Tassadar Beta on 02 June 2004
Sounds good to me :)

DHU InMe on 02 June 2004
I feel this will decrown 1.0 system :)

Clerence Thomas on 02 June 2004
It's a bit of a double edged sword, but should have been present at launch honestly. Time for me to start dropping offices we don't use, or just pay attention and drop the unused ones that the rent goes up at...

Korinth on 02 June 2004
A great start. I would love to see this even more agressive eventually. Each time a slot is purchased the price goes up. So, if the station is popular, the price everyone will pay on next renew will be the current going rate. So, a station with 2 closed slots would be a lot cheaper, and a station with all full slots would be expensive to maintain.

Amin on 02 June 2004
You still need to address the fact that its very very easy to make an alt that can use 3/4 labs. Otherwise it this will help.

Clerence Thomas on 02 June 2004
It helps by encouraging you to make sure your research is worth it rather then wasteful. Even with alts consuming slots and actually utilizing them this hits _everyone_. If your just researching ammo, put it in an out of the way lab that doesn't cost you anything... if your researching a ship bp, keep it in a spendy one 'cause your return savings are going to be worth it.

Artean on 02 June 2004
About time :)

Rolschau on 02 June 2004
I can wait until the rent is about 250k and some people stop renting.. or 500k... (no joking)

Nightfang on 02 June 2004
Finally! But Eight, please make the rental period for an office shorter! 30 days is an eternity...

Holi on 02 June 2004
There is a base price, below which the price can't fall. Is there also a top price above which the price can't rise? And if there is, can we have a guesstimate? :) Like '(total slots - available slots + 1) * constant * base' or something like that?

Rizmordan Hillgotlieb on 02 June 2004
Interesting idea.

Rizmordan Hillgotlieb on 02 June 2004
Interesting idea.

Admiral IceBlock on 02 June 2004
sooo, we will soon be able to buy lab slots for 10mill a week? heh..

Domaru on 02 June 2004
Yes, a 10 day rental would be better. Even at the top end, 250k (a guess) is cheap for 30 days. They should be hit more often imho.

Winterblink on 02 June 2004
Here's an idea: why not provide DEDICATED slots on stations run by corps that you have an extremely high faction with? For instance, if I do awesome work for the Fed Navy, they give me five complimentary slots of a type I choose as a reward if my faction is kept over a certain amount.

Lady Azra on 02 June 2004
Only problem I see here is smaller just starting out corps are gonna get hurt. If they have to pay for an office at like 250K and a factory at 300K just because it is in a secure zone, that is gonna hurt them, So what to just start out and get going they are gonna have to open offices in .1 and .2 systems cause they are cheap ???

Clerence Thomas on 02 June 2004
There aren't any flippin' offices out there either...

Percivs on 02 June 2004
I'm in favor of reducing rent periods for offices and increasing (slightly) the rent periods for labs/factories.

EvilDoomer on 02 June 2004
This will cause an inflation in prices for items sold then. At least I would raise my cost because of lower profits.

Ky Vatta on 02 June 2004
Hmm, what is the max office space in each station?? It seems to vary.....

Xailia on 02 June 2004
I don't see why they just can't have an infinite supply of facilities. The more you rent, the more each costs for you. And of course prices would be much cheaper the further you got from high sec space, encouraging people to spread out.

DHU InMe on 02 June 2004
This is kinda good idea: Here's an idea: why not provide DEDICATED slots on stations run by corps that you have an extremely high standing with? For instance, if I do awesome work for the Fed Navy, they give me five complimentary slots of a type I choose as a reward if my faction is kept over a certain amount.

Falbala on 02 June 2004
Excellent, nice change. Maybe I will have all my labs in the same station now^^.

Righteous Fury on 02 June 2004
I'd love the high-faction/corp standing reward. I currently have over 9.30 with Amarr Navy, it would be nice to get something good out of it other than a somewhat better agent rewards

Drakxter on 02 June 2004
Sounds good.. Looking foward to see how it works... Btw, is there a max price? Or will the price go up forever?

DHU InMe on 02 June 2004
There 32 slot currently, so: At 30 the price drop. At 31 it don't move. At 32 it rise. As stated, there is no maximum of price. As people are ready to paid they will rise.

Arud on 02 June 2004
I realy like it for factory and research slots but not for offices, the price for offices should only rise when the usage of the office stops.

John McCreedy on 02 June 2004
I hate to be a party pooper but this just falls into the hands of Mega-Corps and Alliance members who have so much cash it's not funny. What about the small corps out there who don't have buckets of cash to throw at renting facilities? What would be better is to put a cap on the number of facilities that can be rented by any corp no matter their size. This levels the playing field for all corps out there.

John McCreedy on 02 June 2004
Oh and regarding placing a cap on facilities, it will also bring a more tatical ellement to office placement.

Ralimenua on 02 June 2004
Please consider including standings towards the station owner corporation in the calculation. Standings, of course, shouldn't negate the effects of supply/demand, but being best pals with the corporation should mitigate. Even Microsoft give favourable deals to good customers while gouging them.

TornSoul on 02 June 2004
Finally!!! A BIG thumbs up!!! Lets get this ingame ASAP, and then later 'tweak' it with some of the suggested features above. This deserves another - BIG thumbs up.

Asharee Intrefer on 02 June 2004
This idea is a really good start, but I don't think it will eliminate the problem completely. Some people can spend much isk for little gain, like hogging slots and offices... Something like a standings based que system to get access to slots as they become availible would be a better solution in the long run. Have a number of public slots like now, and add a second standing based system to complete that.

Bubba1977 on 02 June 2004
Sounds good, but perhaps factoring in the number of offices a corp rents should also be considered? More offices means more rent per offices, regardless of demand.

Styrmir on 02 June 2004
"When there are no slots of a given type available..." Are you meaning at the station in question I presume?

Cell Satimo on 02 June 2004
Sounds like a plan, but I would like to see more tweaking in: <26 fall faster for every 1 not taken,26-30 stable, 31-32 rise. That will introduce some strategy in players effecting market pricing. Also shorten office rental periods to 2 weeks, and increase factory/lab rentals to 1 week *with returned money for cancelling proportional to rent remaining* : This will encourage players to un-rent more often.

Marcus Khan on 02 June 2004
Yes, an excellent feature, and comes in not a second too soon. I'm with TornSoul here, add it ASAP and then later have standings play a role with it aswell, when you figure out the best way to do it. Price reduction and ability to evict the one with the lowest standing (if yours is higher) come to mind.

Reptar on 02 June 2004
omg this will raise the price it costs me to build items, as i build in high demand systems, increasing prices, double edged sword as rent will rise to about 500k soon™:/

farfrael on 02 June 2004
Sounds totally stupid : the only thing it will change is that now, there will be no free slots AND people will have to pay a fortune to get one. In the rare case where i would have found an empty slot, i won't even be able to afford it The main problem is not the price of the facilities but the fact that there is a shortage of them, you kept the same amount of facilities even though the ingame population has grown A LOT (Cf the needed hardware upgrade). With the current situation, the only way prices will go is up : there is simply NOT ENOUGH facilities available ! But of course, who cares, let's not think about the problem and instead throw a half-assed solution which will only make matters worse. Small guys gets shafted once more. If you want to turn this game into a perfect capitalistic society where the big/rich guy is all powerful and the small guy can only suck it up then fine. But i'll do the same in real life and pay for another game.

Mr Ratty on 02 June 2004
"price will rise by a small margin each day" what sort of margin we talking about? 1%? 2 5 10? a lab at 1000, 10% increase a day for example puts the rent at: 1000 day 1 1331 day 4 1771 day 7 3452 day 14 13109 day 28 i used 10% as an example, as you can see, the price rises fast & accelerates faster, thats based on a lab at 1k rent, factorys it said would be based on 40k, which after 28 days at the same rate would cost 576,839, thats over half a mil for a few days use of a factory!! i can see a lot of builder corps spreading out, the big ones rent a whole station they do that now it's gonna hurt. i think the standing idea might be a good idea, maybe have your rent adjusted depending on your standing, this could go both ways, so if you have bad standing, the station charges you more or gives higher rent increases due to the fact they dont like you

Novo DuPont on 02 June 2004
BAD BAD IDEA!!!!! All this will do is make the Very Large cash rich Corps control even MORE slots as the smaller Corps will not be able to afford to buy slots. There needs to be SHORT term RENTAL and LONG term LEASED slots. RENTAL Slots are paid and used by the hour. LEASED Slots are paid and renewed by day or week. Many peeps in most cases only need the slots for a few hours anyways so renting slots for days is really a waste. The dedicated production Chars can go lease slots. IF CCP needed to upgrade it's hardware to handle the large influx of players, is it not logical that certain game software parameters need a upgrade as well?!?!?!?!? ALOT MORE OFFICES ARE NEEDED!!!! Of course the letting of players with high standing use special NPC slots is a good addition as well.

Tenashi on 02 June 2004
uhhh lets fix the billing system(bills payed when issued, slots gone at billing time(some times)), factories(random eject) and labs(random eject) labs/factoryies should have a 12hour period or 7 days period in 0.0 with captured stations alot of ppl just need a factory for just a couple of hours to make some stuff and then it`s unneeded, yet left for billing period(same as mentioned with labs, quick copy and leave)

Rolly Polly on 02 June 2004
I like the Rental/ leased idea and maybe permanent slots you could buy(for lots) that didn't take up the available rental/lease slots. a minimum standing requirment with the station owners to buy one I suppose, I say this because there are people who rely on bp copies for income and they have to be able to hold down a lab slot to generate the revenue with which to pay for the copies a gradual rise in price will push the little guy out before the large corps are forced to cut back. Labs might also be an idea for a mobile structure depending on how well the fixed implacments work.

Rasten Ferralt on 02 June 2004
IMHO, the problem is mostly a matter of Facility supply. The demand has increased with the increase in the number of players, yet the supply has not been increased in a good long while. I like the idea of the forces of supply and demand coming into play, along with standings having an effect, but the NPC corps need to take in the increased profits and roll it back into increasing the supply of facilities. This will allow the NPC to add facilities, then drop the price and still make an increasing amount of profit. You know, good business practice.

Tyto on 03 June 2004
For the people saying this is bad (and by the way you're wrong *heh*) think about this. Oh yes the mega corps can afford as many as they want, and yes prices will go up. But then what? They keep going up, and keep going up forever until someone bottles out. There will come a point where the cost of running that office/lab/factory simply won't be worth it in terms of the effect on the margin you can make in sales. So, prices go up, people won't buy there and will start to move one or two jumps away where prices are more reasonable. Provided there is no upper limit this works perfectly. It is the perfect market force model. Now we get to see if capitalism works! Tyto

Mr Hood on 03 June 2004
Thought you might like this idea T, :)

Leitari on 03 June 2004
I think this is an excellent idea, Winterblink had a good one there, awarding good standings with slots.

skitszo on 03 June 2004
humm.........i spent the skill points time and resources to beable to use labs and now your not gonna raise the amount of facilities for the population of eve and start charging me more rent each day and now i'll have to mine each day just to support my facilities. This is lame. the fix is more facilities.......why else would there be a skill to allow you to use 6 research facilities per alt? i use all my facilities for researching ME for a new corp......what about BPC's......now building will be more expensive for single builders don't have access to corp bpc's have to buy them......bad.....bad.

Fto Cruise on 03 June 2004
There is no shortage of factory slots. I use a station in a 0.8 system, only half are ever used, maximum. Offices can be found easily too, just move less than 5 jumps from a highway or starter system, you'll get one. The ONLY real shortage is lab slots, and since no more have been added to the game while the average number of players online has more than doubled in the last few months, is it really that surprising. Just double the lab slots and have done. If you didnt want people to use 6 slots at a time you shouldnt have made it possible!

Annatar on 03 June 2004
I dont think that the choosen way is very good with only "Higher Price = lower demand". This woulnt fix the General Problem.Each (big) Corperation need long term Production & Research slots. If a corperation could simply buy a (limited?) ammount of slots in their HQ base, this would be fix the most Problems. There could be a constuction time on the "buyed/builded" fab or research slots. The rentable slots then are only for non HQ based production. (wouldnt rent a slot if your corperation have build/buyed a Production line) A simple new Tab next to the "Rentable slots" could labeled "owned slots". This slots shouldnt count towards the 32 Slot "public" limit. With this solution each Corperation has its own research and Production, saved. The HQ also gets a good reason to stand in the Corp info´s.

Managalar on 03 June 2004
finally, some solution is better than no solution

Prand on 03 June 2004
How about having the number of rented slots have some sort of impact on the rent? So the little guys with one or two slots don't get hurt as bad as the bigger guys with 6 slots.

qwertyfrozen on 03 June 2004
the price of items are just going to go up beacause of this price rase in building. then the newbs are screwd.

svetlana on 03 June 2004
this is a BAD idea. the folks saying they love this have not fully thought it out, consider this. the price will go up, and up and up, until a mega corp cannot afford it anymore, then release the slot-- but if a MEGA corp cannot afford the slot NEITHER CAN YOU! the result will be only the richest corps located in central systems, all the smaller corps and solo players will be pushed out, and any empty slots there will be so expensive that small/medium corps/players could not even afford them anyway. if the price dropped enough so that a mega corp could use them again, they would rent them again right away- the price will never drop low enough so that smaller corps could afford them. NEW players that complain that they can't find slots or offices in convenient locations- will still not be able to find any, and on top of that they would not be able to afford them even if they did open up. more slots are required OR put a limit on how many offices a corporation can hold based on number of members, or a corporate skill that your ceo trains. if a system of natural rent hikes were to be implemented, it should be a system where existing owners can sub-lease a slot to another corp, thus allowing the rent to rise or fall based on player demand. a whole realestate market would then suddenly open up in eve, much better than hold/sell slot grabbing.

Serilla on 03 June 2004
Finnally! and its gonna fix office space a bit to... Implement please now and tweak later.

Paul X365 on 03 June 2004
What he said ^^^

Cryonik on 03 June 2004
REMOVE the unused offices from corps that do not excist any more!!!!!!!!!! there are plenty of offices rented by corps which have ZERO members and thus not payed nor used! freeing those offices would benefit a lot more in the beginning.

Aitrus on 03 June 2004
I like the idea personally, it'll add a little more variance to market prices for player made goods, and act as a bit of a isk sink. Perhaps modify the current cost of a slot based on faction standing? (NPC to Personal standing for personal slots, and NPC to Corp standing for corp slots.) That would give people with high standing with a specific faction a reason to stay in that area, and people with low faction a reason to leave. (Regionalization!) Think mebbe we can get trade skills working too? (Bartering - 5% discount per level on NPC fees for using station facilities.)

RoyBatty on 03 June 2004
Limit number of offices to skills/number of corp members. Anything else would be a bad idead.

Turos on 03 June 2004
Fom my observations of availability of slots I would say this this would probably work as follows: Corp Offices - Yes - but how about clearing the now defunct rentals Factories - Probably - based on the way these are used this would work (I think). If you reduce the factory lease time to 1 day this would also help as I suspect that the useage % of factories is low (with some exceptions) Labs - No - the way labs are used - this is just gonna cause big problems for the small guys and end up with all research going to the richer corps. This won't work. Because labs are rented long term and used long term then this will escalate the cost of research to ridulous amounts.

Iynara Maeral on 03 June 2004
I think this is a good step but that you need to increase the number of facilities.. population in Eve HAS risen.

Kilhu Emmek on 03 June 2004
I think the folks like John McReedy and Svetlana hit the nail on the head--they must be builders, like me. This change is a bad fix for a bad problem. The huge corporations and big alliances are going to be able to afford both offices and lab/factory slots well after "the little guy" has gotten squeezed out of the research/production market. What happens then? The prices fall ... until they're affordable to the megacorps and big alliances, at which point they're snatched back up. Totally screws small, independent corps and freelancers. In addition, the building market is already near crisis levels. Mineral prices keep going up, ship/gear prices keep coming down. Where we were once able to get a fairly predictable 30% profit margin on something like a tier 2 cruiser, we're now getting close to 4 or 5%. This is untenable--eventually, we'll just quit building, as will others. It's too much "work" to constantly procure minerals for production and sales when we'd make more money farming NPCs--and if I wanted to farm NPCs, I'd go play EQ. Guys--and by guys I mean CCP--you need to look at this problem again and perhaps elicit greater feedback from small-time and solo builders and researchers. These changes are going to totally leave us out in the cold. Combined with the shiva deployables evidently being both really expensive to maintain and limited to very public moon/planet orbital in 0.0 systems, it looks like the non-alliance player has fewer and fewer options for entertaining, creative game play on the horizon. Dev comment would be most appreciated on these issues.

Li'l Mol on 03 June 2004
I like the idea, and i also think that Winterblink, and Righteous also have very valid points with regard to incorporating your faction standing towards the stations corp to get some kind of reward, be it an personal slot, or decreased payment.

Helison on 03 June 2004
I think the change is a step into the right direction, but it isn´t enough! My ideas: 1. Increase the standard price for lab slots to 10k. 2. Double the number of offices and lab slots (not really necessary for factories), but if there are used more than half of the slots the prices will go up. 3. Include variable lease-times for slots: 3a. Maximum lease-time: 2 weeks for offices, 1 week for labs and factories, than new bill for next periode 3b. Shorter fixed lease-times: 1 day, 3 days, 5 days 3c. Rent for one task: slot will be free again after the completion of the task, task may not be longer than the max. lease time.

Mirvnillith on 03 June 2004
I'm with Kilhu (in more ways than one): this is a bad move (like 'I got a baaad feeling 'bout this drop'). Demand cannot be judged by allocation, it must be judged by how many wants a slot when it becomes available (a queue). Why not create that instead and have the prices go up depending on the length of that queue (the "real" demand)?!

Mirvnillith on 03 June 2004
Addition: Limit the number of queues a corp can be in so nobody can "bully" prices.

StarRanger on 03 June 2004
Lot of people whining about that there aren't alot of slots available (specialy research), this because people rent alot of them (sometime 4 or 5) at the same time at one station all for themself. It would be better, IMHO, that you can only rent _1_ slots, until your standing with that corporation that owns the station gets better (say when you hav 0.5 you can rent 2 slots, when you hav 1.0 you can rent 3 slots... etc.) I think thats a better solution to the problem of that one player consumems too many slots.

Jay Denton on 03 June 2004
I think that although this is a step in the right direction it’s not as simple as just raising prices. CCP themselves have had to upgrade their hardware to accommodate the additional players now in EVE, so they know that the old setup was not designed to cope with the current numbers. Why should this not also apply to the office / factory / lab space in-game too, surely it is obvious that if the number of active players on a daily basis has almost doubled then there is going to be a serious shortfall in slots for the higher number of players. Making them more expensive just helps drive them further out of reach of newer players and small corps, and doesn’t affect the larger corps anyway. I think that a better solution would be to limit the number of slots of each type, offices / factories / labs, that a corp can rent WITHIN A REGION. That way if a corp wants to have a higher number than the limit set they are forced to expand their operations into other regions. This would allow larger corps to still have access to a more appropriate number of slots, while hopefully having the effect of distributing the usage of slots better. This could also be associated to a new corp management skill which would influence the number of Regions that a corp could operate "slots" in, perhaps doubling per lvl of skill, ie : 1 at lvl1, 2 at lvl 2, 4 at lvl3, etc..

Clerence Thomas on 03 June 2004
After watching some of the complaining and stuff, and re-reading my box... CCP has always wanted a near impossible life for the little guy and big, expansive empire corps to fight out huge wars over insignificant fields of ore, or slots or something. At least that's the vision I see. That established, I recommend moving on to anyone with delusions to the contrary. Being a small time producer I don't have a problem with these changes, it will actually make my factory rent go down. Sure, my bp cost will go up a little bit and i'll end up unrenting some low traffic mining offices - oh well. As to ore costs, it doesn't take that much to marshel a 10 person company op to demolish a belt of low value minerals in a day. Turn around, sell half of it and buy the high value minerals - voila, easy to get teir 1 bship (or some mix of cheaper to produce items.) At this point i'm looking at having to dedicate 1 days mining to sustaining my corpmates research slots after a month. Yeah, it hurts a little bit - but it's gonna sting someone else a whole lot more. This will also lead to an inflationary period until the market absorbs the changes and stabilizes. This market, as it sits, has the problem that certain things no longer have their value produced because a well researched BP _is_ so much cheaper then the assembled item. All in all I see this as a good _start_. As with every MMO this game is a work in progress, and while in the short term this will hurt the companies that do a lot of R&D and really hurt the small starter corps, the old adage of "no pain, no gain" does apply. Starting my own corp 3 months into release has had it's pitfalls and problems. We've been through alot with this game, and been blatently ignored by CCP (none of our members has ever found a running event for example), but we are still playing and still enjoying this economic simlation gone mad.

Oblivious Vox on 03 June 2004
I think this idea might work out quite well. Even if a huge corp could afford to pay really high prices for an office, factory slot or lab slot it might not be in their interest to do so. The bigger corps must also have a margin between manufacturing costs and selling price and can not afford to waste a lot of that margin on unnecessary slots. Also I can't understand why it would be a bad thing that a 2 player corp can't afford an office in a high demand area? Move out a couple of jumps and you might instead get an advantage in trade. I agree with those saying that there might be a need to increase the number of available slots though, to meet the increase in number of players.

Polaris Lumine on 03 June 2004
Also, can the starmap be changed to accommodate ability to display free lab slots (under the display settings options)

Amin on 03 June 2004
Yes..Have the margin that the rent increase by be reduced by your standing with that corporation. At least that way npc corp standings is more useful than just for refining effiecny.

Amin on 03 June 2004
Also Let us build research centre's in empire space make them extremely costly but let us to that!

Tashinki on 03 June 2004
I think this is a bad idea. What's done is done - you can't stop the bpc influx - not this way either. Same with battleships - they're here to stay - all your ore nerfes didn't decrease the number of bships in the game. So stop working against the game. This won't decrease the amount of bpcs (much) but will only be a burden on everybody - worst for those who don't sell bpcs, as they don't have any way of getting the lost money back. Instead, increase price only a little - perhaps a max price of 50-80k a rent and put in more slots instead - or put in more slots/reseach facilities in outer regions and let empire be the way it is.

Dray on 03 June 2004
the problem as i see it is that there is to little for to many, to solve the problem i think we need more lab slots and you need solve that problem 1st, im not a programmer or software expert, but is there any way to flag who has them and hasnt used them for an extended period of time, if so cancel the rent and not let the same char/corp rent in that station for 3 days to a week, that in addition to an increase in labs might help solve problem, thats assuming its easy to track lab ownership and control it.

farfrael on 03 June 2004
possible solutions : - limit the number of lab slots you can buy to the number of lab slots you can use - increase a lot the price of the "lab operation" skill (2+ millions) - increase the rank of that skill (5+) and above all : increase the number of lab slots to go back to the / ratio which existed a year ago

Cyan Blackadder on 03 June 2004
Bad idea. This will hurt the people (noobs/small corps) who complain about the lack of laboratories the most, since it's all a money game after these changes. It must be possible to follow the researcher carreer for everyone, so either limit the amount of labs a character can use to less than the current 6 or increase the number of stations with labs and make blueprint copying more difficult.

Faramir on 03 June 2004
Maybe we should also look at the other side of things. ppl keep slots becos they CAN. The players/corps in this game are very rich right now and can easily pay high prices. The problem is that ppl CAN keep them. Researching BP's to ME:10000000 just to keep the slot occupied. I think the "little (wo)man" will be hurt most since they can't afford the slots anymore if the prices go up too much. I really think the amount of labs rented should be dependant on skills.

KarateKid on 03 June 2004
Good change, it is a good start, implement it asap, and then tweak it. I agreed totally with those who say that the price need to be hgher for large corps with LOTS of offices and lab slots, so they have to think twice about what offices they really need. Also mabe a hard cap on the amount of slots a corp is able to rent, based on the skills of the members, also suggested above. And the same for a lone player, if he can run 6 slots let him rent 6, if he can run only 4 only let him rent 4 slots. The Rent and lease suggestion is also a very good one, atleast for factories, and if you only need to get the ME up a bit on some ammo BPOs If this is implemented then the average guy should be able to hold on to a lab slot too. And any small corp/lonely player should be able to use the rentable slots to do his small time research.

McBane on 03 June 2004
This is just handing the slots to the rich - games really needs more research labs in it - nigh on impossible to find them & I would quite happily pay 10mil for one now in a good spot (have already paid 1mil for one in 10 jumps from base), so prices rises aren't gonna do squat to help unless they mega rises - which will just hand all the slots to the rich. (I am not a rich player btw!)

Zaklon on 03 June 2004
Thing is, I do not see there ever being two lab slots available in any station for more than the few minutes it will take the seekers to find them. Therefore lab slots will rise in cost every rental period. Soon the average player will not be able to use a lab slot. Then, the players like me who were originally attracted by the research functions will just have to go look for another game. There are plenty of factories available any where I look. Offices are available in most stations (LOL, just not the one where MY lab slots are). But face it, the current system on lab slots is not working. Something does need to be done. I would say to start... if you do not have the skills to operate x number of slots, you cannot rent that many. Then, increase the number of slots provided at each station. But do not price me out of EVE.

Harisdrop on 03 June 2004
its a renewal fee. I would say the price rises fast and changes down very very slow. I would like to see 100% used research labs at 1million isk in Empire while in .2 100k. And thats every 5 days. Everything will balance and yes the rich can do with thier isk as they please. Great job and thanks for listening.

Mirdin on 03 June 2004
As many other people have mentioned, this isn't fair for smaller corperations. Many of the events which have been happening recently have been geared towards the big corperations. Here is another change to the situations whereby the big corperations will be able to gain power over the smaller ones. A consideration, how about charging office rental a set price multiplied by the number of members (same with factory/research slots). The set price increases each day. That way the increase is scaled to the number of people within the corperation. A corperation of 1 might pay 10000isk A corperation of 10 might pay 200000isk A corperation of 50 might pay 1mill isk (For office rental) This could still be part of the increasing price structure, as the slots on the station fill up the price increases. However larger corperations pay more than the smaller corperations. Its only fair.

Dray on 03 June 2004
Mcbane is right there isnt enough slots, there is trade in slots and offices which also points to the same problem, trouble is its hard to implement, if they announce more slots then there will be a stampede to get them, also as i suggested earlier flagging them to cancel rent on unused will be easily beaten too, u buy a cheap bpo put it on an insane me research level, the more i think about it the more it appears to be a harder problem to solve, i still go with more slots to made available, and what about deployable research modules, i dont know the criteria for these but they could help too, but im guessing cost will be quite high on these and restricted deployment options aswell.

Darius Shakor on 03 June 2004
Seems like it couls work in theory, however it might not work in practice. There will always be high demand for factory and labs slots so the price will always be high. And the first people to cancle their rents will be the smaller corps and freelancers. But we will wait and see. CCP, If this doesn't work, don't leave it for 6 months before you change it. Start working on a backup now, just in case. ;)

Selak Zorander on 03 June 2004
I think these are good changes. To those that think they are bad, these changes will only affect labs for the most part. I am in a smaller corp and every factory station we have an office at (0.5 or above) has never had more than 10 to 12 factory slots rented. As for the labs, something like this needs to happen, people are already selling labs to those without the for millions of isk. That is at least a profit of 100 fold if you find the lab slot without paying someone else for the slot. Another thing I think should be done as well though is limit corporations to renting only one office per solar system. Last night I found a system about 5 jumps from Yulai with 8 stations containing lab slots. ALL 256 slots were rented. I checked office space as well (all 8 stations had factories and most had several empty slots) at each of those stations. I know there were at least 2 or 3 corporations that had an office at every single of of those stations. That tells me that corp has at least 8 labs and probably closer to 20 lab slots rented in that system. Is it really necessary for any corporation to have 8 offices in the same solarsystem? If they limit every corporation to one office per solar system, and get rid of all the offices and other facilities being rented by corporations that have zero members, I think there will be no problems being able to find and rent both office and factory space and there will be no supstantial cost increase for those facilities.

Haratu on 03 June 2004
Good idea... makes it more realistic... As most people know, rents in cities cost more than in suburbs, this idea will merely introduce this idea on the game.

wamingo on 03 June 2004
Hard to say whether this will be a solution to anything or just emphasise the problem further when lab slots will be sold for even more millions... You need a whole new system if you ask me... I think there shouldn't even be "slots"... rather there should be a 'Queue', eg on a station there can be tops 15 blueprints researched at the same time, the max research time for a single print is the number of production/material efficiency levels equivalent of 1 day's research or 1 lvl minimum (if each lvl takes more than 1 day), and you pay eg 200 isk per minute of research in 1.0 systems and 50 isk/min in 0.0... You then put your print in queue and you have to wait until other people's prints finish before yours start, if the queue is full, and it will start automatically when the spot opens... Of course you should be able to cancel at any time. And the estimated time for your print to begin should be shown somewhere. This can work precisely the same for both research and manufacture. These values are of course up to ccp, the above ones are just possibilities.

CaptChaos on 03 June 2004
Those drastic changes will make the top dogs (mega corps) able to get more slots/office cause those are the ones that tie up the most atm and it wil be those who can pay for slots in the attractive areas. So to this change you have presented here CCP I say a no go...

gonavy on 03 June 2004
Another bad move. Why do you constantly hurt long time players? Fix the bugs that are in the game stop the nerfs. Or was the goal just to have people play Eve for one year and then have them quit? Sounds like a CCP plan. Also, why don’t you put the game content in that you promised over 6 months ago? I now see how this works get rid of the old players the new ones will think CCP is telling the truth. When they figure out you don’t produce what you said they would then quit. Bring in a new group. The best way to fix this problem ADD more factory slots and OFFICES!!!! You guys are so lame.

GSJedi on 03 June 2004
*** LIMIT 10 LAB SLOTS PER ACCOUNT ***

Kilhu Emmek on 03 June 2004
Occured to me overnight that this will exacerbate an already existing problem--lab and office slot "griefing." Why are people snatching up as many lab slots as they possibly can and keeping them open indefinitely by researching civilian shield booster BPOs to a billion ME? Because the lab slots are in such short supply. Same thing with office slots--as the CEO of a small industrial corp, the first thing I do when finding a relatively unworked area is to see if I can grab office space (and as many know, *most* of the office space is gone--the only reason my corp still has decent flexibility is because we've been around over a year). Factory slots? Still plenty of those available, even in "hub" systems. Why? Because there are so many more factory slots than lab or office slots. Add to this equation the ability to effectively drive up costs for your competitors, rivals, "empire space carebare corps," etc., and you're going to see people abusing every possible loophole in the game--alts, alt corps, trial accounts, etc.--just to grab and hold on to office/factory/lab slots as long as possible, *just* to drive the cost up. I just can't see this solution solving more problems than it creates.

Scott Grizzard on 03 June 2004
Great, you've fixed the pricing according to market principles. Now, why don't you allow the quantity of labs to increase as the price goes up, because the suppliers of labs now have a greater incentive to bring marginal facilities on line and make more money?

Shakaar on 03 June 2004
I haven't read all of the comments above so my apologise if im repeating some of the ideas that has been posted: Make rental price depends on the following factors: How many members in the corp, How many office the corp is currently has, How many factory slot the corp has rented, How many Lab slots the corp has rented Corp standing towards the station and finally how much ISK the corp has in its wallet AND members wallet. This way, it prevents mega rich corp taken up all the space. Also, remove the monthly rental fee and set it to weekly for office space.

Imhotep Khem on 03 June 2004
In my personal observation I have not seeb that big companies have advantages over small ones except in war. This is a good change IMHO. (mixin the standings based costing too though) Ever notice that in eve, the larger quantities of ore or minerals cost _more_? Ever notice you can make more selling ore than minerals? There are some weird things in eve that check the explosive growth a corp would see in the real world. What I am saying is that profit margins are not better for larger corporations because in Eve profit margins are based on one thing only...Skills. Volume can favor large corporations, but this does not affect whether or not it is "profitable" to rent a slot. (Unless you can not maintain full capacity) Thus, I disagree with the big corporations will rule assertion.

Harisdrop on 03 June 2004
Ok folks. This is not a bias system. First off people will not rent a lab for the sake of having one. This is the current metthod cause all they have to do is pay 1k and have something inside. Now if labs where 250k in Yulia and you have to pay that every 5 days you better be making isk. So a bpc of a bs will rise by 250k. So dont think linear. The prices of labs will raise the price of goods. The only price that matter is what people have to pay.

Cell Satimo on 03 June 2004
Another thought: Bartering skill should effect the price paid on the slots. Here is the skill description: Skill at haggling and bartering. 5% discount per level on NPC fees for using station facilities.

Shakaar on 03 June 2004
also, there should be a more user friendly way of showing which station has an office space free, lab slot free and factory slot free :)

Spock Eltigre on 03 June 2004
I can only hope there is an upper limit on how much we will have to pay to renew rent in a station where ALL slots are taken all the time. Otherwise it will soon become impossible to pay the rent and if this is the goal then just state it in advance or limit the number of days rent can be paid or just make more slots !

Imhotep Khem on 03 June 2004
Cell Satimo "Bartering Skill" We got more than enough skills in Eve :) The purpose here is to adress the artificial scarcity of lab slots in a way that makes sense. Shakaar "Show free slots on Map" This would be a disaster as lab hoarders would such up ALL the free labs, and those that suddenly realize they need a lab would be SOL. Spok Eltigre "Upper limit on costs" This is debateable. The upper limit should occur naturally. But... Since us lab rats cant go on strike and/or blockade the lab, we probably are going to hit an issue here. Also since this is just a game, and nobody's family will starve if they waste 500K on a lab slot, you will see people pay stupid amounts for a lab, just because. Hopefully by then Shiva will be here with deployable labs.

Imhotep Khem on 03 June 2004
I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY with the idea of 24hour labs. This gives newbies a chance to experience using labs. No high quality R&D can be done in 24hours so corps should leave those alone. Plus its a burdeon for a strong corp to chase down slots that expire every 24hours. This would vastly improve the joy of being a scientist. This does not trump the supply based costs of slots though. Oh, and how about R&D agents requesting lab work, giving tips about where to find a free lab (for a 'small' fee of course) ;)

Baer Mearund on 03 June 2004
I like the idea of 24-hour labs. You have photo processing in real life in an hour or less. In fact variety is probably the key to this. If you have different labs which work at different rates and charge more or less and have an upper limit on how long they'll work on something, then the market is a lot more diverse, and there are ways and means of getting your research done even if it is costly.

Fto Cruise on 03 June 2004
What is the difficulty in just adding more lab slots? There obviously must be one.

McBane on 03 June 2004
I’ve been thinking about this – when it comes to Research Labs anyway. CCP’s idea is fundamentally flawed, since lab rent rising even by many 100 times will have no affect on availability of labs since there are already fetching black-market prices of many millions. All it will do is squeeze out the smaller player/corp. As the game gets more & more popular, there is ever more demand and smaller players are already being squeezed out of everything. As with real life economy of scales, the natural movement of size, power and wealth will move towards several big corps dominating eve and sucking up all resources. Any changes that accelerate this are bad – we need changes to halt and balance this before we end up with a Microsoft corp. The way I see it the proportion of labs versus players versus the amount of labs a player can have combined with the amount of time a player can keep a lab all to themselves is all wrong. Basically, the first thing that IS needed, is LOTS more labs available. Other ideas that would help in a noob-friendly way include (apologies if I’m repeating ideas above): - Limiting lease time of them (perhaps based on corp standing) – which expire and release the lab. The lab then has a random period of ‘clean up’ before it is ready to be leased again (to prevent instant re-leasing). - Limited the run times allowed when using the lab - Rental cost based on the size of the corp / skill points of the player - Rental cost affected by corp standing - Ability for corps to setup their own research facilities – at a cost and perhaps requiring a new skill. - Waiting lists for lab availability - to prevent lab camping.

Amicus on 03 June 2004
Eight, this is an excellent idea. It should definitely free up office space for new corporations. Those older corps that rented offices in every spot that they could find in the first month of the game will now have to re-think that strategy. I would not be surprised if you find people already un-renting offices because of this blog. I predict, in the short term, that this system will free up labs that are being hoarded because of the low rents. In the long term I am less certain, but it will be interesting to see the effect on labs. This is a good move to a more dynamic, market driven, economy. I understand fears that this favors big/rich over small/poor corporations. However, in theory, this system should really benefit those who make efficient use of facilities over those who are inefficient in their facility use. Let’s at least give this system a chance, before we opt for some communist, everybody-gets-a-candy, approach. Part of the fun of Eve is that is not an easy game.

Razakon on 04 June 2004
Question I have unanswered: I am still looking for Tech 1 Energized reactive Armor Plate BPO. I have been searching for 3 months now

csebal on 04 June 2004
While this may solve the slot availabilty problems, it'll create a whole lot of other problems. This is not the right solution in my opinion, and will basically favor the large corps / wealthy individuals, increasing the already existing gap between rich and poor in EVE.

Kalast Raven on 04 June 2004
I think that they people who say this will hurt the little guys ARE the big guys. This will make it possible for anyone to get a slot when they need it.

Kakita Jalaan on 04 June 2004
For those whining about rising equipment prices: this will not be as drastic as some people predict it, simply because people will no longer keep UNUSED slots. I mean, 1000 isk don't hurt me if I don't get anything out of it, 10k isk scratch me and 100k isk start to hurt me. The poeple who actually use lab/factory slots to make a living off them are still subject to a free market, which means prices will not rise uncontrollably. Ultimately, NPC prices limit how expensive you can sell something. Most PC prices are below 50% of NPC prices, so quit whining already... PCs are subject to a very harsh competition that drives the prices down.

Kakita Jalaan on 04 June 2004
addendum: please make production time research do something. By that I mean, don't limit the gain in production time needed at 5 seconds flat, make it something like maybe 5% of time needed. With production and research costs being non-negligible in the future it would be nice to have a way to counter this (however slightly).

Kakita Jalaan on 04 June 2004
Reading almost all comments it's fun that many people feel THEY will be the ones hurt most, and those comments come from both long time and new players. [sarcasm] CCP is out to get YOU personally, so better don't play Eve. They obviously don't want to make the game fun for YOU, so quit playing finally. Everyone else is going to have sooo much fun once you've left. [/sarcasm]

Chith on 04 June 2004
This is absolutely superb, and has been a long time comming. Anyone who complains is hording. This will reduce the amount of rents being run in the game greatly overall and increase availability both at the cheap and expensive ends.

Chith on 04 June 2004
Last time I checked, "the little guy" doesnt exactly own a boutique on 5th and 51st in manhattan, either. There are so many factory slots out there it isn't funny. I ASSURE you, having production actually spread out through the regions will actually net you MORE profit and MORE business, and not hurt it.

Harisdrop on 04 June 2004
The key will be certain real estate will cost more in more populas areas and less in the far corners. The reasearch lab fiasco will flatten the market areas. More might be 10 jumps away from Yulia.

vixit on 04 June 2004
Good thing, the bigger corporations will build there POS laboratories and factories and move out from secure space.... hence free slots :) CU in EvE and have fun!

Mirdin on 04 June 2004
Eight, can I ask a question? - I can see that prices increase in areas that are most populated, such as starting points for new new members. How will you ensure that new members to eve will be able to rent space without travelling to low sec systems, where they can afford it? Or will you just wait and see?

Imhotep Khem on 04 June 2004
stupid forum keeps wastin my posts... One of two things will happen. A. BPC will go up in cost B. Mega corps will eat the cost and hold won BPC prices. If B happens small corps and independents will suffer greatly. As in today's world, B should be considered an act of agression. But what will be the small corps recourse? Can they attack the large corp? no. Can they affect universe wide trade on some sort of trade council? no. will be interesting.

methuselah on 04 June 2004
Why not discard the rent/use/unrent idiom, adopting instead something similar to the following... Lab slots will be "rented" only for the duration of the task (research ME/PE, copy, etc) to be performed. You pay for the entire duration when the BP is installed. The cost is based on the following formula: Total Cost = (Task Type Constant) * (Starting|Ending ME/PE) * (Duration) * (Corp Standing Factor) Where Task Type Constant = Base rate for activity, this would allow researching ME/PE and copying to have different base costs. Starting|Ending ME/PE = A factor to discourage excessive ME/PE research currently used to reserve slots. Duration = length of time to complete task. Corp Standing Factor = along the lines of the recycling, good standing with station owner allows for descreased cost. The total cost would be due at the start of the job. Upon completion of the job, the slot would be available for someone else to use. Aborting the job before completion would result in a partial refund.

McBane on 05 June 2004
That's a bloody good idea meth!

Steel Optik on 05 June 2004
Hmm I like the idea of short term renting labs Ie you can rent them for 7 days then they become available for the public have a random decontamintation time 0-2 days before the become available again Offices Limit 1 to a corp per system or region factories seem to work ok just now

Lord Shihayazad on 06 June 2004
I dont like this idea. I agree to some others that there should be more research slots. CCP's logical consequences, of this supply and demand thing, are not completely correct. Because everybody knows that a free market trys to supply the demand and therefore not only the prices but also the supply has to raise.

Whitethorn on 07 June 2004
Factories: No current issue except in high-usage systems. I can find factory slots easily when I wish. The systems I'm using as bases at the moment rarely have more than a quarter of their factory slots used at any time. Offices: We need more offices, but there is office space available if you are prepared to travel away from the highway systems. Something needs to be done to increase the availability of space to newbie corps who can't travel to the low security areas though. Suggest freeing up offices rented by defunct Corps with no members. The charges suggested here will probably resolve this issue nicely. Laboratories: Lab space at stations in Empire space in this game works out at around 1 slot per 3-4 accounts. With this massive shortage in space demand will force prices up to extortionate levels (500k isk per slot per 5 days? 1 million? more?). This will mean that any newbies coming into Eve won't stand a chance of ever getting a lab slot, since the prices will be way out of their reach. This also means they are excluded from R&D research, so cannot get any of the better blueprint originals in the game, because you need a lab slot to do that. CCP need to come up with some other solution to the massive shortfall in lab space in Eve. The proposal will mean that lab slots will end up solely in the hands of the rich and the larger corps, directly the opposite of the stated intention behind these pricing changes.

Ooke on 08 June 2004
adding 4 new slots every time the price doubles and taking them away accordingly would make the system work well... but an increase in cost without an increase of available slots is just stupid. with the amount of new characters and semi-useful bpo's being given away by agents the demand will just increase more and more. and I rather think that someone who spends the training time to take their lab ops to lvl 5 should be able to use the skill...

Dav Varan on 09 June 2004
And once again further advantage is given to the old timers with cash to burn !

Nimisha on 09 June 2004
I like the Ideas that will be implemented, Yes, there will be a period of CHAOS, as there always is, in many areas, Lab slots will rise dramatically, as will office spaces. Will this Benefit Just Large Mega Corps? NO! if a large Corps is renting a Lab slot at a station, they likely have an office slot with it, as well as a factory slot, if all the slots are in use consistently, the rent on these will rise over time, yeah, some will absorb the cost a while, but eventually this will reverberate through out the economy as some prices will rise on products they produce, causing Less Sales of those higher cost products, &c. &c. The more Thrifty Corps, i.e. Small to Medium Corps, money is not so bountiful so they will seek places where the prices are more affordable so they can keep low cost goods on the market, and it is not the Little guy that is getting hurt at all, its the MegaCorp who Hogs all the resources that will be putting the Blade to their own throat. I would say that in some areas, Lab slots will be open more often with this, just to keep the cost down, you will see lab slots being rented, then the renter does what he needs done and then Cancels the slot shortly there after, the lost ISK in rent monies in this manner, will be a far cry smaller than the escalating rents to Hold that lab slot Indefinitely as many large corps and wealth players currently do. on another note, this does also hit the so-called lab brokers where it hurts, in their pockets, justly deserved if ya ask me.

Mirvnillith on 10 June 2004
I see most of the "followers" of this idea don't see the "light": YES, this will mean that slots held for a long time will eventually become available as the owner cannot pay the price. NO, this will not benefit small corps as the newly available slots will still have the high price (so high, in fact, that the previous owner couldn't pay it). So in the end all slots will be very high priced and owned my mega-corps. Some will become free, but only until the price has fallen enough for those same mega-corps (probably a level very much above other corp's ISK capabilities).

Albar Gray on 10 June 2004
High lab prices will just mean that there is money to be made constructing a POS science facility and charging for the services. Once POS is in the game, all it will take is a check of current prices to see if it will be possible to break even on the investment in a suitable period. Maybe a year, maybe less. As for more NPC supply, I don't really see the need. We don't need more NPC supply for minerals, we just adjust the prices we sell at until enough people are tempted to go and supply some. Once POS arrive, the same will hold true for lab slots. Starting the increases now will allow the price to rise for the next 4 to 6 months before the POS actually turn up (Approx 30 increases / adjustments) so it should be possible to gauge the player demand for these items.

Ghostess on 10 June 2004
is this suposed to help individuals or large corps?!

Resetgun on 11 June 2004
This is good idea. As a returning player I was trying to find free lab slot. No such thing in Lonetrek! Now I am wondering why I have research skill... ... and I am not going to pay for idiot 2M from lab slot. If lab rent NPC payment raises to 2M, it ok for me - at least some idiot doesn't steal my money.

Alyssa Keliaster on 11 June 2004
This is going to make things difficult for new corps. As the prices rise the big corps arent gonna give a darn. Theyll just stump up the extra (probably not even notice it) and carry on.

Piter deVries on 12 June 2004
Svetlana said: "this is a BAD idea. the folks saying they love this have not fully thought it out, consider this. the price will go up, and up and up, until a mega corp cannot afford it anymore, then release the slot-- but if a MEGA corp cannot afford the slot NEITHER CAN YOU! the result will be only the richest corps located in central systems, all the smaller corps and solo players will be pushed out, and any empty slots there will be so expensive that small/medium corps/players could not even afford them anyway. if the price dropped enough so that a mega corp could use them again, they would rent them again right away- the price will never drop low enough so that smaller corps could afford them. NEW players that complain that they can't find slots or offices in convenient locations- will still not be able to find any, and on top of that they would not be able to afford them even if they did open up. more slots are required OR put a limit on how many offices a corporation can hold based on number of members, or a corporate skill that your ceo trains." Many of you say this change is a good idea. Read and consider svetlana's comments above. How will this problem not occur? I think it will.

Serilla on 12 June 2004
I hope this comes soon just like the removal of anchored cans from .8-1.0 space. lol

Domalais on 14 June 2004
Kilhu Emmek said: "In addition, the building market is already near crisis levels. Mineral prices keep going up, ship/gear prices keep coming down. Where we were once able to get a fairly predictable 30% profit margin on something like a tier 2 cruiser, we're now getting close to 4 or 5%. This is untenable--eventually, we'll just quit building, as will others." You used to make a large economic profit via production, because there weren't many producers. However, that economic profit is gone now and you're eating into your normal profits (profit greater than cost but below opportunity cost). Guess what - people WILL stop building. And when they do, prices will go back up, profit margins will increase again, and ore prices will drop. Welcome to a real, living economy.

Prothos on 14 June 2004
i agree all this is going to do is hurt the poorer corps. or individals tring to rent a slot

Kilhu Emmek on 17 June 2004
Domalais said: "Guess what - people WILL stop building. And when they do, prices will go back up, profit margins will increase again, and ore prices will drop. Welcome to a real, living economy." People will stop building. Prices will go back up, but profit margins won't increase--because of the cost of lab slots, factories, and offices in prime locations. Welcome to a depression, sped along by production monopolies. The alliances already have a de facto alliance on rare ore mining--this is just the next logical step, I suppose. Those alliances with "merchant" corporations will be continuing to try to undercut each other, and the small corps or individuals will be either running missions, giving up on the way they used to play Eve ... or sadly just giving up on playing Eve at all. With the recent bounty changes, NPC mining crews coming in--but only in so-called "alliance space", as they've claimed everything worth claiming, Eve is more and more slipping out of the grasp of small, independent corporations or players. None of the proposed Shiva changes--POSes around moons in > 0.4 systems, etc.--gives the freelancer or smaller corporation any hope of competitiveness. That may be a solid business model for CCP to work towards--cater to the power gamers--but if their intention is to gear the game almost exclusively towards megacorps and big alliances, I wish they'd let the rest of us know so we could plan accordingly.

Kilhu Emmek on 17 June 2004
"de facto alliance" should have read "de facto monopoly."

Nikkoli on 17 June 2004
Well, I have been trying to get into the Manufacturing part of Eve for the past 2 months (since I started) Its the whole reason I chose to play EvE as I can go do PvP combat elsewhere. I was starting to get discouraged by the fact that I can barely do production as it is due to the Megacorps undercutting things based on the "I mined it so its 100% profit" theory. Dont even get me started on the topic of finding a lab slot as I still have yet to see a free one. All I can see from this proposed change is CCP making it impossible for me to ever get a lab slot/factory again. thanks.

KingsGambit on 17 June 2004
This is a silly idea. Raising prices, unless they're wholly extortionate won't help. Just make more slots. Please! It's simple, and will let everyone have a go. Limit slot rentals to how many slots a player can operate, and just increase slots so there are 100s in one station. A lab/factory is a *MEANS* to an end, the blueprints, copies, materials, minerals and products are the end result. Lab slots should NOT be an issue. If there are 10,000 players, make 60,000 slots. Problem solved. The time a lab is in use is the cost, not the isk!

Don Caana on 17 June 2004
I don't understand where you get the idea that this would only help the Big corps.... Okay, first: THe prices are RIDICULOUSLY low as it is, and should be raised at least ten-fold anyways. 1000 ISK / 5 days for a lab ONLY causes the fact that everyone will rent every lab they ever see, if only to make sure that nobody else gets it. Now, have you ever looked how many offices the real big corps have? I doubt that even they want to end up spending millions weekly just to have their logo displayed on a hundred and twenty stations that they never use around the galaxy. If your "corp" is too small to play it out with the big boys, then I strongly suggest that you quit pushing pennies around and merge into a large corp, or try the alternate option of actually doing a bit of work so you can pay larger bills. Everything else is based on supply and demand.... Why on earth would facility slots be any different? (you may not have noticed, but all the slots already ARE rented, and are only unrented if someone messes up. Raising prices thus cannot in any way make this any worse than it is.)

zegor007 on 18 June 2004
How about this? We rent slots for the actual time of their use. Factories 1,000 isk per day Research 2,000 isk per day Say we have 3 Corps, A,B and C A player from corp A builds a Megathron which costs 6,000 for the 6 day production, once complete, no player from Corp A can use that slot until someone from either Corp B or C uses it! This way, Slots will get freed up all the time, and players starting out will a get a chance to rent.

LeeL0o on 19 June 2004
Since the Start we have had 1 time wher the Slots got dubblet from 16 to 32. Now we have 3 x times more simultan useres online. And CCP you really think that this could only be better when rising the Price? There are not enougth slots. thats it.

Annatar on 19 June 2004
I have below a link to my post wich has a very nice idea to solve this Problem with ease. [url="http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=87702&page=1#3"]Corperation "owned" Research Slots[/url]

Yasmine on 22 June 2004
To stop alts from hogging resources, how about disallowing them to research on more than one account. Obviously they can rent but as we all know, if you don't use a slot, it is released. Secondly, 1 rent at 1 station - that is, you can only hire 1 lab per station same with factories. After all, you can only rent 1 office and that helps a great deal!!

Yasmine on 22 June 2004
Hmmm, how about a queue - that is, request a slot. And you can only put in 1 request per station and only so many requests at one time according to skill level. Then, through EVE mail you are notified of your rent. Sound familiar? Yes, I took the idea from libraries, everyone always seems to be able to get a book don't they? Perhaps lab time would need to increase to compensate, I don't really know. This will satisify all users of EVE and the only monopoly is that bigger corps can request their members to put in requests but seriously that will not happen as much as you think due to trust ;-) Hope this helps ;-)

Chani on 23 June 2004
The problem with using a queue and being notified when your slot is ready is that you aren't going to be sitting at the station waiting for you slot to come up. There is already to much "dead time" in Eve (although with instajumps it's not nearly as bad as it used to be)--the last thing I want to do is run 35 jumps to install a bp when my slot becomes available. As far as allowing use of only one or a few labs per station that is untenable as well. There are many legitimate needs to run more than one or two labs - some corps and individuals have hundreds of BPs to manage and, again, the last thing I want to do is have to run to another station several jumps away for each BP. I think the increased rent is a good start, we'll just have to see if the rents go so high that it potentially hurts small corps. If the rents do start getting too high, it is a sign that demand is still to high for the number of available slots and at that point CCP should increase the number of slots available until they become affordable for smaller corps as well. This especially makes sense when considering that the number of slots has remained stable, yet the number of players has increased dramatically. So, to sum up, rents according to demand, coupled with an adjustment of supply to keep rents sane, seem like a good solution imho.

A Brr on 24 June 2004
Good idea. Remember the beginning of Eve where nobody was able to find an empty factory slot. Today finding a factory slot is not really a problem (due to increased price). So put it in, as fast as possible, not soon (TM).

Helison on 26 June 2004
Where are the changes, Eight?

Ezuriah on 02 July 2004
Let's apply this idea to a real world situation: "The population has more than tripled in a year, should we build more housing? Nahhh, let's triple the rent on existing property. But what about the homeless, there's no place for them to rent a place to live? Screw them!" Seriously, CCP boasts about about breaking records about the most people on at the same time (which in online games is making history, good job there) And adding tech 2 items, which require the use of labs slots (damn good idea to make the development of tech 2 items more challenging) but, not adding more research slots, knowing more people NEED them? The argument has been brought up numerous times about the little guy corp not being able to afford offices/factories/lab slots, are you trying to illiminate new corps from starting up? IF the rents on factories goes up, so will the price of the products made, and as a result, fewer items sold. To the megacorporations, this is the best idea you've come up with. This will knock out all the smaller guys and illiminate a lot of that troublesome competition that forces them to charge reasonable prices. Who the hell wants that? I spend way too much time going from system to system, dozens of them a night, searching for just one available lab slots, I still haven't found one. Why should I be spending all my time doing this, and not making ANY money, or doing agent mission or hunting NPC's? I need just a couple or so research slots to do research, make copies for corp members, research for tech 2, etc. This game is becomming... boring.

Khali Nephtys on 03 August 2004
Been thinking about this for some time myself, and I think the solution is as previously mentioned, give everyone a default factory and lab slot each, and you can have it anywhere there is a factory or lab station, a bit like you do with clones. If you want/need more than one lab/factory slot then you will have to rent one, and then the above rules would apply. This would permit the casual or small time builder/researchers to have at least a chance in this highly competitive field. The thing CCP seem to have missed here is that some corps are so uber rich they can afford to buy out whole systems regardless of the cost, and thus denying the smaller operators. If you look at real world models you will see that monopolies benefit only those who run them, bad all round for everyone else.

Alkemar on 10 August 2004
ok you are complaining this will raise prices on items? when the prices on items go up so will the prices on everything else its called inflation and it means money is worth LESS and this is bad for people who have alot of ISK as that 400 million you have saved, the value of it is 20% less however the little guy with not much money hardly loses anything so dont compalin about it pushing noobs out of buisiness

Ishcar on 10 August 2004
Part 1 I can understand where CCP is coming from... Problem: Lab research time wasted on bps going to rediculous levels. Solution: Have a ceiling on how high certain bps can go. Note: This will free up labslots as once a bpo has gone as far as it can then it get ejected. This will then free up slots for others to use as a corp no matter how big or small will have a max of 1 or 2 copies of each bpo. Unless they are improving bpo for sale. Problem: Eve is scaling faster than current stations have capacity for. Solution: Increase office space in all stations to 32 offices just like how it scaled the labs and factories ages ago. Solution: More stations in highly populated areas, and encourage player corp stations in the empire - reduce the risk of a rentee loosing everything should the station be attacked by pirate corp. Notes: It would seen the hidden agenda for CCP is to create a positive push for corp run stations by potientially increasing rent of all NPC facilities so corps will have to create their own stations. The downside is that unlike NPC stations Corp stations will be able to be destroyed. Problem: Lab hoarding / Lab selling at high prices. Solution: As mentioned above set top limit on BPO and call them Improved and Fully Improved BPO. Notes: Some players fly around hunting for labs, on a good day 4 can be found but requires upto 4hrs of work to do so, on a bad day none can be found, this has created a black market in selling offices, labs etc. Those who cant find these resources or are not willing to hunt for the prize pay these property hunters to unrent the property. This has been a work around by many smaller corps and mega corps alike. Some BPO's are too expensive to transport around so corps will either try and trade labs to get sets in which they can work with.

Ishcar on 10 August 2004
Part 2 Problem: Some players and Corps use almost all the labslots (hog them) in a station or system. Solution: Have a ceiling on how high certain bps can go. Solution: Limit how many labs/factories that a corp can use in any one station, ie 6 labs/factories may be leased / rented by a corp in any station. Solution: 24 long term slots / station (weekly rental) & 8 short term rental (pay by the hour) long term rental ~ 100k /day (fixed price) || short term rental ~ 5k / hr (fixed price) Note: This frees up lab slots in a station so that other individuals / corps can use the facilities. Once a bpo has gone as far as it can then it get ejected thus freeing up slots for others to use. No matter how big or small a corp is it will normally have a max of 1 or 2 copies of each bpo. Unless they are improving bpo for sale. The above are possible solutions on how eve's fixed resources could be made to be more efficient. With the exception of placing a limit on how much a bpo can be improved all other options listed above including the option that CCP is moving to will cause hyper-inflation of all eve resources bpcs, production, sales and finally back to mining the full circle. I believe that it is not CCP's intention to cause hardship to smaller corps nor to advantange larger corps. In short I believe that there is a better way.

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
Those willing to pay more are more efficiently using the space. Thats the classic line. Why shouldnt they reward the wealthier corps? Isnt that the nature of the economic metagame? This isnt your reallife I have no problem with you being to destitute to afford a lab where you want. Play on~ This is a way for economic muscle corps to express their might. Its a ball game.

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
Btw this is essentially an auction system that takes some time to play out. The rules remind me of M.U.L.E

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
You know though there is going to be some bah humbuging as people get uprooted in the change. Also personally I think slots should identify the owner and the owning corp so that people can "chat" about it.

Xssassin on 10 August 2004
How about different size facilities at different prices. For example, a small office could be very cheap, be limited to corps with 10 or less members and may have other restrictions which would mean large corps could not or would not be interested in the smaller offices meaning more available for new corps. Medium and Large Offices would be a lot more expensive, would allow more members and have fewer or no restrictions. The price being a lot higher would mean smaller corps could not afford the larger office spaces.

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
It wont be so bad once the system sorts areas into "high rent districts" and "low rent districts" which it will do. Once people realize which they are and areas show themselves to be less popular then people will get sorted out. I expect alot of relocating in the coming month.

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
Oh I got an idea. I would like an option to color code the map with average price for rental. The idea is the map should help people get located in areas suited to their means instead of spending a day looking for a spot.

Milton Smythe on 10 August 2004
Oh the whining. Well all you guys who threaten to quit, I guess you're part of the solution cause you will sure help demand falling by quitting. You want to get ahead ? work for it. You think money falls into the pockets of anyone ? It's the same in production as it is in battle. You can't waltz in on day one and become a successful pirate hunter without some 12M Skillpoint killer with months of practice showing up from time to time to ruin your day. Noone can or will prevent you from getting ahead. pay your dues. Mine and sell us the ore , then when you refine well you mine and sell us the mineral. thwn when you have a good amount of seed money you strike out on your own. This change will help. Our corp have some offices we don't use , and I have been looking for an excuse to dropping them for a fair while.

denzil3 on 10 August 2004
i think that would be unfare for this coz the biggger corps have loads of slots and i have one so i pay massive cost for one if they did it now may each person has then it sould work if this is done it would help others in doing resurch i would like to do more and i find i cant do it thanx denzil3

Milton Smythe on 10 August 2004
As was mentioned earlier. Minerals prices are on the rise. Because fewer and fewer sell and more and more mine only to fuel their own production. This fact makes it easier to start out as your earlier efforts to raise money will benefit greatly from the inflated Ore and Mineral prices. Every corp , including the NPC ones will like profits and will probably try to ask as much for their services as they can get away with. So , new corps might not be able to cut it along the highway. So what.. now you have a goal. There is a little adversity for you to make you feel good about your accomplishment. The fighting in fierce on the markets. Enjoy it.. master it

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
I think if they cant stick to their guns on this change then it will be a bad omen when they try implement moon bases. The whole game is focusing on struggle over scarcity. If there is no scarcity there is no struggle and that really takes the wind out of what I was starting to like about eve. If everyone can have whatever they want whats the point really? Theres no larger game and eve looses alot of corporate struggle potential. Not everyone is going to win but as long as were having fun playing then thats ok. If you take away the struggle though then not only does not everyone win but nobody wins and nobody has a good time struggling over control of finite resources. Its the game lets play it folks.

Qutsemnie on 10 August 2004
hehe i wish i could edit. I dont think it will be that bad after us people that researched cause they could but didnt really care leave the market.

Krazie Tekk on 10 August 2004
i agree with mega corps gonna own all and lil poor meeh wont be able to ME my ammo at all.

Commander Talon on 10 August 2004
A very poor idea The poor players will let there lab slots go long before the richer ones and thus the price of the slots will drop resulting in the poor losing there losts and the rich keeping theres. Rince and Repeat The answer is simple, make new lab slots that can do everything a normal lab slot can but without the ability to make BPC's This way people can buy BPO's reasearch them and build using them and the market dosent get flooded with new BPC's.

Petite Douceur on 10 August 2004
A LOT MORE LABS ARE NEEDED !!!! ------------- UNSATISFIED CLIENT ... 9 month in eve, never 10 ?

Karrde CZ on 10 August 2004
Y'all are wasting bandwidth here :P. Nobody at CCP reads this crap past the 5th comment :P

TheJackalKiller on 10 August 2004
bad ideea i think

Mned Graydroggen on 10 August 2004
been thinking a bitt. I like the idea in general, hope it gets some slots open for more ppl. One BIG BUT though. My Headquarters..... One cant possibly expect a corp to move its headquarters every once in a while. Believe me you dont want that for a medium to big size corp. My corp lives as nomads and we do it from time to time. Is it an idea to have the corp headquarters excluded from this endless rent increase ?

ammargal on 10 August 2004
got about time that some slots got free, especially research slots, nice idea CCP, though i have to agree with Mned Graydroggen, i hope you might work out something for corps slots in HQ's otherwise things will not b payable

damarente on 11 August 2004
"If you have any unanswered questions please post in this dev blog and I'll do my best to answer. Author: Eight" heaps of comments, a few questions but no answers.

The Pimp on 11 August 2004
Like it

The Pimp on 11 August 2004
What the ...... Really this is not good at all. I wrote down heaps and heaps of good stuff and when I posted it my page had expired and I had to log back in.. WTF !!!!

DogWithMeat on 11 August 2004
Okay anyways.. MAKE HQ´s be of some importance for a corp. This game is not complete enough to enjoy until that is in effect. (heres a 1/10 of what I wrote earlyer) make slots more expensive the further you are away from your HQ. Say a 100.000 isk per jump or something (small corps dont need many offices so they dont have to pay this sum if they cant) Also make it not possible to switch HQ´s untill 2-4 weeks after made and make number of offices 3-5 per corp and have a special skill for ceo´s to train to have one extra office per level and make it a very long skiltraining please. If you do this I see good times ahead. HQ´s cant be made in space 0.9 and 1.0 (politicians of eve consider it a breach of harmony for theyre citizens :) Idea to make HQ´s important: 2-5 slots of every type appears for your corp in your HQ. Please note this is coming from a player with extensive EVE experience.

Unforgivin on 11 August 2004
why isn't it just limited by project, charge so much to do so long of research and max it out to like 5 me or 5 pe per print at a time then charge depending on the time it will take, and after it is finished, the slot opens up to whoever needs it.

Aranox on 11 August 2004
Can't really see this working.... but haven't had as much time as ccp to ponder the problem.. Would rather see 6 possible slots per account than anything else... Mind you, never really understood why there had to be a limit on lab space.. thier only paper/electronic blueprints, doesn't take up too much space... Would like to see R&D agents do more of this type of work, give a little extra to the die hard researchers perhaps (but i might just be saying that coz i have an r&d agent... and no, still no t2 bpo... hehe)

Galton Grimm on 13 August 2004
Having to rent a lab or factory slot for any amount of time you're not using seems pointless. In real life would I do that? No, I'd rent the lab for the duration of the run, after which someone else could rent it. It'd be like renting a hot tub for the entire week after you spend an hour in it, or a mechanic's garage for a week after they work on your car. You should instead pay for the number of hours of your run, and the rate should increase exponentially like 1 to 10 hours is X per hour, 11 to 20 hours is 2X per hour, 21 to 30 is 4x per hour, etc, to discourage people from hogging lab slots for any longer than they really need them, and to charge rich players more money for doing long research runs. Once the run is completed the slot frees up and someone else can rent it.

Elizabeth Amortis on 15 August 2004
So even if we are not part of the problem say owning a lab out away from 1.0 space, we are still going to be socked as hard with increasing prices because their are far more people who want labs than there are labs to go around? It is this kind of nonsense that made me stop playing eve the first time, I only came back because the game seemed fixed.

Seraphim Malificio on 07 February 2005
This rule is killing our corp as well. We have our research in 0.1 sec system some 22 jumps from the hubs and still we pay now 500k for each slot and we havent had them very long and our office / HQ which is also in a backwater system some 13 jumps from Hubs is billing out at 3.5 mil a pay. I might afford it for a while yet but it will break us as this problem will rise exponentially.