Friday 23 May 2014

Balancing Freighters - why a nerf is very hard to avoid, the rule of three

Hello

A quick post about the freighter rebalance:

A lot of folks have called the proposed change a nerf, and with good reason.  These ships *have* been nerfed... but I'm not sure it was avoidable.

First, the goal of CCP was to make these ships more customizable, without significantly boosting their power - they didn't want to see a 500K ehp freighter or one with 3 million cubic metres of cargo.   This seems reasonable.  So a nerf accorss the board was needed to reduced the post-rigged stats.  But what stats?  A freighter has 3 important stats:

- Cargo space
- Tank
- Align time

(There is also warp speed but let's ignore that one for now as I believe the above 3 are more important.  You'll see my argument is still valid with those.)

So in theory, if you had one cargo rig, one tank rig and one agility (ie align time) rig, you would have about the same results as before... but that can't work!  If that was the case, having (using cargo as an example) a ship with 2 cargo rigs would have had a fair bit more of cargo, and 3 cargo rigs would have been massive.  So the only way this was tolerable for CCP was to have the nerf so bad that only by putting 3 rigs in one stat would you exceed previous capacity, at a significant cost to the other 2. 

This design space of "3 stats, 3 slots, don't buff too much" leads to an almost inescapable nerf. 

You can see the thread here:  https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=345280  I'll note that Fozzie wisely chose to go away from rigs and toward low slot modules, and I haven't had time to crunch the numbers yet... but I think the fundamental challenge remains.

Ironically, I'll note that having *less* slots to work with might make balancing easier... 

Sunday 11 May 2014

Industrial Griefing - number crunching

In my last post, I mused if it would be possible to intentionally ramp up installation costs in a system to then ask the local industrialists for "donations" to make you go away.  Let's crunch some numbers and see if this makes sense!

First, we need data.  There are about 7500 systems in EVE, but only 1212 are (based on my research) High-Sec systems.  However, based on a recent Dev Blog, about 85% of jobs are in high sec.  We also know there are about 50 000 industrialists (see here).   A big unknown in this analysis is how "lazy" industrialists are - are they running at 75% capacity?  50%?  95%?  I don't know.  Because of this, I'm just going to assume that everyone involved is equally productive.

If we assume that the average job takes about a day, and that the average industrialist character has a 10 job capacity, this means that about 500 000 jobs are run per day, and of those 425 000 are in highsec.  This results, if the job were spread out evenly, in about 351 jobs per system.... meaning there are about 35 industrialist toons per HS system.  That's not an insignificant number.

The complete job instalation cost equation is quite complex, but I will focus on this part:

Instalation cost  = cost of product * square root of fraction of global work hours.

Here I am again forced to take a short cut, assuming that all jobs have the same number of hours.  Clearly this is not true, but we will have to tolerate the approximation for now.  This means that the formulae can be changed to

Instalation cost  = cost of product * square root of fraction of jobs.  

So let's take our perfectly average system with 35 industrialists.  and do the math.  The cost I calculate is 2.6%... which isn't far off from the 2% cost noted in the dev blog that would happen if all HS jobs were distributed equally - I'm on the right path!

So how much is that?  Well if an industrialist is making simple t2 modules that sell for say, 0.5 million, and he makes 100 per day... that is about 18 million per week.  Of course, people who make larger items may be paying more.  But it doesn't seem that big a cost.  If you were doing t2 manufacturer and an extra 18 millions is going to sink your business... you're doing it wrong!

Of course, an average player may have more than 1 toon doing industry.  For ease of math, let's assume that the average is 3.5 (seems reasonable no?) and thus we have 10 industrialists *players* (not toons) in our very average HS system.  This installation cost is now adding up to 63.7 per week, or about 250 million a month... that is starting to add up isn't it? 

Ok ok, so many numbers... what about the evil griefer?   Well let's say he comes in, 2 accounts, 6 toons, doesn't need a POS and starts building cheap crap to drive up the activity.  It's on a 28 day average, so he's going to have to do this for a while for people to notice.  How much damage can he do?  60 jobs a days, the activity in system goes from 351 to over 400.   The installation cost has gone up to 2.9%... meaning an additional 29 million cost per player.   Incidentally, the busier the system is the smaller the change a small griefer can accomplish.  In a system with 1800 jobs/day, the griever can barely increase the installation cost % by 0.1%

So could someone get small sums from several players to go away?  Sure.  But the amounts are small and this doesn't really seem viable.  Then again, the miner bumpers/gankers of the New Order sell mining permits for 10 millions isk, so perhaps a new form of griefing will indeed be born...

Will I be responsible?  Maybe, but someone else would have thought of it eventually...

P.S. Lastly, I'll take a moment to express my frustration that CCP has *still* not fully released the information about how POSes will work now.  Given this number crunching, I'm not really sure POS industry will be very viable (vs just using a station) in the future...

Wednesday 30 April 2014

Industry change - perhaps a new type of extortion/scam?

Hello

So, apparently the 0-14% "tax" will be a system wide effect.  I had assumed that if Joe in POS A is running his small POS red hot he would  have paid more tax than Bob in his POS one moon over barely doing anything, but nope, they will all pay the same "tax" (this 0-14% value is now called the base installation cost).

This has all sorts of implications and strange effects, and really has to be thought about.  I'm not quite sure that it makes sense - using the example as before, why does Joe's action in his POS affect Bob?  They aren't competing for limited resources in an NPC station or anything like that.   It's also troubling that the POS costs haven't been ironed out yet.  It makes this feel rush and poorly thought out.  And poorly thought out systems in EVE have a history of having interesting things happen to them.

So... besides a zealous manufacturer ruining it for everyone else, what could happen?

Well, suppose I start flying around looking for system with low-ish installation costs. I find one with a few POSes that look to be active.  I dock in station, and start manufacturing *tons* of crap.  I don't really care about a profit here, as long as I'm breaking even I'm fine.  The in system activity is driven up and after a while the installation costs start going up sharply. Then I contact all those POS owners and tell them "listen, I'm having a grand old time making a gazillion tech 1 50 mm plate here, but I figured that perhaps it's cramping your style.  If you wouldn't mind paying me a small fee to cover my moving away expenses, I'll be on my way".

... and then you move to the next system over and start again.

I don't plan on doing this, and I'm not sure if it's even possible... but I did want to claim being the first to think of it ;)   Seriously though, if there is *any way* to game this system, it is guaranteed that someone will.

This is EVE, after all.




Friday 25 April 2014

A quick commentary about the industrial changes, how it may impact the economy and the CSM

I've been reading a lot about the upcoming changes to industry.  Some of these changes are good for everyone (updated UI, RAM damage, extra materials), some are clearly benefiting null sec over highsec (superior refining) and some are still unknown (how will slot-less POS work?).  4 more dev blogs are coming up.

Some people are panicking (this is par for the course). The anxieties are because people fear high sec industry will no longer be viable.  I'm waiting for more details to form an opinion.  It is certainly true that high-sec industry used to have a big edge over Null, and this was a problem.  Did CCP over-correct?  Maybe.

Nosy Gamer has pointed out that the CSM members are, instead of putting out the flames, are fanning them with ill advised commentary.  For example, Jester (whom I normally really enjoy reading), claimed that it made more sense that Null sec was more profitable than High sec because it was like the low level vs high level areas of an MMO.   This argument is silly.  In those type of WoW-like MMOs, high level areas are more dangerous and more profitable because there are bigger monsters - dragons are more dangerous (and more lucrative to kill) than goblins.  Eve doesn't have monsters - well there are rats, but who cares, it's the PLAYERS who are the real foes.

Meanwhile mynnna made an economical argument that Nosy poked some serious holes in.  Mynnna argued that the cargo requirements to ship all the goods manufactured in Null back to highsec would be onerous.  Nosy pointed out that this capacity exists as the reverse trade is already occurring. This point is very thought provoking.

Generally speaking, high sec is where things are built (at the moment) and null where things are destroyed. Stuff is built in high sec, shipped (at fairly low cost) to Jita, where it it purchased and shipped (at higher costs) to null, where it is used and destroyed.

Now if you have a significant null industry, why would you ship stuff to Jita only to ship it back to null? It makes no sense. A central market hub will no longer be so crucial. What will happen is the rise of semi-stable Null trading hubs - nothing like Jita of course, but perhaps as big as say, Hek.

The difference between these  new null-sec trading hubs and the highsec hubs we know and love will be stability (due to war) and access. Right now anyone can go to Jita, or Rens or whatever. However, the PL trade hub won't be accessible by SOLAR members (and vice versa). The only reason Jita will persist - and it will be a shadow of its former self - is as a central "trade regulator" - if DCII are 400 K in the SOLAR hub and 800 K in the PL hub, there will be a movement of goods, and having a central market hub will still facilitate this type of trade since a SOLAR member can't just travel to PL space to sell his wares.   Jita may also be a central market place for compressed ore, which will be shipped to nullsec for refining.

These changes won't happen overnight.  It will take many months before these new hubs emerge (if they do).  We still don't have all the information. But changes are definitely coming.


Sunday 20 April 2014

High sec POS warfare - a short note

In my previous post, I mused about how the changes to POS standings may change the nature of POS warfare in highsec.  In brief, I believe that POS will become more desirable (both in looting content and utility), but that at the same time POS will be easier to move and there should be more free slots.

But there is a change I failed to mention, one that has happened already.

There are several ways to defend a POS.  Of course, the most desirable is a large fleet to crush your foe... but that's not always available.  However, a POS is not easy to destroy and its innate defences can be improved .  One is to have so many hardeners on that the POS has so much effective HP it's just not worth the time to blow up.  Another is the "death star"method, where your POS is bristling with firepower (something that works best with a gunner manning the guns, the gun AI isn't very clever).  The last one though is the "dickstar" method - have your POS field so much ECM that it's just impossible to establish a lock on it. (see here)

The "pure" dickstar method doesn't work anymore in highsec, as it has a new counter:  the Marauder.  In bastion mode, marauders are immune to ewar... so all that ECM will be gleefully ignored as the marauder fleet pound your POS to scrap metal.

However, marauders aren't necessarily the be all end all of pos-bashing ships, as they themselves have a counter.  When a marauder goes in bastion mode, it stops moving.  POS can field capital ship guns*. These guns are useless vs moving target, but can track an immobile marauder no problem... which tends to hurt if you have enough guns.

This doesn't mean that ECM can't be a part of your POS defence strategy. But you can no longer rely uniquely on it, as it can easily be countered.

*POS gun sizes are weird.  Unless this changed very recently, small POS guns are medium sized, medium guns are large sized, and large guns are capital sized... and capital sized guns won't be able to track subcaps at all, making them quite inefficient in high sec... but having a few at hands to shoot at marauders might be a good idea.  Remember you just have to anchor them, you don't have to turn all of them on at once.

Wednesday 16 April 2014

POS standing changes: meaning for war and industry

As some of you may know, CCP has announced a major revamp to industry.

Industry in EVE is a critical function.  I would go as far as to say that with no industry, there is no EVE.  It's a key step in the great "creation destruction" cycle.  And industry really needed attention.  So much so that it will need more than one expansion to get it done!  (note how invention and POS management won't be touched).

These changes have been announced and discussed  in more than one venue and I'm sure there are several more out there, since it's so fundamental. 

I would like to humbly focus on a single change: the standing requirements for POS, and its impact on both industry and war.

Currently, there are standing requirements to install a POS in high sec (and low sec too I think?).  The higher the sec status, the higher the standing requirement. In 0.8 and higher, POS could not be installed, period. 

Under the new regime, there will be no standing requirements.  You want to install a POS in 0.9 Amarr space and the Amarr space has never heard of you?  No problem!

I'm in favour of these changes.  There will be more room for POS than there are now - and POS are about to become more important for high sec industry.  It also provides more flexibility to industrial corps.  But these changes *will* have consequences, some of them perhaps unintended.

First of all, I predict there will be more POS in use.  This will lead to an increase in the price of towers, associated equipment, and POS fuel, leading to an increase in ice prices.  In the medium term, a number of these new POSes will be abandoned, creating opportunities for scavengers.

The cancelation of standing requirements should make industrial corps more willing to accept new members, as said members won't mess up the standings.  However, this may be cancelled by the changes in BPO handling, making them more vulnerable to insider thefts.  Time will tell.

I think though the biggest changes will be in corp mobility.  Many small corps have to jump through hoops to deal with standing issues to intall their POSes.  Once in place,  moving becomes a huge hassle.  The removal of the standing requirements will make it easier for a corp to move. 

This increased mobility will have a serious impact on high-sec war.  Small corps that are wardeced and do not wish to fight might simply pick everything up and leave.  Demand for POS-clearing services and standing grinding services will fall sharply, putting certain types of mercenaries - and certain types of scammers! - out of business.  On the other hand, stealing someone's moon will also be easier as replacing a destroyed POS with another will have one less hurdle to overcome.   Still, with the increased flexibility for corps and the vast supply of empty moonspots about to be released, POS warfare in highsec will certainly diminish. 

Lastly, one note of caution for industrialists.  While I think we can all be happy at the prospect of easier industry (I really am looking forward to the new UI and am intrigued by the "teams" concept), there is a caveat.  The current challenges with industry (especially T2 manufacture) keeps away many players.  Easier industry  means more industrialists, more supply and less profits.  Also, easier industry means less time spent clicking etc.  For some of us this will mean proportionally less time grinding and more time clicking.  For others, with more time will come more production.  Someone managing 2 accounts may now get a third to take advantage of this extra time to make more modules or drones or whatnots.  Again, increased supply will mean reduced prices and less profit.  Be careful what you wish for, you may just get it.




Tuesday 15 April 2014

The Battle of Aldrat

Each year, RvB declares war vs Eve University (a corporation that teaches new eve players.  I find them a bit too formal for my tastes, but they are really good for the game IMO, helping players overcome EVE's steep learning curve. Check out their wiki, it's a great resource!).  We declare war vs EveUni mainly for fun, but also to test ourselves vs a group with larger numbers.  Frequently we have the number advantage, but not in this case.  Also, it gives us a chance to form "Purple" - Reds and Blues uniting vs a common foe.

I also believe that this is a good educational for the Unistas - they get a lot of wardecs, but it's frequently by griefers.  RvB gives them a "real" opponent.   So RvB more or less shut down normal activities, we shipped a *massive* amount of ships to Aldrat (personally I sent 17 - I wanted options!) and got ready for war. 

And what a war it was!  It wasn't always "perfect".  On occasion, we didn't have a skilled FC present and vs the larger numbers of EveUni, we suffered a bit.  For instance I took out a t1 frigate fleet (I'm "ok-ish" at FCing).  Our scouts found their fleet, the numbers seemed roughly equal, we engaged... but they had scouts too and warped in reinforcements.  We lost that fight badly.  Oh well, t1 frigs!

In other occasions, we *really* didn't have the numbers.  At this time, we would form smaller roaming strike teams and look for targets of opportunity outside of Aldrat.  We have an FC who specializes in hunting war targets.  I won't name him so he can keep being effective... but he's very entertaining (and quite good too).  See, his wife is often sleeping when he's playing, so he leads with this hoarse whisper, giving the whole affair a unique cloak and dagger feel.  On that roam I decided to take out my Enyo to add punch.  It was my first time flying it in "real" PvP (vs structure bashing) and it was a very potent ship, if challenging to fly (soo little range!).  At one point I engaged a Thorax - look at the damage % I inflicted, the Enyo is a beast!  Other targets of note on that roam were a Talos, a Slicer, a Comet and a 0.5 bill pod.

And speaking of pods, another "fun" aspect of the war was the podding. RvB does not pod in regular Red vs Blue action.  However in this war it was allowed.  This forced me to get better at it... I had an overall success rate of 7/8 roughtly, but I did lose a semi-clean pod to the toon of 100 millions... ouch!

That is when things went "poorly". When they went well... it was glorious.  A doctrine we often used to counter the howling frigate hordes of eve Uni was the Longbow - a fleet built around the cormorant using t2 rails and spike ammo, resulting in a 100 km range!  This is a bit tricky to use - the FC needs to know what he's doing! - but when used well it's very potent, and very fun to be in.  At other time, to counter caracal fleets EveUni fielded, we used feroxes.  Rail feroxes used to be a bit of a joke, but no longer!

All this leads to Thursday, the last evening of the war.  Our spiritual leader, Mangala Solaris, called out for a large armor fleet to blow up an EveUni Poco to make a point.  When we called for the undock, it was an impressive sight.  Well over 20 Domis undocked at once, accompanied by heavy logi support, several other battleships, dozens of battlecruisers etc... about 100 in total.  We headed to the POCO and waited a few minutes for the timer to end, deploying sentries etc.  Mangala asked if we wanted to win, or if we wanted to destroy the POCO - we said it was his call.  This question wasn't rhetorical.  EveUni had a counter for our fleet.  First they dropped a number of suicide destroyers on us at short range.  While we were dealing with that, they put an attack battlecruiser fleet (mostly tornados) fleet in position... and hit us with a second, bigger waive of suicide destroyers.  This tactic, mixed with a bit of EWAR and their superior numbers, resulted in heavy loses on our side.   My dominix *melted*.  But... we did kill the POCO :)

We had a cruiser battle or two following this, then Yngvarr took over Mang for FCing.  Who is this fellow you ask?  Well, after this war I must say he is a Titan among men.  On some days he FCed 6 hours straight!  He also happens to be one of the top pilots on Battlleclinic.  So for this fight, he called for a shield cruisers with rail doctrine, loading caldari lead, all DPS no support.  I hopped in a Thorax.  Eve Uni chose talwars. At this point, both EveUni and RvB had a number of ships left, and not much time remaining on the war.  Everyone decided to go all out.

And Thus Began the Killing

The two fleets danced around each other, exchanging furious fire.  At once point we were killing a talwar ever 5 seconds.  Both sides kept reshipping, sometimes conceding the field for a moment to regroup but always returning to the fight.  I lost 3 thoraxes but kept coming back (at the end I was in a longbow ship and it worked well).  The battle raged for over 2 hours, you can see it here.  If you don't feel like watching 2 hours, the tl,dr is Yngvarr telling us to kiiiilll aaaalll the taaaalwaaars!  I unfortunately missed the end, but I hear there was a massive FFA at one point :)

Last year we stomped Eve Uni.  This year they fought like lions.  The final tally is telling:  isk ratio near 50%,  almost 120 billions destroyed, RvB losing 2400 ships but killing over 4500.  Who won?  All of us I think.  Furious battles, great fleets and fun for everyone.   There was an article about this war on TMC and unfortunately there were a snide comment or two, but they are wrong.  On Thursday, the real action in Eve was not in Nullsec, it was in Aldrat. 

Sunday 13 April 2014

CSM elections - my voting recommendations

So.

I'm a high sec PvPer and (alts) trader/industrialist.  Whom am I voting for this year?


1:  Mangala Solaris.   Yes, yes of course I'm voting for Mang, being in RvB and all that.  I still think he makes a very good choice for CSM 9.  He has experience.  He's a great communicator.  He creates a lot of content for EVE via RvB *and* the RvB Ganked roam (a public roam open to just about everyone).  Mang uses his access to the RvB community to consult about various things - and since RvB members have alts doing just about everything, it's a good sounding board.

2:  Sugar Kyle:  Sugar has mounted a very good campaign this year.  She shows strong signs of being able to deal with CCP well (mixture of agreeableness and good communications).   More importantly though, she's a very ardent advocate for lowsec.  Lowsec is an area of space I don't go to very often, but it's one that can be a lot of fun.  It's very unique - almost outside of empire control but also outside of *player* empire control too.  Yet it seems neglected by CCP.  Lowsec *needs* a CSM representative.   She's also a trader and an industrialist, making her a good choice for anyone interested in those businesses. 

3:  Mike Azariah:   Mike is another experienced CSM member and skilled communicator.  His focus is speaking up for the casual EVE player and the PVE player - the type of players that are often ignored.  These areas of the game clearly need some focus by CCP, and is perhaps the best high-sec representative we have.  We are all in this together... I think people who do nothing but mine or mission are a bit peculiar, but they help keep CCP afloat!

4:  Corbexx:  A short while ago RvB had a run in with NoHo, a strong wormhole alliance.  This could have ended pretty poorly for us but they were great sports and left a tremendous impression.  Of course, when I learned that their leader was running for CSM, I had to investigate.  Corbexx seems to be a strong communicator and very knowledgeable about the game.  CSM clearly needs at least one wormhole space representative.  POS are very important for wormhole life (and for industrialists too) so this is an area I can expect him to be vocal about.  He also does industry on the side, so another reason to vote for him.

5:  Mynnna:  I'll be honest.  I'm a bit... wary of the goons.  They have a tremendous influence over the game and their leadership is fiendishly clever.  But if any CFC candidate deserves to be in the CSM it is Mynnna.  He has a great understanding of the game economy and this expertise is needed.  He also was very active in CSM8. Besides, I almost killed him with a joke (choked on a sandwich) so I kind of owe him.

6:  Ali Aras:  A returning CSM member, she seems to have been tremendously effective.  I'm less familiar with her platform than I should be, but the near unanimous praise she has received as a CSM member indicates to me she deserves a second run.  I'll also note that she is in Noir, a well respected mercenary groups (ie, NOT a bunch of Jita campers) and that definitely is a perspective that deserves representation no?

7: Steve Ronuken:  A high-sec industrialist and developer of 3rd party tools and software.  His campaign focuses on these goals (less clicking!).  He's also very aware that some of the software implementations such as CREST could be abused to power bots, so having his input will be very helpful to CCP I believe.

8:  Matias Otero:   Matias created BNI, ie Brave Newbies, out of nothing.  This small group has grown, and grown, and grown and now has over 14 000 pilots.  Their focus is not isk/h, it is fun/h.  I like this focus, and I like the qualities it takes to make such a feat a reality.

9: corebloodbrothers:  He is the block candidate for Providence.  Providenc is player owned Nullsec, but it's different.  This is where people can go to "try" nullsec.  A lot of industry goes on there, and a lot of small groups.  It's a different perspective, and I think it deserves to be on the CSM.  It also bears to mention he's an experienced FC.

The main thing though... go and VOTE!  You have until April 22nd. Not voting will favour large nullsec blocks since they are organized and will get the vote out.  They have enough influence as it is no?


Saturday 12 April 2014

Schrödinger's Rifter

I was reading a post from Jester about what happened during a battle (see here).  His opponents showed up and disputed what happened.  Clearly, someone is lying... or are they?

As a (very junior) member of RvB command, I often hear disputes about what occurred during a battle.  This is because some RvB fights (not all!) are arranged and supposed to be somewhat fair (why? because fights that are close can be very thrilling).  So when such an aranged fight occurs, sometimes after the fight there will be some arguing about what happened - someone upshiped, they had more numbers, logi etc etc.  Often the stories from each side don't reconcile, IE it sounds like someone is lying.

Initially I thought this was due to sore losers - or bad winners.  I mean, there is only one reality right?  There either was a logi ship, or there wasn't.  The fleet had 10 members or 20, not both.  It's not Schrödinger's Rifter after all!   In Jester's case, one could conclude it's either ego or propaganda spin - both sides want to appear virtuous and dangerous Eve warriors. 

After a while, after hearing so many stories (and being in so many fights), I realized that it isn't people intentionally lying. In an Eve fight, a lot of stuff is going on. There is too much information for your brain to fully process and other facts are hidden. So your mind makes up a story about what is happening (filling in the blanks, making assumptions, shortcuts) to help you cope, and you react to this story.  It often is better to react with partial information than do nothing at all.  In a crisis situation, inaction can be fatal.  Of course, it also leads to mistakes, but such is war.

So two sides having a different story for the same fight? Par for the course!  Of course in some cases one side might be lying... but it's not the only explanation.  Remember Hanlon's razor!

Edit:  themittani.com just published an article that's quite relevant to this, about bias:  Biases in reading and writing

Sunday 6 April 2014

Comet Mining: incursion for miners

Mining in Eve is kinda dull, and it's received very little attention from the developers.  This is is a suggestion to offer an "incursion" like alternative to miners.

I had this idea while looking at ice 0.2 AU from the sun and commenting that there should be a huge vapour trail.  I wondered - why aren't there comets in Eve?   And if there were, what we could do with them?

Concept: 
Comets are pretty rare, but in a world with thousands of star system, there should be a comet in the galaxy every few days.  Comets come from the outer reach of a solar system, and have complex compositions, made of the primordial materials that made the system.  Stuff that has since long been minded out in a system could appear in a comet.  Comet are hard to detect, until they come close to a star and start emitting a large vapour trail, then becoming visible to everyone in the system.   They sometimes do not survive their passage near the sun though, either gassing out completely, hitting the sun or... being completely mined out.

Gaming content:
- Comets are large and contain various valuable materials.  I'm not sure exactly *what* should be in there but it doesn't have to be a new resource.  I think a good idea would be a mixture of common and rare ores and ices, gases, and possibly some types of moon goo and PI resources.  A single comet should be worth a lot of money, and would be worth chasing by miners.  Being there first would give access to the choice materials, but choices would have to be made - the different kind of resources would require different mining modules.  Variability between comets would also be nice, rewarding adaptability in comet chasers.

- Comets are rare on a system basis, but common on a galactic basis.  They appear in a system, are very obvious when there, then disappears after a while.  The basic concept is similar to incursions - a periodic event that happens in different places, bringing players together to deal with it.  There will need to be some kind of in game mechanic so that miners who aren't in that system can find out where active comets have been spotted.

- Comets *move* .  I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but maybe it could be neat if Comets had velocities.  This would change mining gameplay significantly.  I'm not sure how fast they should be moving,  but depending on the velocity certain ships may not be able to keep up.  This would make the skiff and venture more valuable, and certain methods of cargo handling not as great (parking a freighter or orca in the belt type of deal, this wouldn't work).  I'll note that this is probably the most optional part of my proposal.

- PvP content.  The high value of this will attract lots of miners, which will then attract lots of gankers.  I think this situation will make miners fielding a few defensive ship make much more sense than it usually does now, increasing chance for PvP.  T1 haulers going back and forth to the comet to help with the materials, cans dropped behind would also become targets for pirates and thieves.  Of course, the presence or absence of Concord will have a big impact, but gankers have ways of dealing with concord pressures.

- Rats:  Comets may attract attention from bigger or different types of rats than what usually shows up in belts, providing further content and challenges to would-be comet miners.

Reason why CCP should do this:
- new PvE high-end content for miners that has the potential to bring more of them together, encouraging more social play
- shouldn't be too hard for CCP to do
- probable conflict source
- Could have some really cool looking art that would help sell the game.  The comet would be visible from the whole system.

Possible challenges:
- There are economic considerations. What materials should be in the comet, in what quantity and how variable comets are deserves careful thought.  The comet has to be valuable enough for it to be worth going after, and frequent enough that a "comet chaser" community evolves, but not SO valuable to throw everything out of whack.  Miners chasing comets aren't doing their normal mining operations, and that may impact the economy as well.  As mentioned earlier, passing the word around that system X will be crucial - unlike an incursion that affects an entire constellation, this only affects a single system.

- There may be technical challenges too.  For example, one giant rock having multiple ores and ice may not be possible with EVE's code (but this can be bypassed by having the comment be a closely packed assembly of rocks).   The comet with a velocity may also be difficult to achieve. New mining modules may have to be created, although that should be pretty easy to accomplish. 

- There may be "political" resistance from null-sec players.  They may not like the idea of their precious null-only materials appearing anywhere willy nilly, and they tend to be a lot more vocal than miners.

Lastly, I'll note that this type of comet isn't the short period, highly predictable comet.  A comet of this type has been mined out a long time ago.   However, we also have comets that we've never seen before show up every few years.  These are either comets that have orbital periods in the hundred, thousands of years, even more, OR comets that have been  knocked out of alignment in the Oort cloud and are now hurling towards the sun.  These comets are new, fresh, filled with valuables and unpredictable to boot.  Now, in our solar system we only get these comets every few year (say, once every 4 year just to make up a number).  But with 7500 star systems in EVE, that means 5 of these comets would show up *per day* somewhere in the galaxy!

Tuesday 25 March 2014

The Poco Wars: the epilogue and the butterfly effect

It seems that my "best day in eve" was covered by Themittani.com!  

Tale of Wormhole Woe

This article is written from the No-Ho perspective, and is pretty entertaining.

Another article of note covers something I was going to write about but was beaten to the punch - how RvB found Gevlon's WH.  In brief, it seems that Gevlon ganked a miner a while back who got even by passing on information about Gevlon's WH to us :)

The Goblin and The Butterfly   (you should go to the site just to see the *hilarious* image :D )

But what lead to all this?  What lead to such a clash? 

It started with POCOs.  When the , the CFC and RvB decided to split the POCOs instead of compete for them, that way it would be more efficient.  We then would form a mutual defence pact to protect them.  When the great highsec POCO rush of Rubicon started this agreement paid off.  No one else was really ready for it, met little if no opposition, and we were quite successful: the CFC took control of a few dozens while RvB has *hundreds*. 

For the CFC, the POCO income was trivial.  I think they did this mostly to show that they could.  FOr RvB however, since we have no income, this was a boon.  We are now using the revenue for our loyalty point program, ship replacements and other fun activities.  This also has provided a good service to high sec industrialists.  Our POCOs (and so do the CFC's) have a very reasonable tax rate and are stable (ie not changing hand ever other week). 

Now here is where Gevlon Goblin comes in.  He has a *very* strong dislike of the goons, and he realized that their high-sec POCOs were a vulnerable target.  He started blogging about this and formed an alliance to strike back at the goon menace.  But when Gevlon attacked the CFC POCOs, the mutual defence pact was activated and RvB stepped up to the plate to defend them.  Gevlon was stunned - we were an unexpected obstacle between him and his goal.
 
At this point, Gevlon could have tried a "businesslike" diplomatic approach, basically treating RvB as oponents and not enemies.  Instead, he embarked on a propaganda campaigns with dozens of verbal attacks against RvB.  We were goon pets, no we were slaves!  No, we were a secret high-sec arm of goonswarm!  RvB is a scam!  etc etc etc.

This included a lot of dubious use of "statistics".  For example, Gevlon divided our losses by the number of players, and concluded that we were very risk adverse since the average RvB pilot lost only 30 million a month.  But Gevlon never bothered to do research to find out the context behind the numbers: RvB never, ever purges members (we are casual - if you want to pvp once every 2 months, we are fine with that).  So using the total member base as a denominator didn't make any sense!  For example, I'm a moderately active member and I lost 2.7 billion in one year...

Gevlon also hired Marmite to perma-dec the goons and us, and also hired Noir (a competent group of mercenaries) at times.

This "reverse diplomacy" is why RvB felt very motivated to go in Gevlon's WH and burn it to the ground.  We never would have bothered if he wasn't so antagonistic.

How does all this story end?  Well an end may be at hand. The CFC have grown tired of this nonsense, and transferred their POCOs to us (we purchased them basically, so they are ours, end of story).  At this point, Gevlon can declare victory, although it was one at tremendous cost (over 40 billions).  On top of that, he also lost his alliance (Darwin's Lemmings), which as far as I can tell has now become a sort of farm alliance for Marmite (I may be wrong).  

I hope that Gevlon will move on to goals in Eve that may be more suited to his talents.  One can only hope that he hasn't bought too much into his own propaganda... because if Gevlon decided that the best way to strike at the goons is to keep shooting our POCOs, that would be very silly indeed.

Thursday 13 March 2014

The Lion VS the Wolves

 This is the story of one of my favourite fights ever. 

In RvB, whenever a lone battlecruiser engages a gang of small ships by a gate, I've always seen it go one of two ways: One the gang is small and the BC squishes a few while the others run away. In the other, the small ships shred the battlecruiser apart in very short order. 

But what happens when the forces are almost perfectly balanced?

So a small fleet of us reds are in Josamento, by the Liekuri gate (I think). Most are in frigates, I'm in my arbitrator. A prophecy warps to the gate. We engage, and he yellow boxes me, and then agros someone else. He moves towards the gate, and we start pounding on him. He kills one of our tacklers, an atron - no big surprise there, these things happen. The hunt has its dangers.

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506500

I realize that he has some kind of guns and put on my tracking disruptors on him. We all expect him to de-agro and jump into the gate. We are confident - a lion cannot stand long vs so many wolves. But he keeps on fighting! Why? Because we realize, to our dismay, that he's killing us one by one - and fast!

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506511
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506503
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506509
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506510
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506508

Some fleet members warp off and are urging us to keep him in place, that they are going to re-ship in something bigger. It seems hopeless though... but I have moved my arbitrator closer, and I have a point on my ship! The prophecy, piloted fearlessly by Horvick, has a point too and doesn't want to let me go - nor does he feel like running from an arbitrator!

A droneboat duel follows - I want to do as much damage as possible, but mostly I want to hold him long enough for the fleet to arrive. I have no guns to shoot his drones so I can't help that part. I keep TDing him and starts neuting him. He neuts me. Our drones are clawing at each other. He's confident he can destroy me and escape, he knows my tank can't outlast his... but he doesn't realize that my arbitrator isn't a pushover in the tank department, and he can't shake me off. This duel lasts perhaps two minutes at most, but if feels like an eternity. How long can a lone wolf fight of an angry lion?

Finally, helps arrives! Tommy, the first one to lose a ship, returns in a vexor, points him and starts pounding on him. I start burning away to warp off... but it's too late. I take more damage and explode.

http://rvbeve.com/red/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=506507 (32K ehp!)

Another tackler comes back. We expect him to flee, but he keeps on fighting. The cavalry, finally, arrives - this includes a drake and a tornado. This doesn't seem to phase Horvick, and he not done killing red ships, destroying the vexor:

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506502

This was to be his last kill however. Our firepower is now too great, and the mighty lion, despite his mighty tank, must now perish:

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506501

(looking back at this I can now see that part of his success was due to the double web, which slowed frigates to a crawl and is why I just couldn't seem to get away from him to warp off).

Following this, as usual "gf" were given in local but this was followed by a very friendly and animated conversation between the red fleet and Horvick. He said it was the best 70 million isk he's ever spent, and everyone agreed that it was a particularly good fight. He was surprised at how good my tank was, and we were at how well, vicious his prophecy turned out to be and were impressed by his fighting spirit. It really isn't clear who "won" here - the lion is dead, but he gave us one *hell* of a fight!

Fight like these are what keeps people hooked to PvP

Tuesday 11 March 2014

A very good day in Eve

Days in Eve are not equal.

Most are pretty good.  A few are depressing and some feel like work.  And then, once in a while you have an *amazing* day.

(I will note that I had a background part about Gevlon's anti-diplomacy explaining what lead to this conflict, however it was too long. It will be in a separate post.  So for now suffice to say that Gevlon worked very hard to antagonize RvB).
After several weeks of ganks and skirmishes with the Lemmings, (Gevlon's grr-goons alliance), an opportunity presented itself to strike at Gevlon directly - we found the high-sec entrance to his C1 wormhole.  We passed on this information to CFC contacts and they went in and reinforced his POS and his POCOs. On Sunday, his structures were due to come out of reinforcement.

An RvB operation to evict him out of the wormhole was put into place, involving battlecruiser fleets and a very early morning fight for me.  Normally I never would get up early for a fight on the weekend (it's just a game in the end) but for this... yeah I was ready to make an exception.  I spent some time preparing a prophecy for the occasion, equipped with probes, a mobile depot and modules for almost any opportunity... only to learn in the morning we were a bit short on logi and I was instead given a T1 logi.  Oh well, more logi practice!

The fleet is gathered and eager to go... but there is a problem.  See, No Holes Barred (No-Ho), a powerful alliance of wormhole dwellers, has learned about this situation and is camping the wormhole entrance. They have several T3 cruisers and can easily collapse the passage.  (Yes... they are barring the hole...) This is a serious impasse... until someone in fleet remembers that No-Ho is *very* fond of songs.  We have a bargaining chip!  Diplomatic channels are opened, and a deal is struck.  We will get passage if we sing, and if after the POS-bash, we will fight them.  This is a deal we gladly accept.  

Yes, there is a recording of the song out there on the internet.  Go ahead and search for it, but your ears wont thank you when you find it ;) 

Gevlon was apparently offered a similar deal earlier by No-Ho... but apparently, he he didn't want to sing. 

We go in and attack the POS.  The guns are firing, but the POS is not manned, ie no human intelligence is controlling the guns.  As a result they are shooting all over the place, forcing us logi to constantly switch targets.  I get shot at a few times but my fellow logis keep me alive.  After a bit, the POS falls to our firepower:


Yes, that is me on the killmail - you think I wouldn't bring a few sentry drones so I could at least shoot a little bit? ;)

We started wrecking and looting, grabbing a hulk and a rokh, knowing that No-Ho would show up at any moment.



Aaand they did, with a few friends to boot - apparently our numbers intimidated them a bit.   My perspective of the battle was a bit "narrow" given my logi focus.  They opened fire on a myrmidon at first on which I started landing rep.  Thing seemed fine for a few seconds until I got severely neuted and fired upon.  Despite the best effort of the logi team, my ship was promptly destroyed.


My mobile depot, noooo.  Oh well, it was a free ship anyway.

No-Ho used the neuting power of their legions to quickly shut down and crush our entire logi team.  Our FC, Professor Clio, seeing this, the fleet now bleeding battlecruisers and realizing that our firepower was not going to be sufficient to overwhelm the enemy fleet, concluded that the fight is lost. The fleet withdrew and left the wormhole.  No-Ho didn't bar the way and looted the field.

So pretty solid fight and POS down, OP success no?  But we aren't done, nooo!  

We were to regroup at 1:30 pm to head back into the wormhole so we could bash Gevlon's POCOs.  This time the order was for more agile, high DPS ships, and I was planning on bringing a Vexor Navy Issue. However, when I log back in I learn that the POCOs had come out off reinforcement earlier than expected, the fleet has already left *and* that a war with the Lemmings (Gevlon's alliance) had just gone live - a 20 jump trek alone in a VNI was risky.  It was suggested I bring something fast and high DPS and asked if I could fly a stealth bomber (no).  So the FC said "hey, why don't you bring an Enyo? In fact, here is a contract for one".  I take the Enyo and it has techII blasters, which I can't use...  BUT I have the skillbook!  I start training in, buy a ton of void ammo, bring some antimatter just in case and start burning towards the WH entrance as fast as I can to crash any potential gate camp. This plan of "fly and learn" amuses the fleet.

By the time I reach the WH I can now use the guns, and I'm startled a bit to realize that with void ammo my DPS is about 350!  At this point, 2 POCOs are already down. Our 45 man fleet keeps on destroying them quickly at a rate of about 1 per 10 minutes, and soon enough Gevlon now has 9 POCOs to add to his losses.  Here is an example:
We head back home.  I thought this was it for my day of space violence, but no, there was going to be a bonus round!

I keep my eyes open and gave intel to the fleet as I'm ahead of some of them.  I'm almost home when I see that about 10 Lemmings are in New Caldari.  Furthermore, they have a tackle and a prophecy on the NC gate in Josameto.  I'm able to evade this small gate camp.  This looks like a trap, with the prophecy acting as bait.  I inform the fleet, and a plan is quickly hatched.   We pick a bait of our own and send him into the trap.  The Lemmings take our bait, jump on him and we land on *them* in a battlecruiser fleet.  The Lemmings attempt to scatter, but not quickly enough - six cruisers, two battle cruisers and 2 pods are destroyed -one worth over 800 millions. Despite only the Red Fed being able to engage, no ships were lost on our side.
I really like the Harbinger, I really do. 

I logged out of RvB, very satisfied, only to realized that on my trader/industrialist account, 3 battleships that had been on sale forever had *finally* sold all at once, netting me a nifty 90 millions in profit.

So to recap, wormhole adventures, singing diplomacy, POS down, unknown amount of modules destroyed or looted, 9 POCOs down, minimal losses, flew Enyo for the first time, spotted enemy fleet, defeated said fleet and profit!  Yeah, Sunday was a good day. 



Edit:  Apparently No-Ho is going to reimburse RvB's losses.  You folks rock.




Friday 7 March 2014

Eve, Winning, and Tears

It seems that a lot of EVE players enjoy tears to an obsessive degree.  This has given rise to the notion that "EVE players are mean".  Is this true?  And *why*?  I think it's because of the way EVE works. 

EVE is complicated, and one of the complexities is "who won?"

I think we can all agree that many EVE players are intensely competitive.  This is great, except it's not always obvious who "won".  Say Bob is flying around in a vexor, and Joe (in a retribution) and Mike (in a hurricane) hate his guts.  Joe finds Bobs, points his vexor, and Mike warps in and blows up Bob... but not before Bob blows up Joe's retribution.   Who won here?

Well obviously Mike and Joe accomplished their goal of ganking Bob.  However, depending on the fit, it's very possible that Bob won the Isk war.  Trading a t1 cruiser with a cheap fit for a faction-fit assault frigate is a good trade.   But even that's not clear.  Maybe Joe is super space rich and doesn't care about losing dozens of AFs, while Bob is dirt poor.  

Or maybe Bob knew damned well that Mike and Joe were going to gank him, and was distracting them so that Jane's Iteron V, filled with loot, could go by unmolested!  So, who won here, how can you tell? 

In a way, the flexibility of "what is winning" is good.  It leads to very varied and creative gameplay.  In RvB for example, "winning" is defining by having a good fight.  One of my best fight ever is one of those where no one could figure out who was the winner - except all of us (a fight dubbed "the lion vs wolves", I will definitely post it later).

But it can also lead to less positive aspects.  Because in such ambiguous cases, often who "won" is decided by who's upset and who's not - ie tears.

And this is why many EVE players are so obsessed with tears.  Tears are proof of winning.  Tears mean victory!  And EVE players are always ready to "game the system", so whatever is needed to create tears is the path to victory.  This leads to griefing and aggressive forum posting - the easiest, best way to get tears often doesn't even involve logging in!   If the other person is upset, you know you won... doesn't really matter how you made them upset.

Can we change this?  I'm not sure how.  But I don't think it's a great thing.  Yes, it's just a game.  But you can never, ever get tears from a hurricane, or a hulk or a billion isks...

Only players shed tears.

Saturday 1 March 2014

Frigate Fitting 101

So, let's put some actual content here.

A while ago, I wrote a fitting guide for my alt's corpmates.  They were miners and missioners but they were willing to fight (we do periodic low-sec roam).  It wasn't realistic to give a disparate group specific fits, so I wrote a general guide.  I then realized this would be useful for RvB members and well, anyone new to PvP. 

1:  prop mods.  It's debatable if afterburner or microwarpdrive are the best (I prefer the latter), but for the love of god, have one!  Speed is life in PvP, especially for frigates.  If you do want to use a low slot for a speed module, nanofibres are better than over drive because they also make you more agile.
 
2:  Tanking.  If there is logi support (ie a ship that can heal others, ie a "cleric"), it will help if you have the same tank type as the logi is repairing (this mean shield or armour).  Active tank can work, but only in very small gangs - even a medium fleet will completely overwhelm your reper, and buffer is better.  For the love of god, do not dual tank (shield or armor, never both)!  There are some rare instances where it makes sense, but 99.9% of the time, it doesn't.  If you can fit/afford a t2 tank, do so.   Lastly, the most important tank mod you can have is damage control, having one on your ship will help you survive longer.
 
3:  Damage:  We will not be shooting rats for hours - rather other people for minutes, and they will be trying to blow us up too!  It's a race.  So don't cheap out on ammo - get t2 ammo or faction ammo. You won't need more than a load or two, you will get blown up sooner or later anyway.  If you are concerned about running out, bring t1 backup ammo.   Tech2 drones are also really good.  Seriously consider training Thermodynamics  so you can overheat your guns to get that 20% dps boost when it really matters.  (it's really a good skill to have for PvP in general, not just gunnery).   I recommend to have one rig or one low slot devoted to DPS boost - don't go nuts, but it really helps.
 
Of course, *please* use the appropriate weapons for your ship - whatever your ship gives a bonus for DPS, use that!  Also, your weapons should match.  Never ever fit a mixture of short and long range weapons.

If you have a free high slot, put some capacitor warfare - neut or nos, or simply leave empty.
 
4:  Rigs:  It's a good idea to use them, but use t1 version, the t2 are too expensive for t1 frigs.  Rigs allow you to "fix" weaknesses in your ships - tank, dps etc, or to enhance a strong point.  
 
5:  Tech levels:  If you can use tech 2 modules and can afford it, go ahead.  If you want to save money... don't use tech 1.  Use meta 1-2, its frequently cheaper and gives you better performance.  Meta4 are easy to fit and give good performance, but sometimes are more expensive than tech 2.   In some cases (esp ewar) meta4 are strictly better than t2.
 
6:  Mid slots:  It's absolutely essential you have some kind of tackle mod - a web and or a warp scram/disrupter  The only exception is if you are a sniper (and I don't know many sniping frigates...).  If you have room to spare, strongly give thought to some ewar ( turret disruption, sensor dampers or target painter).  You will note that doesn't leave a lot of room for your tank if you are a shield tanker - again, rigs and damage control will help make up for that. 
 
7:  Speaking of capacitor:  you don't need to be stable, only last a few minutes (again, this isn't PvE).  However if you only have capacitor for 20 seconds, use cap boosters (NOT a cap recharger).
 
8:  You may need a fitting low-slot mod to boost CPU or Power grid (or a rig).  However if you need more than one, you are either trying to do "too much" with the ship, or need more fitting skills training.  If you are very close, try using a better meta-version of a mod.  For example, one corpmate was 0.5 CPU short of being able to fit a damage control on his frigate.  By switching his web and his prop mod from tech 1 to meta fits, he was able to gain enough CPU to fit it and thus greatly improve his tank.
 
9.  Look up EFT (see https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=24359).  It's a bit tricky to use but will allow you to test fits without having to actually buy anything. 

10: Stacking penalties.  Apart from weapons (ha), adding several of the same modules will give you a penalty to the bonus provided.  The first module is 100% effective.  The second one will be 87% effective, the third one 57%... on a ship with several slots, it can make sense to have say, 3 ballistic control systems, but on a frigate, slots are few.  It's rarely worth putting more than 2 of the same module.
 
To many PvPers this is pretty basic, even obvious advice. But a newcomer to PvP may not know about all these "rules" and make mistakes.  There are also things that work well for PvE that are disastrous for PvP, and I hope they may help avoid some of those.

I say "rules" incidentally because these are more guidelines than rules.  They can be broken if you know what you are doing!  But in general, these will serve you well. 


Friday 28 February 2014

Yet another EVE Blog

Well hello there.

There are many EVE Online blogs out there, why one more?   Well, I've been posting on other people's blog semi-anonymously for some time now (I am "LR") and I felt it was time I created an account - more accountability (and less CAPTCHA I hope).

That being said, I think I have a thing or two to say of my own.  I'm a high-sec PvPer, specifically an  RvB member.  I used to be a carebear but got bored and quit in 2010. In 2013, after hearing about the Battle of Asakai I rejoined and joined RvB - an organization devoted to constant battle in high-sec.  This turned out to be a great move and I've had tremendous fun ever since.  But I still have to make isk to fund my PvP habit, and my alts still trade, manufacture and mine (the last one quite rarely thankfully).  I therefore have that perspective as well.

I am not just an RvB member, I am a recruiter (and as such will be happy to answer any questions).  That being said, I will caution that I do not speak for RvB as a whole, so don't read too much into what I write ;)

That's it for now, now I have to go beautify the place a bit.  Cheers!