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CSM9 - Day 140




CCP Fozzie also put up the dev blog for the stats on burner missions. The concept of more burner missions, different types of burner missions, as well as different ways to access burner missions has not been forgotten.

The new notification system has been released on Sisi.

What have I been up to in Iceland? Welp, I’ve been talking. I feel as if I’ve been talking a lot. I’m tired of talking but I walk away from the Summit feeling that I did well. My personal view does not change but I’m not just carrying my personal view to these discussions. That means topic to topic and session to session changes as I work through all of the different views, thoughts and desires.

Three days of meetings have left me happy how productive that time has been and the seriousness and depth that CCP brings the CSM into the process.

CCP Affinity caught up with me and let me know the state of my PvE little thing project. I was quite excited. It lets me see some of my pet projects completed.

These will be November fixes:

  • Escalations are being fixed. CCP Affinity rolled up her sleeves and is cleaning up the spawning and escalation rates.
  • Adding in squad warp to escalation sites. 
  • The unrated DED site Guristas Hallucinogen Supply Waypoint escalation’s MWD restriction will be fixed.
  • Blood Raider Intelligence Collection Point is a 3/10 that still has a MWD restriction.
  • Microwarpdrives in 3/10 DED complexes that still have restrictions are being fixed.
  • Reference to Karin Midular being alive are being corrected.
  • COSMOS missions are being fixed. They ate broken in several ways and this pass by CCP Affinity should fix many of the complaints that I have received.

As for Epic Arc missions that are not giving standings? Please submit a petition about the fact that you did not gain the standings so that they can be properly applied.

“Sugar! What about all of the other things I sent you?” I get a lot of ideas for PvE and changes for PvE but right now I am presenting broken PvE to CCP.

We sat down with the team who built the new industry interface. We discussed what is still bothering people and still being requested. CCP posed a question to the CSM about teams usage and asked us to dig into it. What they would like to know is what makes you pick the teams that you pick or what makes you not pick teams if you do not pick them. What is appealing? What is not? What is the interpreted value of one team over another and their various gains and associated costs?

Response, write, comment, poke, post, or chat with me so that I can pull some of this together and see what we have and what we are thinking as players when it comes to this feature.

This particular bit of direct developer request for feedback from the playerbase on their usage came with our POS discussion. This is not a question about hopes and dreams it is a question about actual, current use.

  • What do you use your POS for?
  • How many?
  • Why do you use a POS?
  • What does POS ownership mean to you?

The other question was about POS shields and what that protected bit of space means to each individual. Is the POS a dock? Is it a ‘safe’ zone? Is it a fleet gather point? Is it storage? What is that shielded space to you? It is an opportunity for input into the process that I am running with. Corbexx has already received a huge amount of feedback which is sensible for wormhole space.

When I posed the question to one person, in an attempt to explain my wish to be told what a POS actually is I used an example of a POS that has a moon miner on it but it is really a parking spot for a super carrier. If that POS is just looked at its mining a moon for materials. Maybe for a reaction farm? Maybe for ISK? But, its owner may consider it their super parking spot instead.

We have what seems to be a solid process to get the minutes done, processed, and out to the public in good time. I’m looking forward to starting that on Wednesday and writing myself dry.

Eve Vegas is next month as well. I’ll be floating around for anyone that wants to say hi. For now I’m packing up and heading back home. I’ll say this week has been productive and well worth the time.


  1. How will minute censorship work with the new release cycle? Seems like it will lead to more stuff being censored than before.

    1. The censorship is all on CCPs side. The minutes are not about announcing new features. However, I feel that they'd like to be able to share their future visions and their obtainable goals for the release cycles.

      We encourage them to as much information sharing as we can. The reaction of the player base will dictate a lot of it.

      I hope as much of this goes out as it can. It is a good insight into how your various CSM members thought and reacted to as well as an overview of participation.

  2. Surveys can be "gamed," but can still be very useful tools for obtaining organized feedback from people.

    1. Aye. If all answers fall into it 'might' be gamed or it 'can be' gamed we'll never give or try anything because of possibilities. If people want to sabotage themselves due to their own ornery nature then that is also what they must want to happen.

  3. I do industry in small bits on rare occasions in a wormhole. Mostly it is a case where I find a depot/tractor/other data site bpc and just make the thing because its easier to cash out the goods than the print. Teams are rather unsuitable for that usage and I am certainly not going to bid on a team on the bet that I might do a small job next week. Its a useless feature for me and I suppose exists to make my little bit of casual manufacturing less profitable. Also of concern is the data sites are losing a bit of their loot with oceanus as the paraphernalia related to invention is reduced and will thus be less profitable. I suppose to answer your question with oceanus they are taking out a small bit of game play I engaged with and replacing it with teams in invention which I wont use.

    1. I'm going to direct Corbexx at this reference the loot.

      So, your POS is a necessity because of wormholes. However, you also use it to casually build as I would casually build in low sec items that are on hand.

      Is there anyway teams could be useful to you?

    2. Its pretty sparodic and is mostly a way to cash out of bpcs found in ghost sites or null radar/relic. Its closer to crafting than "industry." As such I am probably an unusual use case.

    3. ( a different anon writes: )

      I don't think we have to worry too much about data site loot, dev comment in invention thread said loot tables should / would be looked at, and another comment suggested they would look into making datacores smaller, to help out the large numbers of covops frigs running around these days.

      Overall the loot value balance of data vs relic is a concern, I'd like to see some new "good stuff" added to data site loot tables. More decryptors won't help THAT market ;)

      Teams -
      I am a non-POS casual builder, when I need 20 small rigs, I just run the job and don't worry about Teams. Teams were designed for volume and high-price producers, where 1-3% savings can add up to "real money."

  4. I run a wormhole corp. The POS is neccessary as a place to keep your stuff. I can not imagine pkaying eve with only one ship so it is a place to keep all those other ships, modules, loot which is waiting to be carried out and the clutter of life in general. It is nice that we have personal hangars to keep modules safe although 50k m3 is not a lot, but there is nothing similar to keep the ships safe so each tower represents another password to segregate one members stuff from anothers. Because of thieves and the difficulty of keeping members stuff safe and also to make the eviction task more painful and less likely to happen we use a lot of towers. My rule of thumb is no more than 5 humans to a forcefield with fewer encouraged. Right now I desl wuth around 20 towers, in the past when we were larger the number was as high as 43.

    It would be really nice if they were really player owned like mobile depots rather than something I must help them with. They cant even unload their gas from a silo without assistance offlining it (surely ccp did not imagine that we would freely give out unanchoring permissions.)

    As a scout I need to be able to count noses as we do not have local. So if ghe pis were replaced with something like an outpost I would want a visual indicator of what active ships/pilots are contained within. Perhaps they could be moored externally like planes at an airport or scattered nearby like those at washington dulles. I also need each members stuff to be safe from the next while retaining a space where people can trade stuff between their alts and each other. Finally I would like the space to discourage docking games. While it is possible to play shield games at a pos it is rare because of pos guns. So while we dont need a forcefield we do need something yhat behaves a lot like one (passwords, tranparency on what ships are inside, docking game discouragement.)

    1. Some excellent points made here.

      In particular, I do fear based on stuff that I have seen in the past that CCP wants to move from a forcefield to some sort of more stationlike POS. That is, one that has an "interior", where you can hide. This makes my calling as a wspace hunter much more difficult. I could still see people who are actually out on grid. But I could not see them at all if in a "station".

      I have a POS; in wspace they are home. I have used them in the past for reacting. But the safety is the main thing. As nony here says, EVE is a game of many ships. To restrict yourself to just one (or a handful in an Orca) is pretty crippling.

      POS roles certainly are a PITA. Also, one peeve I have about POS parts is that I cannot get at my guys' stuff in a Personal Hangar Array. (Well, I think I can get half of it by blowing it up. But that's not easily done.) I had A PHA up once; I had a guy in corp who joined, moved into my system, then went idle. Then I decided to move. I wanted to move that guy's stuff for him, but I could not get at it (I do not even know if there was any). I could not contact him. So I was left with just annihilating his stuff. After that I stopped using PHAs.

      Getting sacked in the spring reinforced my anti-PHA opinion. I don't want any asset in my POS that I cannot get at, at short notice. "Short notice" here is the span of a stront timer, that is, within a day or two at max.

      People in wspace had better trust their corp leaders. If they don't, then they've got problems beyond having a modicum of personal stuff stolen. So, give corp leadership the ability to control their own assets. This does not have to be anything too fancy. I.e. have the PHA pop out in jetcans whatever stuff is still in it when unanchored.

    2. I rather like the personal hanger being inaccessible even by the ceo. It makes it clear to everyone that each person is responsible for their own stuff. If they leave corp or go inactive and we have to move their stuff will be lost and it is not my problem. The regular hangar results in stuff dropped in the wrong slot which is a management task to straighten out. Also occasionally someone imagines something was stolen only weeks later to remember where it is. In so many ways the inaccessibility of the personal hanger is perfect.

      As for the forcefield it can come or go, I am not at all feeling it must stay. What must stay are some of the traits it has namely passworded access, transparency for scouts and discouragement of docking games. If for example an outpost or station like thing existed which had rf/destruction/ehp similar to a pos and had those traits (passwords, transparency for scouts to see active ships on dscan/overview, pos defenses to discourage docking games) it would be fine.

    3. A small thing but... I hope we never lose the FF... living in an outpost would change W-space tending to make it more like Empire space and that is NOT a good thing. Plus on the upside the FF give POS dwellers the ONLY working "window" in EVE.

      I can't tell you of the times I have spent shipped up and waiting on this or that and found the time much much easier to bear than in a station simply because of the view...

      That said I would love to be able to actually dock inside the spike or in the Hangars like we can in stations also... best of both worlds IMHO.

    4. "the FF give POS dwellers the ONLY working "window" in EVE."

      I don't see why docking in a ship hanger under a future POS design should replace the view of near-space... the camera could / should re-center on the ship hanger.

  5. Teams:

    What is appealing?
    ME bonuses on items that can actually benefit from a ME bonus (read: almost exclusively T1 items)

    What is not?
    ME bonuses on things that do not actually get affected by the ME bonus. Also TE bonuses, as the best-bonused TE teams add too much to install cost, and lesser TE teams make no actual difference.

    I'm not sure how to respond to this other than by repeating myself:
    - Many, many ME-bonused teams apply to items that cannot actually use the ME bonus. Their value is thus negative.
    - TE bonus is not worth using for the current install cost increase. Even if you win the team auction for a total of 1isk; that level of "not worth using".


    What do you use your POS for?
    Manufacturing, copying, invention, reverse engineering, status symbol.

    How many?
    Pre-Crius, 10. Post-Crius, 1 online + 3 offline, with the online one alternating.

    Why do you use a POS?
    S&I POS bonuses are ridiculously high.

    What does POS ownership mean to you?
    Higher profits on the balance sheet.

    What is that shielded space to you?
    An area that protects my assets as long as I am connected to the internet so that I can access my notifications-scanning tool.

    1. Perfect.

      When you say status symbol, what do you mean?

    2. Oh hey, random passerby that's either looking for an empty moon or for an undefended research POS. Look at what I can afford! Not just a faction POS, but a rare faction POS. Also 97.5% webs. And large artillery (dreadnought-class) whose sig res is only 400m compared to the usual 1000m. Yup, that's 180k alpha across all damage types that applies perfectly to BSes, and near-perfectly to cruisers.

      The amount of pretentiousness in that paragraph is a bit exaggerated, but something along those lines is what I mean by status symbol.

    3. Yeah, but something can be a status symbol by being just rare and expensive.
      Why does it have to be game breaking? You're basically saying I want a POS that can volley almost anything (in high-sec) in 1 shot regardless of logistics. You're asking for nigh on immunity from attack (and therefore risk) and that sort of defeats the point of EVE.

    4. " Look at what I can afford! Not just a faction POS, but a rare faction POS..."

      If there are enough folks who want a status symbol, not extra utility - then CCP could consider special POS versions for various amounts of AUR.

    5. Kaeda Maxwell, this wasn't a hypothetical POS. I've been using that POS set-up since Crius hit.

    6. Edit: Though there is a massive correction I have to make now that I'm fact-checking myself. The alpha's only 80k, not 180k. I was remembering the figure way wrong.

    7. That sounds more real yes. 80k is something that can be coped with and you'd need multiple pos gunners to get the webs and that much alpha to all go on 1 target.

  6. Prior to the major industry, POS was used primary for BPO R&D. I took it down months before the patch because I had plenty of blueprints to make stuff. Since the CEO has commenced ore compression, with a new tower and location.

    We once used the shields as a layer of defence for mining boosts, but that was it. We used storage for mining operations in systems without stations.

  7. Wait there is a problem with epic arc mission standings?
    I just completed the amarr arc last week with a character but failed to check my standings before I completed the arc. Standings might still be the same as before?

    1. Some ate not awarding standings properly. So go look and if you do not have a bump write a petition.

  8. Teams:
    ME benefits are interesting, but not sufficiently so that I've ever really tried to win. Also, the ME that I'd be most interested in (Component) is often bundled with ME bonuses that are way more valuable (Capital this and that), so the bid price often winds up higher than I care to spend.

    On POS usage:
    What: I use a small POS for research and manufacture of t2 cruisers.
    How many: 1
    Why: The time bonuses for those invention runs move me from a cycle every 2 days to a cycle per day (because of play time windows). The time bonuses on component builds move certain builds into shorter windows as well, but that depends on what ship, how many, and how many BPOs I own of specific components. Time bonuses on the hull itself are more situational, depending on class and decryptor. Material bonuses on components and cruiser hulls are also significant.
    The numbers I've run for frigate hulls are less compelling (for my small batches anyway), although the time bonus on the hulls makes Symmetry decryptor runs (3/BPC) less irritating.
    For T2 modules, a POS does not make economic sense.

    What does POS ownership mean to me? A little chunk of me-space (well 'my corp' space right now) with benefits in exchange for overhead. Were it not for the benefits, it'd be a cool thing I'd do once and get over.

    POS bubbles: My corp/alliance uses it as a parking lot/quick change (avoid dock/undock session changes). Being able to have alliance permissions in a SMA might remove that particular need. Other than that, the bubble keeps randoms away from my stick, mostly.

  9. Regarding Teams, it took me ages to notice that Material Efficiency bonuses actually do something. All I'd see when I clicked on a team was that the job cost increased. The actual savings are hidden in a tooltip...I'd call that buried! The cost of the materials should be always visible, not hidden in a tooltip. That way, you could see it change, and thus your savings, when an ME team was selected. In its current state, CCP is hiding the information that might give me an incentive to use the team.

    One small thing I'd suggest, btw, change the icons: the "factory and gem" looks too similar to the "factory plus hourglass" on my laptop screen. How about just the Gem for Material,Hourglass for Time etc? Just use the factory icon in the actual manufacturing bit.

    I'd like to see number of available jobs without having to click on a blueprint first. Perhaps a status bar across the top of the industry screen?

    Light grey text on a dark grey background is...bad. I get eyestrain trying to read all the bonuses a team offers, and I give up pretty quickly.

    When I have used teams, it's because someone else had hired them, so they were available to me. I don't plan far enough ahead to pay a lot for a month's worth of work.

    The material cost tooltip should show a line item cost, so I can make a judgement about the validity of the estimated values that the game is using. When the materials are thinly traded, some wildly wrong values get included, but if you only see the total, you might not notice. Look at Incognito Ship Data Interfaces, for example. In the Essence region it said they'd cost 140K to make, but they actually cost close to 1M. If the intention of the industry screen is to make this clear, adding the line item cost to the tooltip would help.

    Lastly, I'd like to know the cost *per item* to build something, not just the total job cost. This lets me compare it to the market sell/buy orders so I know where I'll stand in relation to other manufacturers.

  10. Teams: the high bidder should maybe get something back -- like a percentage of all the jobs run in the system using the team or something. Nothing guaranteed, but something based on use.

    POS: we live in a wormhole, and our POS is storage and a way to build things in a w-space system that don't fit through the wormhole. What is important about it to us is that it is semi-secure storage in that we get notified and have a chance to do something before we lose things. It's not completely safe, and that's fine.

  11. What do you use your POS for?
    => as a WH group CEO, I use POSes as a home, as factory, as a hangar for ships and stuff, as a staging point for departing fleets, and as defensive facility against invaders.

    How many?
    => Currently 17, one per moon on our system, all online.

    Why do you use a POS?
    => In Wspace we pretty much do not have any choice. And as I am used to it, I like it better to live out of a POS than out of a station. I like all the tricks surrounding forcefields, I like pos gunning. What I dont like is having to spend hours waiting 2minutes for a module to online/offline. When the pos is not under attack it feels like an unnecessary burden.

    What does POS ownership mean to you?
    =>POS ownership means claiming territory of our system, responsibility to my members without the roles to manage them, it means work as well when me and/or my directors have to manage/setup/fuel them.

    I also would like to be able to manage more precisely who can or cannot do what.

  12. POS
    -What do you use your POS for?

    Our POS is our Home in Anoikis. Storage; ship hangars; some basic mfg. (ammo, fuel, etc.) PI and L&S for sale storage. But more than anything it is our home.

    -How many?
    1 usually, but we have run 2. First we Home second was an Indy POS.

    -Why do you use a POS?
    (1) no NPC stations in Anoikis... (2) It is OURS. Our home out in the cold hard black... in a way no NPC station or even an PO Outpost can ever really be.

    -What does POS ownership mean to you?
    Independence... real independence... and the fact that it is not 'safe'. That unlike a Station or even an Outpost, it is first and foremost YOURS and secondly hat it is like IRL... it is always at some risk. There is nothing, no fortification or building, no nation or state that is truly "idestructible" IRL and POSes in Anoikis are the closest we get to that level or 'reality' in the game.

    -What is that shielded space to you?
    Simple... It is my, my corpmates and our friends Home in the deadliest space in EVE. It is always at risk and therefore WORTH defending and the shared experience of living out of a POS builds a feeling of elan and an esprit de corps you just can't get anywhere else in EVE or out.

  13. - What do you use your POS for? Ore compression. Hisec
    - How many? 1 small tower
    - Why do you use a POS? Compression.
    - What does POS ownership mean to you? Functionality motivated by profit.

    I keep my POS in a single-man alt corp. Offline all the time except a few hours a month when I do my compression run.

    I don't think this situation is good. POS should be leveraged to encourage more interaction in hisec: (1) more banding together in player corps to share POS benefits and (2) increased competition for preferable POS locations. I am not motivated (with regards to my POS owner toon) along either of these factors at all currently.

    Perhaps POS should offer more benefits than just manufacturing and research. For example, small bonuses to mining and PvE (maybe in neighbouring systems as well as the immediate system, with diminishing returns). This would give a better sense of having a home base in hisec. Owning/running/living in a hisec POS should be more of a positive corp experience, rather than a liability that is better kept secret via alt corps.

  14. Sovnull scrub here. I (and several others in my alliance) use a POS as a quick staging area--leave a handful of commonly useful ships floating in space inside the forcefield, then you can warp there to reship quickly. It's much more conveniently located than station (nearby to a gate we like to camp when eyes see something incoming) and saves the docking/undocking time as well.

    The amount of ships floating in space inside this POS is quite impressive :)

  15. What do you use your POS for?
    All aspects T1 and T2 manufacturing and research. Compression and reprocessing has also been added.

    How many? Pre Crius 6 with three active and three for expansion. Post Crius one that achieves everything and more than the previous six.

    Why do you use a POS? Pre Crius to have available slots and do industry where I want. Post Crius to do industry where I want and be cost competitive with the industry hubs without overpaying for useless teams.

    What does POS ownership mean to you? A POS is a tool and an additional safe-safe. It was a symbol of achievement when I first anchored one several years ago.

    Teams as they are currently implemented are mostly useless for the majority of eve players in my opinion. People who waste ISK on them have not fully done there cost benefit analysis. Building big items in null the ME savings out weigh the free intelligence and bid cost. In trade and industrial hubs the ME type are necessary to keep cost competitive. TE teams are not necessary for the 90% of players that do not log in for timers and don't want eve as a second job.

  16. What do you use your POS for? Manufacturing and research. Mostly Tech I with a growing amount of Tech II.

    How many? Just the one.

    Why do you use a POS? What does POS ownership mean to you? The easy answer is that having the POS means more efficient manufacturing and research. Getting every edge possible in those fields is important in the small margin world of manufacturing. This is doubly true since margins have decreased in the weeks since Crius was launched.

    The main reason we have a POS though is because it IS home. It's a tiny slice of New Eden that is ours. We control that little space in that bubble completely. It ends up being the focus of almost everything our corp does. Even the little chores to keep it fueled (ice mining, PI and such) brings the corp together. It gives us a place to collaborate and help one another on our individual projects. Sure, we could do all that in an NPC station but it just wouldn't feel as unique and personal.

    I think things like this are what make EVE compelling. In a game that is advertised as a sandbox it's nice to have your own castle.


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