CCP's New Bounty System Revealed

Evolving Empire

This is just a list of changes that could improve empire space in a variety of ways. These items are not arranged in any particular order. They are numbered for ease of discussion. Some items may contradict other items, thus the entire list isn't being advocated, rather it is a discussion tool. Some of the items on the list are my own ideas, many are from others around the EVEosphere.

Edit: Added #21, added #13f, and altered #10 (2011-10-29). Added #22 (2011-10-31).

1. Corporate-owned planetary customs offices. Obviously this one is already in the pipe from CCP, but I wanted to mention it because it is an excellent idea. The main excitement here is that it brings a degree of sovereignty to lowsec, where corporations and alliances can effectively control planets. This, of course, will lead to conflict. In EVE, conflict is good. Conflict drives the game.
2. CONCORD in low security space. This is tied in tightly with #1 above. If a corporation/alliance controls 60% or more of the customs offices in a system, they can turn on CONCORD in that system. This would not raise the security level of the system, nor would it affect players with low security status, but it would offer a level of protection against aggression. CONCORD response delay would still be tied to the security level of the system. This offers more sovereignty like control in Empire space. Players would be notified of CONCORDs activeness in low-security system when a player approaches a jump gate leading to such systems.
3. Insurance voided if killed by faction police or CONCORD. The CONCORD mechanics should not be changed. CONCORD should not be made stronger or faster. Rather, the use of insurance to mitigate losses while ganking should be removed.
4. Empire space moats. Every racial region is surrounded by a two to three system ribbon of lowsec. Even the alliances between races are shaky and a no-man's land is necessary. Travelling from Gallente to Caldari space requires passing through two to three jumps of lowsec space. Travelling from Minmatar to Gallente space requires passing through two to three jumps of lowsec space. Shortest routes are still bottlenecks (e.g. Rancer), but ensure there are a number of choices for longer routes.
5. Variable system security levels. Every system in empire space can have its security level change over time dependent upon player activity.
   1. The more missions completed in a system, the more lawful the region. The security level increases.
   2. The fewer missions completed in a system, the more lawless the region. The security level decreases.
   3. The more site and belt rats killed in a system, the more lawful the region. The security level increases.
   4. The fewer site and belt rats killed in a system, the more lawless the region. The security level decreases.
   5. An increase in player vs. player aggression decreases security level. A decrease in player vs. player aggression increases security level.
   6. Ship losses which do not draw CONCORD or faction police (e.g. combat due to war declarations) are not used in the security level calculations.
   7. The average hourly (or daily) population of a system is factored into the calculation. Thus, it would be quite difficult to alter the security level of systems like Jita, Hek or Aldrat.
6. War declaration mechanics need to be changed. Many ideas have been proffered, but the following is what I favour:
   1. Flat 10M ISK fee to declare war on a corporation. Flat 250M ISK fee to declare war on an alliance. The fee does not increase if the declared upon already have wars they are waging (e.g., decshields have no effect on war declaration costs.)
   2. Every war will run for a minimum of two (2) days (not including the 24 hour prep/warning time.)
   3. At the end of those two (2) days, the declared upon can end the war by paying whatever it is the declaree paid to instigate the war. If no payment is made, the war continues for another four (4) days.
   4. At the end of a six-day war, the war may be extended for another six (6) days for double the initial costs paid. Wars may continue to be extended every six days for double the previous cost. Thus an initial cost of 250M ISK is needed to declare war on an alliance. At the end of six days, the war is extended for another six days for 500M ISK. At the end of that six day period, if the declarer wishes to extend again, the cost would be 1B ISK.
   5. Once an alliance has had war declared upon them, no corporation in that alliance may leave until the war has come to close. Any corporation not in an alliance that has had war declared upon it may not join an alliance until the war has come to a close. Players may leave a corporation that has had war declared upon it (or its alliance), but no players shall be able to join that corporation until the war has come to a close.
   6. For every seven days that a corporation or alliance has had non-mutual war declared upon it, the corporation (or corporations in an alliance) can bank a ceasefire. A ceasefire can be used to put a war on hold for a 24 hour period, to allow a corporation or alliance some breathing room to perform their regular duties. Ceasefires can only be spent once every seven (7) days per corporation or alliance. When a ceasefire is spent, it is effective 24 hours later.
7. Level four missions appear less frequently in high security space. Only 25% of level four missions acquired from an agent in high security space will appear in high security space. The other 75% will appear in a nearby low security system.
8. Repair drones that will repair the ship from which they were launched. Give solo mission-runners and industrialists a little added protection.
9. Improved bounty system.
   1. Bounties are collected when a corpse plus a matching bounty certificate are delivered to a CONCORD office.
   2. Bounty certificates are handed out randomly, for a fee, at a CONCORD bounty office. Each certificate lists one player upon which a reward for their death is active. An account may not purchase a bounty certificate at a rate of more than one per week. The random nature makes it difficult for people to collect on their own bounties.
   3. Bounty certificates may be sold via contract.
   4. Bounty certificates have an expiration date of one month after they were initially issued.
   5. There can only be one bounty certificate active in the game per player bounty at any time.
10. Ice is only found in certain types of gravimetric sites. Ice is no longer a static location in specific regional systems. The sites spawn and respawn per normal gravimetric site mechanics. This makes ice somewhat safer to mine, makes it moderately more difficult for botters, and adds some small time expenditure and difficulty in reaping the rewards.
11. Base market taxation, brokerage fees and contract fees on the security level of a system. Taxes are higher in 1.0 systems than they are in 0.1 systems. This is to reflect the degree of expenditure in securing systems.
12. Create combat industrials. Ships that have lower cargo space and mining yields, yet can equip some measure of greater defense and small offense.
13. Create newbie sub-regions.
    1. Create four small areas of space, one per race, that are newbie starting areas. Empire space can be reached from these areas, but these areas cannot be reached from empire space.
    2. Each area would consist of 7 systems of highsec space and 3 systems of lowsec space.
    3. Newbies can combat newbies as per normal rules. Newbies are protected from experienced players (i.e., high skill point players) as they learn the game, since these areas are inaccessible from empire space.
    4. This allows newbies to learn the game in a reasonably level-playing-field environment. It teaches them what to expect out in empire space and beyond.
    5. The tutorial missions are completed in this zone. These are the only missions available, and once exhausted there are no more missions to be acquired.
    6. Once a character reaches 1M skill points, they are automatically ejected to empire space.
14. Allow corporations to flag themselves as teaching corporations. This would require an application process. The applying corporation would supply to CCP links to substantial web resources proving that they are primarily a teaching organization. Only highsec and lowsec corporations would be eligible (i.e., most of their POSes are located in empire space.)
    1. It costs double to wardec a teaching corporation.
    2. Teaching corporations cannot wardec another corporation/alliance unless it is mutual.
    3. Teaching corporations are allowed to flag 25% of their membership as mentors, teachers and staff.
    4. Members of teaching corporations are forced to leave the corporation after six (6) months (members flagged as teachers or mentors are exempt.)
    5. Training corporations have access to recruit from newbie sub-regions (see #13 above.)
    6. CCP also advertises teaching corporations heavily in the newbie sub-regions.
15. Security status loss, due to aggression mechanics, are related to aggression activity over time. If you agress rarely (i.e., perhaps once per week), your loss is at the lowest level. If you agress frequently (i.e., perhaps once or many times per day) your loss is greatly increased.
16. Decrease rewards from high security-based incursions. A 10% reduction.
17. Decrease mining and planetary interaction yields from high security space. A 10% reduction.
18. Increase high-security POS related costs. Increased fuel requirements. Increased material usage requirements for T2 module (and above) production.
19. Third parties become aggressable. Third party reppers are immediately agressable, without penalty, to anyone who can freely aggress the person they are repairing. Any ship that an aggressed ship docks into becomes aggressable, as well as every ship currently docked in that ship.
20. Allow stealth bombers to launch bombs in empire space. If smart bombs can be fired in empire space, then so should bomb launchers.
21. Limited missions per agent. Each agent has a mission counter. If anyone turns in a mission, that counter is decreased. When the counter reaches zero, that agent will no longer hand out missions. (They will still honour any missions outstanding and completed after the counter reaches zero.) The mission counter is reset weekly.
22. Transferable kill rights. Kill rights are a transferable item, which can be traded to players or sold on the contract market. Allows weaker players to transfer kill rights to more powerful players, so that appropriate punishment can be eked out. The kill rights interface to be upgraded so that the offender knows who is in possession of their kill rights (so they can take appropriate defensive actions.)

The Future of the CSM - Reorganization

Hilmar, CEO of CCP, isn't entirely happy with the CSM. As most of you are aware, Eurogamer had quite an informative interview with Hilmar. Many questions. Many answers. At the end of the interview, CCP's CEO was asked about the CSM. Hilmar's answer wasn't particularly surprising to me, but it was surprising that he made this particular opinion known publicly at this point in time.

"... some of my concerns right now relate to whether the CSM is maybe focused on a particular aspect of the game and I'm starting to get feedback from players that they worry the CSM is too pre-occupied by a certain playstyle. That might mean we may need to change the structure." (emphasis mine)

So, what about the CSM? Hilmar and the CCP certainly blame them for a large portion of the unrest and anger this summer. The Mittani certainly cheerlead a bunch of it, even instigated some of its continuance (with his little media circus in September, for instance.) His methods of getting his ideas accepted were confrontational, to say the least. Certainly not a method of negotiation and dialogue that CCP appreciated. There's no proof of any wrongdoing, but I'd bet that there are people in CCP that suspect some within the CSM are responsible for the summer's damaging leaks.

The CSM was meant as a conduit between the playerbase and CCP. It was meant as a sounding board for new ideas. It wasn't meant to be a confrontational, disruptive, and destructive tool to be wielded against CCP policy.

(From our perspective, the CSM did good, and got CCP to change course, return back to FiS, I'm sure many in CCP, especially management, views the entire ordeal much differently.)

No doubt Hilmar and the rest of his management team are of a mind that this summer's debacle cannot be repeated again. The CSM will need to be reorganized, if not outright cancelled.

There's really only two possibilities. CSM6 will be the last Council of Stellar Management. Or there'll be a restructuring of the CSM, such that there'll be a certain number of seats per security status of space -- highsec, lowsec, wormhole, and nullsec. I personally don't see CCP killing off the CSM idea just yet.

I'm figuring the following configuration most likely (if they stay with nine CSM members):

1. 3 nullsec candidates
2. 3 highsec candidates
3. 2 lowsec candidates
4. 1 wormhole candidate

To ensure there's no shenanigans, CCP determines the status of a candidate, based on sovereignty and POS locations, of the alliance the candidate belongs.

Candidates must be a member of an alliance for at least 6 months to be eligible to run for the CSM.

If a candidate's alliance owns null sov, then that candidate is a nullsec candidate. If a candidate's alliance owns a POS in a WH, that candidate is a Wormhole canidate. Alliance owns a POS in lowsec, candidate is a lowsec candidate. Same for highsec.

(Nullsec sovereignty trumps everything. Wormhole POS trumps lowsec and highsec. Lowsec POS trumps highsec POS.)

The CSM alternates will just be the highest vote-getters from the remaining candidates, not dependent upon their alliance location.

Russian Roulette - CCP vs. Goonswarm

Highsec players have been complaining about being "forced" into a style of play they don't enjoy, that they would prefer not to partake in, for years, even when they were fully aware of the type of game they were signing up for, even when the stories of the scams and ganks may have been what drew them to the game in the first place. High irony. CCP, thankfully, has never really paid them much heed, beyond beefing up CONCORD (such that they are now automatic disciplinary machines [minus a small security status dependent response delay]) and telling them to harden the fuck up.

But, highsec players are surprisingly vocal when it comes to complaining about any disruption to their style of play. This year, CCP has begun to take notice. Perhaps the need to retain players and attract new ones has decided this change of direction, this move from the HTFU attitude of old.

The HTFU years, the heydey of CCP, are long over. The hardcore Hilmar the Viking, fan of everything devious and diabolical about EVE Online, has been replaced with Hilmar the businessman, willing to forgo the old harsh reality for a kinder, gentler EVE, now that the financial demands on the company are so much greater. The new model? That of consensual PvP for the highsec player. Already there have been changes in that direction, and concerns expressed by Hilmar the Businessman about other aspects of nonconsenual PvP in carebear territory.

Flying in Space (FiS) development may be back. And everyone is happy and excited and optimistic. And that's all good. I'm happy and excited for new FiS development as well. But there's this undercurrent of urgency on the part of CCP, that player retention is tied to highsec and changes need to be made. Radical changes. And without them, CCP will continue to bleed subscriptions. They seem ready to do something rash, when perhaps there's nothing at all that needs to be done.

Thus The Mittani (CSM Chairman) and his Goonswarm enter the picture.

There seems to be a game of Russian Roulette being played. The only two people at the table are Hilmar and The Mittani. Each seem to be pushing towards something from which the other can't back down. Hilmar is playing more subtle hands here, tossing out hints and innuendo. The Mittani is running up and down the halls, arms flailing wildly, daring, screaming at CCP to do something not to Goonswarm's (or the Sandbox's) benefit. What is at stake seems to be high security space and how it will interact with the Sandbox. Will highsec continue to be a member of the Sandbox, or will it be removed from the combat, ship-to-ship, aspect of the player-driven content model?

Already, the war declaration system has been gutted. Recent policy changes make it a very simple process for any corporation to avoid any war declaration called against them, either through alliance hopping or setting up low cost corporate decshields to protect alliances (low cost decshield, high cost wardec.) This new change of policy apparently passed through the CSM with nary a word of dissent. Even if the CSM chairman could give a rat's ass about high security space, he has always expressed the opinion that the sandbox should not be fucked with. Yet, this policy change removes all corporations (but especially highsec corporations) from a major component of non-consensual PvP, one of the cornerstones of the sandbox philosophy.

So what gives? The CSM either cares deeply for the sandbox, or it doesn't.

So what does The Mittani do? He wages highsec piracy (ganking) upon Gallente ice miners. Now, I'm all for this. It is what EVE is about, after all. But what about the timing? With CCP already giving concessions to the screaming carebears, does making them scream ever louder help the situation? Hilmar has already suggested that CONCORD needs buffing to curb ganking. No word yet on whether this is something CCP is currently working on, but Arnar Hrafn Gylfason (Senior Producer for EVE Online) readily agreed with Hilmar. Two top CCP dudes agreeing that ganking needs to be curbed. Take from that what you will. If it happens it will be the final nail in the coffin and non-consenual PvP in highsec will be officially dead.

The Mittani, whatever agenda he might have with his Gallente Ice Interdiction (and the agenda certainly isn't financial -- Goons were fucking rich before the interdiction and they'll be fucking rich after the interdiction), it's certainly working to change the sandbox, maybe even removing one entire section of space from having to participate in an important aspect of it (i.e., combat.)

I'm beginning to think that The Mittani's agenda is scorched earth. That he decided sometime in August that he was leaving EVE Online after his CSM term was complete, but that before he left, he was going to leave EVE in such a state, that he would feel absolutely no compulsion to return. The agenda is to force CCP into fucking with the sandbox, change the face of EVE for good. He'll leave the game come early 2012, and a good portion of the Drone Clusterfuck Federation will follow. And there'll be no desire for any of them to return to the game they all just fucked up, left in a shambles.

How much more meta do you get than that? You don't scam some corporation out of 50 billion ISK, you actually scam the game developer into fucking destroying their own creation.

It's a thought and a possibility, at any rate. He certainly seems hellbent on forcing CCP into some highsec changes that aren't going to bode well for the game overall.

Or The Mittani is a bull in a china shop and is actually as unsubtle as he appears to be, and has no idea what he's doing or the consequences for the game his actions might have.

Do people honestly believe that CCP is not seriously considering/or actually in the process of de-PvPing highsec? Consensualizing it?

The Goonswarm Guide to Highsec Ganking

What follows is an excellent guide to ganking, specifically the ganking of mining and industrial ships. This guide was written by The Mittani and his Goonswarm directorate. It originally appeared on the Kugutsumen Forums, but it deserves to be disseminated far and wide. (And I'm replicating it here for my own easy perusal, since I'm not a big fan of the Kugutsumen website.)

I've spent some time cleaning up the text, some reformatting, removing specific references to their Oxytope initiative (so the document isn't dated when Oxygeddon ends), but no changes to the overall content -- Goons are the experts, far be it for me to question their tactics and expertise in this area. This guide covers the manipulation of CONCORD spawns, ship fittings, newbie tactics, and ganking while at negative five security status.

EDIT: additional, new information added to the Mittani's Hard-Won Lessons From Being -5 section.

--------------------------------

What follows is a bunch of information, the directorate wrote a ton of words, and we're including it here so that you guys have a rough guide, especially if you are a newbie who has never danced with CONCORD.

Logistics and Supply Routes

If you want to make money, decide where you plan to gank, and then stock the nearest hub with your gank ships and modules. If you need someone to move stuff for you, be polite, ask in your corp channel or use Red Frog. Use a courier contract so it's as easy as possible for whoever is helping you out.

Dealing with CONCORD

Ganking relies on doing enough damage before CONCORD shows up and ends the party. That means if CONCORD is already in the belt, you can't gank -- they will instantly jam you as soon as you fire. So if CONCORD ships are already in the belt, you need to move them out so you can get the full amount of ganking time.

The first CONCORD spawn of the day will arrive 6 seconds early. It takes 6 seconds for CONCORD to warp once they are alerted (alert time varies by sec status, anywhere from near immediate to 15+ seconds), but if they haven't been spawned they will merely spawn right on top of you. If you're the first person to gank in the system that day you need to prep the system. Go get a newbie ship and shoot something in a non-ice belt or shoot a pos. Once you're destroyed, the system is ready.

Clearing Up a CONCORD Spawn

Clearing up your own CONCORD spawn, so other people can make their own attack runs, is actually really easy. Dock at the closest station to the belt you just ganked in, then immediately undock in a newbie ship and don't move -- simply drift for 30 seconds with your docking immunity. This will pull CONCORD to you, and since you have your docking immunity sentry guns will not kill you before CONCORD gets there. If multiple people participated in a gank, they should all do this at the same time.

Please make sure to clean up your own CONCORD spawns whenever possible -- it makes life easier for everyone else and really isn't very difficult.

Clearing Other People's CONCORD Spawns

Sometimes lazy gankers will leave a spawn in a belt. You need to get rid of that before you gank, or you'll be instagibbed when you gank.

CONCORD usually only spawns one fleet per system. Once spawned, they will travel from place to place dealing with anything that shoots something they shouldn't. That means you just need to summon CONCORD somewhere else: take a newbieship in an alt and plink something - a GSC, or the staging pos. Just don't do it near faction police or sentry guns, so you don't die before CONCORD gets there.

If two people gank at once, however, there will be two fleets. It appears that the closest spawn is the one that moves: ergo get closer to the spawn you want to move (nearby belt, nearby pos, whatever) than the one you don't, then summon it. If all else fails, use safespots just off-grid. Don't worry about CONCORD being close: they take a flat 6 seconds to warp regardless of distance.

Idiot's Guide to Ganking

1. Add CONCORD to your overview. Seriously. Otherwise you're not going to notice CONCORD is already in the belt and get waxed immediately.
2. Make a hotkey for engaging drones. I like to use F9, then line up all of my mods I'm going to fire next to it, so I can mash, say, f4,f5,-f9. Drones are a key part of your dps and you need them engaged asap.
3. Do you have a high enough sec status to fly around in the system without getting gibbed by the faction police? Great! You should probably stock up the SMA with a few ships while you still can, and train a Mr. Happystandings (see below). If not, see the section below on life as a pirate.
4. A gank is 'lined up' with an alt. This alt futzes around the belt, and then sits next to a juicy-looking target. Your ganking ship then warps to your alt. If the miner is watching, they may notice you sitting next to them and get the frack out - if that happens, just line up a new gank. Even non-bots only pay attention every 10m or so.
5. Warp to your alt. Launch drones, then come to a complete stop (if you're in a blaster ship). Lock the target, then fire/tp/scram/web, then hit your engage drones hotkey (you made one, right?). Now, watch and wait. Once the ship blows up, use your alt (the one you lined up the gank with) to scoop the loot, then loot your own ship when CONCORD blows it up. Warp both your pod and your alt back to the closest station.
6. Immediately board a rookie ship or shuttle with your ganking alt, and undock. Don't touch anything after you do: wait for CONCORD to blow you up. You've just cleared CONCORD from the belt so the next guy can start his attack run.
7. Crap up local something fierce.

Alts

If your sec status is too low to fly ships around without getting killed by the faction police, you need an alt, Mr. Happystandings, and a friendly POS (or Orca) in your ganking system. However, you need to get those ships to the POS. This is where Mr. Happystandings comes in -- this is an alt that can sit in the hull and online all the mods, but you don't gank with. You need to be able to online all the mods -- you don't have time to online them as an outlaw. Your best bet is probably going to be another character you have that doesn't have great gunnery skills or the ship types you need, but has some -- this way you can quickly train up the necessary skills to online everything.

Alternatively, if you want to go madbombing, you can roll a new alt. Since all this alt needs to do is have BS I/II depending on your race, and energy pulse weapons I, it can be done really quickly. Then, you make two more, and you have a dedicated smartbombing team!

Ships and Fittings

Guns -- Thorax, Brutix, Rupture, Hurricane, Dominix

In general, a Thorax with good skills will kill a Mackinaw anywhere, provided you don't frack up. The Brutix is for that odd Hulk that insists on not getting out, while the Dominix is for those especially stubborn Hulks that try to fit a fuckoff tank and live. Don't let them live. The general way you fit these is simple: the lows are damage mods, the highs are guns (filled with a few rounds of faction ammo.) Depending on your budget and market availability, you can use T1, meta 2-3, or T2. I recommend T2 damage mods: they're cheap, and they add a ton of oomph. The mids should be a mix of the following: web, scram (keep them in place on the off chance this isn't a bot), target painter (Hulks and Macks have small sigs) and/or tracking computers.

Alpha -- Tempest

If you're rich and lazy, a Tempest can alpha a Mackinaw easily, so you don't really care if CONCORD is in the belt with you or not. Only recommended for those with ISK to blow on an unnecessarily expensive hull. (Or for a team-gank of an Orca, but there are better ways to accomplish that.)

In essence, this Tempest fit contains gallium cannons (republic fleet EMP) in the high slots, in the mid slots sensor boosters, tracking computers, a warp disruptor (T2 preferably) and a passive targeter, and in the low slots gyrostabs. This tends to do 7-9k alpha with decent skills and implants. This is enough for almost all Mackinaws, but not most Hulks. Plan accordingly.

In .6 and .5 systems you may get a second shot off. This means you should lock two Mackinaws at once, blow one out of the sky, then start mashing f1 again to try to get shot #2 off. I've never actually pulled this off: one time I got CONCORD'd, the other the second guy warped off in time. To avoid this you should fit a warp disruptor and scram the second guy after you fire your first shot. Since this is artillery, come in at ~20km rather than at zero like with blaster ships.

Smartbombs -- Typhoon, Armageddon

A favorite is the 8-smartbomb battleship, combined with implants and cap boosters (to overcome CONCORD neuting) that can take out every Mackinaw in a 5km radius. These won't be that useful once you become known for the tactic to the miners and industrialists in a region, but by god it is fun to kill 5 Macks at a time.

Mittani's Newbie Guide

Orca (key since it allows you to pop Brutixes out of your SMA in a safespot, when your pilot is a pirate, and generally can cart 10+ brutixes and fittings around the galaxy). This can be replaced by a guy that can online all the mods on a brutix, who ferries your brutixes out to the POS SMA.
Prowler/Warpin ship - Salvager, Cloak (not needed but handy), Passive Targ + Ship Scanner (nbd for Macks, key for Hulks)

[Brutix, Gank]
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Warp Scrambler I
Target Painter I
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Gauss Field Balancer I
Gauss Field Balancer I
Gauss Field Balancer I
Gauss Field Balancer I
Gauss Field Balancer I

Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]

5x Hammerhead I

Ammo


• 28 rounds of Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M, maybe a fifth salvo if you're going after a Hulk in .5 and feeling lucky.

Implants


• Squire PG4 (lets you use 2x Collision Accelerators easily [lower skilled pilots may still have problems and need to drop one of the accelerators])
• Deadeye ZGM1000 (5% damage, woop)
• Gunslinger CX-2 (5% damage, woopwoop)

I mostly designed this setup to go after Hulks. Macks are a certain kill regardless of what they happen to have. I comfortably whacked Macks using an identical (but 5-gun) Thorax setup, but I bring Brutixes in my Orca because it's impossible to kill a Hulk in a Thorax. My Orca has stacks of 100 of each relevant module bulk-bought in Jita. After each gank, my Prowler (which is 10km off the target) blunders over, loots the dead barge (often very profitable if the miners drop) and recovers guns from the gank-Brutix wreck. This can make your ganking equipment last a lot longer between Jita runs.

Key tips: Drones must be told to aggress, have a hotkey. Warp in, approach target (should be within 3km or less if you're not bad at EVE), pop drones, commence targetting, activate everything while targetting. Have heat on (duh). When the targetting finishes you'll get the CONCORD warning, pres butan and mash your drone aggro hotkey. This is really low-stress with Macks. Turn turrets and effects on so you can see which barges are actively shieldboosting and mining. Lower your resolution and use small windows because frack it, you're in hisec, there's no need for a high-input setup. Show all brackets always so you can see if CONCORD is in the belt.

Hulks can be a real bitch in .6 if they have any kind of tank, as CONCORD sometimes spawns too fast. You can usually get a Hulk in .5 solo with no trouble though. Brutix + Thorax or god forbid 2x Brutix can nuke any Hulk in .6 or .5.

Having a warp-in ship is key, as it gives you something to loot with and you can comfortably line up your next gank while your ganker is hiding in a station waiting for his cooldown to end.

Multiple Ice Belt Systems Are Fucking Amazing: I didn't know these existed. They're paradise. Literally paradise. You need to do nothing to move CONCORD around, just gank in one belt and then the other. It takes any CONCORD prepping out of the ganking equation.


Spooky's Guide To Destroyer Ganking

You might not have the skills for something like a brutix yet, don't despair! Put some alts/empty character slots to use and train destroyers! Doesn't take long to get into a destroyer, and while you're mucking around in them you can train up to a Brutix.

[Catalyst, Gank]
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Ion Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Gauss Field Balancer I
Gauss Field Balancer I
Gauss Field Balancer I

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

This will do ~500 damage a volley. In 0.6 sec three of these will take down most Mackinaws. For 0.7 you'll need four.

Outlaw Life - The Party is not Over When You Hit -5

People think that once you're -5 (or -3.5 or whatever) you need to stop ganking and rebuild your sec status. This is not the case. All you need to do is change your MO slightly and you can continue to gank away forever. This is actually one of the most fun parts of ganking, as you throw Brutix after Brutix at miners and just don't give a frack.

When you hit -5 (actually anywhere from -3.5 to -4.5 depending on what system you're in), things do change. About 6 seconds after you enter any grid when you are in a ship, faction police warp in to start shooting you. This includes when you're in a POS -- faction police shoot through shields, just like CONCORD. This means you can no longer idle in space waiting to line up your gank. It doesn't mean you can't gank though: once you get the hang of it it's almost as easy (and more exciting: got to run from the po-po) than standard ganking.

Important things to keep in mind with the police:

1. Police jam. Weakly (5 strength) but it's there. If you get jammed during a gank, you flubbed it: fit and overheat appropriate ECCM IIs. However they're not like CONCORD: when they're on the field the gank is not over.
2. Police web, then scram. This means if they land on grid while you're aligning for warp, don't panic. However, this means you better have already started warp.
3. Police get there sooner than CONCORD. This means you need to fit a tank: you have to survive the police until CONCORD gets there. This means fit a DCII at a minimum.

The basic procedure for ganking while -5 is this:

First, you don't have the margin for error you usually do. You need a tank, and you can't set up your gank perfectly. That means you need some overkill: use a brutix instead of a thorax.

To begin, fit and insure the ship in station with your ganker. Then, TRADE (not contract: contracting voids insurance) the ship to an alt. This alt needs to either fly an Orca or be able to online all of the modules (at once - if your fit is tight on PG giving it to your alt may offline a gun). This alt flies the ship out to the pos, where it loads it into the SMA or leaves it floating in space. Undock your ganker in a pod, warp to the ship. DO NOT BOARD IT UNTIL YOU HAVE A GANK LINED UP.

Line up your gank as usual: find an oblivious Mackinaw and sit next to it.

Now, board your ship and mash warp: this needs to be the FIRST thing you do. While in warp, set up your guns, tp, scram on the top row. Activate your sensor booster, overheat and activate your ECCM (just overheat both top and mid rows entirely) and then prime your guns/tp/scram. The instant you land, start locking and hit stop, launch drones. As soon as you lock, fire, then tell your drones to agress. If you're in a brutix, like you should be, you should crush them, as long as you don't get jammed (12% chance with an overheated ECCM II).

If you have an ECCM you'll still get jammed 12% of the time, nothing you can do about it (besides getting more ECCM or implants).

Also note: you're a pirate, people can pod you. They may: don't stick around after a gank. Your implants are worth more than the loot: tell your ganker to dock first then switch to your alt and scoop the loot. One idea we've batted around is set your atutopilot to one system over: when CONCORD shows up, turn it on. Your pod should warp out as soon as your ship dies.

The best ship for -5 ganking is Mittani's Ragebrutix:

Highs: Anode neutrons/neutron IIs x7
Mids: 1 target painter, 1 warp disruptor, 2 ECCM II
Lows: 4x magstabs, 1x DCII.

This gives you a 6% chance of being jammed, and the DCII lets you finish a gank even when the faction police show up instantly.

Mittani's Hard-Won Lessons From Being -5 and Getting Chased Around All Day by the Faction Po-Po

1. Always scan your target first. Don't be an idiot and flub on a supertanker. If you do not scan and then flub because of it, it's your own dumb fault.
2. Don't dick around with Thoraxes below -5. The po-po can kill you before you get your shots off, even with a dcII. Using a Brutix (with a DCII) you can mostly ignore them.
3. Always have combat logging enabled and open during ganks so you can diagnose what went wrong - and something will go wrong as you adjust to the police.
4. Use a sensor booster with a locktime script on your Brutix. You need to lock and fire on a barge quickly due to the police. This wasn't necessary before piracy.
5. Barge-only overview setting for your pirate. The less crap to misclick on during a gank attempt, the fewer flubbed ganks.
6. Some kind of CONCORD-clearing method - either hop into a stored Velator from the GSF POS' SMA while you have a countdown aggro (very pro trick) or have a throwaway alt in a Velator zot an anchored GSC in one of the belts. Nothing is as frustrating as CONCORD guarding industrialists in belts.
7. It doesn't matter much if the faction police are already in your target belt. They'll instawarp to you and begin shooting you, but you mostly don't care because you're in a Brutix now.
8. Always use T2 neutrons on the Brutix, there's no point economizing with Anodes.
9. Void M. Coast to a stop when you land. Don't approach/bump the target, this messes with your tracking. Land, coast while locking, pop your drones out, unload with Void.
10. 3x Agility rigs, not collision accelerators. These let you warp off in time if your target warps before you land. This also means you don't need the Squire PG4. With 4x MFS IIs you don't really benefit from collision accelerators.
11. Squire implants, 2x overheated ECCM IIs, and an Orca with an info warfare mindlink/sensor integrity booster. The police only have a strength 5 jam but it's so infuriating that there's no reason to accept a flub.
12. Before piracy, I would lazily launch my drones before trying to lock prey. This is verrrry bad as a pirate, as seconds count. Activate fucking everything while in warp. While spamming lock and approach, launch your drones, pres CONCORD butan, and mash your drone engage hotkey (you DO have a drone engage hotkey right? go make one). As a Brutix most of your dps comes from blaster facefucking so drones are helpful but not key like with a Thorax.
13. Drones engage hotkey motherfucker.

What To Do When You Encounter Resistance

Some carebears learn. Unfortunately, they don't learn the lesson they should be learning: to get the frack out. They will attempt to resist: either through running remote reps, running ganglinks on their orcas and tanking their Macks and Hulks, or other methods to attempt to stay put. This cannot be tolerated. If you find you're unable to gank something, pipe up to your pirate and ganker friends and get a crew together to kill it, or get someone to bring a facefuck dominix or the like. Those who refuse to bend should be broken.

Hybrid Changes

Someone grabbed all the upcoming changes to ships and modules for the winter expansion off Singularity. Apparently it was up there for a few hours, before being pulled down. A mistake by CCP? Maybe. It's created a tonne of excitement. And a tonne of free analysis for CCP.

For most (all?) of the hybrids:

• a reduction in capacitor usage.
• a reduction in CPU requirements.

For some of the hybrids:

• a reduction in powergrid requirements.

For most (all?) of the railguns:

• a damage multiplier increase.

For most (all?) of the blasters:

• an increase in tracking speed.

Those are the general changes I noticed as I scrolled through the list. Here is an example of some of the specific changes. Not exhaustive, but you can go look at the entire list yourself.

[*] 75mm 'Scout' I Accelerator Cannon
    [*] capacitorNeed: 1.5 => 1.05
    [*] damageMultiplier: 1.65 => 1.815

[*] Anode Neutron Particle Cannon I
    [*] capacitorNeed: 5.159 => 3.6113
    [*] cpu: 30.0 => 28.0
    [*] power: 203.0 => 179.0
    [*] trackingSpeed: 0.1 => 0.12

[*] Dual 150mm 'Scout' I Accelerator Cannon
    [*] capacitorNeed: 4.5 => 3.15
    [*] cpu: 28.0 => 26.0
    [*] damageMultiplier: 1.65 => 1.815
    [*] power: 80.0 => 70.0

[*] Light Neutron Blaster II
    [*] capacitorNeed: 2.023 => 1.4161
    [*] cpu: 19.0 => 18.0
    [*] power: 10.0 => 9.0
    [*] trackingSpeed: 0.3165 => 0.3798

What do I think of these fixes? Any change is good change. I was hoping to see some of the range issues with blasters addressed, but that does not appear to be the case. Damage issues with railguns are addressed, which is nice. I'm not quite sure if the damage multiplier increase goes far enough, so I'll let the min-maxers decide that over the next couple days.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Gallente ship modifications being made for Winter Expansion. (Which I was reminded of with the first comment below.) Of course, any change to Gallente ships goes hand-in-hand with any hybrid weapon changes. For the most part, Gallente ships have been given both a speed boost and an agility nerf. Here are two examples:

[*] Thorax
    [*] inertia: 0.585 => 0.61425
    [*] maxVelocity: 170.0 => 180.0

[*] Megathron
    [*] inertia: 0.128 => 0.1344
    [*] maxVelocity: 105.0 => 115.0

Those agility and speed boosts perhaps make up for any deficiency in range with the blaster hybrids. Again, I'll be listening to the min-maxers for the good or bad news on all of this.

Circumnavigation: Leg 6.5

Impatience got the best of me at the PR-8CA gate in 1DH-SX system. Was hanging about for around half an hour. There were four or so ships bouncing in and out of grid for awhile. Watched them blow up one guy, and try for a couple others. One Thrasher, a dude named Hvergel, was hanging out consistently near the gate (probably the bait.) What the heck, I decided I'd attempt to bomb him. Got lined up. Decloaked. Fired off the bomb. Warped off. Log recorded 1800 damage to Hvergel. Returned to the gate. No Thrasher. But no killmail either. Again, bomb just not enough to take out a ship solo. Too bad. My guess, the Thrasher returned to station for some repairs. He returned some five minutes later.

Activity on the gate picked up at this point, with around six ships doing orbits, probably trying to decloak me. I was 45km off station, a different tactical than the one I used for the bomb run. I wasn't feeling in any particular danger, but I was feeling that I wanted to play in another system, so decided to start heading for the gate. Cloaked. 315 m/s. Fly through the bubble they'd set up. Carefully. Once I'd got through the bubble, all the ships on grid disappeared. I was fourteen kilometers from the gate. I was feeling a tad impatient. So decloaked and hit the MWD. Stupid impatient move, but honestly thought the 1700 m/s I could travel MWD'd would get me to the gate easily, even if a couple ships showed up.

The moment I dropped the cloak, one ship appeared instantly. Rapier, I think. Within about 3 seconds, another three ships landed on grid. A second later, another. I was blowed up 2800 meters from the gate. Damn it. Three hundred meters short of safety.

Looks like I got a Delve killmail. Not exactly the killmail I wanted. Weirdness, though. Not quite sure how I got on my own killmail with the bomb launcher, since I didn't fire the damned thing during my "escape". But lols all the same. :)

Hvergel podded me back to Agil. Jumpcloned back to Jita. I'll resume the trip again on the weekend. Annoyed at myself. This stealth bomber loss was totally unnecessary. My first bomber loss on this trip was a learning experience. This one did not have to happen. I knew better. Impatience killed this cat.

Circumnavigation: Leg 6.3

I can't seem to find all the epic battles happening in Delve. Christ. I ran across three when I first arrived, and for the life of me now can't find any. I know they're happening. Dotlan gives me the 24 hour statistics. 350 kills yesterday in 1DH-SX. Another 280 in Z3V-1W. You'd think I'd be able to find these damned battles. And then today, about 5 jumps away, 722 kills in QX-LIJ. Arg. Someone needs to send me some intel.

Yes. I am still in Delve. I do not wish to leave until I either get a kill with these three scorch bombs I have left, or whore my way onto some killmails.

I did try to fire on a group of loiterers outside the Blood Raiders station in 1DH-SX yesterday. Almost got myself killed in the process. The damned radius on that station is huge. Trying to get into 30km range, didn't even realize that I was inside the radius of the station (and still 40-50km from my targets), thus decloaked. Damn near got myself blowed up good. Warped off with only 25% shields remaining. Thank you Warp Core Stabilizers (x2) for saving my ass.

Today I decided to scope out the Morsus Mihi POS in 1DH-SX. Around 50 ships sitting inside, along with a Minmatar Titan. A couple Brick Squad Drakes floating around outside the POS bubble. Decided I'd see what these scorch bombs can do. Didn't think I'd kill a Drake with one, but was curious about the damage.

Not even an angry outburst on local. The bombs likely didn't do anything but tickle those Drakes. The punishment of the comfy chair and the soft cushions.

(I think I'll rename my Nemesis to The Spanish Inquisition. Because nobody expects it. Nor does it frighten anybody.)

If CCP were to sell ...

... would EVE Online, as we know it, be over as a phenomenon, as something quite unique, in the MMO market?

Yes. Unless CCP were to sell to a small, niche gaming company (and what small, niche gaming company is going to be able to afford CCP), then yes, EVE Online is over. Done. Flew the coop. Dead as a doornail. Off its twig. Kicked the bucket. Shuffled off its mortal coil. EVE Online will go mainstream, and many features we loathe from more traditional MMOs will be built into EVE to attract a larger audience.

Inside of twelve to eighteen months, the following will be introduced:

• High-sec as a PvP-free zone.
• Establishments completed.
• Return of Nex Store.
• No "gold ammo", but many convenience items sold for Nex.
• DUST 514 to be dropped if it does not sell well in first six months.
• Combat engine streamlining, simplifying core mechanics.
• Certain actions the players take for granted will be deemed bannable (i.e. scamming, griefing, etc.)
• CSM will cease to exist.
• Free-to-play model announced or introduced.

Spinning, Planetary Interaction, and CCP Layoffs

Ship Spinning

I must admit. I am very glad to see ship spinning back. It's something to do when you're just cooling your heels in station, chatting with folks on Mumble or Teamspeak.

For the most part, the functionality seems identical to what it was before. I did notice that I can no longer look at the ceiling of the hangar. Slightly disappointing, but not a serious grievance. (Or perhaps I simply forgot how to look at the ceiling?) Looks like they used old hangar models for this update. Could not find any of the patios for the captain's quarters. Makes sense, of course, since CCP thought the hangar views were a thing of history -- no need to start developing new models for them. Overall and going forward, I think hangar and quarters will have a nice, immersive simpatico together.

One thing I could not find ... a button on the interface that takes me straight from the hangar view into my quarters. Is there one? Am I blind?

Kudos to CCP for getting this back out to the players, especially since they had to develop it into a brand new engine. The turnaround was fast by CCP standards (or what we've come to expect from them in that regard.)

Planetary Interaction

Great move by CCP here. Giving the players more control over resources and the market. Not too mention bringing a measure of sovereignty to lowsec. Place a customs office over a planet, that's basically corporate sovereignty over that planet. This is a completely new dynamic for lowsec. More so than POSes were. These things are going to be far easier to pop, there'll be far more back and forth over planetary control.

I do have some concerns with the attackability of these new customs offices. Will one need to declare war upon a corporation to attack their lowsec-based customs offices? If so, considering how broken the wardec system currently is, customs offices in lowsec will be immune to destruction. With the recent policy changes to war declaration mechanics, removing a corporation from a wardec right now is ridiculously easy, to the point that the war declaration system is entirely moot.

As long as these corporation-owned customs offices are easy to attack (i.e., the wardec mechanics don't come into play), it should be a pretty exciting time for EVE.

CCP Layoffs

I'm not terribly surprised by the need for layoffs at CCP. Six hundred employees. One small MMO to support that mass of development. Not too mention the international locations. The travel. So much overhead, beyond just the employees. It seemed boggling to me that EVE Online could support all that, and I'm by no means a business major. And sure, someone might say "They had investors!" I'm sure they do. But how much are you willing to invest in a company who's about to step out into two fields that they have zero experience with, and with single game to their name that they've not been able to grow over the past seven years (subscriber numbers have increased marginally year to year.). At the end of the day, investors or not, I still think EVE Online was expected to shoulder most of the burden of financial support for these new directions CCP wanted to travel.

Gotta say. I'm glad they shitcanned World of Darkness. Sure, vampires are quite popular at the moment. Television and film, they are overwhelming people with the shit. By the time CCP gets the game out the door (five or six years from now), the vampire fad will likely be over, the general populace onto the next "thing." You gotta catch these waves of popularity between formation and peak, to really capitalize on them. Release it after the peak, and World of Darkness would be doomed to be another niche game for CCP.

CCP claims development of vampires will continue, using worry-free marketing-speak in their press release, attempting to calm concerns. The usual, when you're desperate that people don't think of you as a sinking ship of a company. (I certainly do not think CCP is teetering at the edge of financial ruin.) The platitudes aside, I would be surprised if World of Darkness ever came to fruition. Vampires seeing the light of day (vampires don't want that!) would require subscribers returning to EVE Online in droves and Dust 514 as a huge success. For all intents and purposes, CCP's vampire game is dead. The Atlanta office will likely be shut down in the next year (or moved to a smaller suite, if only to maintain a U.S. presence.)

The rest of the layoffs.

I am surprised CCP let go the community management team. How many folks were on that team? Did they all get laid off? Or most of them? Tweetfleet would have me believe that CCP gave the entire department their walking papers. I'm not believing that just yet. That seems like a ludicrous move.

Sure, community management departments are sort of dead weight when your focus is mainly on development. CCP still has customers, though. CCP did commit to better communication with its customers. Seems an odd dichotomy there. "We will communicate better with you, our customers, but we're firing everyone we use to do that communicating. Here, talk to our robotic voice message service. Press 1 for PvP. Press 2 for PvE. Press 3 for Nullsec sovereignty mechanics ...."

And what about the CSM? As others have mentioned, I would not be surprised to see CSM6 the last. Maybe forever. Maybe for a few years.

Circumnavigation: Leg 6.2

I had a small amount of time to kill tonight, not enough to go looking for pitched battles to bomb, so instead flew out to do some suggested sightseeing. Will get to trying to bomb some battles tomorrow. I think I know prime time for the pitched battles. (Yesterday, it was around 1 - 2 PM PST.)

Shattered Planet - T-IPZB

Blood Raider Ship Graveyard - T-IPZB

Forgotten Amaar Outpost - QC-YX6

Circumnavigation: Leg 6.0

I wasn't killed, just took a 30 jump detour to pick up some new weaponry. The sixth leg of this journey, which is through Delve, is not yet complete.

Crazy-assed Delve. Came across at least three separate pitched battles (like the one below). Coming across something like that (and so frequently ... and I've not seen anything like it since the first leg in Cobalt Edge, Intrepid Crossing versus NCDot), I decided to head out of Delve to the Agil system in Khanid to ditch the torpedos for a bomb launcher. How much more fun could it be to come across another pitched battle and to be able to launch a bomb into the middle of it all. I have no vested interests in Delve, so everyone is a neutral target as far as I'm concerned.

Avoiding the battles wasn't too difficult. They either ended quickly (five or ten minutes) or there was an alternate route around them. Even got to chat a bit with Megarom (apparently my arrival in local was broadcast on Morsus Mihi intel) where we determined that my corpse might be worth a half-decent amount of ISK to the right people. Not giving it up without some effort, though.

My path through Delve is a bit convoluted. I decided to take Rhavas' (and Mark726's) advice, make a side trip to check out my first shattered planet. So danger, excitement, maybe a bomb launching or two, and some sightseeing. This is going to be a great leg of the trip. There'll be more to come, I'm sure, on this sixth leg, the Delve leg, of this journey.

My trip through Delve will be as follows, with appropriate deviations here and there.

Circumnavigation: Leg 5.0

Jump cloned back to Stain yesterday so that I could resume the circumnavigational trip today. Delve, Fountain and Deklein are going to be the most exciting legs of this trip (or so I hope, since I anticipate it will be at least as nerve-wracking as Cobalt Edge, plus some.) I wanted to get to the edge of Delve today. And I did. Very uneventful, especially moving from Stain, through Esoteria, and into Paragon Soul. For the first 20 jumps, I saw nobody, absolutely nobody. Middle of Esoteria, saw two people, and another three or so folks in Paragon Soul. I was expecting a little more in the way of population in Period Basis, and there was. Mainly a group of sixteen Morsus Mihi (The Graduates) roaming about. Passed by them near the Period Basis/Delve border, and then again later in my final system. Waved hello in local. They waved hi back.

Thus the fifth leg of this adventure ended. I think I'll spend Leg 6.0 crossing Delve, Leg 7.0 crossing Fountain, and Leg 8.0 stepping inside Deklein, and then Leg 9.0 crossing Deklein. Leg 10.0 will be the finish and back to Jita.

Up until this point I've not done much in the way of bookmarks. Four or five gate observationals per region, with the majority at the borders between regions. Of most of the early legs, I don't see myself revisiting again, not for a long time, so didn't see much point wasting lots of time and effort on bookmarks. The Delve, Fountain and Deklein regions, I think I'll spend more time, not just on gate observationals, but a few safespots in systems that seem active. There's currently an incursion in Fountain, so if I reach that constellation before it ends, I'll definitely spend some time using the incursion sites as starting points for some good safes.

Seeing as how utterly boring this leg was, I checked up on Dotlan for any landmarks that I might pass near. As it turned out, my destination tonight in Delve contained Pagera Manton. Sounded pretty cool. Once in CX8-6K headed out to Blood Reach, a Blood Raider agent staging point. To discover the location of Pagera, you have to talk to Dalitat Dakpor to get the Death's Door mission. Unfortunately, you need standings to get the mission. So no Pagera Manton for me. But here's a shot of Blood Reach, at any rate.

Tomorrow will hopefully be exciting. Delve.

HTFU: CCP No Longer Embracing the Credo

Granted, I wasn't playing EVE Online back in the early days, but I've read old posts, followed links back to old dev blogs, I've read the old attitudes. I wish I was part of the game back then.

Back when CCP was a small company, publishing an MMO unique in the field of MMOs (unique since the days of the original Ultima Online, at least), CCP had some serious viking attitude about it. This was a game made by people living every single day on a goddamned volcano. They didn't brook any calls for the pussification of their game. There was little difference between the attitudes of the hardcore players and the employees developing the game. This was a pitiless, brutal game. It was a true sandbox. The players decided conflicts, the game didn't limit those conflicts artificially (even given CONCORD intervention in high-security space.) They didn't so much as say these things outright, but the attitude on the forums and in the blogs spoke it plainly. "People are going to try to ruin your day. Get together with others, ruin their day back." "Harden the fuck up players. This isn't your little sister's pussy Asian instant-messenger MMO. This is motherfucking EVE Online." "Watch your back, because no one is watching it for you."

The years crept by. EVE Online grew. CCP grew. Dreams beyond EVE began to foment. Vampires. First-person shooters. Console gaming. Microtransactions. No longer content to just be the niche player on the block, they wanted to be recognized far and wide as innovators. Not an unnoble goal to be sure, but how you go about reaching that goal is important.

CCP opened offices in Atlanta and Shanghai. They hired more people. They bought a floundering roleplaying company known for a certain vampire game. They ballooned to 600 employees. Public relations materialized. Communication with their customer-base became muted, distant.

EVE Online now had to support two new games in development. The first, DUST 514, a first-person, console gaming tie-in to the EVE Universe. The marketing speak on how the game would tie-in sounded very much like the old HTFU attitude reborn. The playerbase was excited for this, more HTFU gameplay is always welcomed. The second game though, a vampire MMO, World of Darkness, based on Vampire: The Masquerade, is where that old HTFU attitude officially came off the rails and it impacted every aspect of CCP. World of Darkness was to be about fashion and good-looks, its goal to attract a general MMO demographic.

To support these two new endeavours, EVE Online had to grow. Under its current model and subscription base EVE couldn't support development of both titles for more than a couple of years. Development on EVE Online shifted from "flying in space" (which is 90% of the gameplay) to microtransactions and "walking in stations." As a proof of concept for World of Darkness (part of a development framework called Carbon), an avatar system was developed for EVE. This was supposed to attract that wider audience of players, from MMOers more used to seeing their character "in the flesh", so to speak, rather than just a spaceship. It was supposed to allow players a greater degree of simpatico with the world they were playing within. It was a bold move away from core gameplay.

CCP is known for its boldness. Unfortunately, CCP is also known for biting off much more than it can chew.

Walking in stations, or Incarna as it became known, was a colossal flop. The walking in stations portion of the game consisted of a single room and your avatar. No actual gameplay was included. There was no interaction at all with other avatars. As such, the microtransaction system, which included various forms of fashion for your avatar, proved useless. Why dress your avatar up if no one else can see it? Barely anyone was buying the new dress-me-up clothing.

By this time, CCP's relationship with its customer-base was at an all-time low. It was almost as if CCP viewed its customers as the enemy. Communication was spotty and pretentious. Talking down to the customer was the norm, the attitude that the customer could not understand the bold, exciting new direction that CCP was heading towards, so CCP would drag them kicking and screaming, and eventually they would see that CCP was right. And all would be well again. What CCP didn't understand was that the customer was under no obligation to be dragged kicking and screaming anywhere.

Incarna proved this point. Subscriptions fell off sharply. CCP reacted with more pretension. It still believed the customer was dead wrong, was short-sighted, had no vision for the future. Internal newsletters and CEO emails were leaked, basically stating that the customer was to be ignored, CCP knew what it was doing. Communications from the player-run council, the CSM, were edited for softer language. Corporate marketing speak was thought to be the saviour. But CCPs customer-base isn't a bunch of 12 year old kids, they are more savvy than that. The customers saw through these weak attempts at controlling the message.

The thing is, if the customer doesn't like where you're heading as a company, and they stop giving you their money, then customer is in the right. They don't have to have to follow a corporate path they don't agree with. And without the customers' money, how was CCP going to fund its brave, bold new vision? It wasn't.

And then the turnaround happened. Walking in stations was going to be put on a simmer. It would eventually be released more fully, but CCP would take its time with it. Release it properly. In the meantime, CCP would re-dedicate themselves back to flying in space, the core concept of EVE Online. The playerbase cheered. Subscriptions were renewed. CCP started communicating with its customers again. What had become a two-year malaise within the community and the game, well, it was finally having some excitement breathed back into it.

Was that HTFU attitude back?

Players were beginning to think so. Until CCP offhandedly took two actions towards changing the sandbox, an attempt to artificially control player-run conflicts, soften the play environment. The first was a statement by the CEO about toughening up high-sec space, making CONCORD smarter, thus making high-sec safer than it already is. A rash, ill-thought response to combating a sudden spat of suicide-ganking by a single alliance (something that wasn't going to maintain itself for very long.) The second was to change war declaration policy, effectively giving every high-sec corporation the option to engage in PvP or not. These are both radical changes to the sandbox. Attempts to pussify a particular area of the game, to attract the wider audience they couldn't attract with their previous walking-in-stations iteration. It's a Trammel-izing of EVE Online (this will deserve its own post.)

CCP. Taking that two big steps forward, then immediately taking a step back again. There are obviously two schools of thought within CCP still. The old HTFU attitude, and the newer carebear attitude of making things safer and easier for a certain demographic of player. The former is what made EVE Online what it is. The latter is what every other MMO in the world strives to be.

2012 should be interesting¹. Where does CCP go from here? Which internal faction wins out in the end?

¹(I had thought to make a Mayan calendar joke here with reference to New Eden, but couldn't make it work.)

The War-Free University

GM Karidor wrote:

In the past, there have been some policies in place within Customer Support that imposed additional rules onto the war mechanics available in game, such as the so called "Alliance Hopping" or the more recent "Dec Shield".

The decision has been made to lift those restrictions that affect war declarations, thereby opening up ways for corporations to avoid unwanted wars via methods that were previously considered exploits of game mechanics.

In other words:
If you can leave or declare a war, raise the costs for other entities to declare one to you or do any other war related things within current normal game mechanics, you may do so without having to keep other rules in mind.

Basically all bets are off. You can alliance hop to avoid wardecs. Or you can set-up as many alt corporations to dec a main corporation to make future wars against that main corporation exceptionally expensive. Not too mention, you can reduce the cost of those alt wardecs by toggling between mutual and non-mutual.

People called me a tinfoil-hatter when I stated on a few occasions that EVE University was in talks with CCP on how best to limit their exposure to war declarations.

Here is a recent forum post by Kelduum Revaan, CEO of EVE University, on how the new changes will be used to, in effect, make EVE University nearly impossible to wardec.

EVE University "DecShield" now out of Beta

We tried it a few times, going back as far as 2008, and resurrected it again recently, but after CCP have recently made some changes to their policies, we can finally put in place the full DecShield as it was originally planned.

Over the next 24 hours, a number of E-UNI members and alumni who have taken part in my 'Special Project' and sacrificed a character slot, and will be wardeccing E-UNI with various shell corporations. These wars are all being paid for by the Uni (totalling around 3-4 billion ISK) and all management of these is being maintained by the directors via the API.

The end result will be that the cost of declaring or continuing a war with E-UNI will between 500M and 1B ISK per week. Of course, in the event that someone who has a proven track record and/or the numbers to provide a good fight contacts us, we can declare war on them ourselves.

This is done with a total of 19 corporations who are at war with E-UNI, with the majority of them mutual by default, acting as 'spares' in the event we should we need the full DecShield deployed. Each of the accounts, corporations and their CEOs, are being monitored by the API, which will be polled every few days to ensure the accounts are live and in good standing.

(As far as the mechanic or mechanics used to prevent the wars costing us up to 72 billion ISK per month, I would rather not go into detail, as although I have had confirmation from CCP it is fine, the mechanic could be used in other ways - similarly, I would rather people didn't speculate as to this, at least in public, although I'm certain that a few of you may know how it works. Lets just call it a special E-UNI "sekrit"...)

Note: If you like the DecShield, and by extension the change to the CCP policies, please "Like" the post by GM Karidor. This should help show the level of support for the change, versus the 'griefer tears' being displayed, and it is anonymous to all but the poster. Similarly, please do not post there, as anything coming from an E-UNI member will look like it comes form the corp as a whole.


If you have any questions on the DecShield, please feel free to post here.

This recent "change", while it affects everyone and everyone can avail themselves of it, was no doubt implemented to help the Uni, since only the Uni has the resources to implement this sort of massive decshield. I believe this is the "teaching decshield" that was referred to earlier. No doubt a tiny nugget that Kelduum passed on to the membership after discussions he had with CCP.

That this change was brought down just as the "WSOP-free Month" is ending is a tad coincidental. It's almost as though Kelduum knew during what time period this change was going to be announced. Thus he stages a last huge set of wars for the EVE University students, a last hurrah before the University goes war-free for good. Someone crazy enough and rich enough may wardec the Uni for a week at a cost of 1 billion ISK, but the next week they'll likely see that cost jump to 10 billion ISK or more.

The days of the University being under war are pretty much a thing of history now.

Sandbox. What sandbox? EVE University has bricked up their sandbox. Good luck getting inside to cause a little EVE-style mayhem.

---

Irdalth Delrar, EVE University's Director of Propaganda Public Relations stated:

CCP never contacted the Uni about this change, never asked for the Uni's opinion on the change, nor did we have any idea it was coming.

I call hooey!

CCP and Kelduum talk weekly on issues regarding high-sec and the University. Wardec topics are a priority with the University, and always have been. To pretend that Kelduum and CCP have never talked wardec mechanics, especially one as monumentally game-changing as this one ... well that's disingenuous.

And I know Kelduum, in the last month, has hinted over Mumble, of a big change coming down the pipe. He loves to hint after a big conversation with CCP. He likes people to see him with the CEO hat on. Which is why McDarila made the comment he did about a "teaching dec". He didn't know exactly what he was talking about, since he only had Kelduum's hints to play from. But he knew something was coming down the pipe from CCP, because Kelduum knew. And the WSOP-free Month wasn't decided by the membership ... it was decided by Kelduum. He made the big post with the dates (the membership only had the option of voting it down, which Kelduum knew was not going to happen.)

Circumnavigational Pause

Just taking a couple day break from the circumnavigation to do a little PvP up Gallente lowsec way. Built out ten Ishkurs. The Ninevite fit, as I call them. He was one of the more prolific PvPers in EVE University (he's in Morsus Mihi now). He swore by the Ishkur. He was quite successful with it. Decided that I can't go too wrong learning more PvP using his fit.

[Ishkur, Ninevite]
3x 125mm Railgun II (Federation Navy Thorium Charge S)

Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Faint Warp Disruptor I
Small Capacitor Booster II (Cap Booster 150)

Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Small 'Accommodation' Vestment Reconstructer I

Small Drone Speed Augmentor I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I

5x Hobgoblin II

Lost two of the Ishkurs yesterday. No kills to show for it.

First loss in a three frigate to one Rupture battle. All three frigs were lost (the other two partners in crime were Flies Incandenza and North Crossroad.) I made a couple of errors in that engagement. First, my orbit distance, perhaps 12km is too far out, even if my optimal is 14km. Second, orbiting with the MWD turned on. I was thinking that increasing tranversal velocity would be good, but then the sig radius bloom from the MWD probably cancelled that benefit out, plus some. (Not too mention the MWD ate through my cap in about 20 seconds.) I also have to learn to use the capacitor booster effectively, since never really used one before.

The second Ishkur was lost in a sentry gun experiment. Attacked a Rifter within 150km of a gate. Was warned not too, that it would end badly for me. I wanted to see what sort of damage sentry guns did. Quite a lot, actually. To a frigate. Not really tankable in a ship of small stature. I had to see for myself though. Right after this, learned all about the GCC timer, and how it resets, and got a bunch of Velator-noob ships blowed up good, in the process.

Still expanding my horizons out from Metropolis. These were my limited travels back in July. These are my travels as of yesterday.

Circumnavigation: Legs 3.0/4.0

OMFG! Russian space is damned boring. It's so damned empty. How in the hell do these people hold so much space, when their per capita population per system is so damned low. Doesn't matter what bloody time I'm in their space (for the third leg, I was there during Eastern European prime time), I'm usually the only ship in system.

I can't get out of these regions fast enough. No where near as exciting/nailbiting/manic/paranoia-inducing as Intrepid Crossing space was. I suspect the western edge of the map will be similar to what I experienced up in the northeast, with respect to people wanting to kill you and people actually playing the game -- those Test, Goon, and Delve pilots have a real bloodlust. A bloodlust I would have expected to see more in the Russians, but sadly, not.

And what is with the red-this, red-that, red-all-over in their corporation and alliance names. The days of the CCCP are long gone. Give up the communist red already.

So, I completed two legs today. Mainly to get this Russian bullshit over as fast as possible, and to dock up in Stain so that I can take a break, jumpclone back to highsec and go pirating with a buddy. The two legs (70 or so jumps total) were completely uneventful. Even when I tried to rile some of them up in local, no one took the bait. I then resorted to telling jokes. Again, no response. Didn't matter if I typed in English, or used Google Translate. Maybe they're less somber amongst themselves.

Here was the fourth leg of the trip.

Circumnavigation: Leg 2.5

Eventually reached the system where I'd been killed by TheBlueFox, so that I could resume the journey. It was only a couple jumps now, and I would be out of Intrepid Crossing territory and into Shadow of xXDeathXx territory. (What is with the retarded Xs, by the way? Are they supposed to make alliance names look cool?)

I must say, I like those Intrepid Crossing guys. I was under the impression they were Russian (assumed, I suppose, since they seem to be sandwiched between them), but pretty sure they are not. One, I never saw any that used cyrillic in their character biographies. Two, their written English is very good. They seem like a pretty classy bunch. And I like the area of nullsec they are in. You don't hear much from them on the forums (it's all Goons, Test, NCDot), so they fly under the radar quite a bit, I would think. And being way out there at the buttfuck edge of space, they don't seem to get too involved in all the big super capital muckity-mucks. That said, they are a pretty active bunch, rarely did I pass through a system without a handful of them in it. If I were planning to get into nullsec, I would definitely look these guys up. Seems like a good area and a good bunch of people with which to get introduced to null. Plus, they have the occasional fun dust-ups with NCDot.

Completed the second leg of my journey with no major incidents.

• There was the occasional gate bubble collection, with no one around to monitor it. A minor annoyance.
• There was one fellow from Intrepid Crossing who was stalking me for five or six systems, but gave him the slip. He went one way, I went the other longer way. Never saw him again.
• I changed my route to avoid going through the eastern edge of Outer Passage, mainly because it is a lengthy pipeline. Too easy to get waylaid, with no options for alternative routes. I opted, instead, to go through Oasa and Perrigen Falls.
• There was also the Russian from Moon Tribe who set me to terrible standings the moment I entered his system. I engaged him in a short conversation on local:
  [ 2011.10.11 05:35:27 ] Poetic Stanziel > Why so mean, Eriksson?
[ 2011.10.11 05:35:33 ] ErikssonArtem > Poetic Stanziel all qwestion KOS13
[ 2011.10.11 05:36:12 ] ErikssonArtem > now if I see you , I kill you
[ 2011.10.11 05:36:25 ] Poetic Stanziel > So angry, sir.
[ 2011.10.11 05:38:12 ] ErikssonArtem > While you to us anybody You for us as the enemy
[ 2011.10.11 05:39:05 ] Poetic Stanziel > Give peace a chance -- John Lennon
  I suspect he may have been trying to talk to me through Google Translate.

Now onto leg three. This won't be the exact journey, but thereabouts. I plotted it quickly before logging off, but will refine it more tomorrow.

Explorations of the Redonkulous

Other capsuleers are doing crazy extensive explorations of New Eden. Specifically every single system (or landmark, in Mark726's case) in the game (maybe even including wormholes). Read about them. My little journey is but a simple day trip compared to theirs.

Katie Sae - To Boldy Go
Black Claw - The Adventures of Black Claw
Mark726 - EVE Travel

They even have photos. I'm too lazy for that, mostly.

Circumnavigation: Leg 2.2

Heading back to the scene of the crime, to continue this little adventure. Much more paranoid and nervous heading back. Would rather not get popped trying to get to my restart point for leg two.

Getting popped is always a possibility, though, since having to fly back through Intrepid Crossing (IRC) space. I know at least one of those guys may be keeping tabs on the blog. These guys are causing me some mania. Especially considering I'm giving away intel in the blog ... well, my choice to do so, but it raises the blood pressure a tad.

Currently logged off about 12 jumps from my destination. The system I was in had 10 IRC members as I arrived, which grew to about 17 in ten minutes. Not to mention a lot of activity back and forth at my destination gate (Crows and Dramiels, mainly, but worrisome since they are a bane to a covops ship trying to remain cloaked after coming through a gate.) Am being extra careful here, setting up gate observationals and a couple of safes. The system is a funnel, only one way in or out, and no path around it (nothing less than 50 jumps.) A bit of a nullsec Rancer here. Have not scanned any interdictors as of yet, but they may be waiting on the other side. Or I could just be wearing the tinfoil hat too tightly. I wish I could get eyes on the other side of the gate.

Idea/Aside: A remote spy as a new drone type. You can remotely fly this through a gate into another system. It gives you eyes for two minutes before it goes dead (you can scoop it up on the other side.) Something like that. Perhaps this is coupled with a new covert ops ship type. Would allow for some solo scouting. Perhaps all it would do is give you a d-scan on the other side of a gate, so it wouldn't be something that would take a tremendous amount of effort to implement. Of course, there should be an ewar counter to it.

Circumnavigation: Leg 2.1

The pod didn't make it. Tried making a run for it, warping to 0 at every gate. Hoping for the best. Made it about 5 jumps before I was caught. Lost my +4 implants. Sort of annoying, but knew it was likely. Will use +3s for the remainder of the trip, since the dose of reality yesterday has me thinking that I'm not going to lose just the one stealth bomber. (Maybe a tad pie in the sky thinking I could do this without any losses. Heh.)

Now to build a better Stealth Bomber. Here are a few fits I'm looking at. Any advice or tips are welcome. I'll wait until tomorrow before building out the new ship and heading back to where I left off (or thereabouts.)

[Nemesis, Nemesis - Circumnavigation]

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Inferno Torpedo

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Small Shield Booster II
Partial Weapon Navigation
Partial Weapon Navigation

Warp Core Stabilizer II
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
Small Warhead Rigor Catalyst I

Using a 'Gypsy KMB-50 to fit everything here. Also the reason for the Warp Core Stab I and II. This puts my new optimal targetting just slightly under the optimal for the target painters, so it works out okay in that regard.

Actually, I'm kinda stuck on this particular fit (so this will be the only fit for this post.) No other fits I've looked at today have really caught my interest. Not too mention, I've tinkered with what I found on Battleclinic to get this to where it is now, and I kinda like it. So, I'll leave this here for any comments. If you have better fitting suggestions, post or link to them in the comments.

Circumnavigation: Leg 2.0

Well, pause in the story as I attempt to make it back to Jita in my pod to pick up a new Stealth Bomber. This should be interesting. And annoying. I'll probably die. There's 30 jumps of Shadow of xXDeathXx space to get through.

Yeah. I was popped.

I'll fit the next Stealth Bomber out a little differently. The fit you see in the lossmail, that was taking my original stealth bomber and trying to add some slight survivability to it at the last second, which is why the shield mods. Not an expert at shield mods, so just bought stuff I sort of knew would help, a bit. Wanted to add another rig, but already had those two on the ship, and can't equip a third on a Nemesis.

If I'd had a warp core stabilizer, I'd have got away for sure, so will modify the fit to get rid of the damned co-processor. I might have to lose the bomb launcher. :(

So what happened? Jumped into 9KE-IT. A Sabre was there, 13km from me. My fault really, for not really paying it any attention, actually for not really knowing that a Sabre is an Interdictor (I am now memorizing all the Interdictor ship types now.) Though not entirely sure I would have done anything differently -- for the one second that you're on someone's overview at a gate, you just hope they're either not paying attention or don't have the reflexes of a cat. This guy had feline DNA. In the one second that I was visible on his overview (between gate cloak being removed and cloaking device being activated), he threw up a bubble right on top of me. Couldn't warp out at that point, obviously, so I tried to burn out of the bubble (burn being used loosely, since 320 m/s cloaked is hardly burning.) He closed the distance extremely fast, got within 2km, decloaked me. By the time I was out of the bubble, I was down a quarter of my shields, but he was warp disrupting me at that point (I'm pretty sure he wasn't using a warp scrambler), so couldn't get away (if only I'd had a warp core stabilizer.) It was more or less just firing off some torps at that point and waiting for the pod to appear.

Logged off at the moment. Trying to map a shortest path out, but being up in Cobalt Edge near Oasa, there is no short way out.

Circumnavigation: Leg 1.0.1

I log back on, with the intent to locate something to kill, before setting out on leg two of the voyage. In system U6R-F9, one jump over from CUT-0V, I d-scan a Skiff, a Procurer, and an Orca. The Skiff is named after one of the two dudes (other than me) in system. I'm feeling a tad excited. Perhaps I'll get my first kill of the trip.

I don't have any combat scanners on the Nemesis, so have to make do with d-scan. My procedure (and anyone who has better ideas how to do this, feel free to speak up) is to find a centrally located object, and warp to it (at distance.) Then proceed to do a maximum scan at 360°. If targets I wish to look for come up on scan, then I proceed to narrow the scan to 5°, and scan to each celestial (or group of celestials) in the swath about my location. Once I locate my targets with the narrowed scan beam, I then check if there are any asteroid/ice belts near that celestial, if so, then I start warping to them looking for prey. If there are no belts, then I assume they are parked at player/alliance controlled structures. Nothing too terribly complicated, and I can perform the task reasonably quickly.

So this is what I'm doing at U6R-F9, only four folks in system, when suddenly huge local spike. Sixty people now in system. The majority of whom are Northern Coalition Dot. A minute later, local spikes again, and 125 people are in system. Seems about equal numbers, NCdot and Intrepid Crossing. A broohaha seems to be forming. And this is what I got to witness for the next five minutes (I got a little to close to the battle for comfort a couple of times.)

I believe NCdot got the best of Intrepid Crossing in this exchange, but it seems, from the local banter afterwards, that everyone had a good time. Both struck me as two quality alliances, no trash talk at all in local, just a good bang-em-up, and a lot of "good fights" afterwards.

Tomorrow, I'll head out on Leg Two. Hopefully I'll find something to shoot at this time. I intend to solve the entire EVE Online mining bot problem on this circumnavigation. There's no need to thank me. It's what I do.