Fireside Chat Transcript 2024 09 21

Ranger Gama:

How's everybody doing on this fine Saturday? Uh, so

Snipereagle1:

Did you guys hear Ranger? I saw him light up.

Ranger Gama:

Fucking sniper. I hate you so much. Um, Asher has stepped away for, um, the day. He was supposed to be here. Um, I got a message, he is in a sudden death tournament right now. So, you know, well, we want him to lose, I'm sorry. I mean, we totally want him to win. Um, he is in sudden death right now. On something. Uh, what game? He did not. So, I have a feeling it's like Magic the Gathering, and he knows I would just fuckin rib him for it till the end of time. Hello Kitty Online! Oh, I like it. That's what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, there we go.

Asher's playing Hello Kitty Online in sudden death right now. Why not?

Snipereagle1:

I told him good luck with his LARP.

Kazanir:

It's an old joke, but it checks out.

Ranger Gama:

Yep, yep, it's a good one, yep. Uh, alright, looks like, oh, right at 420. Uh, somebody just ruined it. Yeah, fuckin goons. Always ruining the good stuff. Uh, so Kaz and Sniper are going to talk to you guys all about the Equinox updates that came out just a few days ago.

It's actually been kind of interesting, uh, CCP's done some, some stuff and things to places. And Sniper and Kaz, you guys take it away, tell us all about it.

Kazanir:

I didn't realize you were going to drop the whole agenda on us. So yeah, uh, this week we got a big patch. There is actually a ton of stuff in it, not all Equinox related, but what we are most happy about is that they are continuing to iterate on the new map on what we can do with SOV space.

Uh, unfortunately, we have very diligent planners and experimenters who have had all of their hard work the past three or four weeks just completely upended. Uh, and so we're now we're looking at all the maps again. So if you haven't seen those patch notes, go check them out. There are a lot of changes in there.

Another thing they did is actually manage to slightly simplify capital production. I hope this is not the end of the road, although I hate regulatory uncertainty, but they did make some substantial changes to actually simplify the chain, uh, and make it, uh, certain subcomponents, uh, easier to build so that you don't have to have six or seven different branches of of intermediate product to get some stuff built.

Snipereagle1:

And it was mostly just streamlining, not cost reduction, right?

Kazanir:

Correct. Yes. The actual cost as far as we can tell has not gone down at all. Uh, I think the prices of some of the, the intermediate item will now shift around a little more freely. Uh, in particular, one of them called the FTL, I think is now something you can build with just one high level moongoo item and the rest is wormhole gas.

Um, there, there are a couple other changes like that. Uh, all the wormhole gas got taken out of basic capital components, for example. So you no longer have to have a tiny bit of the fullerene reaction products, the hybrid reactions, just to make a capital component of any kind, which is great. Uh, so really that that's all pretty positive and we're happy to see a lot of iteration.

Uh, but yeah, let me, you know, someone did link the patch notes. Cool.

https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/patch-notes-version-22-01

Uh, but if anyone's paying attention to that and wants to ask questions, we're happy to take. That is obviously impacted everything we're doing. So, what I said last week about GSOL and others rapidly building the bridge out underneath us as we stand out over the edge of the cliff continues to be true.

Uh, they also added, I guess the other major, not major, the other small thing they added was a new rack of mining sites, which do not, in a way, look very good. They seem more like ADM sites to me. Uh, but they do output minerals, uh, at a, you know, if you're, if you're mining them on cooldown, which is kind of annoying, uh, you're actually producing a fair amount of minerals with the, with the new site still.

Snipereagle1:

Well, and they're, they're kind of a bin packing site, right? Where you're probably not going to build out your plan around them, but they're a nice way to fill in some places where you're like, well, shit, I really wanted to put a mining upgrade in this system, but it can't really support it, you know, so what can I do from there?

But yes, Wookinator, 10K m3 asteroids, frowny face, indeed. I don't know why they're so opposed to just, like, giving people big rocks to chew on.

Kazanir:

I'll let you know when I find out, man.

Snipereagle1:

Everybody's getting PTSD just hearing the asteroid has been depleted over and over and over again in their headphones.

Ranger Gama:

Except the classic EVE has sound.

Snipereagle1:

That's enough, you.

Yeah, let's see. So what else did they change with upgrades, right? So they did that, um, They made some changes to the lower level ratting upgrades that makes them quite a bit more viable, especially in low trusec.

Kazanir:

Wait, they changed the minor TDA? Okay.

Snipereagle1:

No, sorry, major.

Kazanir:

Major, yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, so all the ratting upgrades got a couple of extra sites.

Snipereagle1:

I love having a number range and Minor and Major, that is very clear.

Kazanir:

I know, they should have gone with lesser and greater, but in any case, um, that was helpful. The other, the biggest change is that we were, in planning, planning terms, this will make more sense if I describe it this way. A big thing we have been trying to decide and plan around is how the strategic layout of the new space we have is going to go.

And a big part of that is planning Equinox with what looked like extremely expensive strategic upgrades, uh, Anciblex beacons. And potentially jammers were all pretty expensive, not just in fitting terms, in terms of the power and workforce map, but also their reagent cost. Now, all of that has been reduced substantially.

They're still going to be a lot more expensive than we're used to. I think, uh, what is it? A beacon is still going to be like a billion isk a month or something, maybe 800 million. I forgot the exact number where they previously were only 150 million a month to turn that upgrade on.

So still a big hike in cost. But not one, you know, when we were looking at it previously, it was like, ah, the whole universe seems like it can only support so and so many beacons. This is very challenging. And now it's not like that. So we do, we are going to have to plan still, but this is, that's a dramatic change to everything we were looking at in terms of map, in terms of just deciding what to do with all the new space in the first place. Stuff like who is going to live where, it just, this has upended everything once again, in a good way. We're very positive about what's possible now, and again, I'm glad CCP is iterating. Uh, but we have fewer decisions now than we had a week ago, so I guess that's bad news in a way. Yeah, they did...

Snipereagle1:

They cut the, they cut the jump bridge almost in half. They cut the beacon by 80%. They cut the jammer by a fuckton. Went from 2500 an hour to 205 an hour. So, yeah, we'll have, we'll have the, we're still not gonna have like, uh, you know, the, the, the Delve that we see today with a jump bridge in every system is, uh, is not going to be a thing after a November patch. We can probably support twice as many jump bridges as we were thinking we could a week ago.

Kazanir:

Dragon Zero asks, how does it affect our enemies? I mean, it's a buff for them too, right? All of the, all of SOV Nullsec was under this type of threat, uh, from the restrictiveness of the new map, and no one was looking forward to the forced conversion, as it were, um, and I think that's a lot, a lot more tenable now in general. Um, so I don't, I don't know that there's any particular distinction, but we were, uh, you know, there, there have been times we've been sitting here worried that CCP is just going to kill NullSec almost by accident with the restrictiveness of the matrix, and I think that that won't not be true for the time being. So, that, obviously that helps our biggest enemy, but that's okay. We'll kill them anyway.

Apple Pear:

Also on the reagent stuff, like the stealing, etc. Are they not going did they not say, like, they're going to do an update on that in October? Like, I've read something like that.

Kazanir:

They have not personally read the public post that gives a new time. I know they promised one in September, which hasn't happened. And I think there was some language about it. But yeah, they're they claim that there is a change to the skyhook mechanics coming, which affects reagent collection, theft, etc.

Ranger Gama:

Sorry, go ahead.

Kazanir:

I was, I was going to answer his question. Is there anything Average Joe members can do to help? If you want to come out and ADM some of the new space, feel welcome. There are a lot more structures there now than there just were a week ago. I think, what is it? Every system that we own in Tenerifis has some type of tetherable structure now, as well as, is it Catch, or is it Impass? I forgot. That was a sniper question, but he's not listening to me.

Apple Pear:

I think Brodog knows a little bit more about what's going on there. But yeah, there's a lot more stuff there.

Snipereagle1:

I'm just getting a drink so I can talk more. Um, yeah, there's some in Imensea as well.

Kazanir:

Uh, so Johnny asks, Are supercap manufacturing Sotiyos going to stay where they are currently? No, those are already off. Uh, we needed to move those because of power and workforce requirements. Regardless, I haven't actually checked the super cap upgrade and what they did to, uh, but we're going for a major re-optimization there. So that's why that stuff is all, all off. The MER is going to look kind of crappy for a couple months, and that is okay because we want to get a better setup. Uh, we had a really good plan that has worked the last couple of years in Delve. We've been the top of production. I'm pretty sure every month, uh, relative to the rest of Nullsec, and very competitive with all the other Empire regions, uh, but we are not going to leave those there. They can't be left there.

Snipereagle1:

We beat Jita once, uh, beat the Forge once in the last couple months.

So, uh, the question of, uh, question from Grapesized_nutz, does this create empty systems all over the map because you can only do stuff here or there? So, You know, right now we go around and we upgrade a system. We go, okay. So this is going to get pirate detection five, which means you get as many anomalies you want and we're going to add ore prospecting five, which means you get a colossal. Um, so like that stuff is, is gone and you will have to pick and choose. Um, as they reduce the requirements and buff the lower end upgrades it makes it, you know, you're still going to have like, you can't just go to every system and find a haven anymore, right? Like, you're going to have systems that are like, Oh, well, like, this is a system that has a minor 1 or sorry, a major. So the minor upgrades just to, like, establish this for real quick, they are garbage. They are dog shit. You will probably not see them anywhere because they suck. Uh, they only give good sites in high truesec where you would just want to have a higher major upgrade anyways, um, but yeah, so like we are gonna have to pick and choose right there's not gonna be a colossal in every system. There's not gonna be giga mining upgrades in every system. Having a jump bridge is easier than it was a week ago, but it still uses a lot of the the fitting for us.

So for anybody that hasn't been following it super closely, uh, the upgrades require power and workforce, and you can basically think of it like CPU and power grid, uh, when you're fitting a ship, right? Um, so power is a hard cap where there's a set amount of power for a system. And that is what it is. And then you can import workforce from other systems. They've reduced the power usage on things and buffed up some of the suns to a point where power is sometimes a hard cap, but more frequently, the challenge is just figuring out where to get enough workforce into a system from. Because, like, you can import, but it's basically like, you have to play connect the dots. And so, like, if I have, you know, 1 system, like, let's say I, I want to import into 1DQ, right? Uh, Every system in between 1DQ and wherever I'm getting it from has to be set to, like, a transit mode, uh, so that we can, uh, so that it can, like, move over, and then you can't import or export from anything in the middle. So, it's fairly complicated, um, but, yeah, so they've done things to make it so that we can upgrade more systems more. But it's not just going to be every system just gets fully upgraded because that's just not possible anymore.

Kazanir:

This is something that sort of sounds bad, but in a way, Alliance leadership is semi delighted that we can choose where the crabs will end up and where they will not end up. Uh, because currently, maybe you've noticed, but a lot of people go crab in places that we tell them not to. Uh, we're not in a...

Snipereagle1:

Something something dying mining ABCs in the ass end of period basis.

Kazanir:

Exactly. So we, we will no longer suffer that problem in exactly that way. We will be able to offer a little shaping to people's behavior, uh, which is delightful. Uh, just on its own terms, even though we were afraid of the restrictiveness of the map. Yeah, that's right. Regulation.

Ranger Gama:

Squid, we're, we're goons. There's always mining and ratting drama. There's never not mining and ratting, when there's never, like, if you go through in leadership and there's no mining or ratting drama, it's because you forgot to turn on Discord or Jabber or something. There's always a little bit of drama. We're goons. We do drama.

Beyondnoxx_UNP:

It's my, uh, secret santa wish that goons learned to read. I know it's impossible, but one can dream.

Ranger Gama:

Well now that you have said it out loud it's not going to happen.

Beyondnoxx_UNP:

Like it would before.

Snipereagle1:

Oh, I have a, I have a funny tangent for a sec that any of the market or industry people will enjoy. Uh, there's a chance that we fixed goon metrics for good last night. We'll have to see. I, I know I am like hubris to the nines right there. So if it doesn't fix it, we'll look at it more.

Kazanir:

What a great one liner that was. Oh my heck.

Snipereagle1:

Right. Um, so what happened is when you pull market orders from ESI, you like, Request that market, and then there's like only, you know, a thousand orders per page. Uh, and then you have to get another page of results and it tells you how many pages there are. Well, at the beginning of that code, it has a number set for how many pages there are. And then once it makes a successful request, it updates that number. But if it never makes a successful request, it never updates that number. And so I was looking at the logs on it last night and I was like how many pages of orders are there in Jita? Oh, 344, and it was requesting page, like, 165,000, and it was going to continue running all the way up to 2.14 something million, whatever a max 32 bit integer is. So, uh, gave that a sane default so that it and like, when it would be doing that, it would just not do anything else until it got to the end of that.

And in like, 4 days, it only made it 165,000. So, uh. Yeah, it was, it was quite, yeah, there you go Aoife, uh, 2,147,000.

Ranger Gama:

Oh man, you just messed up your own number there, Sniper.

Snipereagle1:

Oh yeah, I'm off by

Beyondnoxx_UNP:

A couple of billions?

Ranger Gama:

Yeah, you're off by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Snipereagle1:

Well, yeah, any, anyways, uh, yeah, so I fixed that so that if it does get stuck in that hell loop, uh, it should only do it five times instead of a couple million or billion times, whatever the actual number is, so.

But yeah, if, uh If you do see it broken again, feel free to tag me in like gs_isk or elysium or something and we'll take a look at it.

I know people would like- if that does end up fixing it, I know people will be very entertained with that story. And if it doesn't, then I just have more work to do. Hooray.

Kazanir:

Uh, I see a couple of questions we have skipped over to which I will answer no future plans without identifying them. If your question was skipped, now you know why.

Uh, Eagleklaw asks, thoughts on Frontier from the coders? I actually do have thoughts. Um, I posted this on Reddit. For those who are not caught up, Frontier was Project Awakening that they had in the sort of secret beta that there were a few leaks about. Uh, it is their blockchain game, and it is, it's a spaceship game. It is a lot like EVE. It's in a totally different sort of universe. It's not, it's not TQ. It's not in New Eden, so to speak. Uh, and the, the base layer of the game is some sort of blockchain implementation such that a lot of your assets ultimately are, are on the blockchain and could be hypothetically traded over a blockchain app rather than in the game. Now the details of that are not all worked, but yes, this is their thing that they took 40 million dollars of cryptocurrency investor money to build. Uh, but what's actually kind of awesome about it, and this is why I'm saying, I'm sanguine about it for two reasons. Uh, one is that I told them EVE players are not going to come play this game. They need a whole new player base if this thing is ever going to be successful, but they already knew that. They are cognizant of that. Um, so that's, that, I'm sort of, that's why I'm, not, I don't want to say optimist, but they at least know that this is not going to be something they're going to have a starting player base for, except very few.

Um, The other great thing is they took 40 million of someone else's money to build a second game in the exact same engine that that EVE is built in, in the carbon engine. And so carbon has just gotten a ton of investment, which will redound to our benefit. Some of it already has. Um, and if we're in the medium and long term, it's just going to be great for Eve's sort of underlying health, uh, because of the amount of work they've been able to put into that. So, the news is not all negative on that score. That does not mean we're ever going to advertise. There's not going to be a goonswarm federation in Frontier. There is zero, there's negative planning for that. Um, but nevertheless, Uh, their CCP's broad strategy on how they executed that will ultimately benefit TQ.

Snipereagle1:

I have a seriously trolly question, Kaz. Did they get 40 million dollars of crypto money or 40 million dollars of crypto?

Kazanir:

No, no. I mean, that's, they got, they got the money right. Now, the question is, yeah. How much, how much of the game's underlying terrain does that mean that the investors will control? I have no idea the answer to that. And I'm suspicious about it, but whatever, you know, uh, there as like a company, as a business strategy, it was actually a pretty slick move.

Ranger Gama:

So clearly, and I know this is a, it's a giant troll in there, but I love it. So clearly Kaz, they were not in Jita local looking for the, uh, you know, money doublers, they could have had, you know, 40 million or 80 million. I mean.

Kazanir:

Speaking, speaking of that undersung thing from this patch, if no, if you have not noticed. I have not even checked it out personally. There is the ability to block types of messages in your local chat so that your local cannot be spammed up by recruitment links, by hypernet crap, by whatever ISK doubler, uh, that has just gotten rave reviews. So big credit to the people who surprise implemented that. Uh, I can't say too much more, but there were people at CCP who didn't even realize that was going in and that has got great, great feedback.

Snipereagle1:

That's a wild, like, last bullet point in the patch notes that's like, Hey, what's this? And it's like, Oh, wow.

Yeah. So you can do all kinds of like super complicated, like, I don't want to see contracts in Alliance chat, or I don't want to see, uh, you know, hypernets in my Corp chat or, you know, whatever. Like you can, you can do all kinds of customizable filters to, uh, you know, you could probably even filter out Cassador and Minatar's Pancake Cat links in Fleet Chat if you want to.

Ranger Gama:

Well, that may be crossing the line there, Sniper, but It actually was a great one to put in there.

Apple Pear:

Is there somebody who can, like, make a guide on how to do that and, like, that we not all have to find it out for ourselves?

Beyondnoxx_UNP:

I already did. _99. It removes the pancake cat link.

Snipereagle1:

We should we'll ask, Hey, you know, like Gooniversity or something might have, uh, some suggestions or something, but yeah, it'd definitely be a good thing to have like a forum post of like, hey, if you want to block scam contracts out of local, then.

Beyondnoxx_UNP:

Boo.

Kazanir:

Yeah, someone's I mean, yeah, we're getting a few complaints from the scammers, but I'd like to certainly we have a long, long history of great scams and probably the tiniest single digit percentage of those actually started in a local chat, right? All the good scams are serious social engineering of people exploiting other people who don't understand what EVE is like. And that will continue to be true. This is not going to affect those guys at all.

Snipereagle1:

See Beyond, you either have to stop complaining or admit that you're a low effort scammer?

Kazanir:

Right.

Beyondnoxx_UNP:

I'm both. Like, there's no reason not to do the AFK money when you can do the high effort as well. It's like saying you don't Ishtar rat because you also have Stormbringers. The fuck?

Apple Pear:

And is it also like something that, as I see, I can like for everybody cancel in FleetChat, or does everybody have to do that for themselves?

Snipereagle1:

It's a client setting.

Apple Pear:

Okay.

Snipereagle1:

So, unfortunately, Apple, no, you can't take away people's ability to talk in FleetChat, even though I know you want to.

Apple Pear:

That was more like no pancake cats in my fleet chat, like that for everybody that would be so nice, like, and, and, and Cassador filter, like that would be so nice for everybody in my fleet chat.

Ranger Gama:

Uh, there was a question just about CAD alts in there. Um, we'll, we'll get on that. So they're usually not pending for five days, man. I- yours got missed, I think.

Snipereagle1:

Well, we do, uh, we usually do a pass on them every weekend, so.

Ranger Gama:

Yeah, like for sure every weekend we do them. BP and I try and do them during the week as well. Looks like it was just one of those kind of weeks. Yeah. But speaking of CAD alts, uh, we've been doing a lot of a lot of CAD fleets. So if you don't have your alpha alt, Please do that. Get those in there. We have been using them there are fits on contract in the alt corporation. There are skill plans in there. Gooniversity has a skill book pack for at least they used to I believe they still do. All those are still in there. Uh, they still do. Perfect. I think that's all of our questions. Did we, if we missed your question, you know, put it back in there unless it's the future plans one that Kaz mentioned, then we'll just miss it again.

Kazanir:

Yeah, there are a couple more questions.

Snipereagle1:

I've got another future plans one that Kaz can maybe mention real quick from Eagleklaw. CSM elections are coming soon.

Kazanir:

CSM elections are coming soon, people are putting their apps in. Uh, at the current juncture I intend to run again. Um, I am on the quest, if you read last year's thread. Um, Equinox is actually a big step forward in sort of fundamental framework terms towards where, um, I derived that the game needs to go. Uh, unfortunately, I don't think that means that I have been understood yet. I don't have complete faith in them to just do it. Um, so you will hear more about that coming soon. I think the campaign officially starts on the 1st of October or the 5th of October or something like that. I can't remember. I have to go look at the exact timeline, but we have about another week and a half, uh, before things really heat up, uh, and then you'll start hearing a lot more from me about that.

Snipereagle1:

Time to see which is more robust, CCP's earwax or your term limit.

Ranger Gama:

Wow, okay, I think we'll call it a day there. Y'all enjoy your Saturday. Asher should be back to tell you all about his sudden death match that he had today I'm sure. You guys have a nice day. Enjoy your weekend, and we'll catch y'all next week