I’d like the ability to pause and remove BPO’s from the Industry queue that are on a research run etc.
Not just the long ones, any BPO in the queue.
Here’s why, I’m on the verge of quitting but I intend to give all my BPO’s etc away, but if I remove them now I’ll have wasted a lot of isk and more importantly time. If this was implemented whoever gets them would just have to finish them off rather than starting from scratch again.
I’ve thought about it for a while now and can’t think of any reason not to make the option available, it just seems very unreasonable to lose all the research time.
There is some risk involved in submitting any industry job. If you can’t see the job to completion, you lose the time, ISK and inputs (for manufacturing/ reactions). Why is this important? Without it, you can evacuate everything with zero cost in the event of danger (say, for example, a war dec). This becomes increasingly important for bigger jobs like building super capitals, for example, where many billions worth of ISK would be invested risk-free with no penalty to stopping the job in the face of aggression. Something to think about.
The first problem I can see, is it’s a bunch of development work, for a very niche case. As you’d need to implement a ‘how far through research’ attribute onto a blueprint.
And ISD Fractal is entirely right. This would do a lot to reduce/eliminate the risk of doing long research as you can remove them at a moments notice.
But mine are in a NPC station so wardecs etc don’t in any way affect them. Yes it would be different if they were in a citadel but would it be possible to differentiate between where they are?
Maybe make it that those started in a NPC station can only be finished there, and vice versa. You could also keep the research time but charge the full fee to restart it again.
The maximum time allowed on any industrial job is around one month’s time (30 days.) A player is able to see the time commitment (and ISK charge) before submitting it for processing. I take this into account before pressing the ‘Start’ button.
It’s an interesting idea… You could include some % measurement to show how far along it was when the job was cancelled.
But at the same time, it makes sense that if you cancel the work early, you have to start over. Having the progress remain makes it seem as though the research data was saved to the BPO itself. Having the progress reset makes it seem as though the data was saved in the computers of the Lab doing the work. I don’t think the BPO would store all of the research, it would only store the final data.
Or perhaps you can transfer them to another player whilst in situ, a bit like when you used to jump clone you used to have to pause your training queue, perhaps the option could be to transfer any BPOs already in situ to another player and as long as it doesnt mean they go over their number of allocated jobs the research would just continue under the new players oversight.
Well, one possible solution would be that a 10-run manufacture would be actually 10 distinct runs queued one after the other. Resources would be taken for every run individually, initial time and money costs are only an estimate.
Pausing = print completes the current run, but won’t start the next one. Nothing gets wasted.
(perhaps adding some player defined cost/time threshold at which the print pauses automatically)
Cancelling = print abruptly cancels even the current run, materials are wasted.
Delivering manufacturing stuff would take whatever was completed up to that point.
Risk regarding supercapitals and such (as mentioned by @ISD_Fractal) remains. So, it wouldn’t do much for the OP’s problem, though it might give at least levels 1-9 of research finished - just 10 would be scrapped, no matter if it was just started or is nearly completed. Better than nothing
Risk of many runs of a small job (say ammo) would be completely eliminated - but I don’t see this as a bad thing.
Furthermore, this opens another possibility - make a long many-run manufacture while you do not yet have all the materials. Which opens a possibility to add another skill that increases max manufacturing/research time (perhaps 2 skills, one for each). Say current 30 days base gets decreased to say 10 days, then each level doubles the max time and the 5 gives infinite time. As you don’t require all minerals at start, you would be able to set and forget the job, checking on it only to deliver what was completed as the stock on the market runs out.
I have often wondered why this isn’t the case already. It doesn’t make sense to order 100 of something, and be told that you cannot stop production until all 100 are finished. You should be able to tell the plant to finish what they’ve started, but don’t start any more. Or just scrap whatever is currently unfinished, and deliver what has been completed.
Why does the Research and Manufacture system in Eve have to be All or Nothing?
