellows:

Jove-Eidolon Jove-Phantom Jove-Wraith Jove-Specter Jove-Visitant

Until CCP removes these ships from their CDN, you can still view these ships in 3D in LMeve Database:

What’s new in Rubicon 1.3? Status post! (due to popular demand)

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

darkblad-tweet

Last friday @Darkblad_eve, maintainer of a german fansite schildwall.info, sent me some resources regarding Rubicon 1.3. I couldn’t just ignore it, so here you go: the usual feature compilation for upcoming 1.3 Point Release for Rubicon!

New way of acquiring the Astero, Stratios and Nestor

High demand caused new Sisters of EVE ships to have quite a pricetag. CCP came up with a solution, that will reduce these high prices slightly, boosting Rogue Drones nullsec regions at the same time. Since Rubicon 1.3, Rogue Drones will start dropping nexus chips. It will be possible to turn in said chips at any Sisters of EVE agent for a one-run BPC of either a Nestor, Stratios or Astero. The chips will be called:

  • Rogue Drone 46-X Nexus Chip,
  • Rogue Drone 43-X Nexus Chip
  • Rogue Drone 42-X Nexus Chip

Source:dev forum post

T1 Frigate and Cruiser Balance Pass

Combat Frigates:
The Punisher will now follow the new Amarrian high mass pattern. It will be getting a boost to cap recharge and fitting. Kestrel gets a slight a mobility buff. The Breacher is getting a boost and a nerf at the same time: its missile damage bonus will be changed to Rate of Fire bonus (which means higher dps, but also the need to reload more often). It will also be getting a tad more speed at the cost of agility. The changes to Rifter are however the most significant. Rifter will have its Small Projectile Turret tracking bonus changed to a 10% falloff bonus. Judging by the replies under original post, this change was welcomed by the community.

Support Frigates:
First, the whole class is getting more base cap (but with lower cap recharge) and more speed (with lower agility). CCP’s idea is to reward actual piloting skills. Lowered agility will for sure require more attention when flying support frigs. The Inquisitor is also getting additional mass.

Cruisers:
The Augoror, Maller and Omen are getting their mass increased substanially. Vexor gets a tiny nerf to agility and speed, but gets its mass reduced to comepnsate. Moa will get a bit more shields at the cost of hull, slightly more cap with better recharge and substantially reduced mass. Osprey gets a bit more speed and less mass at the cost of agility. And Caracal? Caracal will loose just a tiny bit of agility.

Source: dev forum post

Mobile Tractor Unit Meta Types

‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit – best durability
+200% higher sensor strength than the base MTU (affects difficulty of probing)
+25% higher tractor beam velocity than the base MTU
+50% Armor and Shield HP, +33% Hull HP compared to the base MTU

‘Magpie’ Mobile Tractor Unit – best range and tractor speed
+500% higher sensor strength than the base MTU (affects difficulty of probing)
+50% higher tractor beam velocity than the base MTU
+40% higher max tractor beam range than the base MTU

Source: dev forum post

Corporation Member Cap Increase

In Rubicon 1.3 the effect of all four of the Corporation Management skills that affect corp membership limits will be doubled:

Corporation Management will provide +20 members per level.
Megacorp Management will provide +100 members per level.
Empire Control will provide +400 members per level.
Sovereignty will provide +2000 members per level.

Source: dev forum post

Remote Sensor Dampeners and the Celestis

The base optimal range of all damps will be reduced by 16.66% and the damp range bonus on the Celestis will be reduced to 7.5% per level.

Name Old Optimal New Optimal
Remote Sensor Dampener I 30000 25000
Remote Sensor Dampener II 36000 30000
Low Frequency Sensor Suppressor I 34500 28750
Indirect Scanning Dampening Unit I 33000 27500
Kapteyn Sensor Array Inhibitor I 31500 26250
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I 36000 30000
‘Broker’ Remote Sensor Dampener I 36000 30000
‘Executive’ Remote Sensor Dampener I 36000 30000
Shadow Serpentis Remote Sensor Dampener 36000 30000

Source: dev forum post

Hull Repair Drones

hull-rep-dronesHull repair modules are the only logistic modules that didn’t have drone counterpart. Since Rubicon 1.3 there will be Hull Repair Drones in Light, Medium and Heavy sizes, and Tech I and Tech II flavours. Their skill requirements will be very similar to Armor Repair Drones, but will be using Remote Hull Repair Systems skill instead of the Remote Armor Repair Systems skill. Other skills required will match other logistic drones. Both Repair Drone Operation skill and Drone Repair Augmentor rigs effect will now be applied to Hull Maintenance Bots just like they do for Armor and Shield drones currently.

  • Light Hull Maintenance Bot I – 6HP restored over 5s
  • Light Hull Maintenance Bot II – 7HP restored over 5s
  • Medium Hull Maintenance Bot I – 12HP restored over 5s
  • Medium Hull Maintenance Bot II – 16HP restored over 5s
  • Heavy Hull Maintenance Bot I – 30HP restored over 5s
  • Heavy Hull Maintenance Bot II – 36HP restored over 5s

Source: dev forum post

New limited edition ships

These have not been officially confirmed by the CCP, neither they are visible on market on Singularity. They have been found in static data dumped from the current Singularity client.

2014.03.01.11.03.54 2014.03.01.11.03.34 2014.03.01.11.01.13 2014.03.01.11.01.54 2014.03.01.11.02.03 2014.03.01.11.06.03 2014.03.01.11.03.41 2014.03.01.11.02.57 2014.03.01.11.02.48 2014.03.01.11.06.11 2014.03.01.11.06.24 2014.03.01.11.06.37 2014.03.01.11.07.46 2014.03.01.11.07.55 2014.03.01.11.08.17 2014.03.01.11.09.11 2014.03.01.11.09.18 2014.03.01.11.09.26 2014.03.01.11.13.56 2014.03.01.11.14.03 2014.03.01.11.14.11 2014.03.01.11.16.52 2014.03.01.11.17.01 2014.03.01.11.17.11 2014.03.01.11.17.21 2014.03.01.11.17.56 2014.03.01.11.19.28 2014.03.02.09.05.02 2014.03.01.11.01.02 2014.03.02.09.04.01 2014.03.02.09.04.12 2014.03.02.09.04.23 2014.03.02.09.04.39

Yup, those two guristas ships look like this year’s Alliance Tournament prizes.

On 6 of March CCP Xhagen unveiled the secret of the above ships. According to dev-blog, These are ship skins. They have exactly the same stats as normal ship variants, and will come as BPCs. Some will cost LP, some will be sold for AUR. The microtransaction prices should be moderate, at 45 AUR per 1 run frigate BPC and 350 AUR for Battleship. Of course all ships and blueprints can be sold on market for ISK. While many players question AUR payments in itself, these skins seem to be exactly the same as 100 AUR pants. Don’t like them? Ignore them. Like em? Fly skinned ships. By the way, Police Pursuit Comet blueprint will cost 3,000 CONCORD LP and 3,000,000 ISK and will be available in any station with a CONCORD LP store. I can’t wait to fly the Woop Woop Comet!

By the way, if you inspected the link from @Darkblad_eve that I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph, you’ve probably noticed some new clothing coming to game, too. I like the New Eden Open shirts best:

2014.03.02.09.05.59 2014.03.02.09.05.49

Source: Singularity, Dev-blog

TriLambda Features

  • All ore and ice asteroids have received their Shader Model 3 treatment. EVE has just become prettier.
  • V3 doesn’t end there, because Territorial Claim Units have been redon as well. They will correctly display alliance logos, and have fancy activation animations.
  • Remember the Tristan redesign mentioned on last fanfest? Well, Fat Man does look like a fat man now.
  • Linear Lighting, which is supposed to get more details out of ship textures (but for the moment causes them to look a tad darker than usual).

2014.03.03.19.21.44 2014.03.03.19.21.58 2014.03.03.19.22.04 2014.03.03.19.22.37 2014.03.03.19.22.47 2014.03.03.19.22.51 2014.03.03.19.24.19 2014.03.03.19.24.26 2014.03.03.19.24.33 2014.03.03.19.24.39

Source: dev forum post, Singularity

Drone Assist change

As per CCP Rise’s forum post, post Rubicon 1.3 it will only be possible to assist a maximum of 50 drones to one pilot.

Source: dev forum post

Little things by Karkur, Punkturis and Merc

  • Guest Lists:
    • can be viewed in compact mode
    • has a counter to show you how many pilots are in the station
    • can be searched in a similar way to search in hangars
  • You can now assign a label when you add a contact
  • It’s now possible to open more than one Kill Report at a time.
  • Orbital bodies in the Show Info window will now have a more functional right click menu
  • The Directional Scanner has now 2 input fields (km and AU) and a slider for range input. The 3 inputs are connected so when one is changed, the other ones update.
  • The angle slider in the D-scanner as been changed so it’s non-linear and has even steps to make it easier to select the lower angles
  • In chat windows:
    • you can specify words to be filtered out
    • you can specify words to be highlighted
    • highlighted words can always blink the chat tab, even if the channel is set “Blink Off”
  • Right click on booster will now show “Consume” as the topmost option
  • The “Fitting” tab in the Show Info window has been given a bit of a facelift
  • The capacity of the bays of your current ship is now displayed in a bar in the Show Info window (just like resists)

Source: dev forum post

What happens when Data Analyst and a Coder team up? [UPDATE]

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

If you want to know what happens when Lockefox (@HLIBIndustry) and I team up, see these two links:

by-group by-type

What’s that?

This is animated kill stats for 2013. Each blink is a ship of given type (or group) being destroyed!

You probably wonder if you can watch the battle of Asakai here? Well, not really. Let’s say 1,167,452 capsules got killed in 2013. That means, on average, every 27 seconds one was popped. The Capsule image on the webpage will therefore blink every 27 seconds (since I speed up time by 20x, it will blink every 1,5 seconds instead). In short, it’s showing the average frequency, not the actual kills. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to playback live data on this “ship grid” – it’s only matter of getting hold of the actual kill data as it happened. It should be even easier for a single battle – B-R – I’m looking at you!

How did we do this?

Lockefox had a database with kill data for the whole 2013 (downloaded from zKillboard.com), but we didn’t have an idea how to show it. Our inspiration came from XKCD Frequency – an animated gif, which shows how often some things happen in real world. Making it an animated gif however would be rather time consuming, so instead I’ve chosen javascript. First, javascript does a lot of things automatically. If I want to change something, for example update the data or make a 2014 version, I only have to update the CSV data with kill information. Scripts will do the rest. Later in the development I realized that for ship types I can actually use their icons instead of text, which should look better. So I came up with an idea of ship type grid, with icons blinking every time something is destroyed.

I have some more ideas how to present this information, so stay tuned. More pretty graphs and visualisations is coming soon!

Update

After we’ve published the 2013 kill stats yesterday, people kept asking if it was real time data. But it wasn’t.

So today I got the B-R5RB killmail database from Lockefox and used the ship grid from yesterday to make… an actual EVE Online Battle Player!

by-type

Since the event was played at 10% TiDi, if you set the time compression to 10x (yes, I’ve added a slider for that!), you will get real time as it would have happened without TiDi. Of course the entire battle took over 24 hours, so it’s best viewed at 100x 😉 Enjoy!

Wardecs, Business and POS

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

war-at-posI’m sure there’s plenty of high-sec industrialists, who are afraid of wardecs. There are players who do PVP on one character and Industry on another, but there is also lots of those who only like to build sandcastles, letting someone else destroy them (as long as it means profit of course). Corporations made of the other kind of players are at increased risk of non-consensual PVP. That’s why I’ve decided to write up how such corp can deal with agressors, based on our recent experiences.

There are two types of wardecs

One that is merely a nuisance and another that can be a show-stopper.

The beginning of new year saw an omnidirectional “Burn highsec” campaing by the Marmite Collective. While dangerous for travellers, these kinds of wardecs are more less safe for business, as Marmite’s rearely attack POS or POCOs, and logistics can always be done by out of corp freighter alts (or even Red Frog if need be).

But Aideron Technologies has fallen victim to another wardec in January: The BEA’s – Unintended Consequences alliance (a merc wing of what otherwise looks like a probably dead industry/pve alliance: The Butterfly Effect). They claimed they have a contract against Aideron Technologies for transgressions of one of our members. It sounded unlikely, even more so because they didn’t give any names. They were seen around our home system, so we have promptly halted all the production and pulled all the labs, turning on hardeners and waiting for the agressors move.

They didn’t talk to us until the last day of the first week, when they demanded a ransom (slightly more than one PLEX worth of ISK). Otherwise a fleet of Vindicators and a handful of other faction battleships would level all our POCOs and POS (mind Aideron Technologies has no POCOs at all, but whatever). Of course they all logged on instantly and undocked their shiny battleship fleet to show they’re not joking. Not sure why (probably has something to do with our diplo), but they let the first wardec expire and started another one, giving us 24 hours of time. It was a perfect window to pull down all towers to safety, thus there was nothing more they could ransom us for.

Fear not, the agressors didn’t stop there. For us not honoring the ransom they offered, they stated they are going to wardec us indefinitely, to completely break and disband our corp.

The war lasted exactly one more week

I am not going to lie. After having a blast in Stay Frosty FFA, I was eager to do some PVP. I was even devising strategies how to fight their Vindicator bash fleet. Unfortunately, Aideron Technologies being a purely industrial corp with only a handful pilots experienced enough in PVP was not going to fight. And my one man army of me, myself & I was not nearly enough to do so either. But I’ve gathered as much intel as I could, written it all down on the corp wiki (there is a few pages of information there now!) and had my locator agent pin the enemies on the map. Guerilla warfare favors use of fast ships like Vagabond and e-war ships like the Curse, so I fit a few of each. Surprisingly enough, the whole second week of wardec they only hopped online briefly to what seemed skill queue updates. Their killboard ends on January 30th. There is no sign of them afterwards.

Does it mean Aideron Technologies is not doing industry anymore?

Well, we’ve pulled all our POS down, which means we no longer have the labs to use. Our enemies thought we have no other choice: either pay up the ransom, or loose the POS towers (which means the industry would have to stop entirely, plus, AT has no standings with Gallente Federation to put the towers back up). Obviously, they were wrong, because we had a few more choices:

  • First, having a POS is a simple convenience. A high sec corp doesn’t need POS at all to run industry. All you have to do is decentralize, find NPC stations with free Invention and Manufacturing slots. Copying in NPC stations is indeed a pain, but we are patient fellows.
  • Secondly, we could join an alliance, increasing the wardec cost to a point where it’s not feasible for the attacker to keep the wardec up anymore
  • Thirdly, high sec manufacturable capitals, namely Freighters and Orcas can be easily made without a POS, and the whole enterprise can still be profitable.
  • Lastly, out of corp alts can always do the logistics

As you can see, wardeccing a high sec corp is easy. Killing their POS towers is only a matter of having enough force at hand. Stopping a corp from doing industry in high sec entirely? Nearly impossible, as they can stay turtled indefinitely, still making ISK in the safety of station.

And of course there is a handful of counters to a Vindicator bash fleet if you wish to fight back. They are short range Neutron Blaster fits you see. Is this enough of a hint?

Wardecs will happen, because this is EVE

As long as you stay in high sec, you will always be at the risk of wardecs. And that’s ok really. I mean, yes, they are a disruption of normal day-to-day operations. But this is exactly what I love EVE for: it’s unpredictable. Wars are a refresher, that makes the boring life of an industrialist less boring. They require creative thinking and using game mechanics to your favour. Which, again, is great. If I wanted a game that takes material records from database table A, inserts them as manufacturing tasks to table B, and then outputs them as new product records back to table A, I would write a browser game that does it myself (damn, this is an awesome idea! I think I should start writing that! …wait a minute, I still have a few outstanding projects).

What’s wrong with Industry in EVE?

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

The recent survey about industry by CCP Arrow has awakened hope in industry oriented players of EVE. Wait, does it mean something is wrong with the industry in EVE?

To answer this question we should first have a look…

Who is doing industry in EVE and why?

  • alts of PVP oriented characters
  • busy individuals who can’t stay logged in game for long

Industry (which is basically how crafting is referred to in EVE) caters to the needs of people who don’t want to (or can’t) spend a lot of time on EVE. Why? Because industry requires a brief period of activity, and then you are free to do something else. Install another Linux box, change diapers, shoot stuff on another character (* delete where inapplicable). It means industry is a rather passive activity. Should it be made more active? Should mining become a gang activity that requires 100% attention? Should industry be made more active like the hacking minigame was? Well, as long as it adds to the current system, rather than replaces it, I’m ok with it. But EVE requires different types of activities – it is great because you don’t always have to grind. Skillpoints are gained regardless if you’re logged in or not. There are activitites which require undivided attention, like PVP or Incursions. Or missioning/exploring low sec. There are those which require moderate attention – for example missioning in high sec. And there are activities that require low amounts of attention or none at all. Mining would be example of activity which doesn’t require much attention. Do you know why miners are so pissed with James 315 and his crusade to get rid of miners in high sec? Because ganks require miners to pay much more attention that they would otherwise have to. And there comes industry: most of production is done in the safety of a station, be it in high sec or low, or even null, not to mention PI which is as simple as “push button, wait x time, receive bacon”.

What’s wrong then? It seems industrialists are pretty happy with the state of affairs, no? They have their activities in EVE, that don’t force them to sit at the computer for hours on end. So, again: what’s wrong?

GUI is wrong. Well, maybe not in a strict sense wrong. It is wrong as in seriously outdated. It haven’t changed much over the years. Yes, it was iterated upon, for example when Reverse Engineering was introduced in Apocrypha, but it was rather adding a new record in an already existing database.

The core problem with industry in EVE is clickfest

Every industralist's favourite window
Every industralist’s favourite window

Most activities are highly repeatable. You have to login every x hours to start 10 invention and 10 manufacturing jobs. Starting up each job is 9 mouse clicks and 1 or 2 entries from keyboard.That gives 180 clicks just to set up one batch of invention and manufacturing jobs. It’s funny how CCP changed the first implementation of PI to reduce the amount of clicks. This is exactly what manufacturing, invention and copying needs: getting rid of the clickfest.

Possible solutions:

  • Introduce ability to start multiple jobs with just one set of clicks:
    • Choose an installation with free slots: Corp lab/assembly array or NPC factory
    • Set up parameters for a single run like you would right now
    • Choose to repeat the same job x times
    • As long as installation has free slots, there are correct number of blueprints and materials that meet the criteria, the job is inserted this many times
  • Make GUI remember past choices.
    • It already remembers if we used Corp or Public installations. Why can’t it remember the last invention/decryptor choice?
    • client should remember the choice for each blueprintTypeID
  • pick-installationChange the “Pick Installation” window to have installation list on the left, and production lines on the right, rather than one on top of the other.
    • In corporations with many installations (over 50)  the majority of time is spent on scrolling this list.  Why scrolling? Because the size of the installation list is fixed, and cannot be resized after reaching a certain height.
    • If the lists were displayed next to each other, the height limit would be the size of the window. This should make it possible to see either most or all available installations

Contribution tracking

Manufacturing and invention are very much like real ife work, so many corporations decide to pay their members for the work contributed towards corp goals. Unfortunately besides the API, game offers no GUI to track participation in the S&I program. Even if CCP wanted to introduce it in EVE it will be hard, because some corporations will choose to pay for the time character spent on manufacturing or invention jobs for corporation, promoting long jobs over short ones. Other corporations will choose to promote people who do a lot of clicking, paying for the amount of jobs installed, rather than for how long it took to complete them. There will also be those who would be willing to pay a share of the profit on specific item. As you can see, there is a multitude of options to choose from (which is bad for implementation).

timesheetSince there is no tools in game, Aideron Technologies has chosen to build our own tool (this is how LMeve was born). We have also chosen to pay for the amount of time, because if people run jobs for corp, they can’t run jobs for themselves.

What should CCP do?

  • Make a report available to corp Directors, which allows contribution tracking
  • The report should show (for each character)
    • How many jobs have been installed (per activityID)
    • How much time they took (per activityID)
    • How many products (t2 BPCs, items) have been produced

This would allow CEOs to pay their members for their chosen contribution metric. A contribution-to-isk calculator, that says how much corp owes their members would be perfect.

Progress Tracking

tasksCorp members can have many different production tasks assigned by corp. How would they know how many more Heavy Neutron Blasters they should build or invent? This is where progress tracking chimes in. Each character should have a small UI that shows their progress through the tasks that the Directors/Production Managers assigned to them. This way corp member “A” can invent exactly 100 BPCs, and corp member “B” can build exactly 100 modules, not to mention corp members “C” and “D”, who will make enough R.A.M.s and tech II parts to make said modules.

Planning

So the corp wants to make 200 Covert Ops Cloaking Devices II. This requires quite some effort:

  • 400 Tech I BPCs have to be copied
  • 200 Ishukone and 200 CreoDron R.Db.s have to be made to enable copying
  • 200 Tech II BPCs have to be invented
  • 50 Electronics R.A.M.s have to be made
  • Photon Microprocessors and Graviton Pulse generators have to be made (4000 and 3000 respectively)
  • Finally, 200 Tech II Covert Ops cloaks can be manufactured
  • of course Logisitcs have to provide all the materials, including PI, moon goo, minerals and datacores

kitsHow did I know how much work is required? Well, everything was in the Static Data Export, all I’ve done was connect and display that information. What should the GUI do in such case?

  • Insert a Copy task
  • Insert all intermediate Manufacturing tasks
  • Insert an Invention task
  • Insert a T2 Manufacturing task
  • Generate a shopping list for Logistic pilot

Of course some of the items above can be sourced from market instead of manufacturing them in-house. By the way, I’m pretty sure the ISIS interface would be great to visualize even the most complicated production process.

What’s wrong with Industry in EVE?

First, it’s a clickfest. It takes several mouse button presses to set up a single job. Secondly, game offers no tools to coordinate large scale S&I efforts. The GUI works good enough for a solo manufacturer, who uses either public or limited number of player owned installations, but is completely unprepared for corps which own hundreds of labs and run thousands of jobs each month. There are also no tools for planning or tracking S&I activities of a group.

The result: a multitude of third party tools to choose from

All the above results in players making third party tools which help with tracking and planning:

By the way. You know player-made killboards, right? Ever heard of War Reports feature in EVE? Guess which was first.

Rubicon 1.1 Static Data Dump conversion

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , ,

DevFleetHi #DevFleet! CCP has again published the static data dump before deploying expansion to Tranqulity. I would like to thank @Darkblad_eve here, who sent me and @FuzzySteve a heads up tweet on Twitter last night about new SDE being available. It seems CCP has a new procedure: SDE is deployed on friday immediately preceding the usual tuesday expansion deployment on Tranquility (only database is available for now, icons have not been published yet). Anyway, today I had a few spare mintues to run the conversion. Please find the results here:

You might want to get the new “Ship traits” -> Head to Fuzzy Steve’s page (look for invTraits).

The original MSSQL data dump is available on the official Toolkit page.

LMeve Database updated

The item database has been updated to use the new Static Data dump as well. For example: Nestor stats are up to date now, and Deployable Structures have been move to Structures group, along with other POS and Outpost modules. When you head there, you will find all the new deployables (they will be missing icons until CCP publishes them, though).

…coming soon in Rubicon Point-Release

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , ,

With the new year break now over, Rubicon 1.1 is looming closer. If you’ve enjoyed the new deployables in Rubicon, you will certainly like the two new ones coming in this point release!

Rubicon 1.1 will be deployed on January 28th, 2014.

Mobile Micro Jump Unit

  • single use structure
  • can’t be placed:
    • within 20km of gates or stations,
    • within 40km of a starbase tower
    • within 10km of another MJU
  • you have to be in range (within 5000m) to start spool-up
  • spool-up of 12s, skills are not taken into account
  • no cooldown – can immediately use a MJD or another MJU
  • anchor time 60s
  • lifetime 48hr
  • 5k EHP
  • can be used by friends and foes alike
  • 50m3 volume
  • 1M ISK build cost

If it could only be used by friends, it would be a major game changer, but it would also be overpowered a lot. With the approach CCP took, it seems much more balanced. Use cases? Quick spread-out to avoid getting bombed (MJU does not determine the direction of the micro jump). Will also allow a lot of cat & mouse games if you put enough of those around a reinforced tower. And yes, this structure is very similar to an acceleration gate (well, it does not determine the direction, though). Fun to be had!

Mobile Scan Inhibitor

  • single use structure
  • Can’t be placed:
    • within 75km of gates, wormholes or stations,
    • within 40km of control towers
    • within 100km of another scan inhibitor – MSIs can’t cloak each other
  • Hides everything within 30km radius from
    • d-scan
    • combat probes
    • itself it can be probed pretty easily
    • you only know something is hidden, but you don’t know WHAT
  • Ships inside 30km radius of MSI cannot use d-scan o probes
  • anchor time 60s
  • lifetime 1hr
  • 45k EHP
  • 100m3 volume
  • 15M ISK build cost

Again, not a major game changer, but allows to hide fleet composition from dcsan, which can be pretty useful. 30km range means that even if hidden ships are orbiting at 29,5km from the structure, it should be quite easy to catch them. Ceptors, arazus/lachesis’/proteus’ should be able to do that nearly instantly. HICs however would not be able to bubble everything just after dropping, though. Again, it gives a twist, but is not a major game changer.

Ships

More?

Well, if you log in to the Singularity test server, there is even more point-release things to see:

  • Little things by CCP karkur
  • Resists in Show Info are in one row now
  • Redesigned Station models (in space)
  • Redesigned Capital wrecks (WiP)
  • Rendered icons are now part of the patch

More reading: CCP Fozzie forum post, CCP Habakuk forum post

A drive that should not be tampered with

Lukas Rox ((IC)), EVE Online, Games, Role-playing , , , , ,

Undisclosed location in Essence region,
POS owned by Aideron Technologies

Research log, 23rd of December, YC115. I will be attempting to disassemble external compression dishes of new Sisters of EVE warp drive. Both armor and external hull have been stripped. Dishes are made of unknown, possibly fullerene material and are consisting of two 120 degree arcs on both sides of the hull. Arcs are fitted with a grid of graviton emitters and are bearing the logo of Propel Dynamics. Power coupling which connects compression dishes to ships powergrid is of Caldari origin as well and is based on graviton technology. There is an electronic interface on the bottom of the starboard arc.

astero-drydockRox was still amazed how Sisters of EVE were able to convince several companies around New Eden, from all four factions that are currently at war with each other, to cooperate and provide components for the new ships. Astero was half disassembled already, and only vaguely reminded of it’s original shape. With the armor plates removed, most of the ship was made of light grey tritanium alloy, full of sticking I-beams, wires and tubes interconnecting all the ships systems. The drydock assembly array was normally used by Aideron Technologies to produce tech II ships, but it was just as useful to disassemble them and analyze their inner workings. Powerful stasis field kept the ship in place, while robotic arms removed components part by part, like a surgeon operating on a beating heart. Lukas was just outside the structure in a small Gallente shuttle. It was curious how the Sisters managed to move one of the crucial warp drive components from the inside of the ship to the external, ringlike structures outside of the ships hull. This mechnism is what made these ships able to use covert-ops cloaks, without the need for advanced quantum computers and huge cooling systems normally required to keep them operational.

Now attempting to remove the compression dish control electronics.

Robotic arm reached for a small piece of electronics attached to the bottom of the right arc. Reverse engineering these chips would probably yield insights into how exactly the drive operates. Just after the device was removed, the grid on both arcs began to glow. It was a dim blue light at first, but it was becoming brighter and more intense with every second.

Graviton levels are off the scale, removing the control circuitry from the drive has caused some kind of runaway reaction. Aura, signal the CEO, we might have to evacuate…

Rox did not finish his command. Half-disassembled Astero collapsed violently as if sucked by a black hole. The surrounding assembly array followed the implosion, pulling all the robotics, then the dry dock, and the assembly array hangar inside. Rox willed his shuttle away from the structure, but it was too late. The implosion suddenly reversed, releasing bright white light that enveloped the tiny craft, obliterating it instantly. The capsule, even though well shielded, crumbled under the intense pressure and heat. The ectoplasmic gel, which normally fills the capsule began to heat and then boil, making Rox twitch in pain. The pain was so intense, that he wanted to scream, but the tracheal tube would not allow it. You see, in space, no one can hear you scream. The blast damaged the surrounding Mobile Laboratories disabling half a dozen of them immediately, and it made the POS shield flicker for a several seconds. And then everything went dark. At least as far as Rox was concerned.

***

Lukas was expecting to see white light; it’s normal, because new clones never used their eyes before, making them very sensitive for the first couple of minutes.

Instead, his body was still in dull pain. But pain meant he was alive. The capsule did not feed anything into his brain socket, so it must have been seriously damaged.

– Lukas, can you hear me? – a voice said – Are you all right? Listen, we’ve received a notification that POS is under attack. Are you ok?

– I will live – Rox willed his thoughts through the barely operational FTL radio. – Lukas realized it was Razeu, who came to check up on the explosion.

– I am repairing your pod, it caught fire. You should be able to fly back to station… right now.

Rox was weak, and couldn’t feel his limbs, but willed the capsule into warp. Medical personel was waiting on the docking ramp already.

***

Undisclosed station in Essence region
Poteque Pharmaceuticals property

– We are sorry – said a doctor in a white robe – but we were unable to save your left arm.

– It’s all right – Rox replied – it will only have to do until next time I die.

– Well, technically yes. But until then, you have been given a Phanca arm prosthesis. We were also able to treat all 12 broken bones and severe burns that you’ve survived. We did what we could about the scars, but I’m afraid they will still be visible. Of course since you are an empyrean, all these are permanent, but for this clone only.

– How long until I can get back to work? – Rox inquired

– You should rest at least a week before going back into capsule. We will monitor your vitals, but they should remain stable. – doctor replied

– I would probably be more lucky if the pod blew. – Rox said

– Not quite – the doctor said – You will have to ask your technicians, because I don’t know the details, but it seems the explosion disabled all FTL comms for a moment. That would include brain scan from your capsule.

A shiver went down Rox’s spine. That was close!

– It seems I should’ve listened to that note and not tamper with it. – Rox said to himself.

– Excuse me? – asked the doctor