FW Pilots and the Null Sec Bubble Dilema

The other day I published a piece about a couple of topics near and dear to my heart in Eve lately, and one of those topics mentioned a certain development style that has taken CCP by storm in the last year or so: Delete Key Game Development. It is the removal of features or functionality in the game client in an attempt to fix issues or improve the experience.

Images today from http://evepics.wordpress.com

Industry teams not working the way they were envisioned? Remove them, stating the possibility to revisit and fix them properly later. Clone costs too high for nullsec/WH veterans to justify flying cheap ships? Get rid of them. Bombers able to probe and warp to targets too quickly? Remove a bunch of fleet warp mechanics!

I know I come off as if this is a terrible way to do things, and in some cases it can be. Present issues aside, however, deletion of some game functionality could have a positive effect.

While still a lowsec resident, I'm no longer a part of Factional Warfare. I still communicate with a few old friends in the business, and one concern that has come up is an issue that complicates things considerably for FW groups wanting to play in Null space.

While it would be cool to be able to take the credit for the following, I can't. The issues were raised initially towards the end of CSM9's term by a group of concerned FW citizens and presented to CCP. I know Sugar Kyle has brought this to CCP's attention once or twice over the course of CSMX's term, but there appears to be little traction being made thus far, so it might be time for a spotlight.

Bubbles

Bubbles are a big part of combat in null sec, and for a FW group, deploying bubbles in nullsec can be a tricky endeavor.

Any member of your own militia that wanders into a bubble you deploy counts as an act of aggression, and comes with a lovely standings hit. That's bad. Worse is if any of those guys lose their pods in the scuffle, because a bad standings hit gets multiplied several times over. Losing a single rank in FW comes with a nasty faction hit to the empire you fly for, one that can't be regained by simply ranking up again. Half a dozen pod kills can net SEVERAL demotions, causing standing hits so severe they can get you, your corp, and even your alliance kicked from FW. Aside from the prospect of losing several billion ISK in implants, this is pretty big on the list of why FW groups often avoid nullsec.

There is some real hope in that there is a relatively easy solution to this problem, and it doesn't even involve making any changes to bubbles.

To put it simply, all that needs to be removed from the game to solve this dilemma is NPC standings hits for aggression in Null Sec and WH space. Of course, that would mean that FW groups could engage "friendlies" at will in null security space and wormholes with no consequences to their standings, but after talking with several people still in FW, no one seems to see this as being an issue. After all, there are no FW objectives in null sec or WH space, just a few good fights, and maybe a chance to try out Fozzie Sov, something that would be very difficult with the way standings hits currently work.

IWantRMT plus Proposed Fleet Warp Changes

Hello friends! It's been an interesting last few days in Eve. It's also been a couple of months since the last blog post, but really there hasn't been much to say that couldn't be tackled on the weekly radio show.

IWantRMT

Before I get to the meat of today's posting, I think it's only fair to touch on the IWantISK situation. I've known about the site for some time, but haven't really cared one way or another. My primary form of gambling in Eve is in PVP, and that loses me enough money these days without the benefit of FW LP to make up losses. I had a brief stint at EOHPoker, lost a few hundred million, and came to the determination that I suck at Poker. I also tried betting on some AT matches on Eve Bet lost some money there too. Basically, gambling is bad for me.

Eve's meta is kind of unique in the land of modern day MMO's. I don't know of any sites where you can bet your WoW gold playing poker or bet on real life sporting events, nor where it can be used to gamble on lotteries for in game items run by players. In fact, off the top of my head I can't think of ANY other MMO that allows this, which is kind of a pity, because I suspect there are a lot of people paying subs right now in Eve that may not be if it weren't for the meta game.

So that brings us to the temptation that hits guys like Somerset Mahm when their meta game gets a little too good, and they start seeing opportunities to turn it into real money. IWantISK has apparently been doing well, and when the site was black listed from the in game browser a while back, it was fairly obvious that something was afoot. Supporters of the site were calling for calm, the guy that runs it was asking why, and anyone with a level head on their shoulders had a pretty good feeling someone, or more than one person got caught with their hands in the RMT cookie jar.

So much shit was posted in the wake of the black listing, it's hard to separate the bullshit from anything that might have been substantiated, but we've come away with 2 facts at this point. 1: Some of the bankers for IWantISK were dirty. 2: the more the IWantISK guy opens his mouth to speak, the more I'm convinced he's either a clueless idiot, or he knows more than he's let on.

The thing that eats me on this stuff is just how unnecessary it all is. EOHpoker and Eve-Bet have been operating for years without this stuff happening. Maybe they're not raking it in to the point where the temptation is too great to pass up, or they're just honest dudes trying to make money in game creatively, I don't know. One thing I do know is that you might gamble and do ok, but if you keep playing long enough, the house always wins. In this case, it looks like the house is CCP, and they've called in their chips.

Nosy did a great writeup on what he's collected to date. If you don't know him, he's THE guy when it comes to blogging about RMT stuff in Eve, and should be on your reading list.

Lazy Game Development Part Deux

Over the last couple months I've been working hard to curb my inner bittervet. I got out of FW, I've been playing Eve more, and I've been having fun doing it. I've even had some positive things to say about CCP and Eve on the weekly Eve Radio Show! I'd been making some real progress, then someone brought the o7 show from this past week to my attention and I think I'm having a relapse.

When I saw the fleet warp change announcement on the o7 show my initial reaction was "WTF?!" The more I've read about it since and come to figure out exactly what is changing, I'm even more confused. Warping your fleet to 0 or range on a stargate or celestial or fleet member is fine, but it's lazy piloting to fleet warp to a bookmarked tactical? Are you effing kidding me?

I have linked the relevant section of the show below, it should start right when the fleet warp discussion begins. 

 "We want to encourage more specialized play!" In a word, bullshit. I kept waiting for a Feel, Felt, Found sales pitch somewhere in there which thankfully never came.

I will admit that I'm a little out of touch where large nullsec fights are concerned. I typically fly in small to medium gangs, hardly ever more than 20 people. We rarely probe, but when we do, we always send a cloaked guy in first because if someone is sitting there aligned we NEED to make sure our tackle lands at the right range with as little time to get away as possible.

We do, however, maintain an extensive list of tacticals in many of the systems we routinely operate in. Gate perches, off grid pounces, instant dock and undock bookmarks are a few examples.

In lowsec, we're lucky because the stuff we bookmark tends to not move around, and I have few enough people I fly with that if I can remember how to copy my bookmark sets, I'll only have to copy a couple hundred BMs to pass around. It'll be a complete pain in the ass, but maybe not as bad as a null FC that would need to pass them around to a few hundred people.

There was a time when the mass copying of bookmarks had a really negative effect on the server performance, which is how we ended up with warp to 0 (warping to something used to land you 15k away, our autopilot is a legacy of that system). If this ends up becoming a thing again for fleet ops, I'm wondering if CCP has considered whether this will rear it's ugly head again.

That all aside, I don't even want to think about the guys in WH space. From the rumblings I'm hearing, if this change goes through, CCP is hitting those guys with the big purple dong. Fortunately, CCP has come out and said they'll look into ways to not screw WH guys over quite so much, but that also reeks of "Wow, we only thought of the one area of the game we were trying to make more 'interesting' and didn't even consider what that would mean to you guys over there." Here's an idea: Mention something like this to your CSM first, and consider the WH guy's feedback before the "Big Announcement"

So, what exactly is CCP trying to fix with this change? Well, they've talked about flying "mostly afk" and warping fleets to probe results (specifically bombers?). Bookmarks it seems weren't the real target, but got caught in the collateral damage category because you can bookmark your scan results. I'm not buying the mostly afk thing, because if that was the case it would make more sense to remove the entire fleet warp mechanic... of course maybe they wanted to, but then thought the tsunami of tears would be too strong and decided to baby step this instead.

That being said, lazy here begets lazy. It strikes me as an FC that if a bomb drop was a legitimate concern of mine, I'd spread my fleet out a little bit. Maybe a tweak to the explosion size of a bomb is in order if fleets are getting hit too easily?

Further, in a non stealth bomber situation, fleet warping your interceptors and tackle with the bulk of a fleet seems kind of dumb, since all ships will warp at the speed of the slowest ship in the fleet warp. Maybe by wing or squad, but then wouldn't you need a prober in every squad or wing leader position to pull this off? Surely no FC would warp an entire mixed fleet at battleship speed right?

So again, I'm a little confused.

If the issue is warping a fleet onto a probed target and the speed at which that can be accomplished, why aren't we tweaking probing? The most likely reason I can come up with is the coding behind it, and the fact that it's easier to remove functionality from the client than edit existing code. In a nutshell, that means looking for the fastest, easiest way to tackle a problem and determining whether any collateral damage is worth it. That's why the teams feature got pulled from industry, too much of a pain to fix vs just removing them entirely. You may also recall a certain heated incident during my term on the CSM last year where removing intra-corp aggression entirely came up at the summer summit, followed by a complete removal of clone costs with "plans" to replace the risk with something else later down the road that I don't think we'll ever see. Pluck, pluck, pluck, meaningful changes made to the game with the Delete key.

This wasn't brought up on the o7 show, but another casualty of this change is the time honored tactic of inviting someone undocking to your fleet, and if they accept, fleet warping them to a nice, good old fashioned, passionate ass whupping at an insta a few hundred km off the undock. Recalling a few.... impassioned discussions I've had with one of the people present for this change's unveiling, I would not be surprised if the protection of "players who don't fully understand game mechanics" getting taken advantage of (ie: noobs and/or dumbasses in capital or other blingy ships) did not come into play at all here.

In Summary

There are a few issues going on here, and looking at the proposed change from the angles I just don't see what's being "fixed" outweighing what's getting broken. I don't think CCP Fozzie and Larrikin are telling the whole story. This seems like a poorly thought out change, or a change for the sake of change. There's no quality of life improvement, nor does it make the game any more fun or intuitive.

One could argue that it would make the game harder for some people, which in itself might not be terrible, but I'm grasping at air when I look at the given "reason" for the change being "We want transfer more responsibility for the success of a fleet from its FC to its members." Fozzie has stated that he feels this is a good outcome for bomber fleets, but the bigger picture makes this look like a change meant to kill a fly with a bazooka. There is far too much collateral damage if the act of fleet warping itself is not the perceived issue.

And that brings us back to a modus operandi that seems to have taken increased hold at CCP over the last few years: putting more emphasis on getting things done the easy way, not necessarily the right way.

The changes to POSs and space structures appear to be an exception to this, and I have to say I'm very excited for what I've seen so far on that front, but I'm still left shaking my head with some of these "Delete key" changes.

Lowsec Combat Fits: The Heretic

I used to call these features FW Fits, but with our departure from FW a couple weeks ago that term no longer seems like it would apply. That being said, there's certainly nothing stopping someone in FW from using any of the concoctions coming out of FunkyBacon labs these days, I'm just no longer using a FW plex fight as the measuring stick for a ship's effectiveness. As always, individual results may vary!

Today I'm going to write about a fairly rare ship class for lowsec, Interdictors, and more specifically, the Heretic.

Amarr Destroyer skill bonus per level:
10% bonus to Rocket and Light Missile Velocity
5% bonus to Rocket and Light Missile launcher rate of fire

Interdictors skill bonus per level:
4% bonus to armor resistances
10% reduction in microwarpdrive signature radius penalty

Role Bonus:
Can fit Interdiction Sphere Launchers

Immediately we can forget about the role bonus on Interdictors. The illegality of bubbles in lowsec might be a primary reason these ships don't see much action out here, however with a T2 resist profile, improved warp speed over regular destroyers and even frigates, and a solid speed improvement over their T1 counterparts, Dictors have been impressing me lately as extremely good skirmish boats.

Let's take a look at one possible fit. Full disclosure; I usually operate with Genolution CA-1/CA-2 implants along with a 3% base speed implant and a Zor's Custom for 5% MWD speed boost.

[Heretic, NX-522]
Low:
Damage Control II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer
Ballistic Control System II
Mid:
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor II
F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines
High:
Light Missile Launcher II x7
E5 Prototype Energy Vampire
Rigs:
Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Small Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I

At current prices, this ship and fit should run in the 60 million ISK range.

With this fit and relevant skills maxed out, you can expect to do 170 DPS with navy light missiles at 83k (200 DPS with heat) and upwards of 230 DPS at 62k with Fury. You'll have a rate of fire of just over 5.5 seconds and an alpha just over 1000 with navy, and 1300 with fury. The damage is a bit less than a Flycather with kinetic missiles, but unlike the Flycather, you've got your choice of damage and will be doing more DPS with any other damage type. Also, with an 8-3-3 fitting layout, you have more versatility than the Flycatcher's 8-5-1 fitting.

Speed wise you should expect somewhere in the 2600 range, slower than most frigates, faster than other destroyers, and about on Par with many cruisers. With appropriate links (love or hate them, they are prevalent in lowsec, and if you want to be competitive you'll sometimes need them) you'll get up in the 3300 range for speed. If you're willing to drop the Nos I'm using as a heat sink in the highs, the ship should fit without the Genolutions, and you could go crazy with a snake set.

The point of this fit isn't to chase so much as it is to keep a respectable distance. With just the small armor rep, you'll be able to hold yourself together against some long range plinks, or a few light drones, but if you get caught in a brawl you're pretty much toast. With the range and speed of your missiles, even most Garmurs will be forced to keep a respectable distance, giving you opportunity to sling shot out if tackled. For the rest, you'll have to use judgement on what distance to keep, but generally if it's slower than you that would be just outside its effective range where you can dictate the fight.

In small gangs we've been using the Heretic as long range bombardment, usually supported by 1 or 2 interceptors tackling while the heretic provides added fire support from long range. A larger flight of these ships would be absolutely devastating to most small craft gangs that are all the rage in FW lowsec these days.

In practice, most pilots I've run into while flying my Heretic haven't been too keen on getting in close. With a yellow box at 120k, and a rain of missiles long before they can get in tackle range, most small ships have backed off fairly quickly, and most cruisers don't have the speed to close range on the heretic in a respectable period of time. Cynabals and Orthuss should be avoided unless piloted poorly. My only Heretic loss so far this month? A Svipul that I let get too close, which I can chalk up to cockiness and pilot error on my part.... and maybe a little bit of "Svipul is OP". :)

Changes

With the CSM9 term now all but over (we're just waiting for CSM10 to finish getting NDA's sorted until we're officially released) it's just about time to drop politics and get back to the Eve.

Over the next few postings I've got some great topics to cover, including some lowsec survival tips, some fresh ship fits, and something to go over lowsec mining (my posting last year about why no one mines in lowsec is a fairly constant traffic generator, so it seems fair to cobble something up about mining and local production for lowsec markets).

The perspective of things is changing around here as well. For the last 3 years myself and the guys have been flying for Gallente Factional Warfare. As of last weekend, that era is over. We gutted what was left of the alliance, trimmed everything down to 4 pilots, made a couple new friends, and left FW.

While we still live in the same place in lowsec, this change has cancelled an enforced blue status with a couple thousand active pilots in our area providing us with a far more target rich environment, more fights, and new challenges. Our former friends in Gal Mil (aside from a few confusing moments when standings weren't properly reset) seem just as happy as us to have more potential targets, and there haven't been any hard feelings. The change has had an immediate positive effect on our Eve outlook, and has caused some changes in how we do things.

Primarily while in FW, income was gained through LP. We now face the challenge of having to earn an honest living. Charlie is hell bent on funding himself solely through piracy. So far, he's doing quite well. As the managing director of Noob Mercs last year, Charlie made a name for himself flying cheaply fit, low SP compatible ships, and actually winning fights with them. There are a lot of people flying around lowsec that make bad fitting decisions, but Tech II and faction mods dropped off poorly fit ships still sell well, and Charlie has racked up 63 kills this week totaling over 6 Billion ISK.

Well known for it's role in Nullsec, the Heretic has
impressed me as an extremely capable Lowsec fighter.

For myself, I enjoy flying slightly prettier ships than t1 fit destroyers. This week has seen me try both the Sentinel and Heretic for the first time in my Eve career, and I've had buckets of fun with them (I'll talk about each one specifically in future posts this month).

With a 10 year old character, I've got some skills stashed away in invention and T2 production that I've started to leverage for income purposes. I'm not a hardcore producer by any means, but our home system has a decent market that seems some traffic, and I'm able to sell things for higher profits than I'd be making in saturated highsec markets, even if things take a little longer to sell. With FW system upgrades, goods are also considerably cheaper to build. Once I find a reliable JF service that doesn't try to get me to sign over my first born for a round trip jump costing around 15m ISK in fuel, I'll be golden!

The o\ Show Recap Part II: Clone Costs and Escape Pod... Escapes.

Welcome to part 2 of my blog coverage of last weekend's The o\ Show on Eve Radio. Yesterday I went over the first half of the show discussing Awoxing, wardecs and new Player Retention. Today we'll go over the second half covering clone costs, death penalties, and escape pod mechanics. If you would like to view the entire broadcast for yourself, it can be viewed on twitch HERE.

Now we come to the very thing that inspired The o\ Show, the removal of clone costs. Many people have looked at me askew over this. Why would I be in support of a "death tax"? People with a lot of skill points pay a LOT of money to replace a clone, and it deters older players in nullsec from flying cheap disposable ships that cost a fraction of their pods.

Live polling on the show revealed that, unsurprisingly, the vast majority of our audience was in favor of the removal of clone costs. Charlie, who is a member of Brave Newbies was especially vocal in his support of this change.

As my present main was created in January of 2005, I am keenly aware of these clone costs. Without my FW discount, a replacement clone for me costs around 45 million ISK, but as I fly in lowsec, this is not an issue, much as it isn't an issue for anyone in lowsec that flies around with over a billion ISK of implants in their heads. Even a single 3% implant costs more than the vast majority of pilot's clones that are flying around in space right now.

If the cost of a clone is not a big deal for people flying in lowsec, but is a huge deal for people in nullsec who are by and large hugely in favor of this change, what gives? The answer is likely to be found in the risks involved.

Using my lowsec alliance as an example, of our nearly 55,000 kills, 5,400 of those are escape pods, just a hair under 10%. We've also lost slightly over 18,000 ships, of which just over 2100 of those were escape pods, or around 12%. Just a cursory glance at numbers for large nullsec groups like Goonswarm Federation (29.6% of kills are pods, and 27.6% of losses) and Northern Coalition. (23.8% of kills, 30.9% of losses) reveals the start of the issue here. No one will be shocked to know that pilots are far more likely to lose a pod in nullsec than in Lowsec, but even these numbers are misleading.

Since a 50% ratio of pods killed vs ships would mean basically a 100% chance of pod death on ship destruction, a 30% ratio of pod losses should equate roughly to a 60% chance of losing a pod once your ship goes down. I will freely admit that the math might be a little more complicated than it seems at first glance though, and does not take into account that some losses these groups incur are in lowsec and highsec. With that in mind the actual % chance of pod death while in nullsec is likely much higher than these numbers can account for, I just don't have access to the data.

While the number for my lowsec alliance are a bit more accurate for our area of space (since we hardly ever have cause to leave it) another thing to consider is that people who fly more expensive pods in lowsec are far less likely to lose them than the 10% ratio would suggest. For myself, I lose approximately 1 pod for every 30 ships I lose. Flying with a billion ISK plugged into my head, you can imagine I've gotten quite adept at spamming the warp button once I realize a fight is lost. Sometimes my ship goes down too fast to react, lag happens, or Santo Trafficante (lowsec pirate specializing in escape pod destruction, nearly 60% of his 18,000 kills are pods) sees me warp off and is waiting for me when I land, but aside from that, I have a very good chance of getting my pod back home.

Interestingly, the same people attending the o\ Show that were hugely in support of getting rid of clone costs, also voted in a 2-1 ratio that Escape pods having such a low rate of survival in nullsec is a larger problem than clones costing money. Even Charlie, our most vocal supporter of the change was given pause when asked the same question.

Here's my problem with this change: Clone costs are being lauded as a dumb mechanic, a death tax that serves no purpose than to cost people money. People risk the ship, they lose that, and then they lose their pod as an added bonus. This change, it is said, will encourage more people to risk PVP in nullsec. The fact is that this change doesn't encourage risk, it removes it.

People that wouldn't risk a 30 million ISK pod before the change are not likely to risk taking out a HAC or T3 cruiser after the change any more than they were before it. They may "risk" flying in a t1 frigate or destroyer after the change.

For a 5 million SP pilot in Brave Newbies, losing a clone means a cost of 175 thousand isk, which to my veteran eyes seems awfully paltry. In fact, to exceed a clone cost of even 1 million ISK one must purchase a clone that holds over 25 million SP, and is still less than the cost of the fully T1 fit derptron we throw away by the dozen in lowsec.

For a guy like me with a main that's nearly 10 years old, nullsec would ABSOLUTELY be a pain in the ass. At 45 million ISK a pop, and better than 60% chance of losing it, pods start to add up. Putting that in perspective, and looking at the fact that clone costs are a non consideration in areas of space where escape is more likely, is the issue at hand the fact that clones cost money, or is it that losing your escape pod is nearly a guarantee in nullsec if you lose your ship?

People say that there are no interesting choices when it comes to clones. You must purchase one that will hold all of SP, and this is true. They don't really do much else except hold your implants. In lowsec we have a choice. When I lose my ship, I have to weigh out the cost of my clone versus the convenience of instant travel home via the pod express.

At 45 million ISK, I am very unlikely to prefer taking the pod express over making 10 or 15 jumps back to my home station. If given the choice of making the trip manually or taking it for free however, I'm much more likely to sit back, activate self destruct, and hope that someone comes along to pop me before the timer runs out to save even more time! As a lowsec PVPer, I really don't WANT my victim to sit still in their pod and type in local "Pod pls" just before the self destruct notification goes off. In nullsec there should be some incentive for self preservation as well.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the present mechanic is not in need of improvement. It is in need of an overhaul. For one, loss of skill points AND money is definitely too harsh. While I've never lost SP because I forgot to upgrade my clone, I know i am in the minority there. Getting rid of the SP penalty is definitely a good idea. For another, something needs to be done to give "escape" pods a chance to actually escape in nullsec.

Bubble immunity is one idea on the table. I've heard the cries that this would make pods "impossible" to catch in nullsec. In lowsec we have no such tools to catch pods and yet we kill plenty. Some folks, like Santo Trafficante, have made careers out of catching and destroying large numbers of very expensive pods. This change alone would be far more likely to encourage people in nullsec to fly with much more expensive pods, than removing clone costs entirely will. Surely pod deaths will go down, but would ISK destroyed from pod deaths go down with it? For my fellow PVPers, would you rather nail 1 pod with a billion in implants plugged in it's head or 30 empties?

For those vehemently opposed to bubble immunity for pods, what about a decent base speed for them that would allow them to burn out of a bubble given a short time if no one in a small ship were there to pick them off? Changing base speed might also affect align time slightly, giving fast lockers more of a chance to catch pods.

These are just two options among many to help increase the chance of a pod escaping conflict in nullsec, and bringing a small choice back into space combat: Is the cost of death worth the convenience of instant travel back to base? Sometimes the negative consequences of an action ARE the incentive not to let it happen, and an instinct for self preservation isn't a bad thing.

FW Sov vs Null Sov: Setting Phasers to Fun

I've noticed a bit of a theme when it comes to the sov grind. Your average FW line pilot tends to get excited about taking important defended systems. The average null pilot does not seem to get very excited about a Sov push. During a slow night on comms, our pilots will begin to fondly tell stories of past campaigns; taking Innia, defending Nennamaila, vacationing in Huola. A lot of the Null guys I talk to, with a few exceptions, generally don't have much to talk about.

During a FW sov grind the pilots are motivated to participate with lines like, "Holy shit guys! My kill cup runneth over, you should get down here before you miss out on this!" During my null days it was more like, "Ok guys, let's get our shit together, it's time to go RF some towers." (I left null just prior to Dominion, though I hear the excitement of RFing structures hasn't improved all that dramatically).

So what gives? Why do we in lowsec FW Sov enjoy the activity so much while our cousins in null sec get to it with a grumbling resignation of "Let's get this over with"? Is there anything we could learn from FW and apply to null? I'll take a look at some key differences, and see if there's not something to glean from them.

1: Your Supers Can't Help You Here

This is one of the most obvious differences. In a lowsec Sov push, caps are the next thing to useless. You *could* drop them somewhere in system and conventionally warp them into a large complex, but that will get you only 1 out of every 4 complexes. If you can get the system to vulnerable 5 dreads can knock out the iHub in a single cycle, but all it takes is a couple guys in frigates to defensively cap a plex or two for it to go invulnerable again. Your fleet can't even lock the iHub at this point, and your system capture is on hold until you can gain plex superiority again... with your subcaps.

I've been on both the giving and receiving end of the iHub going invul before the system can be taken. It's frustrating as hell for an attacker, but the defenders are usually skittering around having a laugh because they just gave their fleet a bit of extra time to mount a proper defense. In these situations, if the system already got this high to begin with, it's likely to fall at some point anyway, but not today. If an attacker is using caps, they will usually evac them before someone with more caps shows up, but even then, a 40 or 50 man mixed subcap fleet is more than enough to take the iHub in 10-15 minutes.

While a huge limitation to the power of supers in FW is one of the biggest draws we have, for feasibility in null, I'm not sure there's much to carry over here. While many people are quick to bemoan the proliferation and power of Supercaps, I don't see a forced push away from them as going over too well, especially with the people that rely on them so much. If there was some part of the null sov grind that required subcaps it might make people who don't enjoy flying caps and supers feel a little more useful, but artificially limiting fights in null seems a little against the grain, so that brings us to...

2: 1000 Paper Cuts, The Benefit of Many Smaller Timers

To take a system in FW, at least one that's actively defended, the attacking force needs an around the clock presence. Plex timers run anywhere from 10-20 minutes. A capture will either add 20 Victory Points to the contested pool, or take 20 out of it. In a non-dust modified system, it takes 3,000 VP to make the iHub vulnerable, and that iHub has no RF timer; you put it to structure, you win.

Good indicator that someone's house is on fire in FW.

A FW FC has decisions to make when assaulting a system. There can be 4 (and sometimes more) plexes open at any given time. If you ball your fleet up in one of them, the enemy can stick a single dude in each of the other 3, and you won't be accomplishing anything. This requires splitting forces to maintain plex superiority, or a very nimble fleet to constantly push the enemy out of plexes while trying to keep timers going in your favor. A HAC/T2 Logi gang can effectively hold 2 out of the 4 plex types, but you also need a good number of frigates and destroyers to support your fleet and hold the other 2 types. If your enemy ships down and becomes too much for your small ship support to handle, as an FC you have to decide if you need to ship down your whole fleet as well to deal with it.

While the FW way of doing things seems to play back into that whole bit about forcing people to fly smaller ships, there IS something that might translate here. As it stands in null, you drop fleet, RF structure, take note of the timer, and then leave with plans to come back in a day or 2 to push it to the 2nd timer, and then hopefully a couple days after that to finally destroy it. If you're lucky you'll get a fight, and it won't result in an atrocious amount of TiDi. If you're unlucky, you'll be reading a book or shooting the shit on comms while trying to remember to hit F1 every couple of minutes between reloads.

In FW, leaving a system for 18 hours means giving the defender every opportunity to plex it back down a long way towards stable. What if sov null consisted of a larger number of timers that were shorter, spread out location wise, and encourage guerrilla warfare against larger entities with big slow fleets. Maybe 20-30 minute timers akin to FW plex buttons that require pilots in proximity to capture instead of raw DPS and wrecking balls. Guerrilla warfare would be feasible at this point, allowing smaller fleets to outmaneuver larger less nimble ones, or forcing those larger fleets to break apart to hold multiple objectives at once. I could go on all day about the tactics that would be required to hold and take multiple short timers over a 3 or 4 day period instead of 2 or 3 planned fights at a RF timer expiration, but I think most of you could figure this out for yourselves.

What I can say definitively, is that highly contested running battles that last for days on end are some of the most exciting times for a FW pilot. Even the solo and small gang guys that despise fleets have a good time flying around catching stragglers that can't keep up with their FC.

Of course I haven't addressed the issue of iHubs and outposts, but a system like this would allow for there not to be 2 long RF timers between grinding those structures 3 times.

3: YOUR Space is MY Income Source

Holding a system in FW means having access to the station in that system and denying its access to your enemies, but if you want to make the big FW LP money, you need to go to enemy territory to do it. Our PvE mission agents will send us 9-12 jumps mostly into enemy territory (not as much when we hold the majority of the zone) and if we opt for the plex for LP route, defensively plexing in your own systems, while easy, pays a fraction of running them in enemy held systems. We can mine or rat in our own systems of course, but unless we get lucky with a Mordu's spawn, the money in FW is in LP or exploding someones ship sporting an overpriced fit.

In this sense, losing the system next door to a fortress system is both good and bad. While it does offer the enemy a staging area to assault a fortress system more easily, it also provides a fertile farming ground if that enemy isn't on top of their game defending that staging area. when these assaults happen, often major fighting will occur in both systems in a tug of war to see who can oust who first. The fighting in 2013 between the Gallente in Nennamaila and the Caldari next door in Enaluri was legendary, with fleets attacking and defending both systems for nearly a week non stop until the Caldari were finally pushed out, and forced to evacuate the area.

While this is a huge win for FW and people looking for fights (someone running a plex in your system is likely looking to do some shooting) I'm not sure there's a translation here for null sec. If each alliance was an island unto itself, it could maybe work, but with coalitions being what they are, I can't see a way for CCP to code the game to tell the difference between your coalition buddy's space and that of "the other bloc". On top of this, with the size of nullsec, it would probably be too difficult for a bloc to say, strike a non essential system at the heart of the other bloc, and keep the logistics up in that system for an assault on the enemy's capital.

4: Conclusions

Looking at what are probably the 3 most major differences between FW and Null sov grinding, it might be a little easier to see why FW pilots tend to enjoy the grind more than their null cousins. Unfortunately, what null really needs is a complete overhaul, and I'm not sure there's much that can be taken from FW's successes to translate. I do see some merit in the 1000 Paper Cuts approach over the current meta (amassing as much supercapital damage as possible, RF, Timer, RF, Timer, Capture, with almost no focus on smaller operations or need for subcap support) but such change would have to accompany other mechanics, and would be a major undertaking on CCPs part.

I think many people will disagree on specifics at this point, but one thing I think I see almost everyone out in null saying these days is that the current system isn't all that good or fun, and something needs to change. The rest is all just details.

The Power of Conflict

There have been quite a few postings made elsewhere about Lowsec lately, and I think it's time to toss my own thoughts into the ring about the subject. For some context here, I'm going to suggest a bit of light reading before I get into the grit.

First up we have a lovely posting by fellow Gal Mil pilot Niden over at Crossing Zebras "Eve is Dying?" The TLDR here is that lowsec kills are rising, nullsec not so much. He makes the case that if Eve is dying, lowsec didn't get the memo and is doing great.

Our friend The Nosy Gamer took Niden's data a bit further and made the case that kills in almost all areas of Eve are related to the Average Concurrent User (ACU) data. Then Gevlon took Nosy's data and used it to show that Nullsec players are running off to highsec to make money. Sweet shit, it's like anyone can take a line of data and dress it up to show whatever point they want to get across these days.

All I'll say about those who have come before in this discussion is that they all have a point, and they're all worth reading. Who knows, maybe you'll find some piece of data to expound upon and write about yourself.  For my own part, I'll share some of Niden's feelings that lowsec certainly feels busier as a whole, but something none of the data can demonstrate or predict is an intangible: Conflict drivers.

I'd been watching my own data line before any of these articles hit the interwebs. As most of you are no doubt aware, when I'm not bashing my face in CSM stuff I'm the executor of a 377 man FW alliance. We don't hold sov (our home system is debatable since we do actively defend and hold it) we don't run POSes, we have no POCOs, and we certainly don't rent space. We serve one function: shooting stuff, and our killboard has told an interesting tale these past few months.

Like anyone in a leadership position in Eve will tell you, there's nothing like some nice propaganda, and a great purpose to rally your lads (and ladies) to log in and put the screws to someone. This past March we saw our busiest month yet, topping 4200 kills and leaving over 1600 wrecks on the field of battle. March was an incredible month that saw some spectacular fighting between the Gallente and Caldari, where several pushes were made to take important systems... places both sides were more than willing to fight for. Conflict happened, content was generated, and we had people logging in to be a part of it. April saw a dip to 2600 kills, May things tipped back up over 3k, and then in June the wheels practically came off.

What happened in June? Nothing, and that was the problem. Kronos came, seemingly 90% of the farmers went away, and they might have taken most of the Caldari with them. Most nights we couldn't BUY a fight, and finished the month with numbers we hadn't seen so low since May of 2013 when our alliance was half the size it is now.

July had the start of another dismal month, but was salvaged when bunch of Amarr FW guys got together and decided it was time to headshot the Minmatar in their main staging system of Huola. As it turns out, there are some Russians living in Huola that helped us out a year or so ago, we owed them a favor, and a bunch of Gal Mil corps and alliances sent some of our best and brightest to aid the defense. The fighting in Huola, that one system, has accounted for over half of our kills this month, with less than half of our kills coming from the entirety of our own warzone. It is conceivable that had the Amarr not gotten it into their heads to attack Huola, my alliance would be sitting on less than 900 kills so far this month.

Does the spike in lowsec kills that's about to show up on Nosy's kill graph for July have anything to do with ACU? If there is a correlation between the two, is it a result of more people logging in to take part in a conflict that wouldn't have logged in if that conflict wasn't there?

You know what gets people to log into Eve? An epic expansion certainly helps bring people in to check out new stuff, but a few new ships or a fancy new game mechanic doesn't keep people around forever. Conflict does. Your buddies calling you up on the phone yelling at you to get your ass in the game because shit is going down and we need everyone we can get into a ship in fleet RIGHT FUCKING NOW! People who don't give half a shit about what's coming in Crius this week resubbed their accounts to help their friends defend their home system, and get some epic fights in Huola earlier this month. If the Caldari wake up tomorrow and decide to shoot for the moon and assault Nennamaila, the same thing will happen in our warzone.

B-R earlier this year probably generated more subs for Eve than Kronos did (that is completely unresearched and unscientific as I have no data to back it up, but I'd bet you 100m ISK I'm right). I can certainly tell you that it generated more applications to our newbie corp than anything that's happened since.

Conflict, ladies and gentlemen: any story is shit without it. Eve is a pretty big story filled with some epic conflicts... though not as many lately. We've had some great one-off battles this past year, but the real wars have been rather light. A lot of folks in null will point to the problem of Sov mechanics as a serious detractor to wanting to start up a serious war, and it's true that the onus is on CCP to provide the mechanics and tools needed to make the jobs of the content (and conflict) creators a bit easier.

What's also true is that part of this is in our hands, and I can tell you that the next great bout of content in lowsec isn't going to come from a mechanic instituted by CCP. It's going to come from a handful of players sitting in a private room on their teamspeak server discussing their next move to stick it to the other guys. They'll motivate their pilots, and spread the word to their allies. People who have been bored with Eve and have hardly logged in for the last month will get ready for war, because hey, it's something to do. Some of that intel will get leaked, and the guys about to have the hammer dropped on them will rally their pilots, and more people will be logging in. The fighting will start, and people who unsubbed from boredom a while ago will reactivate their accounts to take part in some of the epic fighting that will be taking place. Hell, even the QCATS might put down League of Legends for a few nights.

None of that might show up prominently on some ACU chart, but it will likely result in more than its fair share of destruction. With that in mind, maybe what Eve's sub numbers need more than some industry revamps and a few new and rebalanced ships, is a world war.

Fanfest from a Lowsec Perspective

The week was a rough one for me to cover fanfest. Real time just wasn't an option due to work commitments and not being able to watch almost anything live, but thankfully I had twitter, and a great Eve Media community to keep me abreast of the situation as it was developing and I don't think I missed many key developments.

The Good

I feel like I've been ragging on CCP a bit lately, so I'm going to start this post off with happy feelings.

One of CCP's teams that never seems to do any wrong is the art department, and holy balls did they come through this year. First and foremost on my list is the new Moa concept. I'd hate to think of myself as an overly vain person, but when it comes down to it one of the main reasons I don't fly the Moa is because it looks dumb. I prefer the Thorax as a cruiser gunboat in our zone due to tracking bonuses, but those shield resists would come in handy in some situations. I predict I'll actually have a few Moas in my hangar by the time that new ship model is rolled out. CCP's focus on adding warp animations to ships, like what they did with the Tristan recently, really adds to the visuals, and it looks like the Moa will be getting a good one as well.

The new Dominix concept is also of interest. The ship is on it's 3rd iteration right now (the launch brown potato, the Trinity Redesign, and a later reworking to fix some of the textures) and I still don't know where the drones get launched from. On it's 4th pass, it looks to be getting sleeker, and it'll now have a visible flight deck.

The Condor family of frigates wasn't particularly bad looking before, but the new model brings it from decent to bad ass.

A new typhoon was also unveiled. I have to say, I like where the art department is going with glowing Minmatar engines. It looks great on the Stabber line, and I think it will add a nice look to the Typhoon line as well.

Outside of art, I'm becoming more confident that CCP is thinking about lowsec in the upcoming industry changes. The mention of bringing in a lowsec only POS module to construct capital ship components at an especially high ME will be most welcome if it significantly closes the refinery gap we're seeing between null outposts and POS modules available to lowsec industry.

No one out here is too worried about the tech 1 ship market getting taken over by nullsec blocs with an 11% advantage on compressed ore yields. With the nerfs to jump fuel consumption, and a low volume market when compared to highsec, I don't see null blocs invading our markets with a flood of goods being sold for less than we can produce them for. As I mentioned before, that 11% margin on capital hulls will be a huge deal if not dealt with. The POS module will increase the risk of building those components, and if done right, could close the gap on manufacturing dreads and carriers enough to keep lowsec competitive with null in that market segment. I am very much looking forward to details and numbers to how that will work out.

Next up, I was quite pleased to see that high value ore anomalies will be coming to low sec instead of just being a null phenomenon. Paired with the announcement of a new t2 black ops capable mining frigate with twice the ore hold of the venture, this could be an excellent start to bringing some miners, and by proxy other industrialists to lowsec. I see this as being a healthy start, but it's just that: a start. More love is going to be needed to fully flesh this out, but CCP is making steps in the right direction at this point, and I'm happy with where we're going.

The new mining frigate itself I see as an especially high boon for null sec miners. With the ability to black ops bridge them in and out of a system, they're the first mining ship that has a reasonable chance of being able to circumvent a large chunk of travel risk in null sec, and they'll have a good chance of being able to escape danger if they're on their toes with a Black Ops ship cloaked in a safe to provide an exit bridge. For low sec, a cloaking frig offers even more travel protection than one with 2 built in stabs.

Lastly, the move to a 10 point release development cycle is something I see as an overall positive. The last 4 "expansions" we've had haven't been much more than content patches really. If Eve development is going to get away from expansions that deliver significant new game play elements in favor of releases that feature a small amount of new content mixed in with a large amount of balancing and fixes, point releases at 6 week intervals will deliver that experience better. This may also give CCP Masterplan and his team the time they need to finally revamp the POS code. Good luck with that buddy, you'll need it.

The Great

The 3 announced Mordu's Legion ships planned for release may end up becoming HUGE for lowsec PVE. I'm not sure at this point how we will be going about getting our hands on the blueprints, but the announcement that they will only be attainable in lowsec is a big big deal for us. These ships should give lowsec PVEers one more thing outside of Tags4Sec for a lowsec only export. I expect we'll see an influx, especially early on, of people seeking out these ships, and you can bet there will also be a surge of people hunting the people hunting for these BPCs. It could be glorious if done right.

Also on my great list was the new Eve Prophesy trailer. Amarr empire vs a capsuleer alliance building the first capsuleer built stargate in New Eden makes for an interesting story. Of course, this has nothing to do with reality in eve (the TiDi is conspicuously missing for one) but it's a badass trailer none the less, and shows us some of where CCP is going with the overarching story of Eve. Capsuleers are becoming more and more independent of the empires. As far as such 3-way battles are concerned between Eve, Dust/Legion, and Valkyrie, make no mistake that we are likely YEARS away from anything this epic, if it's ever realized at all.

The Mixed Bag

Some small changes were announced specific to FW.

First, Large complexes spawning as a regular part of the rotation, not just as rare and random spawns I see as a good thing. A portion of the community has asked for FW fighting to branch out beyond cruiser and down gameplay, and they'll be getting their wish. If you want to assault a home system, you're still going to need lots of frigs and dessies as large plexes will only account for 25% of the capturable assets, but this will give people who want to bring out the big guns a chance to do so. Of special note here is that even though you cannot light a cyno in the vicinity of a FW plex, you can light them elsewhere in system and warp caps into a large conventionally. I personally would not mind seeing a large plex fight escalate all the way to a cap fight, and that will now be a possibility.

The inability to cloak in a 30k proximity to a plex button is a bit of a mixed bag here. It sort of takes care of the the cloaky frig problem, but cloaks are a better defense for pilots paying attention to short scans, whereas stabs are the primary defense of pilots that are plexing AFK. The cloak nerf also kills one of the more successful tactics to hunt stabbed farmers, which is using a stealth bomber with multiple scrams to sneak up on, and snag a cloaky stabbed plex farmer. It also kills the bait and decloak recons gank method.

Stolen from Drakarn.

A far more effective way to combat cloaky stabbed farmers would be to nullify the effect of WCS inside of the 30k button radius, or to adjust stabs to make it VERY difficult to mount any kind of an offense if multiple mods are stacked on a frigate. What we need to be doing here is nerfing the ability to run FW plexes AFK. At this time, with stabs it is possible to sit in a plex with your client minimized, and simply warp off once you get that buzzer notification telling you your shields are about to drop. I don't think killing cloaks in plexes is going to solve this issue... at all.

Last up, and this one has me a bit worried, is respawns inside plexes. 2 years ago, we used to have huge NPC spawns and respawns inside FW plexes and they were a huge deterrent to engaging in any sort of PVP inside said plexes. Part of the reason for having the single spawn is so that the NPC can be dispatched, and then PVP can happen without the interference of NPCs.

Presumably, the point of these respawns is that someone who is plexing afk, will have to reopen the window periodically to kill another NPC before they can go AFK again. Fozzie has not told us how often the respawn will happen, and certainly hasn't mentioned if they have the ability to stop the spawn if there is actual PVP happening in the plex, but my guess is no, they can't. The NPCs offensively are relatively weak, but in a 1v1 situation, they put out enough DPS to tip the balance in an otherwise close fight.

As a PVPer, I don't like the idea of an NPC ship giving me an edge in a primarily PVP activity. Defense of systems is best left to the players, and what we NEED are mechanics in place that will prevent AFK farmers from being able to ply their trade with little to no risk. Anyone farming plexes and paying attention has the ability to watch their short scan and warp out of the plex before a hostile lands, or while a hostile is landing and hasn't fully exited warp yet. WCS allow someone who is not otherwise paying attention to run from fights, or to make bank if they are not disturbed.

WCS have a place for people traveling and moving ships or goods from one place to another in hostile territory, but they have no place as a means to enable AFK farming in an environment designed around PVP interactions. I am disappointed this part of the issue was not addressed at all, nor were timer rollbacks brought to the fore, which is something FW players have been asking for for years now.

The Ugly

A lot of dick moves have happened in Eve over the years, but rarely has one been done by CCP itself in such a direct way as what happened with the Dust players at their keynote this year. here you have a number of people who likely paid thousands of dollars (or Euros, or whatever their currency is) to come to Iceland to celebrate your game with CCP and other fans, and are then (quite publicly I might add) punched in the dick while the successor to their game dominates the Dust514 keynote.

If I was a Dust player I'd be beyond bullshit. There is a time and a place to announce the sunsetting of  a CCP game in favor of the next big thing, but in Iceland, during Fanfest, at the keynote for that game that people have paid thousands to attend is not that time or place. The worst part of it is that CCP doesn't seem to have seen this reaction coming. Surely, even if Dust's devs are too dense to see how this would play out, they at least ran this plan by their CPM and got feedback about this possible scenario happening before going ahead and doing it anyway... right?

I'm not a Dust player myself, but I know quite a few people who are. The goodwill CCP burned this week by pulling this stunt at fanfest, and then not being ready to answer the most obvious questions that came as a result of this announcement, is huge. There apparently aren't a ton of Dust players as it stands now, but how many of those did CCP lose as a result of this? How many of the Dust players spending all that money to attend fanfest, or pay to watch the HD stream, are also their biggest whales in their cash shop and won't be spending quite so much money moving forward?

There have been a lot of dick moves done by game developers over the years, but this one might make the top 10 all time list. It's a certain kind of special.

Industry Changes and Effects on Lowsec Capital Production

Industry isn't my strong suit in Eve. I have some skills in it, and used to do some Tech 2 production out of a highsec POS about 3 1/2 years ago. I ended up giving it up because my heart was into looking for pew, and my POS wasted many hours in fuel between jobs. It just wasn't as efficient as it could have been.

With the new changes announced for manufacturing, BNANA's Logistics/Industrial chief (Gothie) mentioned to myself and some of the directors on comms yesterday that our capital production line is likely going to be grinding to a halt this summer. Of course, we're like "What the hell? We just got it up and running a couple months ago!"

I've got some handle on production, as I mentioned, I've done a little of it, but I can't really wrap my head around the numbers. When my own expertise falls a bit short, I do what any sane head of an alliance does, and I drag the guy who knows his shit into a conversation and have him explain it to me.

Military experts are saying lowsec capital manufacturers
should start investing in lubricants instead.

First up, getting into the capital game as a startup manufacturer requires an initial investment of around 14 Billion ISK for the BPOs involved in components and ships. Those BPOs need between 5 and 6 weeks of research each before the manufacturer can even think about building anything with them. As it stands now, this research can be done at a POS while the 14 billion ISK investment stays locked in a station. After the change, these BPOs will need to be actually inside the POS. In highsec, an industrial will have a 24 hour warning before someone can attack and RF his POS. Plenty of time to cancel jobs and get your stuff out.

I shouldn't need to tell you what happens in lowsec when someone finds out your POS is holding several billion ISK in loot, but even this is manageable. With slots going away, BPOs can be researched in a station, likely for a premium, but at least safe, transit aside.

That brings us to the core of the problem. Not even the guys that rode the short yellow bus to school would dare hold a mining op in lowsec. There are relatively safe places to do it in null sec, but where we live? Guaranteed hot drop in 30 minutes or less, MAYBE 60 if you can keep a low enough profile. Every single one of the 101 systems in our war zone is within a single jump from the 3 main Gal Mil capital staging systems, to say nothing of the threats posed by BALEX, Snuffbox, Stealth Wear, Scum, or any other group in the area with a titan and a t3 gang. The other war zone is considerably smaller than ours, and the people living there have bridging titans too.

With no local source of ore and minerals, any materials used in lowsec production need to be shipped in. With the life expectancy of a standard freighter in lowsec measured at about the 5 minute mark, that means jump freighters and fuel. The average dread takes about 1.5 million m3 of minerals to construct. Shipping efficiency is obtained right now through ore compression in modules. Our industrial arm uses 425 mm Railgun I modules mostly, which offer about 30x mineral compression allowing a single JF run to haul in enough materiel for about 5 dreads with some filler minerals to compensate for ratios.

With module reprocessing changes coming, modules can only be reprocessed for 55% of their minerals, which will sound the death knell for module compression when the expansion hits this summer. The good news in this is that ore will then hold a similar compression ratio, so we won't need to worry about making 5 jump freighter runs to build a single dread. The bad news for lowsec is in the new REFINING changes.

This ship is about as vertical as the predicted drop in
lowsec capital manufacturing is likely to be this summer.

Gothie was kind enough to link me a chart explaining the differences in reprocessing. Considering that we can't build caps in highsec, we can ignore any small advantage lowsec may have over highsec in refining, and instead look to null sec as our competition in this market... a place that really isn't any more risky than where we call home, yet will see an 11% advantage in ore processing yield.

An 11% advantage on small ships is really no big deal. On a 2 billion ISK capital hull, 11% is a deal breaker. We're already locked out on Supercap production, but to this point we've at least been able to remain competitive on dreads and carriers. At an 11% disadvantage, lowsec capital manufacturers are just about fucked, GG.

So an upgraded outpost in null will have minerals available 19.9% cheaper than someone that refines in a NPC station, and 11% cheaper than a POS module in Low sec. Which means costs for building capitals that are that much cheaper....
Some say "Yes but upgrading an outpost is expensive!!! It's many billions!!!". To which I call bullshit, when a player with 4 indy toons (something that is at the low end of any half-serious indy guy - I myself have 7) can crank out 60 moros or Naglfar per month, worth 130 billion at today's prices. An 11% cost advantage will simply kill out all low sec capital manufacturers, when frankly the risk of building in low (particularly FW low) is not exactly lower than null... -Gothie Maulerant, BNANA Logistics/Manufacturing Division

This is exactly the sort of stuff I was talking about during the CSM campaign season. It appears that without lowsec representation on the CSM, no one either on the CSM, or at CCP either realized this would be an issue, or cared, and once again lowsec is getting bent over and shafted while a severe financial advantage is being handed out to sov holding null sec entities. Call me a crazy bitter asshole, but the risk/reward is not computing for me in this scenario.

Vote for Pedro

The CSM election is upon us, and the polls have opened today. My phone was chiming quite a bit today with twitter tags going off from supporters, several letters of support, as well as those asking questions found their way to my eve-mail box, and the show of support from several members of the community has been heartening to say the least.

I've pounded the ground here on the blog, on various podcasts and shows on Eve Radio, and on my CSM Campaign thread to get the word out. I sent a series of letters to Corp and Alliance leaders in Factional Warfare asking for their help in getting our people out to vote, and to keep our voice strong.

At this point, some might expect some words of closing, on why you should vote for me. I'll simply say that if you care about PVP, if you care about lowsec, if you care about Factional Warfare, regardless of where on your ballot I am (if even at all) should my bid for the CSM be successful, know that you'll have my full backing and support this next year whenever I'm voicing our concerns to CCP. I say our, because being on the CSM isn't about having a chance to help make the game better for me. It's about helping to make the game better for us... all of us. That's a huge responsibility to offer to take on, and an obligation that those of us who make it will owe to the ones who helped put us in a position to be their voice. CCP hasn't always been right, but they've been a lot more right when the CSM has been included in the big decisions, and a lot more wrong when they haven't.

I'm also going to go a step further than some of the other candidates, and prop up a few of my fellow hopefuls. You get to rank 14 candidates afterall, and while you don't have to go that far, I certainly wouldn't fill a ballot with less than 5 or 6 if you don't want your vote to go to waste.

Sugar Kyle: If I'm your number one, I hope you've got her at 2 or 3 at least. If I don't make it on the council, she HAS to. In an ideal world, I'd like to see us both on, but having neither would likely mean another year of lowsec having no voice, and little in the way of resources dedicated to improvements.

Steve Ronuken: Fuzzy Steve is a great representative for the guys making all the cool things with Eve's API, and in the future CREST. I'm not a programmer. I can't do the shit he and the other guys in that crowd do, but they do a lot of cool shit that improves our quality of life in the game. If you like being able to download Eve related tools on your smart phone, market tools for your browser, and spreadsheets on the web to help make sense of the spreadsheets in the game, he's their voice, and they need a voice on the council. If you use EFT, Eve Mon, a killboard, any of Steve's tools, Aura on android, one of Chribba's sites, or anything of the like, you owe a spot on your ballot to a guy like Steve.

Psychotic Monk: With the most recent backlash against Eve's most notorious villains, having a voice on the council to support highsec conflict creators is going to be key to preserving their way of life moving forward. A highsec completely free of scams, wars, and suicide ganks is not a good thing for Eve. Conflict breeds excitement. Having to deal with bad guys gives more appreciation for days filled with sunshine and puppies. Psychotic Monk is an excellent voice for those guys that really make you appreciate the good days in Eve.

Gorski Car: He's in PL, and I doubt will need a ton of support. I don't agree with him on adding more FW plex types (the 3 main ones we have now cause an obscene amount of reshipping when assaulting systems as it is), and his favor towards dual timers on plexes shows that while he understands plex PVP, he has little understanding of Plex warfare in a focused system assault. I find the rest of his platform to be solid however, and many of his ideas would benefit life for those of us living in lowsec. He should be on your ballot somewhere.

Mangala Solaris: RvB pilot and an incumbent. He knows a thing or 2 about PvP, and isn't afraid to get his hands dirty learning about issues he doesn't fully understand. History shows he did his part on CSM 8, and he even had some supportive things to say for lowsec. That's worth something in my book.

Mike Azariah: The 2nd incumbent on my short list, and would be a good balancing Yin to Psychotic Monk's Yang. If those two could get together and make a baby, that might be the perfect highsec CSM candidate. Since that is going to be impossible without some serious advances in Welsh cloning technology, I think we'll need to settle for having them both on the council.

That will do it for my recommendations. There isn't really anyone on the ballot I would tell anyone NOT to vote for (even Xenuria and riverini have value if you feel CCP Dolan needs to be punished for some reason). The nullsec guys will be determined by the sway of their blocs, and as someone who has only spent a bare 2 weeks living in a wormhole, I can't pretend to tell you which of their 5 candidates has the best ideas... I think their fellows will make that decision, and the best ones will undoubtedly see themselves elected.

Regardless of how you vote however, please, vote. And get in your corp and alliance mates' ears, and get them to vote as well. History has shown that the more players participate in this process, the louder the voice of the council. The CSM is meant to be the voice of the players, but it is the players that give them that voice. It's best we all remember that.

CSM9 Platform: The (Broken) Eve FW/Dust Connection

I had an interesting day today. It might have been especially interesting for those people tuned into DJ Wiggles' The GRN Show today, because they got to hear me rage at DNSBlack for a couple of minutes. I have no problem with the guy on any level really, it's just that when someone suggests to me that finding fights in Eve (especially Factional Warfare) should be more challenging, I'm liable to lose my shit in a fit of rage that would make Shadoo proud.

Well, DNSBlack sort of said this, but in his defense
I think he was thinking of farming, not fighting.

What sparked this though? A little used mechanic in Factional Warfare connecting Dust 514 and Eve; the Orbital Bombardment. This mechanic was actually revamped some time ago, yet when I talk with most people involved in FW about it, the most common response I get is "What's that?" or "How can I get in on it?" The answer, unfortunately, is complicated.

During one of the more recent patches, CCP changed the way orbitals work in FW in a few ways.

The Changes

First, they added an LP reward to encourage Eve pilots to want to provide them. This LP scales with warzone control, and comes out to 6000 LP per volley fired from space at tier 2. A volley can be fired once per 3 minutes, and the average Dust battle lasts anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes.

Second, CCP made the conditions that dictate whether an OB can be called down based on what's happening in Space, not on the ground. If one faction holds the Satellite in orbit for a 3 minute timer, the squad leaders of the faction that holds the satellite then have the ability to call for a strike. It is then up to the pilot in space to fire.

Third, CCP added kill reports for Dust troops and vehicles destroyed from orbit. While the isk destroyed is usually laughable, most killboards count dust kills as kills, so it can fluff numbers a bit.

Lastly, CCP made it so that if someone is in proximity of the district beacon, it will show up loud and proud on overviews anywhere in system (providing the appropriate box is checked in your overview settings) so that anyone passing through will know that someone is sitting there waiting to get ganked.

The Challenges

These changes were all well and good, however CCP left out one itty bitty important piece to this whole thing... a reliable way for Eve and dust players to communicate a need for each others services! As an Eve player, there is no easy way for me to actually find where these Dust battles are happening. For Dust players, there is no easy way to find pilots in Eve willing to race around lowsec to provide air support.

A simple tool showing FW players upcoming and in progress dust battles would have been sublime. Instead, several dozen clumsily put together in-game chat channels have cropped up with a handful each of Dust and Eve players in them who were able to find their way in. Given the turn over in dust players, often a channel that was busy a month ago is now dead as many of the Dust players in that channel likely no longer play the game. While I applaud players for attempting to work around a shitty implementation by CCP, I am appalled that CCP's devs in this case were either unable or unwilling to provide the players of both games a reliable way to find and help one another.

This issue is further compounded by a rather shitty implementation of voice comms. Most Dust FW players use squad comms for their voice chatting needs. Eve players can not be a part of a Dust squad, and therefore cannot join their squad chat with Eve voice. Eve players can join DISTRICT chat for a battle in progress, but only as long as they are in orbit and connected through the Dust satellite. Most Dust players in my experience, while showing in district chat, are not connected to it audibly, and therefore can't hear or speak with a supporting pilot in orbit.

The only real work around for this issue I've found has been to have a completely separate channel populated by fleet support and ground troops and have everyone connected to it through Eve Voice. In the world of FW, and it's accessibility, this can prove to be a supreme pain in the ass to coordinate, even with a smaller group.

The Solutions

The solutions to these 2 very major issues facing the dust/Eve connection in FW are as simple as the problems.

Proof that CCP's Marketing Dept. probably
doesn't actually play Eve.

First, Eve and Dust players need better tools to communicate with each other. A hybrid CCP sub forum linked on both Eve-O forums and Dust forums, where players from both games can post and communicate with each other would lend itself more to CCP's "One Universe / One War" marketing slogan. I've talked with several FW corps who would love to be able to find like minded souls on the Dust side to work with, but only those who also have Dust accounts are able to communicate with Dust players on official CCP forums.

Next, allowing Eve pilots to join Dust squads as designated air support would go some way towards tightening the voice comms gap. Many Eve players seem allergic to Eve Voice, but this may be one way of showing people that it doesn't completely deserve the bad rap it's been given since it's early days. It also happens to be the most reliable link between Eve and Dust players comms wise at the moment.

Lastly, we need tools to be able to find one another. On the Eve side, this could be as simple as adding a tab in the FW interface to display in-progress and upcoming Dust battles in a player's chosen war zone. For the Dust side, having a queue that Eve pilots can join to show willingness to provide Orbital Support for Dust players to ping, and invite to squad.

Unfortunately, as DJ Wiggles said on the GRN show today, these changes are unlikely to happen unless CCP sees a clear benefit. If the present piss poor implementation of this feature is an indicator of how much stock CCP is putting in the Eve/Dust connection, I weep for it's future. Perhaps with a good shove from both the CSM and the CPM (which I hear is fighting their own uphill battle against CCP at present) some progress at a more meaningful connection can be made.

At least I picked up a solid endorsement from the ER In-Game channel after my ranting:

I'd vote for Bacon. I've heard him rage, so if anyone can get CCP off their asses it's him - River Tamn, Eve Radio Listener

In my own defense, it's not so much rage as a passion to make Eve a better game.