First, a note on the latest Eve Dev blog posts in regards to industry: <insert little-girl-getting-a-pony-squeal here>
Although I am not happy that the POS assembly lines are being pushed back attention-wise, and I am a little wary about how manufacturing in systems without any stations/outposts will work (Will we still have teams? Will it become cheaper to manufacture in a cluttered high sec system with -50% costs due to station bonuses?), I still think it is an overall positive change. The UI and usability cleanup alone is amazing; as a newer player, I have had many arguments with the industry UI, trying to bully it into doing what I want. This will be great.
And now, the 'screw industry, GIVE ME BLOOD' berserker Karen demands I stop talking about lame stuff and move on to the other new project I have started.
I spent all day at work yesterday checking my phone, watching for notifications that my POS might be under attack. I was up until 3 AM in the morning Sunday night/Monday morning, setting up a new large Amarr control tower and anchoring/onlining defenses. I got maybe a third of the things I wanted up and online before I crashed due to exhaustion, and although I didn't have anything inside the bubble aside from an (empty) tayra, the tower, and the hardeners (YES HARDENERS GO *INSIDE* THE BUBBLE) I still worried.
Last night, I got the rest of the defenses online and the bare necessities of storage put up. If you glance at the 'About the author' box in the top left corner, you will see that I moved out of Sin Factory's C5 wormhole; I am now the CEO of a new w-space corporation, Anarchist Asylum, based out of a C2.
I love w-space. I am passionate about it. I want to spread Bob's blessings to many people, new players in particular; at the moment I have about a dozen newer players in corp, with half a dozen of them highly active. :) I will also freely admit that a couple of them were sniped from the 'holy god brand new player' (as one put it) help channel, selected for inquisitiveness about PvP and wormholes. I'm getting them trained up, and trying to instill a Proper Wormholer Attitude in my trainees - we will give no mercy, no fucks, and all of the fights we can.
Anyway, still a little administrative work to take care of tonight, assigning titles and roles now that I know I have it done right, and then to secure the POS fuel for the rest of the month... and then some hopefully fun and hilarious cruiser/frigate roams.
If you have a nice cruiser gang fit you feel like sharing, look me up in game. We're experimenting with stuff. :D
See you in space, cowboys.
o7
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
New Projects
I have had ... numerous ideas for new projects pestering me lately, begging to be put into action now that the CSM campaign is over and things have settled into their latest groove. There is certainly something major being worked out this week, but the number two project is what I want to talk about today: Industry.
I have devoted many hours over the last half a year to building and managing my PI empire, and I am pretty happy with where I am at the moment; between the nanite paste production and the other byproducts that I ship out and sell, I clear about a billion isk a month - small potatoes compared to major market movers and full time industrialists, but I feel very proud that I can say that as someone who has only been playing Eve for half a year.
I have been managing our corp's industrial tower in our C5, as well, running the polymer reaction array, and sorting through blueprints to see if there is anything we have on hand worth making; the down side, however, has been that... well, we are a pretty small corporation. The alliance has nowhere near enough demand for things to justify running a POS full time, and the logistical obstacals inherent in living in a C5 wormhole with a C4 static likewise makes manufacturing for export a highly problematic endeavor, at least on a scale that I could run and manage with my current assets. (Look at me, breaking out the economics lexicon! Heee~) If I were like Proclus, and cornering the capital weapons market in a major trade hub, I'd have enough volume and enough profit to justify it. With the meager level I am working at now... ehn.
This is why I have decided I need to scrape a couple of my alts together and make establish and industrial outpost somewhere in k-space (:boo: :hiss:, I agree, w-space is best space, but there are reasons!). I have also decided that the bulk of my new operation will take place in high sec, despite the pending industrial revamp eliciting cries of a falling sky from much of the community.
First, there is no way in hell that I would rent space in Sov Null. Never. Ever. Even with an alt corp.
Second, NPC Null and Low Sec are just too... labor intensive for me to make a major industrial investment in without having a solid corp presence backing me. Much like in w-space, territory in NPC null and in low sec is secured through force of arms and an active corp presence. If I were part of a low sec alliance, I would feel safe enough shipping in large quantities of materials or making a base of operations out of an NPC station, but not with just a couple of alts.
So, that leaves high sec, and it's where I'm going to set up... on the eve of an incoming nerf and rebalancing to high sec industry. #yolo
Of course, I am not going to move *everything* to high sec. I'll maintain most of my PI in w-space, but retool my alt's planetary production lines to require semiweekly maintenance instead of daily with more infrequent pick ups, and finish PI training on a couple of other alts to pick up the difference. I am also going to keep a few things running in a POS, things I want to baby sit and keep a close eye on, or items that just make more sense to manufacture out of a POS instead of a station. And, of course, when we get the rest of the details on the industry revamp things may need to change again.
I've also been doing a lot of hangar cleaning; last week I was feeling horribly, incredibly space-poor with only a couple hundred isk to my name. Then I remembered that I had a Megathron Navy Issue in a station in high sec gathering dust, and a few faction frigates - both navy and pirate - scattered around high sec that I wasn't using. So, I've been flying all over New Eden, collecting my spare ships, mods, and whatnot in a central location, then going through and deciding what I actually wanted to keep and what could go. This has given me a surprising pile of funds to work with, and since I don't like just sitting on money, asking "What can I do to put this isk to work for me?" is what led to my musings on an industry outpost. And/or helping out with or establishing a trade hub. We'll see!! :D
o7
I have devoted many hours over the last half a year to building and managing my PI empire, and I am pretty happy with where I am at the moment; between the nanite paste production and the other byproducts that I ship out and sell, I clear about a billion isk a month - small potatoes compared to major market movers and full time industrialists, but I feel very proud that I can say that as someone who has only been playing Eve for half a year.
I have been managing our corp's industrial tower in our C5, as well, running the polymer reaction array, and sorting through blueprints to see if there is anything we have on hand worth making; the down side, however, has been that... well, we are a pretty small corporation. The alliance has nowhere near enough demand for things to justify running a POS full time, and the logistical obstacals inherent in living in a C5 wormhole with a C4 static likewise makes manufacturing for export a highly problematic endeavor, at least on a scale that I could run and manage with my current assets. (Look at me, breaking out the economics lexicon! Heee~) If I were like Proclus, and cornering the capital weapons market in a major trade hub, I'd have enough volume and enough profit to justify it. With the meager level I am working at now... ehn.
This is why I have decided I need to scrape a couple of my alts together and make establish and industrial outpost somewhere in k-space (:boo: :hiss:, I agree, w-space is best space, but there are reasons!). I have also decided that the bulk of my new operation will take place in high sec, despite the pending industrial revamp eliciting cries of a falling sky from much of the community.
First, there is no way in hell that I would rent space in Sov Null. Never. Ever. Even with an alt corp.
Second, NPC Null and Low Sec are just too... labor intensive for me to make a major industrial investment in without having a solid corp presence backing me. Much like in w-space, territory in NPC null and in low sec is secured through force of arms and an active corp presence. If I were part of a low sec alliance, I would feel safe enough shipping in large quantities of materials or making a base of operations out of an NPC station, but not with just a couple of alts.
So, that leaves high sec, and it's where I'm going to set up... on the eve of an incoming nerf and rebalancing to high sec industry. #yolo
Of course, I am not going to move *everything* to high sec. I'll maintain most of my PI in w-space, but retool my alt's planetary production lines to require semiweekly maintenance instead of daily with more infrequent pick ups, and finish PI training on a couple of other alts to pick up the difference. I am also going to keep a few things running in a POS, things I want to baby sit and keep a close eye on, or items that just make more sense to manufacture out of a POS instead of a station. And, of course, when we get the rest of the details on the industry revamp things may need to change again.
I've also been doing a lot of hangar cleaning; last week I was feeling horribly, incredibly space-poor with only a couple hundred isk to my name. Then I remembered that I had a Megathron Navy Issue in a station in high sec gathering dust, and a few faction frigates - both navy and pirate - scattered around high sec that I wasn't using. So, I've been flying all over New Eden, collecting my spare ships, mods, and whatnot in a central location, then going through and deciding what I actually wanted to keep and what could go. This has given me a surprising pile of funds to work with, and since I don't like just sitting on money, asking "What can I do to put this isk to work for me?" is what led to my musings on an industry outpost. And/or helping out with or establishing a trade hub. We'll see!! :D
o7
Monday, April 21, 2014
The Endgame
Gevlon Goblin has a 'meh' post up from Friday. However, one of the things he says in his post struck a note:
My first thought when I read that was "Uhm. End game? What end game?"
In most MMO's, the 'end game' is the set of content designed for characters at max level. The standard formula for that includes things like 'hard-mode' dungeons, Nightmare levels, massive raids, or top-level, competitive PvP. The end-game implies "this is why you play the game; this is why you bothered to grind 90-some levels and then spent another two months gathering the exact best equipment and perfected your skill rotation. Now you are here, now you are at the top of the game."
Frankly, ideas of an end game just do not belong in Eve. At all.
Granted, there are many areas of the game that use a small and localized progression scale as players invest more skill points and isk: going from running L1 NPC missions in a frigate to L4 missions in a battleship or T3 cruiser, going from mining in a venture to mining in a Mackinaw, starting frigate PvP in an Atron and moving up into an Enyo... however, even things like 'doing solo PvP in a frigate' and 'doing solo PvP in a cruiser' have their own distinct progression, nuances, and 'play area'. Everything in Eve is about the niche game, and how the myriad of niche games interact with each other, not about everyone progressing from mining in a venture in high sec to flying a titan in a battle like B-R.
There are two places where this "We are the end game" perspective seems most pronounced, at least that I have noticed: Sov Null, and C5/C6 wormholes. Many groups assume that, since nullsec offers higher rewards and Sov Null is some of the safest space in the game, that and large corporation will eventually want to end up in a coalition in Sov Null. In the wormhole community, it is commonly assumed that corporations that move into 'lower class' wormhole have an end goal of building up to the point that they can move into and hold a C5 or a C6 wormhole. These are certainly progressions that some players and corporations plan on taking, but many others are content to find their niche and live in it. Each class of wormhole offers its own distinct flavor of play, and there are plenty of pockets out in null sec - from NPC null to places like Providence - that are divergent from the coalition mentality.
If you are a newer player, dabble around a bit! Find something you enjoy, and move into that niche. It's a lot easier to break into a new area of play than you might think.
o7
"Instead of endgame, nullsec became niche game."
My first thought when I read that was "Uhm. End game? What end game?"
In most MMO's, the 'end game' is the set of content designed for characters at max level. The standard formula for that includes things like 'hard-mode' dungeons, Nightmare levels, massive raids, or top-level, competitive PvP. The end-game implies "this is why you play the game; this is why you bothered to grind 90-some levels and then spent another two months gathering the exact best equipment and perfected your skill rotation. Now you are here, now you are at the top of the game."
Frankly, ideas of an end game just do not belong in Eve. At all.
Granted, there are many areas of the game that use a small and localized progression scale as players invest more skill points and isk: going from running L1 NPC missions in a frigate to L4 missions in a battleship or T3 cruiser, going from mining in a venture to mining in a Mackinaw, starting frigate PvP in an Atron and moving up into an Enyo... however, even things like 'doing solo PvP in a frigate' and 'doing solo PvP in a cruiser' have their own distinct progression, nuances, and 'play area'. Everything in Eve is about the niche game, and how the myriad of niche games interact with each other, not about everyone progressing from mining in a venture in high sec to flying a titan in a battle like B-R.
There are two places where this "We are the end game" perspective seems most pronounced, at least that I have noticed: Sov Null, and C5/C6 wormholes. Many groups assume that, since nullsec offers higher rewards and Sov Null is some of the safest space in the game, that and large corporation will eventually want to end up in a coalition in Sov Null. In the wormhole community, it is commonly assumed that corporations that move into 'lower class' wormhole have an end goal of building up to the point that they can move into and hold a C5 or a C6 wormhole. These are certainly progressions that some players and corporations plan on taking, but many others are content to find their niche and live in it. Each class of wormhole offers its own distinct flavor of play, and there are plenty of pockets out in null sec - from NPC null to places like Providence - that are divergent from the coalition mentality.
If you are a newer player, dabble around a bit! Find something you enjoy, and move into that niche. It's a lot easier to break into a new area of play than you might think.
o7
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Evictions, E-Honor, and the Metagame Part 2: A Commentary
For anyone reading who isn't up on w-space, most of the fights there occur on/around the connecting wormholes or on a site of some variety. There are a lot of ganks, there are some straight up brawls, and there are fights with back and forth maneuvering around one or both sides of a wormhole. Most hostile fleets will avoid engaging a Player Owned Starbase, because they have a crap ton of HP and are usually packed full of more guns and ewar than the tower can online all at once (so that spares can be brought online as needed). There are, however, a few times when a tower will come under direct attack:
Eviction - With an eviction, the goal is nothing less than the destruction of every tower owned by the enemy corporation in a given wormhole system. The evicting fleet will also often pull down any Player Owned Customs Office that the enemy corp holds in the system as well, since they may as well while waiting for the tower reinforcement timers and skipping them can leave a feeling of a job unfinished. Evictions are a major undertaking, requiring the attacker to bring enough force to bear to overcome the defenders in the first place, to assault each of the defender's towers in turn, to forcibly take control of the system and all connecting wormholes, and then to maintain enough active pilots garrisoned in the defender's system to prevent attempts to bring in reinforcements or evacuate valuable assets. The garrison needs to remain attentive and in position for up to 36 hours or longer, and there has to be enough pilots available to handle whatever might come up. Once the reinforcement timer runs down, the attacker has to still be strong enough to defeat whatever final defense is mounted (if any), grind down the last HP from the towers, and destroy and loot whatever assets are left behind.
Invasion - Much like an eviction, an invasion involves planting a large force in an enemy system for a prolonged period; unlike the eviction, however, total destruction of the defender is not necessarily the end goal. Many invasions are done in order to force a large fight, with the invaders leaving (and the defenders functionally intact) once they are satisfied, although one group can also invade another just to make life hell for a while. Usually by that point, though, it's turned into an eviction instead.
The Stront Check - By far the most common, when one group is 'checking' another group's tower, they attack it and put it into reinforced mode. Strontium is the fuel that towers use to become invulnerable and reinforced - if a tower doesn't have any, it won't reinforce, hence the name. A stront check is often called for on towers that look weak or undefended but potentially full of valuables, or if an attacker is trying to apply pressure to another group in order to goad them into a fight. The biggest difference between a stront check and an invasion or eviction is that once the tower is reinforced they (typically) return home or go on their way - the attacker is not committing assets to a siege of the defender's system.
If I did not make a big enough point of it in my last blog, or up above, an eviction is a major undertaking and a pain in the butt, even for a major C5 or C6 wormhole alliance. Capital class ships are often required to perform a successful eviction in a C5 or C6 wormhole, but they can only be brought in intermittently; that also means they can not always be extracted in a timely manner. Even if an alliance has forty or fifty capitals in their home defense fleet, a dreadnought is a valuable asset and they'll want to maintain sufficient force in the defending hole after the eviction, long enough to escort the ship out. While the eviction is going on, a significant number of the active pilots of an alliance will be busy - there were times this last weekend where scouts found hostile forces in/near the home wormhole chains of Ragnarok or NOHO, but with the skeleton crews left behind they couldn't engage. That kind of deployment can leave home systems vulnerable, as well, bringing additional risk beyond the number of assets committed to the siege.
In short, nobody does an eviction just for funsies.
However, one of the best things about Eve is that people can do whatever they want; one of the things that makes w-space so great is precisely that everything can be destroyed. Nothing in w-space is safe. If someone is willing to put in the time and effort and can dedicate enough resources, they can blow up every single thing a corp owns in w-space; the question then becomes "What tilts that reward/effort equation from 'stront check them and move on' over to 'EEVICTIOOOOON'?"
Some w-space corps will say that is is an e-honor thing, that corps who fight are encouraged to stay while corps that hide are evicted. This is not true, though: granted, refusing to fight someone might piss them off, and pissing someone off makes them more likely to want to evict you, but any cause that the attacker feels passionately enough about is good enough for them. Ragnarok evicted the Goons from their hole because Goonswarm is a major Null Sec power. People have ended up on eviction lists for being asshats on the forums or on a podcast. Honestly, if someone decided they absolutely hated my fashion sense and wanted to evict me for it, they are welcome to try. The thing that matters is how much they care about it, and if they care enough about their cause to put in the effort.
While I am on the topic, this does lead me to something else I have been wanting to write about: e-honor. Bluntly, it doesn't exist and expecting other people to live by it leaves you open to be taken advantage of. Most of the corps I've met in w-space are, at the end of the day, pretty cool. Many of them are just out to have a good time. Expecting another pilot/corporation/alliance to abide by a set of rules that has not been agreed upon, though, will put you in a bad spot and if you get burned for relying on 'honorable conduct' you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.
That may sound harsh, but w-space is a harsh environment. You can count on yourself. You should be able to count on your corp mates. You might be able to count on your blues, be they in your alliance or just diplomatic friends. Anyone else is someone you are competing against, and is a potential enemy, no matter how friendly they may be. Instead of expecting someone to follow a set of rules that you may or may not have told them about, be practical on the matter. Expect them to behave in a way that they have acted in the past. Alliances and corporations like having their reputations; for example, I would expect NOHO to honor a ransom request, because that's something they are known to do. If someone from SSC offered me a spot in a roam and told me they wouldn't attack me, I would trust them - I've seen that behavior from them in the past. I myself try to be extremely trustworthy, but it isn't out of a need to feel honorable. It's because people like other people they feel they can trust, and life is easier for me if people know they can take me at my word.
This also ties into the metagame - not the game knowledge aspect of the meta, but rather the people knowledge side of it. For anyone who hasn't delved too deeply into it, the 'metagame' refers to a number of things - the game beyond the game itself, knowledge of the game as a set of rules, the 'universe' of things that are Eve-related while not strictly coming from within the game client itself, and so on. When an FC is prioritizing targets and telling the ewar ships who to hit with what, they are using their knowledge of how people play the game in order to guess at what ships will be fitted what way and how they are flown, as opposed to basing it strictly off of what they can see in the present engagement. When a fleet engages in a fight that they should lose from a strictly by-the-numbers numerical standpoint, it is often because the FC believes they have a psychological edge over the enemy fleet - the knowledge of how people think and react giving them an edge. For example, a few weeks ago we rolled our home system's static connection and it opened up on a system with four battleships and a pair of basilisks running sites. I had three pilots available to me, so it certainly wasn't a fight I could take and win; one of our alliance members, though, urged me to ship up into a group of Talos battle cruisers and jump on the logi ships, because who would jump a fleet like that with only three attack battlecruisers? Ideally one of the basilisks would explode and the rest of the site fleet would attempt to warp off and away from the (non existent) remainder of our gank fleet, and we could point the last battleship to align for another easy kill. I love that sort of player versus player competition; where it isn't the amount of isk spent on ships or the age of the account that decides the outcome, but a player's skill at reading other players and predicting what they will do, and the player's ability to influence that reaction. I love my Stratios because it is such a versatile cruiser; it can be fit with guns, with neuts, with double webs or dual prop, and with the covops cloak on it nobody will know how I have it fit until I am on them. It's one of the reasons I am fond of the Gnosis, and weird things like the blaster naga or the armor/ECM drake - when you throw a curve ball at someone and catch them flat footed, you get to dictate the engagement.
With that being said, I personally feel that the benefits of being trustworthy are too good to pass up and so I leave my metagaming at the engagement level. I may bluff, posture, or feign weakness before an engagement to get an edge but if I say that, no, for real, my fleet has moved off of the wormhole and it is safe enough for you to jump through... then it has moved off, and it is safe enough.
Just don't expect everyone to play like that, though - anyone can do whatever they want in Eve, for whatever reason, if they want to put in the effort and don't mind the reputation and reaction it'll get from other players. And if you don't like what someone else has done, you are free to tell them as much, in whatever way you feel will cause them to listen.
Personally, I don't have any Causes in game that would incite me to evict anyone, nor has anyone pissed me off enough to get put on an eviction list - I just want to fly my ship through space, blow some people up, and hopefully be able to afford to replace whatever I lose.
o7
Eviction - With an eviction, the goal is nothing less than the destruction of every tower owned by the enemy corporation in a given wormhole system. The evicting fleet will also often pull down any Player Owned Customs Office that the enemy corp holds in the system as well, since they may as well while waiting for the tower reinforcement timers and skipping them can leave a feeling of a job unfinished. Evictions are a major undertaking, requiring the attacker to bring enough force to bear to overcome the defenders in the first place, to assault each of the defender's towers in turn, to forcibly take control of the system and all connecting wormholes, and then to maintain enough active pilots garrisoned in the defender's system to prevent attempts to bring in reinforcements or evacuate valuable assets. The garrison needs to remain attentive and in position for up to 36 hours or longer, and there has to be enough pilots available to handle whatever might come up. Once the reinforcement timer runs down, the attacker has to still be strong enough to defeat whatever final defense is mounted (if any), grind down the last HP from the towers, and destroy and loot whatever assets are left behind.
Invasion - Much like an eviction, an invasion involves planting a large force in an enemy system for a prolonged period; unlike the eviction, however, total destruction of the defender is not necessarily the end goal. Many invasions are done in order to force a large fight, with the invaders leaving (and the defenders functionally intact) once they are satisfied, although one group can also invade another just to make life hell for a while. Usually by that point, though, it's turned into an eviction instead.
The Stront Check - By far the most common, when one group is 'checking' another group's tower, they attack it and put it into reinforced mode. Strontium is the fuel that towers use to become invulnerable and reinforced - if a tower doesn't have any, it won't reinforce, hence the name. A stront check is often called for on towers that look weak or undefended but potentially full of valuables, or if an attacker is trying to apply pressure to another group in order to goad them into a fight. The biggest difference between a stront check and an invasion or eviction is that once the tower is reinforced they (typically) return home or go on their way - the attacker is not committing assets to a siege of the defender's system.
If I did not make a big enough point of it in my last blog, or up above, an eviction is a major undertaking and a pain in the butt, even for a major C5 or C6 wormhole alliance. Capital class ships are often required to perform a successful eviction in a C5 or C6 wormhole, but they can only be brought in intermittently; that also means they can not always be extracted in a timely manner. Even if an alliance has forty or fifty capitals in their home defense fleet, a dreadnought is a valuable asset and they'll want to maintain sufficient force in the defending hole after the eviction, long enough to escort the ship out. While the eviction is going on, a significant number of the active pilots of an alliance will be busy - there were times this last weekend where scouts found hostile forces in/near the home wormhole chains of Ragnarok or NOHO, but with the skeleton crews left behind they couldn't engage. That kind of deployment can leave home systems vulnerable, as well, bringing additional risk beyond the number of assets committed to the siege.
In short, nobody does an eviction just for funsies.
However, one of the best things about Eve is that people can do whatever they want; one of the things that makes w-space so great is precisely that everything can be destroyed. Nothing in w-space is safe. If someone is willing to put in the time and effort and can dedicate enough resources, they can blow up every single thing a corp owns in w-space; the question then becomes "What tilts that reward/effort equation from 'stront check them and move on' over to 'EEVICTIOOOOON'?"
Some w-space corps will say that is is an e-honor thing, that corps who fight are encouraged to stay while corps that hide are evicted. This is not true, though: granted, refusing to fight someone might piss them off, and pissing someone off makes them more likely to want to evict you, but any cause that the attacker feels passionately enough about is good enough for them. Ragnarok evicted the Goons from their hole because Goonswarm is a major Null Sec power. People have ended up on eviction lists for being asshats on the forums or on a podcast. Honestly, if someone decided they absolutely hated my fashion sense and wanted to evict me for it, they are welcome to try. The thing that matters is how much they care about it, and if they care enough about their cause to put in the effort.
While I am on the topic, this does lead me to something else I have been wanting to write about: e-honor. Bluntly, it doesn't exist and expecting other people to live by it leaves you open to be taken advantage of. Most of the corps I've met in w-space are, at the end of the day, pretty cool. Many of them are just out to have a good time. Expecting another pilot/corporation/alliance to abide by a set of rules that has not been agreed upon, though, will put you in a bad spot and if you get burned for relying on 'honorable conduct' you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.
That may sound harsh, but w-space is a harsh environment. You can count on yourself. You should be able to count on your corp mates. You might be able to count on your blues, be they in your alliance or just diplomatic friends. Anyone else is someone you are competing against, and is a potential enemy, no matter how friendly they may be. Instead of expecting someone to follow a set of rules that you may or may not have told them about, be practical on the matter. Expect them to behave in a way that they have acted in the past. Alliances and corporations like having their reputations; for example, I would expect NOHO to honor a ransom request, because that's something they are known to do. If someone from SSC offered me a spot in a roam and told me they wouldn't attack me, I would trust them - I've seen that behavior from them in the past. I myself try to be extremely trustworthy, but it isn't out of a need to feel honorable. It's because people like other people they feel they can trust, and life is easier for me if people know they can take me at my word.
This also ties into the metagame - not the game knowledge aspect of the meta, but rather the people knowledge side of it. For anyone who hasn't delved too deeply into it, the 'metagame' refers to a number of things - the game beyond the game itself, knowledge of the game as a set of rules, the 'universe' of things that are Eve-related while not strictly coming from within the game client itself, and so on. When an FC is prioritizing targets and telling the ewar ships who to hit with what, they are using their knowledge of how people play the game in order to guess at what ships will be fitted what way and how they are flown, as opposed to basing it strictly off of what they can see in the present engagement. When a fleet engages in a fight that they should lose from a strictly by-the-numbers numerical standpoint, it is often because the FC believes they have a psychological edge over the enemy fleet - the knowledge of how people think and react giving them an edge. For example, a few weeks ago we rolled our home system's static connection and it opened up on a system with four battleships and a pair of basilisks running sites. I had three pilots available to me, so it certainly wasn't a fight I could take and win; one of our alliance members, though, urged me to ship up into a group of Talos battle cruisers and jump on the logi ships, because who would jump a fleet like that with only three attack battlecruisers? Ideally one of the basilisks would explode and the rest of the site fleet would attempt to warp off and away from the (non existent) remainder of our gank fleet, and we could point the last battleship to align for another easy kill. I love that sort of player versus player competition; where it isn't the amount of isk spent on ships or the age of the account that decides the outcome, but a player's skill at reading other players and predicting what they will do, and the player's ability to influence that reaction. I love my Stratios because it is such a versatile cruiser; it can be fit with guns, with neuts, with double webs or dual prop, and with the covops cloak on it nobody will know how I have it fit until I am on them. It's one of the reasons I am fond of the Gnosis, and weird things like the blaster naga or the armor/ECM drake - when you throw a curve ball at someone and catch them flat footed, you get to dictate the engagement.
With that being said, I personally feel that the benefits of being trustworthy are too good to pass up and so I leave my metagaming at the engagement level. I may bluff, posture, or feign weakness before an engagement to get an edge but if I say that, no, for real, my fleet has moved off of the wormhole and it is safe enough for you to jump through... then it has moved off, and it is safe enough.
Just don't expect everyone to play like that, though - anyone can do whatever they want in Eve, for whatever reason, if they want to put in the effort and don't mind the reputation and reaction it'll get from other players. And if you don't like what someone else has done, you are free to tell them as much, in whatever way you feel will cause them to listen.
Personally, I don't have any Causes in game that would incite me to evict anyone, nor has anyone pissed me off enough to get put on an eviction list - I just want to fly my ship through space, blow some people up, and hopefully be able to afford to replace whatever I lose.
o7
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Evictions, E-Honor, and the Metagame Part 1: BeeGone
I got home from work early on Friday and began settling in. It was a typical late Friday afternoon/early evening, with a low logged in player count across all of New Eden and nothing going on in my home system. I had just decided to get started working the rounds for my CSM campaign, finding wormhole groups to convo and chat with, when I ended up talking on Skype with Corbexx (a fellow CSM9 candidate, from No Holes Barred, one of the larger C6 PvP alliances and noted WH mercs).
The wormhole CSM candidates and the Chitsa have been using Skype to get to know eachother and chat about the campaigns - one of the recent topics that came up was the relative quietness of most wormhole corporations operating in C1 - C4 space. There are a lot of corporations there, but many of them try to avoid notice - partly because one of the big draws of w-space is being able to do your own thing and ignore most everyone else, and partly, some feel, because they don't want to draw the attention of an otherwise bored C5/C6 corp that will evict them for 'something to do'. One of the things I have heard a few times as I made my rounds was "If they want more people in w-space, why are there so many evictions?"
The short version is that evictions are a huge pain in the butt and a logistical challenge, requiring an entire fleet to dedicate several days to sitting in one place camping a hole and watching a timer slowly tick down. Nobody is evicted just for funsies - usually, you have to really piss someone off to warrant a full eviction.
Usually.
I bring this up because, during our conversation, Corbexx asked if I had done an invasion. I hadn't. Being the nice guy that he is, he then offered me the chance to tag along with NOHO on the invasion they were doing that weekend, so I could have first hand experience. I asked if that was what Ian was asking about in game, and got a moment of silence. Followed by a "What?"
In game, a guy I knew from a C4 alliance (The Amalgamation Initiative) had convo'd me. "I'm with a group...we're evicting some nullbears... I'm not supposed to be very specific, but, it's a nullbear corp that's part of a major null alliance you would definitely recognize and probably wouldn't mind blowing up." I relayed it to Corbexx and he told me that, no, it wasn't his op... so I mulled over a few rumors I had picked up, and I had it. "Oh. You're evicting goons, with Ragnarok." "That didn't take you long. I knew you were resourceful."
It turns out there were a few events going on in w-space: NOHO had an invasion they were launching, Ragnarok was evicting their group, and I didn't get details but there was at least a third invasion going on somewhere. Busy! Corbexx came into the convo in game, and Dmitry and Borsek (both of Ragnarok) hopped in as well in order to share the details, and off I went to a C5 pulsar to join their party with my Vexor Navy Issue.
I picked up some drones for Dmitry on the way, and soon enough I was heading up chain alongside a crew from Dropbears Anonymous. On grid, a pile of Ragnarok Ishtars were busily chipping away at the POS tower's shields, and glancing through the Fleet list and the tags on teamspeak showed that we had a scattering of people from Quebec Underdog League, The Dark Space Initiative, and Red Coat Conspiracy as well. I launched my own bouncers and began orbiting the anchor, and listened to the chatter on voice coms. A couple of Naglfars had been spotted in the hole earlier before they logged, and the Goons had at least three Chimeras, with two of them currently logged in and piloted inside of the POS we were shooting. There were a few other active ships as well, and we watched them moving things about in the POS as Ragnarok began bringing large mobile warp bubbles and planting them around the POS.
Eventually, before the tower went into reinforced mode, the Goons made their move. The chimeras in the POS warped out to a second POS, the other Goon capital ships logged in, and their fleet warped back to the first tower. The Goons had four Chimeras on field, two Naglfars, as well as a few T3's and other subcaps in their POS.
The capital ships landed in one of the bubbles, and the FC began calling orders. We started attacking one of the carriers, and although we had two dozen Ishtars and nearly as many Navy Vexors the four Chimeras kept everything up. We did volley out a couple of the subcaps that came out to help pop bubbles, but it looked like the carriers and dreadnoughts would slowboat their way back into the POS. The FC called for the carriers to be driven apart, with two of them bumped into the POS shields to break their targeting and the other two pushed further away. We took out a couple of subcaps that came out and more or less ignored the naglfars, letting our speed protect us from their guns. Still, the carriers were only barely losing shields, and it looked like it would take the rest of the night to even drop one of them.
However. I had earlier heard someone on coms mention that they were talking with Sky Syndicate, and that Sky was getting staged in high sec. When the carriers landed in the bubbles Ragnarok sent word to Sky, and our backup came up the chain.
In the firm belief that there is no kill like overkill (and that four Chimeras in a pulsar would take a lot of killing) Sky Syndicate brought plenty of firepower. There were about twenty five Sky Fighters and a couple of guys from End of the Line, and with the extra DPS and the extra energy neuts they brought we started cracking the carriers. They went down quickly, and one of the naglfars as well - the second had made it out of the bubbles, and warped off to a safe. We cleaned the last of the Goons off of the field, and then...
Erm.
There was an amusing incident. Short version, Sky got more kills than the Goons did, but what is a little friendly fire between allies? Somehow the full blue list hadn't been propagated, and if someone isn't blue or purple they get shot. S'how things work out in w-space.
First day killboard: https://zkillboard.com/related/31002136/201404120200/
(Of special note: Nota Ero from RCC's Laser Ferox <3. Also, Sky was on our side. Honest!)
A video from Sky Syndicate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SzZORYyWI&feature=youtu.be
("Bring me everyone." "Everyone?" "EVERYOOOONNNNEEEE!!!")
Some screenshots from one of the guys in our fleet: http://imgur.com/a/WUwqg
The chain had collapsed when Sky exited, so I reshipped in Jita (Burn Jita had been postponed for some reason >.> ) while Ragnarok scanned out a new one. I made my way to the new entrance, and I heard on coms that the Goons had tried to loot and salvage the field; Ragnarok picked off the few who tried, then finished reinforcing the tower and hit the next one as well. I got back into the C5, helped tear down the Goon TCU, then hooked up with the hole control fleet and spent the next couple of hours chatting and watching the entrance hole. I ended up crashing from exhaustion about an hour before downtime, but the Dropbears were still going strong and Dmitry himself had been mainlining Red Bull all night.
Real Life had me busy the next morning, and extended Real Life Drama kept me from getting back in as early as I had planned; when I got back home, I logged into the C5 to find that things had stayed pretty quiet, with the Goons attempting to plant a third tower and Ragnarok blowing it to pieces early in the day but little else of note going on. I got back into place in the hole control fleet, and settled in to chill for the next twelve or so hours.
There were a couple of false alarms with new signatures showing up on the combat scanner, usually members of the Ragnarok fleet logging in, although at one point we jumped on a Caracal as it logged in - it was a prior owner of the wormhole that wasn't part of Goonswarm, and we escorted him to the exit without explosions. At one point, the Goons did try to get an orca to a safe spot and cloak it up in order to save some of their loot, but our combat scanners were on the ball and the guard fleet dropped onto the orca as it landed on grid.
https://zkillboard.com/detail/38151094/
Eventually I ducked out for dinner, came back to find things much the same, and the hole stayed relatively quiet until Sunday.
Nota's Laser Ferox, providing entertaining colors for the fleet to be hypnotized by: http://imgur.com/a/IUtB0
(Not my pics, from a reddit post)
On Sunday, as the towers neared the end of their reinforcement timer, the last active Goon in the hole began self destructing the nicer ships left in the POS and pulling the shinies off to take to safety in his cloaky, interdiction nullified tengu. Dmitry and the Goon bantered back and forth a bit, but eventually the tengu slipped off to a safe spot, the towers came out of reinforcement and were destroyed, and things were looted. Except for one of the Ship Maintenance Array wrecks that a friendly blew up. There is, apparently, ALWAYS things blowing up that shouldn't be exploded. :D
I should also mention at this point that one of the Quebec Underdog League scouts who had been with us Friday had been popping about on Sunday; there were a couple of times where his cheetah warped through, to calls of "Who's that Cheetah?! Is he blue??" and reassurances that, yes, QUL was with us it's cool. At one such surprise drop in the Cheetah did get pointed and its shields scratched, but damage was stopped before anyone even tagged armor.
This is important because, after the event was over and most of the Dropbears had made it out to k-space, QUL brought a fleet through into the C5. The hole control possee was taken aback and not sure how to respond... after all, we had been bashing the POS with them just the other day. We started asking what they were doing on coms and seeing if anyone knew what was up when they began locking our ships and blowing people up. I made it out, but only just; my poor Vexor Navy was quickly dropping through armor as my microwarp drive pushed me out of point range and I warped back to Ragnarok's staging POS.
Things were looking tight - most of the fleet was gone, down to twenty or so Ragnarok Ishtars, two or three Vexors, and a scimitar or two against an equal number of 100mn tengus and a squad of basilisks. We did have a chimera that had dropped from one of the Goon towers, and we fitted it up; the two naglffars that had been brought in on Saturday to help DPS the towers were brought online at our POS as well, but we knew the Goons still had at least two chimeras and a naglfar of their own (we had reason to believe that QUL was working with the Goons), and the FC suspected that QUL had a blingy carrier in the system as well - their C6 had been connected to the C5 (it was how Ragnarok got in) on Friday.
We warped the carrier and our drone boats to the hole at 100km, with the naglfars in reserve to counter escalate if the other capitals showed up; as it turns out, though, we didn't need to bother. Sniper ishtars are nuts, and any time QUL started closing the distance they came within drone range and began taking heavy damage. We evaporated a blackbird and a cruor into space dust, while the QUL tengus were beefy enough to shrug off the initial vollies and retreat back out of range; they dropped combat probes and for a little I thought they might warp off of the hole and then try to drop on us to reduce the range, but they ended up retreating back through the wormhole instead.
We moved our drone boats up to get optimal range on anyone coming back through the hole, and then warped the orca (full of Ragnarok's loot) onto the static; while we had the advantage at range, going after the tengus at point blank on the other side of the wormhole would be suicide. The orca jumped through and back, closing it off and shutting the door on QUL, and then we scanned out the new chain and I made my way home.
All in all, the weekend had a couple of fun fights, and a lot of time spent staring at d-scan and guarding a wormhole, chatting with other fleet members to stave off the boredom. Evictions are a pain in the butt.
Here's a write up from BBP, one of the Dropbears: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/22yrvq/operation_beegone/
I've got another post cooking, with extended thoughts and musings, but egads this is enough typing for THIS post.
o7
The wormhole CSM candidates and the Chitsa have been using Skype to get to know eachother and chat about the campaigns - one of the recent topics that came up was the relative quietness of most wormhole corporations operating in C1 - C4 space. There are a lot of corporations there, but many of them try to avoid notice - partly because one of the big draws of w-space is being able to do your own thing and ignore most everyone else, and partly, some feel, because they don't want to draw the attention of an otherwise bored C5/C6 corp that will evict them for 'something to do'. One of the things I have heard a few times as I made my rounds was "If they want more people in w-space, why are there so many evictions?"
The short version is that evictions are a huge pain in the butt and a logistical challenge, requiring an entire fleet to dedicate several days to sitting in one place camping a hole and watching a timer slowly tick down. Nobody is evicted just for funsies - usually, you have to really piss someone off to warrant a full eviction.
Usually.
I bring this up because, during our conversation, Corbexx asked if I had done an invasion. I hadn't. Being the nice guy that he is, he then offered me the chance to tag along with NOHO on the invasion they were doing that weekend, so I could have first hand experience. I asked if that was what Ian was asking about in game, and got a moment of silence. Followed by a "What?"
In game, a guy I knew from a C4 alliance (The Amalgamation Initiative) had convo'd me. "I'm with a group...we're evicting some nullbears... I'm not supposed to be very specific, but, it's a nullbear corp that's part of a major null alliance you would definitely recognize and probably wouldn't mind blowing up." I relayed it to Corbexx and he told me that, no, it wasn't his op... so I mulled over a few rumors I had picked up, and I had it. "Oh. You're evicting goons, with Ragnarok." "That didn't take you long. I knew you were resourceful."
It turns out there were a few events going on in w-space: NOHO had an invasion they were launching, Ragnarok was evicting their group, and I didn't get details but there was at least a third invasion going on somewhere. Busy! Corbexx came into the convo in game, and Dmitry and Borsek (both of Ragnarok) hopped in as well in order to share the details, and off I went to a C5 pulsar to join their party with my Vexor Navy Issue.
I picked up some drones for Dmitry on the way, and soon enough I was heading up chain alongside a crew from Dropbears Anonymous. On grid, a pile of Ragnarok Ishtars were busily chipping away at the POS tower's shields, and glancing through the Fleet list and the tags on teamspeak showed that we had a scattering of people from Quebec Underdog League, The Dark Space Initiative, and Red Coat Conspiracy as well. I launched my own bouncers and began orbiting the anchor, and listened to the chatter on voice coms. A couple of Naglfars had been spotted in the hole earlier before they logged, and the Goons had at least three Chimeras, with two of them currently logged in and piloted inside of the POS we were shooting. There were a few other active ships as well, and we watched them moving things about in the POS as Ragnarok began bringing large mobile warp bubbles and planting them around the POS.
Eventually, before the tower went into reinforced mode, the Goons made their move. The chimeras in the POS warped out to a second POS, the other Goon capital ships logged in, and their fleet warped back to the first tower. The Goons had four Chimeras on field, two Naglfars, as well as a few T3's and other subcaps in their POS.
The capital ships landed in one of the bubbles, and the FC began calling orders. We started attacking one of the carriers, and although we had two dozen Ishtars and nearly as many Navy Vexors the four Chimeras kept everything up. We did volley out a couple of the subcaps that came out to help pop bubbles, but it looked like the carriers and dreadnoughts would slowboat their way back into the POS. The FC called for the carriers to be driven apart, with two of them bumped into the POS shields to break their targeting and the other two pushed further away. We took out a couple of subcaps that came out and more or less ignored the naglfars, letting our speed protect us from their guns. Still, the carriers were only barely losing shields, and it looked like it would take the rest of the night to even drop one of them.
However. I had earlier heard someone on coms mention that they were talking with Sky Syndicate, and that Sky was getting staged in high sec. When the carriers landed in the bubbles Ragnarok sent word to Sky, and our backup came up the chain.
In the firm belief that there is no kill like overkill (and that four Chimeras in a pulsar would take a lot of killing) Sky Syndicate brought plenty of firepower. There were about twenty five Sky Fighters and a couple of guys from End of the Line, and with the extra DPS and the extra energy neuts they brought we started cracking the carriers. They went down quickly, and one of the naglfars as well - the second had made it out of the bubbles, and warped off to a safe. We cleaned the last of the Goons off of the field, and then...
Erm.
There was an amusing incident. Short version, Sky got more kills than the Goons did, but what is a little friendly fire between allies? Somehow the full blue list hadn't been propagated, and if someone isn't blue or purple they get shot. S'how things work out in w-space.
First day killboard: https://zkillboard.com/related/31002136/201404120200/
(Of special note: Nota Ero from RCC's Laser Ferox <3. Also, Sky was on our side. Honest!)
A video from Sky Syndicate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SzZORYyWI&feature=youtu.be
("Bring me everyone." "Everyone?" "EVERYOOOONNNNEEEE!!!")
Some screenshots from one of the guys in our fleet: http://imgur.com/a/WUwqg
The chain had collapsed when Sky exited, so I reshipped in Jita (Burn Jita had been postponed for some reason >.> ) while Ragnarok scanned out a new one. I made my way to the new entrance, and I heard on coms that the Goons had tried to loot and salvage the field; Ragnarok picked off the few who tried, then finished reinforcing the tower and hit the next one as well. I got back into the C5, helped tear down the Goon TCU, then hooked up with the hole control fleet and spent the next couple of hours chatting and watching the entrance hole. I ended up crashing from exhaustion about an hour before downtime, but the Dropbears were still going strong and Dmitry himself had been mainlining Red Bull all night.
Real Life had me busy the next morning, and extended Real Life Drama kept me from getting back in as early as I had planned; when I got back home, I logged into the C5 to find that things had stayed pretty quiet, with the Goons attempting to plant a third tower and Ragnarok blowing it to pieces early in the day but little else of note going on. I got back into place in the hole control fleet, and settled in to chill for the next twelve or so hours.
There were a couple of false alarms with new signatures showing up on the combat scanner, usually members of the Ragnarok fleet logging in, although at one point we jumped on a Caracal as it logged in - it was a prior owner of the wormhole that wasn't part of Goonswarm, and we escorted him to the exit without explosions. At one point, the Goons did try to get an orca to a safe spot and cloak it up in order to save some of their loot, but our combat scanners were on the ball and the guard fleet dropped onto the orca as it landed on grid.
https://zkillboard.com/detail/38151094/
Eventually I ducked out for dinner, came back to find things much the same, and the hole stayed relatively quiet until Sunday.
Nota's Laser Ferox, providing entertaining colors for the fleet to be hypnotized by: http://imgur.com/a/IUtB0
(Not my pics, from a reddit post)
On Sunday, as the towers neared the end of their reinforcement timer, the last active Goon in the hole began self destructing the nicer ships left in the POS and pulling the shinies off to take to safety in his cloaky, interdiction nullified tengu. Dmitry and the Goon bantered back and forth a bit, but eventually the tengu slipped off to a safe spot, the towers came out of reinforcement and were destroyed, and things were looted. Except for one of the Ship Maintenance Array wrecks that a friendly blew up. There is, apparently, ALWAYS things blowing up that shouldn't be exploded. :D
I should also mention at this point that one of the Quebec Underdog League scouts who had been with us Friday had been popping about on Sunday; there were a couple of times where his cheetah warped through, to calls of "Who's that Cheetah?! Is he blue??" and reassurances that, yes, QUL was with us it's cool. At one such surprise drop in the Cheetah did get pointed and its shields scratched, but damage was stopped before anyone even tagged armor.
This is important because, after the event was over and most of the Dropbears had made it out to k-space, QUL brought a fleet through into the C5. The hole control possee was taken aback and not sure how to respond... after all, we had been bashing the POS with them just the other day. We started asking what they were doing on coms and seeing if anyone knew what was up when they began locking our ships and blowing people up. I made it out, but only just; my poor Vexor Navy was quickly dropping through armor as my microwarp drive pushed me out of point range and I warped back to Ragnarok's staging POS.
Things were looking tight - most of the fleet was gone, down to twenty or so Ragnarok Ishtars, two or three Vexors, and a scimitar or two against an equal number of 100mn tengus and a squad of basilisks. We did have a chimera that had dropped from one of the Goon towers, and we fitted it up; the two naglffars that had been brought in on Saturday to help DPS the towers were brought online at our POS as well, but we knew the Goons still had at least two chimeras and a naglfar of their own (we had reason to believe that QUL was working with the Goons), and the FC suspected that QUL had a blingy carrier in the system as well - their C6 had been connected to the C5 (it was how Ragnarok got in) on Friday.
We warped the carrier and our drone boats to the hole at 100km, with the naglfars in reserve to counter escalate if the other capitals showed up; as it turns out, though, we didn't need to bother. Sniper ishtars are nuts, and any time QUL started closing the distance they came within drone range and began taking heavy damage. We evaporated a blackbird and a cruor into space dust, while the QUL tengus were beefy enough to shrug off the initial vollies and retreat back out of range; they dropped combat probes and for a little I thought they might warp off of the hole and then try to drop on us to reduce the range, but they ended up retreating back through the wormhole instead.
We moved our drone boats up to get optimal range on anyone coming back through the hole, and then warped the orca (full of Ragnarok's loot) onto the static; while we had the advantage at range, going after the tengus at point blank on the other side of the wormhole would be suicide. The orca jumped through and back, closing it off and shutting the door on QUL, and then we scanned out the new chain and I made my way home.
All in all, the weekend had a couple of fun fights, and a lot of time spent staring at d-scan and guarding a wormhole, chatting with other fleet members to stave off the boredom. Evictions are a pain in the butt.
Here's a write up from BBP, one of the Dropbears: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bravenewbies/comments/22yrvq/operation_beegone/
I've got another post cooking, with extended thoughts and musings, but egads this is enough typing for THIS post.
o7
Interlude: Twitter!
I am writing a story time report (that will probably turn into a two parter) and a thought occurred to me: I recently signed up for Twitter.
Shame! But, if you are into that sort of weirdness, I am @KarenGaleo and I am not afraid to admit it. I don't plan on making a lot of tweets, but I'll announce things like blog posts I suppose. :)
Shame! But, if you are into that sort of weirdness, I am @KarenGaleo and I am not afraid to admit it. I don't plan on making a lot of tweets, but I'll announce things like blog posts I suppose. :)
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
CSM Campaign: Endorsements
After my last ramble, I am going to keep this one short and to the point.
Most of the time I do not like telling people what to do. I do not mind giving advice, if it is asked for, but I believe in encouraging people to make their own decisions and to form their own opinions. I have already had a few people ask me who I think they should vote for... and that is difficult for me to answer.
With the STV ballot, I think you should put the candidate (and candidates) at the top that come closest to representing your own play style and views. Once that is done, fill in the rest of the ballot with candidates that you feel represent areas of Eve that need a voice, or ones that you think will give CCP a good, balanced group to talk to.
Still, people want to know who I am voting for and why, and it's a fair enough question. So, this is what I plan on voting:
1) Karen Galeo - Obviously, or I wouldn't be running.
2) James Arget
3) Proclus Diadochu
4) Asayanami Dei
5) Corbexx
We need all five of our wormhole candidates at the top of the ballot in order to get the best chance of landing two - or possibly three - of us on the CSM. I would be very happy working with any of them on CSM9 - their wormhole veterancy and positions in larger alliances provides an excellent compliment to my own experiences in w-space. James gets to be my number 2 because even though his experience and his opinions on topics that are important to me would warrant him a high spot on my ballot, he already has experience with the CSM process as well and can help the rest of us be more effective communicating with CCP.
6) Sugar Kyle - She runs a market hub in Low Sec, does small gang roams, handles logistics for her corporation, and has given some very impressive interviews. She seems like the type that works well with a team, and low sec needs our love as well.
7) Mike Azariah
8) Ali Aras
9) Mynna
10) Mangala Solaris
Much like James, each one of these four are strong enough candidates to make my ballot without being incumbents from CSM8. Mike is always fantastic to listen to on podcasts and interviews, and the casual play style he represents is where new players are frequently sitting as they consider whether or not to subscribe to Eve. Ali has done a great job communicating with the community, and actively reaches out to other groups to talk about important issues with them. She even has an alt in w-space, almost enough to make her an honorary w-space candidate. Mynna is absolutely an expert in his field, and provides a perspective from the view of the huge Null coalitions, and likewise Mangala regularly engages and entertains hundreds of people at a time. I have personally flown with RvB Ganked in the past, and I like the way Mangala does things.
11) Steve Ronuken - This guy is great. I was using his website and apps before I even knew who he was, and his expertise in third party tool development - and push to fix many of the interface hurdles in manufacturing - is something I can gladly get behind.
12) Psianh Auvyander - I have a big interest in small gang warfare, and training new players, and Psianh does them both. I like what I have heard him say in the interviews and panels he's done.
13) Angry Mustache - Yes, he's a block candidate, but I really like what I have heard from his campaign as well. He has had some great points related to getting new players going with a better experience, and shares my concern with getting the UI out of the way of the game.
14) DJ FunkyBacon - Probably the candidate on this list that I have the least in common with, but I think he focuses on some good points.
o7
Most of the time I do not like telling people what to do. I do not mind giving advice, if it is asked for, but I believe in encouraging people to make their own decisions and to form their own opinions. I have already had a few people ask me who I think they should vote for... and that is difficult for me to answer.
With the STV ballot, I think you should put the candidate (and candidates) at the top that come closest to representing your own play style and views. Once that is done, fill in the rest of the ballot with candidates that you feel represent areas of Eve that need a voice, or ones that you think will give CCP a good, balanced group to talk to.
Still, people want to know who I am voting for and why, and it's a fair enough question. So, this is what I plan on voting:
1) Karen Galeo - Obviously, or I wouldn't be running.
2) James Arget
3) Proclus Diadochu
4) Asayanami Dei
5) Corbexx
We need all five of our wormhole candidates at the top of the ballot in order to get the best chance of landing two - or possibly three - of us on the CSM. I would be very happy working with any of them on CSM9 - their wormhole veterancy and positions in larger alliances provides an excellent compliment to my own experiences in w-space. James gets to be my number 2 because even though his experience and his opinions on topics that are important to me would warrant him a high spot on my ballot, he already has experience with the CSM process as well and can help the rest of us be more effective communicating with CCP.
6) Sugar Kyle - She runs a market hub in Low Sec, does small gang roams, handles logistics for her corporation, and has given some very impressive interviews. She seems like the type that works well with a team, and low sec needs our love as well.
7) Mike Azariah
8) Ali Aras
9) Mynna
10) Mangala Solaris
Much like James, each one of these four are strong enough candidates to make my ballot without being incumbents from CSM8. Mike is always fantastic to listen to on podcasts and interviews, and the casual play style he represents is where new players are frequently sitting as they consider whether or not to subscribe to Eve. Ali has done a great job communicating with the community, and actively reaches out to other groups to talk about important issues with them. She even has an alt in w-space, almost enough to make her an honorary w-space candidate. Mynna is absolutely an expert in his field, and provides a perspective from the view of the huge Null coalitions, and likewise Mangala regularly engages and entertains hundreds of people at a time. I have personally flown with RvB Ganked in the past, and I like the way Mangala does things.
11) Steve Ronuken - This guy is great. I was using his website and apps before I even knew who he was, and his expertise in third party tool development - and push to fix many of the interface hurdles in manufacturing - is something I can gladly get behind.
12) Psianh Auvyander - I have a big interest in small gang warfare, and training new players, and Psianh does them both. I like what I have heard him say in the interviews and panels he's done.
13) Angry Mustache - Yes, he's a block candidate, but I really like what I have heard from his campaign as well. He has had some great points related to getting new players going with a better experience, and shares my concern with getting the UI out of the way of the game.
14) DJ FunkyBacon - Probably the candidate on this list that I have the least in common with, but I think he focuses on some good points.
o7
CSM Campaign: Spaceship Politicians
When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a tough, capable space bounty hunter like Faye Valentine or Twilight Suzuka.
... ... OK, I really wanted to be a wizardess, but space bounty hunter was a close second. Even today, I see myself as being far closer to a Kara Thrace than a Laura Roslin. I try to be a direct, down-to earth kind of girl rather than a carefully worded diplomat. So why am I running for CSM?
For the readers who are not as familiar with the Council of Stellar Management, it is a group of fourteen players from across the spectrum of the Eve community. They serve as a focus group for CCP to bounce ideas off of, and sign a Non Disclosure Agreement, so that CCP can feel free to discuss whatever they want with the CSM without worrying about spoiling upcoming expansions or inciting a mob riot based on rumors. In order to make sure that a diverse group of players is chosen, capable of representing multiple play styles and focus areas within Eve, CCP holds elections and everyone with an active account is allowed to vote for the candidate or candidates that they feel best represents the way they play Eve or that holds a view point on certain topics that they want to advance.
I have been following the metagame (things like podcasts, forums, blogs and the like - information and interactions related to Eve but not taking place strictly inside of the game) since I started playing Eve, and had been following CSM8 and the upcoming elections for CSM9 with a great deal of interest. There were quite a few people from the wormhole community who were complaining about a lack of candidates for the CSM9 cycle, and both of the candidates who did look to be serious about running were from major, established alliances from C5/C6 space. I had only the briefest familiarity with them, and although they seemed decent enough I didn't think they would really represent my views and my corporation - we are a smaller corp, and pretty new to our C5 home. Being a newer player myself, I felt that I had a better idea of the interests and challenges facing new players, and specifically new players trying to get into wormhole space. There were not enough candidates, and there weren't any from my end of the wormhole spectrum.
That is why I decided to run for CSM. When I see a problem and think I can handle it, I will take it on and just like in Eve, I am not afraid to take on a challenging fight.
"Fair enough, Karen. So tell me about yourself, and those viewpoints you mentioned. Why should I vote for you?"
At the most fundamental level, I am a wormholer. You should vote for me if you want someone on the CSM who is passionate about w-space and the wormhole meta. I live in a system in wormhole space, I shoot anyone I can catch who isn't part of my alliance and enjoy roaming in a small gang. I love the ever-shifting space jungle that is w-space: the hunt itself, the stalking and spying and sneaking around, is worth far more to me than the killmail you get for a job well done. I enjoy getting a new system, a new chain, a new set of terrain to consider several times a day without having to redeploy my ships to new bases. I do regular PvE activities like site running, data and relic exploration, and mining and gas harvesting in order to pay for all of the expensive ships I lose. I have over a billion isk worth of ships scattered around between high sec and our various starbases, and I only have one alt that flies a tengu. My wallet is thin, but that is because I get to buy all the pretty ships - and if I lose a couple Asteros or a Vigilant, I might grumble a bit but I end up going back and making more money so I can replace it and lose it again. If this playstyle and this viewpoint matches yours, or compliments it, or you think it would be valuable to have someone like that on the CSM, then you should vote for me.
My home system regularly ends up connecting to null sec and low sec as well as the intermittent high sec connections, and I have no problems harassing the residents or taking advantage of those sectors of space as well. I have an industrialist alt and am one of the managers for our corporation's industrial POS, and have more than a few PI alts up and running. I have flown in faction warfare, plexed and hunted plexers, and I have a battleship fitted up and siting in a station in high sec for incursions, if I get in the mood. I also have a couple of throw away gank taloses. If you want a CSM candidate with broad exposure to Eve, then you should vote for me.
Personally, my primary strengths lie in building relationships and communicating with others, and my enthusiasm for and willingness to take ownership of challenges. I have an easy time empathizing with other people and enjoy getting to know the thoughts and concerns of other players. I love working with a team and measure my success by what goals the team accomplishes and how smoothly, instead of what achievements I can stick my name on. However, I am still a very persistent lady, and if I feel that something must be done or a point needs to be made I make sure it happens. When I accept a project, position, or responsibility, I own it and I do everything I can to ensure the best result. This is also why I spend so much time looking into concepts and mechanics in Eve that I am not personally familiar with - I have a need to know what I am or might be dealing with. If that sounds like the kind of person you want on the CSM, then you should vote for me.
... ... OK, I really wanted to be a wizardess, but space bounty hunter was a close second. Even today, I see myself as being far closer to a Kara Thrace than a Laura Roslin. I try to be a direct, down-to earth kind of girl rather than a carefully worded diplomat. So why am I running for CSM?
For the readers who are not as familiar with the Council of Stellar Management, it is a group of fourteen players from across the spectrum of the Eve community. They serve as a focus group for CCP to bounce ideas off of, and sign a Non Disclosure Agreement, so that CCP can feel free to discuss whatever they want with the CSM without worrying about spoiling upcoming expansions or inciting a mob riot based on rumors. In order to make sure that a diverse group of players is chosen, capable of representing multiple play styles and focus areas within Eve, CCP holds elections and everyone with an active account is allowed to vote for the candidate or candidates that they feel best represents the way they play Eve or that holds a view point on certain topics that they want to advance.
I have been following the metagame (things like podcasts, forums, blogs and the like - information and interactions related to Eve but not taking place strictly inside of the game) since I started playing Eve, and had been following CSM8 and the upcoming elections for CSM9 with a great deal of interest. There were quite a few people from the wormhole community who were complaining about a lack of candidates for the CSM9 cycle, and both of the candidates who did look to be serious about running were from major, established alliances from C5/C6 space. I had only the briefest familiarity with them, and although they seemed decent enough I didn't think they would really represent my views and my corporation - we are a smaller corp, and pretty new to our C5 home. Being a newer player myself, I felt that I had a better idea of the interests and challenges facing new players, and specifically new players trying to get into wormhole space. There were not enough candidates, and there weren't any from my end of the wormhole spectrum.
That is why I decided to run for CSM. When I see a problem and think I can handle it, I will take it on and just like in Eve, I am not afraid to take on a challenging fight.
"Fair enough, Karen. So tell me about yourself, and those viewpoints you mentioned. Why should I vote for you?"
At the most fundamental level, I am a wormholer. You should vote for me if you want someone on the CSM who is passionate about w-space and the wormhole meta. I live in a system in wormhole space, I shoot anyone I can catch who isn't part of my alliance and enjoy roaming in a small gang. I love the ever-shifting space jungle that is w-space: the hunt itself, the stalking and spying and sneaking around, is worth far more to me than the killmail you get for a job well done. I enjoy getting a new system, a new chain, a new set of terrain to consider several times a day without having to redeploy my ships to new bases. I do regular PvE activities like site running, data and relic exploration, and mining and gas harvesting in order to pay for all of the expensive ships I lose. I have over a billion isk worth of ships scattered around between high sec and our various starbases, and I only have one alt that flies a tengu. My wallet is thin, but that is because I get to buy all the pretty ships - and if I lose a couple Asteros or a Vigilant, I might grumble a bit but I end up going back and making more money so I can replace it and lose it again. If this playstyle and this viewpoint matches yours, or compliments it, or you think it would be valuable to have someone like that on the CSM, then you should vote for me.
My home system regularly ends up connecting to null sec and low sec as well as the intermittent high sec connections, and I have no problems harassing the residents or taking advantage of those sectors of space as well. I have an industrialist alt and am one of the managers for our corporation's industrial POS, and have more than a few PI alts up and running. I have flown in faction warfare, plexed and hunted plexers, and I have a battleship fitted up and siting in a station in high sec for incursions, if I get in the mood. I also have a couple of throw away gank taloses. If you want a CSM candidate with broad exposure to Eve, then you should vote for me.
Personally, my primary strengths lie in building relationships and communicating with others, and my enthusiasm for and willingness to take ownership of challenges. I have an easy time empathizing with other people and enjoy getting to know the thoughts and concerns of other players. I love working with a team and measure my success by what goals the team accomplishes and how smoothly, instead of what achievements I can stick my name on. However, I am still a very persistent lady, and if I feel that something must be done or a point needs to be made I make sure it happens. When I accept a project, position, or responsibility, I own it and I do everything I can to ensure the best result. This is also why I spend so much time looking into concepts and mechanics in Eve that I am not personally familiar with - I have a need to know what I am or might be dealing with. If that sounds like the kind of person you want on the CSM, then you should vote for me.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Surprise! \o/
There are three things a scout can say that will get a fleet mobilized quicker than anything else in w-space:
I logged back in.
The first report had them at a mining anomaly, but when Tak moved in to get a better look he saw that they were past it, at a cosmic signature; he moved out of scan range and dropped probes, nailed down the signature, pulled his probes and warped in right as the orca jumped back into the C4 from the C4's static, popping the hole. They were closing down their system, and our static was the only other hole on the signature list.
I had shipped into my Vexor Navy, while Nate grabbed his Ishtar and Sabre. The two of us moved to our static hole and cloaked up within jump range, forming the ambush fleet; I logged my covops alt in as well and put her just off the hole in a bomber, giving us a third long point if needed (or extra DPS if they brought the scorpion and it had to die quickly). The 911 ping went out, as well, and we sat on the hole and waited while Takusen watched their POS, where a third pilot was sitting in an orca as well.
They had probes out in their system - it was a fourth pilot in a buzzard, we saw after he jumped the hole into our system. The hole activated, and I almost held my breath for a moment - after about ten second the buzzard dropped the jump cloak, 8km away from my vexor, and reapproached the wormhole.
"I want to yell "BOO!" at him in Local so bad right now," Nate muttered on coms. We laughed. The guy hadn't even scouted out our hole before he jumped back into the C4.
One of our corpmates had responded to the 911 and logged in both of his characters, getting into tengus; I brought my own tengu alt online as well, giving us three of the T3's in reserve. All in all, it had shaped up into a rather nice little gang; I really wanted those orcas, but hopefully the fact that they had a K162 from an occupied C5 would trip enough flags that they'd send an escort for us to duke it out with as well.
It took them long enough to decide. Tak watched the pilots at the POS bring out a pair of orcas, one of the orcas swap to a Tempest Fleet Issue, the Scorpion hovered around... we imagined the conversation they might be having, and patiently waited them out.
Just as Nate was about to have the tengus move up to our static and log out, the buzzard came back through into our hole. We quickly logged the tengus off where they were, in the POS, to keep them from showing up when the buzzard scouted them out; this time he cloaked up and we assume he warped off to have an actual look around. And we remembered that one of our pilots had gone AFK for the night with her pod floating in a POS. Whoops. >.>
That didn't deter them, though, and Takusen reported that both orcas had entered warp, heading towards our static.
The scorpion was still behind at the POS.
"Alright, log the tengus back in and get to the C4. Vexors, jump through and hold cloak."
I was the only vexor in the ambush fleet, but I wasn't about to nit pick with explosions to be had; Nate and I jumped our ships through, Taksuen warped his loki back to the K162 side of the wormhole, and after dropping a warp bubble on our side of the hole Nate ran his sabre through as well. I put my tengu back in fleet even before the e-warp ended, and immediately jumped to our side of the static. Hitting the bubble, but the tengus weren't going through; they were there to keep the orcas from breaking through and getting loose in our system.
The two orcas landed on grid, and the sabre dropped a bubble immediately. Nate and I dropped the jump cloak and kicked out our sentry drones, getting the DPS going on the primary while pointing both of the orcas as well; Takusen doubled up his scram with my point on the secondary orca, and we got to work.
The scorpion landed 100km away from the action and began locking us up to try and jam; the primary orca jumped through the hole, but between the tengus and and the HIC bubble it quickly jumped back into the C4. I pushed my bomber through the static into the C4 and began burning towards the scorpion, afterburner on; I was hoping I could point it and keep it in the fight as well.
The scorpion got a few jams off, but I was able to relock the second orca and reapply my point before Nate had to refresh the sabre's bubble; the second orca jumped into our C5 while we were getting the first one into structure. The bubble in the C5 had dropped, so the orca began aligning away from the hole; the three tengus quickly pounced on it, and just as quickly we realized that none of the three had a point on them.
I had Karen in my vexor on my PC's main screen, my tengu on the second monitor, and my alt's bomber on my laptop; the bomber wasn't too far from the hole at this point, so I turned her around and jumped back into the C5. She burned towards the orca and began getting a lock so I could put her long point on it; it had taken too long to get her into the system, though, and the orca made it into warp before the lock finalized. It was that close.
Back in the C4, the first orca was dead and the scorpion had warped back to their POS; we pulled our drones in and orbited the K162 just in case. In the C5, we gave chase.
"Did you see where it warped to?" Nate asked. Of course I was watching it warp away, but Jij answered first. "Yea, it looks like they warped to the sun." "Well, warp to the sun then and finish it off."
So I warped my bomber to planet 1. *shifty eyes*
To be fair, both planet one and the sun were in line with the warp path the orca took, but personally I wouldn't warp to a system's sun unless I had friends waiting there for me. I also had my bomber land at 100k from the planet's warp point; I almost never warp to a planet at zero.
Orcas are sloooow. My bomber was already on grid, and I was already feeling slightly disappointed that the grid was empty, when the orca warped in and landed. It turns out the pilot had warped in at 0, so I called it out on coms (over the report of nothing at the sun) and burned in towards it. I missed the window between end-of-warp and cloak activation, so I couldn't lock the orca, but three tengus, Tak's loki, and the sabre all landed on the planet at 0 and quickly bumped the orca out of cloak. It exploded.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22734226
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22734224
We got the pods as well, at a couple hundred million each.
It was an hour after I had originally told myself I had to go to bed and logged out the first time, which had already been an hour after my bedtime, so although Nate invited the pilots left in the C4 to chat us up in our public channel I only hung around a little before I took off for bed. It had certainly been worth staying up.
o7
- "Miners on d-scan, in an ore site."
- "Hey, an active orca."
- "Carrier on grid, alone."
I logged back in.
The first report had them at a mining anomaly, but when Tak moved in to get a better look he saw that they were past it, at a cosmic signature; he moved out of scan range and dropped probes, nailed down the signature, pulled his probes and warped in right as the orca jumped back into the C4 from the C4's static, popping the hole. They were closing down their system, and our static was the only other hole on the signature list.
I had shipped into my Vexor Navy, while Nate grabbed his Ishtar and Sabre. The two of us moved to our static hole and cloaked up within jump range, forming the ambush fleet; I logged my covops alt in as well and put her just off the hole in a bomber, giving us a third long point if needed (or extra DPS if they brought the scorpion and it had to die quickly). The 911 ping went out, as well, and we sat on the hole and waited while Takusen watched their POS, where a third pilot was sitting in an orca as well.
They had probes out in their system - it was a fourth pilot in a buzzard, we saw after he jumped the hole into our system. The hole activated, and I almost held my breath for a moment - after about ten second the buzzard dropped the jump cloak, 8km away from my vexor, and reapproached the wormhole.
"I want to yell "BOO!" at him in Local so bad right now," Nate muttered on coms. We laughed. The guy hadn't even scouted out our hole before he jumped back into the C4.
One of our corpmates had responded to the 911 and logged in both of his characters, getting into tengus; I brought my own tengu alt online as well, giving us three of the T3's in reserve. All in all, it had shaped up into a rather nice little gang; I really wanted those orcas, but hopefully the fact that they had a K162 from an occupied C5 would trip enough flags that they'd send an escort for us to duke it out with as well.
It took them long enough to decide. Tak watched the pilots at the POS bring out a pair of orcas, one of the orcas swap to a Tempest Fleet Issue, the Scorpion hovered around... we imagined the conversation they might be having, and patiently waited them out.
Just as Nate was about to have the tengus move up to our static and log out, the buzzard came back through into our hole. We quickly logged the tengus off where they were, in the POS, to keep them from showing up when the buzzard scouted them out; this time he cloaked up and we assume he warped off to have an actual look around. And we remembered that one of our pilots had gone AFK for the night with her pod floating in a POS. Whoops. >.>
That didn't deter them, though, and Takusen reported that both orcas had entered warp, heading towards our static.
The scorpion was still behind at the POS.
"Alright, log the tengus back in and get to the C4. Vexors, jump through and hold cloak."
I was the only vexor in the ambush fleet, but I wasn't about to nit pick with explosions to be had; Nate and I jumped our ships through, Taksuen warped his loki back to the K162 side of the wormhole, and after dropping a warp bubble on our side of the hole Nate ran his sabre through as well. I put my tengu back in fleet even before the e-warp ended, and immediately jumped to our side of the static. Hitting the bubble, but the tengus weren't going through; they were there to keep the orcas from breaking through and getting loose in our system.
The two orcas landed on grid, and the sabre dropped a bubble immediately. Nate and I dropped the jump cloak and kicked out our sentry drones, getting the DPS going on the primary while pointing both of the orcas as well; Takusen doubled up his scram with my point on the secondary orca, and we got to work.
The scorpion landed 100km away from the action and began locking us up to try and jam; the primary orca jumped through the hole, but between the tengus and and the HIC bubble it quickly jumped back into the C4. I pushed my bomber through the static into the C4 and began burning towards the scorpion, afterburner on; I was hoping I could point it and keep it in the fight as well.
The scorpion got a few jams off, but I was able to relock the second orca and reapply my point before Nate had to refresh the sabre's bubble; the second orca jumped into our C5 while we were getting the first one into structure. The bubble in the C5 had dropped, so the orca began aligning away from the hole; the three tengus quickly pounced on it, and just as quickly we realized that none of the three had a point on them.
I had Karen in my vexor on my PC's main screen, my tengu on the second monitor, and my alt's bomber on my laptop; the bomber wasn't too far from the hole at this point, so I turned her around and jumped back into the C5. She burned towards the orca and began getting a lock so I could put her long point on it; it had taken too long to get her into the system, though, and the orca made it into warp before the lock finalized. It was that close.
Back in the C4, the first orca was dead and the scorpion had warped back to their POS; we pulled our drones in and orbited the K162 just in case. In the C5, we gave chase.
"Did you see where it warped to?" Nate asked. Of course I was watching it warp away, but Jij answered first. "Yea, it looks like they warped to the sun." "Well, warp to the sun then and finish it off."
So I warped my bomber to planet 1. *shifty eyes*
To be fair, both planet one and the sun were in line with the warp path the orca took, but personally I wouldn't warp to a system's sun unless I had friends waiting there for me. I also had my bomber land at 100k from the planet's warp point; I almost never warp to a planet at zero.
Orcas are sloooow. My bomber was already on grid, and I was already feeling slightly disappointed that the grid was empty, when the orca warped in and landed. It turns out the pilot had warped in at 0, so I called it out on coms (over the report of nothing at the sun) and burned in towards it. I missed the window between end-of-warp and cloak activation, so I couldn't lock the orca, but three tengus, Tak's loki, and the sabre all landed on the planet at 0 and quickly bumped the orca out of cloak. It exploded.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22734226
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22734224
We got the pods as well, at a couple hundred million each.
It was an hour after I had originally told myself I had to go to bed and logged out the first time, which had already been an hour after my bedtime, so although Nate invited the pilots left in the C4 to chat us up in our public channel I only hung around a little before I took off for bed. It had certainly been worth staying up.
o7
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