QOL: Volume of in game items. Ore/Components (Balance Team)

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

This might just be the OCD in me coming out!

Dear CCP, what is the reason behind all the weird inconsistencies in volumes of like items.

So I’m looking at starting the planning phase and build up for the next two-three year plan of my EVE life. Building spreadsheets, looking at cost, volumes of assets and ore etc, to figure out the best way to do what I want to do. Do I build before and jump my assets in or do I move the base materials in and then build.

Now, I’m well aware that you guys like to play with cargo bays and volumes of things in an attempt to use that as a balance feature for the game. IMO that can be a bad balance option if it isn’t kept in check.

–Question–
The ABC ores all have a base 16m3 volume when in their uncompressed form.
But when you compress them…

100 units of A is 8.8m3, 100 units of B is 4.4, and C is 7.81. That is one compressed unit, which makes up 100 of those 16m3 units.

Ice when compressed is 1/10 the size of the original. I know I’ll probably piss off a lot of logistical players, but 100 units of A is 1600m3, 1/10 of that would be 160m3.

Veldspar is a .10m3 per unit. A 100 units would be 10m3, and 1/10 would be 1, but the compressed version is .15m3… :thinking: A hundred compressed units is only .05m3 more.

Done with ore

I believe I brought this up in another thread recently, but I’m also looking at the volumes of capital ship components vs structure components. 10km3 vs 3km3.

An Orca’s build components are about ~2x+ the size in volume when compared in volume of the parts of a Fort. There is a massive difference in the size of these structures when you have them in space.

My request is, can we get some consistency in volumes of like items. (My understanding or view of like items my not be inline with CCP or others. Which is I understand and can live with.)

Thank you

TheGream

2 Likes
2

I can actually answer this one.

The ore volume is part of the balance of mining amounts. The compressed ore volume is part of hauling and compression balance.

The ABC base ores are all the same volume because that makes it clear and intuitive what you get out of how much mining time for each of them, and also makes it easier to balance those ores between each other, since mining amount is done in m3.

Ore compression has its own balance considerations. You may not think this is a big deal but it really is. How much of something you can fit into a Freighter in different forms has significant impact on the game as a whole. The three ABC ores refine out into different volumes of different minerals. By changing the volume of the compressed ore you make it easier or harder to move around those base minerals in a compressed form.

Similar issues to the above, but here I’m fairly sure the main concerns are:

A. not having too many different component items in the game.

B. the size/cost of the biggest and/or most expensive thing those components go into.

So when someone was figuring out what components should go into an Orca, they basically just said “Does this deserve any unique components? No? Cool! Lets figure out what vaguely makes sense to go into this thing and then work out amounts based on cost and existing demand.”

There’s also some considerations that go into how easy the parts should be to transport compared to the final product, but mostly it’s just a cost thing and, I think, a certain deterrence factor against manufacturing your capital and structure components too far away from where you build the final product.

If any of this hurts your head too much just write it off as a result of magic spacial compression technology. That’s how half of Eve works anyways.

1 Like
3

Lol. I was thinking it was magic.

When I get home from work. I will link some spreadsheet data.

edit: finally home!

Okay so, as I prefaced my OP with, I’m looking into getting myself ready for my next journey in EVE. Part of that has me building spreadsheets to see what I need to farm/buy to build a Fort and Azbel (plus I’ll have to add in the Large Refinery when it comes.

That is the comparison sheet for the quantity of compressed ore vs the quantity of ore I need to mine to have the minerals to build a Fort and Azbel (I’m not worried about the P4 volumes)

The total compressed volume of ore is ~75k m3. While the uncompressed is ~16.2 million m3. Thats a major major difference. That means compressed ore to none compressed ore is ~0.005 % of the volume of regular ore. Double check my math.

Evepraisal - Goodbye Evepraisal :: sudorandom.dev shows the volume of the minerals is just over 1.7 million m3.
thats about 1/10 the volume of the normal ore.

Question? Would it be wise and feasible for CCP to basically just make all ore/ice pre-compressed and just remove compression from the game. They would have to change a lot of numbers, and adjust mining yields, but they wouldn’t have to worry about trying to find ways to tax compression in Upwell structures. It would also remove a 1/2 the ore types in the market - compressed vs un-compressed. Which could lead to less stress on the market nodes.

Now on to the volume sizes of Capital Ship Parts vs Structure Parts

Orca has a total of 81 capital ship parts @ 10k m3 each which comes to 810k m3. (Cargo expanded freighter to move parts)

Phoenix has a total of 185 capital ship parts @ 10m3 each, which comes to 1.85 million m3. (1.5 Cargo expanded freighter runs)

Fortizar has a total of 126 structure parts @ 3k m3 each, which comes to 378k m3. (Can nearly shove that into a JF.)

I’m just wondering if the balance team could maybe adjust the numbers to bring them a little more in line.

4

So, I can’t fully double check your math without doing a lot of my own math to figure out if your ore amounts are right, but I will note that you have a “Volume” column there which seems like it should maybe be “amount” or “units” or something.

Regardless, looking at the compressed vs uncompressed volume for Arkonor it looks like your ratio is roughly correct.

Finding a way to tax compression is relatively easy compared to what you’re proposing here. You’re basically having CCP couple mining yield and compression together for balance purposes, which wouldn’t just require rebalancing mining yields but also the cargo capacities of the various mining ships and possibly hauling ships as well.

On top of that you’ve just removed a major incentive for having an Engineering Complex since you no longer need to compress the ore where you mine it, and that in turn removes both demand for ECs and fuel since the compression module takes fuel to run.

In comparison taxing compression just requires either taxing the output or paying a fee based on the value of the output ores. The hardest problem in either of those is how to deal with small volumes of ore, but that’s solvable by simply setting a minimum batch size along with the compression tax.

I’m personally not seeing an issue here.

Final packaged volume of an Orca is 500km3, final packaged volume of a Phoenix is 1,000km3, and the final packaged size of a Fortizar is 80km3.

The Orca and Phoenix are supposed to be hard to transport, whether that’s in parts form or as assembled ships. The Fortizar is supposed to be relatively easier to transport both in terms of parts or the finished product.

Looking at this from a more nuanced perspective, the ships are almost impossible to transport as a finished product due to their size and the size of available haulers. You basically need to fly them to where you want them. Consequently it makes sense to make it difficult to transport them as parts to make it similarly difficult to get a ship where you want it by shipping it there one piece at a time, especially in the era of Jump Fatigue.

The Citadel on the other hand is relatively easy to transport once assembled (requires a Freighter or, if you’re particularly brave and/or suicidal, a cargo fit Orca) despite the eventual size of the finished product. This isn’t a concern since all the fun stuff with a Citadel happens once its in place anyway, and they can’t get up and move on their own so they should be relatively easy to move.

5

So first thing! Thank you for replying.

CCP has stated they want to add compression tax, but last word I heard they haven’t found out how. So if finding a way to tax compression is “easy” why hasn’t it been done yet! (Google failed me on finding a blue post - but I did find an old forum thread with you in ti from 2016-12-20

On the rebalance side. The mining yields would have to be looked at, but I’m not so sure I’d look at increasing or decreasing any ore holds on ships - let people mine more in one sitting, means they spend more time in space which leads to more accidents. I’m a big fan of keeping people in space. Now the rest of the balancing aspect would probably just be a nightmare or simple as they would just have to go change numbers in the database, test on SISI, see if they like the numbers or not and push to TQ at some point. Which is harder: Adjusting numbers vs finding a way to tax compression? I’d leave that to CCP to figure out.

Another thing, the refining/compression isn’t an Citadel or EC thing, though those structure have access to them for now, the bonuses will change once CCP gives us Refineries. So my idea could hurt refineries in the future, unless people fought over better refine rates and taxes (which would take more options for fitting structures). As it stands now. I can go mine in one system as there are few miners there to mine all the ore, then use a local guy’s compression (if it is open to public) and pay him nothing, and then simply move a massive load of compressed ore to a better refining system later. So in the current system, you ether make ISK b/c you invested in a better structure and charge nearly nothing for refining or you provide a free service with compression.

Darn Space Magic :stuck_out_tongue:

6

And remmeber is a secondary market in compressing. As example if u compress Kernite loss in the final price because compressed kernite is cheaper than the original kernite.

In the past i move with a freighter and a POS to compress very big quantities of purchased ORE, but if a people can DECIDE tax of compressing in the citadel / EC / refinery they own, you cant get a simple estimate of benefit / cost and the eve central data will be useless, because you have not a way to say the tax of compressing of that three frighters of velddspar you bought in genesis, nd dont knowing nearest tax, you cant know real cost.

If they do tax must be a fixed isk or %

I think they KNOW how make the taxes, but dont want tell public the problems the solution can bring to the table.

7

A little hard to read - but i didn’t think about the whole thing that CCP might be holding off on compression tax as it might stem some other issues yet to be known.

8

Lol, yeah the last word we had on compression was from I think either one of the conferences (Eve Vegas or Fanfest) or from the o7 show, I honestly can’t recall which one, and it was pretty much just a “yeah, we’re interested in doing this”. There was also something about it on the structures survey CCP sent out a while back which was, I think, the last place it’s shown up in official communications.

What I said though was ‘relatively easier’. There’s less to figure out from a balance perspective and very little to do from a technical one, the main thing they need to do is actually just figure out what they want to do with compression taxing. There’s at least the two main options I mentioned above, and there may be others as well that I haven’t thought of.

Also just because something is easy doesn’t mean that it’s so trivial there’s no work to do or someone can slap it out in an evening at the office. Everything takes time and everything, even fairly simple things, have a priority to them. With compression taxing there’s a large impetus to get it right the first time since it’s something a major group of users for the new structures have a large investment in, so cocking up the feature there will burn a lot of good will with that group.

Except that the flip side of this is it enables more AFK gameplay, and it opens up the possibility of a catastrophic loss for a newer player where as forcing them to dock every few loads reduces the number of eggs they can physically keep in their basked at one time.

In either case, both problems are pretty much just adjusting numbers, the problem is that removing compression from the game involves a lot more numbers to adjust and has a much broader impact, which means there’s a lot more that needs to be considered and tested.

It may not seem like it but the ease of moving ore around in Eve is a pretty big deal for the economy so it’s something CCP keeps an eye on. That’s one of the reasons compression hasn’t just been added as a base service to all NPC stations.

Compression doesn’t have a bonus beyond the fuel used by the Standup Service, there aren’t any rigs associated with Compression and as far as I know there aren’t any planned.

Yup!

9

They are, if memory serves me right, to increase the fuel cost of the refining module after Refineries come out. The refinery would then lower back down, but ECs and Cits would cost more to run if they kept them.

10

Yup, like I said, there’s no bonus to Compression specifically. Refining and Manufacturing have rigs with associated bonuses to efficiency, time, ect.

11

Right now, structure owners set the tax rate if you want to use their facility for manufacturing, research or reprocessing. The tax paid has no effect on what your product is worth - it’s up to you to decide if it makes economic sense to use the facility. Why should compression work differently?

Capital components are mostly built in lowsec. Thukker bonuses make it uneconomical to build them anywhere else. Super capitals can only be built in sovereign nullsec - creating a lot of work for JF pilots. I don’t think this is accidental!

Volumes in Eve are chosen for game play reasons - not because they make any kind of real world sense.

You can fit a Raitaru in a Nereus, yet once anchored the storage capacity is infinite.

An Ascendancy implant requires 4K M3 of material to make a 1 M3 implant that plugs into a human head.

I’m sure everyone can come up with numerous other examples and for some reason Max Planck gets the blame/credit for this!

12

1 m3 of compressed veldspar making around 20 m3 (or whatever it is) of trit always seemed weird, but I love that implant example.