The Value of (In)security

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I got to reading a bit of the forum thread for the SVT ballot dev blog.  There are some wonderful quotes such as “TEST vote, please ignore.”  (I love that.  Sorry TEST.  It’s just funny, in a dark sort of way.)  There is the usual tinfoil hat-ery going on, even though null blocs didn’t sweep the elections.  There is the important idea that no voting system can represent people who cannot vote.  Most interesting to me is the sentiment that null bloc candidates are bad.  I’m not a null bloc guy, and don’t currently want to be one.  But I don’t understand the sentiment. Sharing time:  I’ve had the fun experience of talking with a wide range of Eve players, with some serious conversations with people from all areas of the game aside from WH space.  But I’ve dipped into that area enough to know a thing or two about it.  There seem to be a few major types of players.  High sec carebears, in the bad way.  High sec carebears in the “I can’t be bothered with that paranoia” camp.  Low sec FW.  Low sec Pirates.  Null players.  Give-no-shits pvpers. Out of all of these groups, one particular mindset Continue Reading →

PI: The Second Month

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In my earlier wrap up of my PI challenge, I noted that I was considering running PI on all three characters on one account.  I did this.  Mainly because I though Mabrick’s claims might have a silver lining if I ran it that way. There’s more posts over there, you should read them.  He has some interesting views on Eve. Back to the follow up.  As a reminder, here were the results from the first month.  The key point is that I netted about 134m in profits. Across three characters on the same account, with 4s in Command Center Upgrades and Planetary Consolidation, I ended up netting this: Not quite triple the total, but I had to run 2 factory planets.  And 334m isk ain’t bad.  A few thoughts on this. I didn’t even have CCU 4 and IC 4 trained at the outset.  That took about two weeks or so.  So that’s lost income.   I was also much less serious this time around, and missed more than a few updates by margins of hours or days.  Also failed to move some ECUs when I knew I should have.  That’s also money lost.  Due to resource imbalances, sometimes I Continue Reading →

My Little Corner of the Cluster

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So ice changes, they are a coming.  Not sure how this is going to shake out.  Jester wrote an interesting take on why it might be a good idea to remove ice from high sec in the long run, and why it’s ok for prices to go up.  I disagree. First there is the problem of POSes.  For small group and industrial groups working in non-null space, the cost and effort of maintaining POSes is not insignifigant, and any real consideration of running one has to balance the cost of fuel against the potential profits from running said POS.  For a medium or large, this is already a bit of a constraint for some players, at least from an initial setup and first few months of run time.  Especially if you live in HS or LS.  In high sec you can only do so much at a POS, and in low sec you have to manage the supply chain of getting the damn blocks to your towers.  You don’t have the same intel channels and blue donut protecting you.  You also don’t have the same level of juicy targets to distract would-be attackers. Second, you have the issue of inflation Continue Reading →

CSM 8 Results, Fanfest, Stuff

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10 for 14 on my picks.  Not bad, even if a few were shoe-ins.  What surprised me more was the balance of who got in outside the bloc vote.  Mike Azariah but not Unforgiven Storm?  To me that was the biggest shock.  Nice to see Mike get a seat after so much time, though.  Apparently persistence pays off, even in spite of the Null Bloc ballots. So this thing called Fanfest happened.  I didn’t go.  I followed the news as best I could.  Lots to talk about.  Too much to talk about, really.  So I’ll spin out some threads in my head. Mining This was at the same time awesome and disappointing.  Removing grav sites to a simple system scan is a small boon to finding the things, but a huge smack in the face to anyone who wants to mine in them, especially in non-HS space.  CCP has essentially turned grav sites into FW plexes, and that will not entice any miners who want to keep their ships for long.  The one nice thing about signature-based sites in LS is the small window of obfuscation they provide for ships that are designed for some sort of PvE instead of Continue Reading →

Reasonable Foreseeability

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In the wake of Burn Jita 2, I have a few thoughts: Who plays Eve, but ignores the metagame? How do haulers, one of the most at-risk groups to events like BJ2, manage to ignore it? What responsibility does CCP have to players in regards to known events that CCP is not actually causing? I’m fairly sure the answers to the first two are something like “many” and “through dumb luck”.  But the anser to the third is not clear.  One very angry pilot posted the following in part of a draft letter he plans to send CCP, and posted on the forums: “Lack of capacity in Jita causing a large amount of ships (likely on autopilot) containing vast wealth to be stuck on the gates around the system.” In the larger context of the letter, he was implying CCP’s lack of ability to meet player demand for access to a system was responsible for a large number of the deaths in Burn Jita 2.  This made me stop and think for few minutes.  What we have here is a player trying to apply a real world legal principle to Eve online, a game made on a pile of interconnected Continue Reading →

Some Closing Thoughts on PI

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A few final thoughts of Planetary Interaction before I stop talking about it, at least for a while, are in order: Characters and Accounts Something was nagging me after finishing the PI challenge.  Just to be sure about it, I asked Mabrick if his approach was just for one character, or for an entire account.  He told me that his play-style was to focus on one character.  Take that as you will, I’ll take it at face value.  But I started playing around with my alts (I have 2 accounts that are active), and found a nice string of systems that I could feed into one final production planet.  So I started building and mapping out logistics.  Turns out you make up for a lot of holes in a production line this way. I now have 2 characters feeding a PI chain, with a third who will be added to that in a few days.  Already the profits are increasing a fair bit, more than double what I was making per day with the one character.  The logistics are also tighter, but the string of systems is helping with this.  I simply unload everything via contract into one central station, Continue Reading →

Making NPCs Matter – Blog Banter 46

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“EVE Online is a unique piece of science fiction that is ‘participatory’.” – CCP Seagull, December 2012 EVE Online is heading into its Second Decade with renewed vigour and a new development strategy. At the CSM Summit in December, Executive Producer CCP Unifex and Development Director CCP Seagull explained how future development and expansions will be broader in scope than recent “collections of features” stating that CCP “want to create something more inspirational, that players aspire to play.” With the return of Live Events such as the Battle for Caldari Prime, clearly the prime fiction of EVE is back in favour as part of this new thematic approach to expansions. However, EVE’s story is very much a tale of two playstyles, with an entirely player-driven narrative unfolding daily in parallel to the reinvigorated backstory. Often, they do not mix well. How can these two disparate elements be united or at least comfortably co-exist in a single sandbox universe? The biggest disconnect between the lore of Eve and the Reality of Eve, in my mind, is that nothing players do has much impact of the NPCs of New Eden, aside from making an endless supply of red crosses explode. The following Continue Reading →

Meanwhile, In Black Rise…

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I had surgery a few days ago, so I missed all the fun in Enulari over the weekend.  Boo! No longer will the Caldari be using Ena for quick jumps into Nenn.  Hikkoken, my favorite place to lose frigates, has no stations.  In fact, no systems that the Caldari control neighboring Nennemaila have stations, so I kind of hope the squids push back and take something.  So I’m fighting neutrals and lowering my sec status.  I’ve found a few fights there recently, and I just had a fun one that makes me like Eve. I’m in Hikkoken, running down buttons, because why the hell not?  I’ll take a nice pile of LP for hitting the scan button.  A neutral Atron hopped into my plex (because I own it, right?).  I was also in a kitey Atron, and we had a fun little dance.  I wasn’t quite hitting enough, but he kept letting me get out of point range.  So I got out at mid structure.  GFs happen, and then he says “I need to learn to fly better.”  I told him to not let me get out of point range.  We both ran back to Nenn, and met up in Continue Reading →

PI Challenge – Final Results (Edited to Respond to Mabrick)

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Edit:  Mabrick responded to this post, and I want to share/respond to some of his thoughts, as I may have not been clear about some things.  I made isk, 134m isk specifically.  I did not lose any money on this.  HS PI will MAKE YOU ISK! In Mabrick’s initial post, he gives a specific skill set.  I DID NOT use this skill set.  I tried to note this below, and in the previous posts, giving my skills, and revised estimates for how much might be earnable. Even given the above, based on my experience, Kao’s results, and Mabrick’s own writing, I stand by my claim: Mabrick’s original and revised amounts per month, and my own revised amount per month, are false given the current state of PI in High Sec. I did wholeheartedly try to make as much as possible, and was in no way trying to sabotage Mabrick’s claims.  I only wanted to test them. I am in no way opposed to the “passive” playstyle.  I have an alt that only does industry, and did this challenge.  It is my opinion that for a brand new player, however, spending the first 2 months of the game training skills that Continue Reading →

Double Play in a Three Way

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Low sec faction warfare has a lot of wrinkles any time engagements start.  An interesting twist to many fights is that allies in one moment are you foes the next.  Amongst faction warfare pilots, you have those who have hit pirate status (pies) and those who either haven’t by choice or those who haven’t simply because it takes some time to drop your sec rating.  I joined FW with a shiny 5.0.  As I write this, one month in, I stand at 3.8.  Yep, I’ve become that evil bastard that shoots the innocent.  Sometimes. Tonight we had a nice little fight that showed how all of these mechanics work.  My corp had meeting to discuss various things, and then we decided the proper way to conclude business was a gate camp in Akidagi, on the Ichoriya gate.  For those who are unaware, Icho is a HS Caldari system jumping into low, so it gets s moderate amount of consistent traffic from both Militias, neutrals, and pirates.  It’s a good place to catch those who are not taking the proper precautions when entering low sec.  It’s also a really nice place to catch Caldari Militia loners who don’t bother checking intel. Continue Reading →