CSM7 - Counting Sheep

Vote gathering, if you're a nullsec candidate, is different than vote gathering if you're a highsec candidate.

The issues for the nullsec candidate are pretty cut-and-dried. Basically they boil down to supercapital balancing, sovereignty issues, and ISK flow. From what I've seen, every nullsec candidate is on the same page with every other nullsec candidate. So blindly voting for the nullsec candidate you're directed to vote for, there's little in the way of needing to know what that particular nullsec candidate represents. You don't need to see a complete rundown of the issues they're campaigning on. It is reasonably self-evident what they'll be representing, what changes they'll be pushing for, etcetera.

Things are not quite so determined with the highsec candidates. There are so many flavours of highsec representation. Is the candidate a super-carebear? Do they desire conflict? Do they wish to see less conflict? Are they proponents of risk vs. reward? Do they desire more theme park MMO attributes in EVE Online? Their relationship to lowsec? Nullsec?

Which is why Kelduum Revaan's exploration into vote gathering must have taken him a bit by surprise. Rather than page upon page of the student body proclaiming that "Yes, you have my vote, Kelduum", there were mostly questions. What issues are you campaigning on? What is your manifesto? Sorry, can't give you my vote until I know what it is you want to accomplish on the CSM.

What happened? Kelduum tosses up a poll asking his students and alumni if they'll vote for him. And that's it. No indication at all concerning why he wants to run, what he brings to the table.

The poll went up over 36 hours ago. At least twenty people ask him what is his agenda. Not a peep from Kelduum. Which is why I figure he must have been taken a bit unawares at the responses. Perhaps he doesn't even really know what issues he wants to campaign on yet? That would strike me as odd. He stated his intent to run three weeks ago. He must have drafted something? He must have an idea what he wants to push forward with CCP.

When Trebor did his CSM crowdsourcing vote, the unistas came out 550 strong to vote along the Kelduum line (back when membership was 2000 strong.) Based on that alone, and since Crucible saw none of those top crowdsourced vote-getters with any attention, we can maybe assume that things like the corporate UI interface are still high on his agenda, as well as the medal interface. But it would be suicide to run on UI issues alone (especially corporate UI interface issues, which impact an exceptionally small minority of players.)

Hopefully he'll put something together soon. Where does he stand on wardecs? (Is he going to push for his capture the flag idea as a replacement for the currently broken wardec system?) High-sec incursions? (Too much of an ISK faucet? Not enough?) CONCORD? Less PvP in highsec? Does he favour PvP flagging for corporations in highsec? What about EVE University? Is he going to push for the University to become a training corporation, with special rules for all corporations that get to wear that designation?

Nullsec, there's basically just one side to the coin. Highsec a polyhedron. So many sides a candidate can come out on.

If his plan was to just coast into a CSM seat based on his 1500 EVE University members, then he's going to be a tad embarrassed come the end of April.

So, if you're a highsec candidate, don't start rallying the votes until you've put together your platform.

CSM Voting Mechanics

It's probably too late to suggest changes to the CSM voting system, but I'm gonna throw out a suggestion nonetheless. I'm interested in the feedback. What people see as the upside and the downside.

Currently the system is one account one vote. You simply vote for the candidate you are most interested in. This puts a great deal of control into the hands of large voting blocs.

The upside to the current voting system is that it, more or less, mirrors real-life political voting. In essence, people are voting for political parties. CSM6 was made up mostly of folks from the Nullsec Party, even if the Nullsec Party doesn't actually exist or has no formal structure.

The downside is that it also promotes sheep voting. A popular candidate in a large bloc doesn't have to do much of anything, other than direct his underlings to vote a certain way. If you have a large enough bloc, the candidate is almost guaranteed a seat based on voting numbers alone. The candidate doesn't have to represent anything in particular if they are popular enough with their constituents.

An alternative is you allow every account a VOTE FOR a single candidate, and a VOTE AGAINST a single candidate. Every candidate then has two votes associated with their election run, votes for and votes against. Votes against are subtracted from votes for, and the folks with the highest values get seats on the CSM.

The upside is that candidates have to appeal to the greater community, not simply their voting bloc. It would make it more difficult for candidates with singular agendas to get seats on the CSM. Candidates would have to appeal to a broader base, they'd need platforms that encompassed the game as a whole, rather than niche policies. For example, Ripard Teg, who has a very broad base of appeal would find himself a shoe-in for a seat, rather than looking at a potential second loss in a row (which is the main reason he hasn't declared candidacy yet for CSM7, the current voting system doesn't favour those sitting outside voting blocs.)

Another upside, increased complexity means increased difficulty gaming the system.

The downside is that it would lead candidates, who lead large blocs, to play against their nature, simply to appeal to that broader base. For example, The Mittani, would he have embarked on ice interdiction, upsetting a broad base of highsec players, increasing his chances for far more votes against?

Life in Stain - Burned Burning

Today I finally did the smart thing and I have a non-blowed up Viator to show for it.

So many times, when jumping semi-blind into a system, and then encountering a bubble camp, I do the exact wrong thing and get blowed up.

The wrong thing is to try to burn out of the bubble, cloaked with a single pulse of MWD, and then warp away to safety. Fine idea, in theory. What usually happens is that the single MWD pulse doesn't get me out of the bubble, and the ships camping the gate catch up to me, decloak me, kill me. I'm burned burning away from the gate.

And whenever I written about that exact scenario happening, I've always added, "I should have just headed back to the gate and jumped from whence I came. That would have been the smart thing." But I rarely do the smart thing in that instance, usually because I'm anxious to get where I'm going and usually because the gate camped system is one that is necessary to get through if I want to get to where I'm want to go.

Curiosity kills a lot of cats. Impatience kills this cat.

Except tonight. A couple Sabres and friends camping the entrance into 37S-KO. My first instinct was to start analyzing my position within the bubbles, start plotting out a quickest route while still having a celestial I could align too. I spent about thirty seconds deciding what direction to start burning, when I finally paid attention to that little voice urging me to do the smart thing. "Save the Viator! Save the world!"

So I did.

Align to gate. Activate cloak. Activate microwarpdrive. Twelve kilometres. None of the ships even headed towards the gate after me. Only seeing a partial align, they were convinced I was heading spaceward, not gateward.

So I jumped back through, and immediately warped and cloaked to my observational point. Twenty seconds later the two Sabres followed me in. They hung around for a couple minutes before jumping back to 37S-KO. Me? I logged. I'll try the system later.

(And yeah, before any one writes, a scout would have been useful. But I'm not going to be using a scout, because a) I don't want a third account right now, and b) I'm not bringing Poetic back to Stain just to scout for the alt. I do fine solo, when impatience doesn't win over instinct.)

Life in Stain - Planetary Interaction - Black Frog

I'm finally in the black with the planetary interaction.

I've yet to sell a single High-Tech Transmitter, but I'm calculating what I'm stockpiling at 87.5% of the current Jita market value. Until it's actually sold, I think that's a fair assessment of the worth of my commodity.

I won't be selling any High-Tech Transmitters (HTT) for another 170 days, though. I am currently processing 288 HTTs every 24 hours. I plan to bring my HTTs to market when I stockpile 50000 units of them. That is approximately 4.1B ISK worth of HTTs.

The problem, being way out in Stain, is transport to market.

I'm already thinking about it. Risk versus reward. That's what EVE is all about.

My current Viator configuration can hold 8052 m³ of cargo. HTTs require 6m³ each. Thus my Viator can transport 1342 units of HTTs per run. If I want to transport 50000 HTTs, that's 38 cargo runs. That's a lot of round trips between Stain and Empire space. That's a lot of danger.

If I want to make the Viator safer, faster, then the cargo capacity drops further. Which means even more cargo runs.

How many Viators might I potentially lose, making that many trips through nullsec (and some lowsec)? A fit Viator is worth a tad over 100M ISK, and the cargo another 100M ISK. And that's the ISK part of the equation. How much of my time is that going to occupy? A fuck tonne, that's for sure.

Enter Black Frog. The nullsec hauling arm of Red Frog. I've used them once before, to transport a bunch of Viators and Dramiels down to Stain. Cost from Jita to Stain? 95M ISK. Pretty damned reasonable, if you ask me.

How much, though, to transport 4B ISK in cargo from Stain to Jita? 125M ISK. Considering the worth of the cargo, again, pretty damned reasonable. Considering that my last use of Black Frog, I had my stuff in Stain four hours after I created the contract, pretty damned reasonable. So, a fuck tonne of my time, or create a contract, go to sleep, wake up and likely have my cargo in Jita waiting for me. Hmm.

This decision is pretty simple. I doubt I could make 35-40 jumps through Stain, Period Basis, and Delve without losing at least one Viator (if not more.) I don't relish the thought of making an 80 jump trip (there and back) 35-40 times.

In 170 days, I'll be calling on you Black Frog. Be ready. (Hell, I'll be calling on you again soon, because I want more ships and mods down in Stain.)

EVE University and RvB - Fun Times Always

It's been awhile. Since I've posted anything about EVE University. Since there's been some juicy EVE Uni-RvB drama.

This is what happens when you try to get two incompatible alliances together. One is all for freeform PvP with a very limited set of rules (which are often breached nonetheless.) The other prefers safe gameplay with a heavy overlay of rules and procedures that dictate their play.

The last time we met our heroes, the Uni was up-in-arms when PvP happened. Namely that RvB, in all their PvP enthusiasm, attacked the University POS. No one told RvB that the POS was off-limits. RvB assumed it was just another target of opportunity. The Uni screamed, hollered, stamped its feet and called off the "war."

Many months later, the University has forgiven RvB its transgressions, and they will be going to "war" again, this weekend. This time there will be a list of rules that each corporation has to follow. What not to do. Where not to go.

Before "war" happens, though, hilarity must ensue. Namely the University, once again, getting its panties in a knot when PvP happens.

The University has a large presence in the Hagilur lowsec pocket, out near Hek. Obstensibly for PvP learning purposes. They've been stationed there for a couple months now, so likely a lot of the University's carebear industrialists have moved in also, to reap the extra rewards that they can't quite get from highsec. So, it might explain the hollering that occurred when the following happened.

In a nutshell, a couple of RvB members wandered into the Hagilur pocket and killed a few Unistas. PvP in lowsec. The problem for the University, is that they mind-bogglingly set RvB to +5 status. What that meant is that the folks blowing up the Unistas didn't even appear on the Unista overviews. So, until they examined killmails, they didn't really have a clue who had killed them. The RvBers doing the blowing up had no idea that the Uni had them set to blue.

Why one sets a PvP corporation to blue status is a question for the scholars, especially a PvP corporation that doesn't set any outside corp to +5/+10. Perhaps the University diplomatic corp had some lower-rung RvB diplo agree in principle to mutual blue status. The University went ahead and did it, RvB never did. Mistakes were made, likely not on RvB's part, since they've never had a policy of setting outsiders blue.

Back to the fun. Once what was happening was made clear, hollering started on the Uni chat channel (the one for members and alumni, not the horrible public channel). Here are some of the better comments (names redacted for their own protection):

Unista 01 > why are we giving rvb the privalege of fighting us when they can't follow rules?

Unista 02 > Did we agree to an armistice with them before our war next weekend? Can a diplo confirm?

Unista 03 > Who wants to bet some ISKies taht they'll attack our pos again?
Unista 01 > i'll take that bet & raise you that they'll podkill during our war.
Unista 03 > ROFL!! No doubt!

Unista 04 > We should cancel the big war and teach them a lesson. If they can't obey there standings how are they going to obey any of the rules for the war next week?

Unista 05 > RvB has no honor. We learned that during the last war. Why are we all surprised?

It goes on and on. Apparently the overriding sentiment is that fighting the University is a privilege and that RvB should consider itself lucky.

Then some of the complaining eventually reaches their forums.

It takes an ex-Uni to finally speak some sense to the mounting anger: "To the best of my knowledge, RvB doesn't have any blues, since that would kind of defeat the point. They have like, extra-red, but that's about it. Now come on ... this idiocy is just embarassing the Uni. You're on a public forum section, ffs."

Other than the hilarity of what happened -- that RvB is always getting itself in hot-water with the University when they actually do PvP -- I found some of the director comments eye-opening. This one in particular: "... there are elements of every corporation that have their own methods and agendas. While it reflects poorly on the organization, it is (hopefully) an isloated few who are not adhering to the rules."

That there is the crux of the issue. When you're raised in an environment that is chock full of rules, you come to expect that the outside world should be rules-based as well. When the University says they love PvP, they love PvP within a well-defined framework, one in which the aggressing parties cannot stray. Even Kelduum Revaan has suggested a capture-the-flag system as a replacement to the war declaration system.

When Kelduum is running for CSM7, bear that in mind. When he says he loves PvP, remember two things: a) he doesn't actually participate in PvP, and b) he wants to bring World of Warcraft-style battlegrounds to EVE Online, as a replacement for the war system.

Planetary Interaction - The Skill Sweet Spot

So you want to do planetary interaction. Do you really need elite certifications for Colony Management and Planetology?

The answer to that would be a resounding "No!" Not for any level of efficient planetary interaction, at any rate.

If all you're doing is playing the market, buying your commodities and running a single manufacturing planet, then this little tutorial is not for you.

If you have any designs on actually running several planets, setting down extractors, hauling from customs offices, doing actual management of your planetary output, then read on.

If you're too busy to read on, then here's the "too long; didn't read" bit. You should achieve the improved Colony Management certificate, and achieve the improved Planetology certificate. The elite certificates are not necessary, though getting Planetology V and Advanced Planetology III (both components of the elite Planetology certificate) is important.

I run a five planet set-up for P3 production. Four planets to extract P0 resources and convert them into P1 commodities. I then transport the P1 items off planet, which are then shipped to a manufacturing planet, which converts the P1 commodities into P2 and then the final P3 commodity. In my estimation, this is as far as you want to go when you're extracting and building up the chain, from P0 resources up to P3 commodities.

If your plan is to build P4 commodities, I'd suggest running only a single manufacturing planet, and buying all your P3 commodities from the market. Due to the limitations of the Interplanetary Consolidation skill, you simply cannot run enough planets on a single character to make P4 production, from raw to final, at all efficient.

Planetology V
Advanced Planetology III
Where the planet mode heat map (scan) says the raw resources are hidden, is not necessarily where they are actually located -- especially if your planetology skills are low. Acquiring Advanced Planetology III ensures your heat map is quite accurate, only minor adjustments of your extractor heads will locate the actual sweet spots. As a rank five skill, spending the (approximately) twenty-five days skilling Advanced Planetology from III to V is not worth the effort. Apply that time elsewhere.

Command Center Upgrades IV
This skill is most important when it comes to your manufacturing planet. Manufacturing planets demand a lot of powergrid (for all the processors.) Upgrading command centers gives you more powergrid, which means more processors planetside. The number of processors you have will determine your ISK output per day. It's easy enough for your P1 planets to keep up with the needs of the manufacturing planet. The powergrid needs of P1 planets are low, even when running at a high rate of output.

The following image represents my P1 -> P4 manufacturing planet. P1 items are shipped to the launchpad. Those P1 items are then funneled to the advanced industry processors. The resulting P2 items are funneled back to the launchpad, and they are then moved onto the remaining advanced industry processors to create the final P3 product. The configuration below uses up 97% of my command center's powergrid. This configuration will create earnings of 23M ISK per day (using a value for the high-tech transmitters that is 10% below current Jita value.)

Training Command Center Upgrades V would allow you to increase your P3 production from four to five facilities. In my case this would increase my daily ISK intake to 28M ISK per day. I've decided those sixteen days spent training are better spent elsewhere.

Interplanetary Consolidation IV
Since five planets are required for (most) P3 production, there is little point training Interplanetary Consolidation V, which will allow you to produce on a sixth planet. The sixth planet offers no efficiency benefit to P3 production. Five planets are all you need.

(For those P3 items that require three P2 commodities -- Supercomputers come to mind -- similar to P4 item production, these particular P3 items are most efficiently created via market trading for the P2 components.)

Remote Sensing III/IV
This skill simply allows you to scan planets from a distance. Since you'll likely be managing your planets within a three to four jump radius of your base station (where you'll be parking the ship and storing the commodities once you've picked them up from the customs offices), there's little requirement for long range scanning. Five to seven light years is more than enough.

Life in Stain - Ramping Up Production

Second Viator lost in Stain, along with an entire day's worth of planetary production. Commodity level one, Chiral Structures, Industrial Fibers, that sort of thing. So not a big loss, monetarily. I brought down extra replacement Viators (thanks Black Frog!), so I could replace losses at Jita costs and not Stain costs.

Dude was clever though. He followed me around my usual route, but I kept beating him to the correct gate (it was his first time following me.) Lost him for a bit at one intersection system (I went to pick up planet goods, he went to a station system, since that was the logical choice.) He picked me up again, five minutes later at the station system. I loitered around a bit, and decided to take route B (rather than my usual route A) back to my home system. The dude must have been waiting for me at a gate along route A, and when he saw me leave system, yet not pass by him, he must have quickly figured out that I was taking an alternative route back to home. Viator travels at 3AU/sec. His Sabre at 9AU/sec. He caught me at my home system as I jumped in at the route B gate.

I had a feeling he might be there. But I also figured he wasn't going to clue in to the direction I took fast enough, nor get their quick enough to catch me.

It's been a few days since that's happened. Every time I log in now (we seem to share a similar timezone), within a few minutes of logging in, he shows up in system. I must have made his watchlist. Woot! I can't blame him. You get an easy kill, you're going to want to check up on the idiot again, see if he's learned his lesson or not.

I still go about my business, of picking up my planetary commodities, but I then log off in space with full cargo, and deposit it in station the next morning, when he isn't online. Undock, log off in space again. I learned my lesson, so eventually he'll get bored and search out someone dumber than me.

We dumb people abound in New Eden, though most of my kind never leave highsec. I'm the anomaly. I prefer the risk, even if it costs me ISK. Lots of it.

I just started up the production planet. Spitting out High-Tech Transmitters now. At my current rate of production, earning about 15M ISK per day profit. It's the first time I've gone beyond P2 production. Back with my lowsec PI, I made a little over 2M ISK per day. P3 is proving to be much more worthwhile.

(I'll never go with P4, too much of a pain in the ass and requires juggling too many planets; I can run five of them now. You couldn't run proper P4 production on six planets, if the goal was to never buy from the market. The only viable way to do P4 production is to feed a production planet from the market. A lot of hauling in that method, because you'd need low region-wide buy orders.)

Anyhow, once I see how things fare, I can ramp up production to 27.5M ISK per day.

And yeah, I could make more money doing other things. Incursions. Market trading. But I hate Incursions. Mind numbingly repetitive. Reminds me of theme park MMO raiding (I quite WoW because I could no longer stand raiding, and raiding is pretty much all there is to do in WoW.) And market trading, I do not have the patience or the time for 0.01 ISK wars.

AFK

Not going to be around much for the next week or so. So there'll be little in the way of posting, and the only playing I'll be doing is updating skill queues and managing the planetary interactions.

Not that I've had much to write about recently. Hauling planetary interaction commodities off planet isn't terribly exciting. Nor is bookmarking. There's only so many adjectives and adverbs one can use to make them seem even moderately rah-rah-siss-boom-bah. And then the audience figures out what's happening.

100 Tristans - Giving Up The Ghost

So, I'm giving up on the 100 Tristans experiment. Twelve Tristans into it.

Why?

It wasn't much fun. It wasn't really that the Tristan is a sucky ship (if it can't be competitive with a Rifter, what the hell use is it?) It's more that solo PvP isn't my thing.

I don't really enjoy going out and looking for PvP. It's sort of boring. Flying around the same five systems over and over, hoping to waylay someone, or find someone who wants to do some 1v1. Some nights you find a couple or three fights in an hour, other nights you can fly around for three hours and find nothing at all. That's not the sort of thing I look forward to when logging on.

I love the idea of PvP. I would never play a game if it didn't have some sort of PvP. I like open-ended, world PvP. I like knowing that as I'm going about doing my thing, that I could be someone's target of opportunity. I like knowing that if I run across someone, all happenstance-like, that I can attempt to take them out (even if, usually, I wouldn't bother.)

I'd quit this game in a second, though, if CCP added consensual-PvP (and they're coming close, what with their silence on fixing the broken wardec system.) Sandbox PvP. That's the essence of a great MMOG, in my opinion. My playstyle and my engagement in PvP, it probably sounds contradictory. I don't really go out looking for PvP; most times PvP doesn't interest me at all; but I would never play a game that didn't have PvP as an integral part of gameplay.

Time for an anecdote. Today, I was just out minding my own business in Syndicate (as well as you can do that in NPC nullsec.) Bookmarking systems. I land on a gate, and low-and-behold, a Taranis. Brother to the Ares. I could have jumped through the gate easily enough, avoided the conflict. Most times I would have; got on with the business of bookmarking. For whatever reason though, I felt in the mood to engage. I got my ass kicked. But I had fun. I podded off afterwards four jumps, went and built me a new ship; continued bookmarking.

PvP will always find me. But every so often, on the blue moons, I'll come looking for it.

When it comes to PvP in EVE, what I find I enjoy the most are fleets, small- to mid-size gangs. I like the social aspect. The comms. I like having a defined role and job. I don't want the stress and bother of leading fleets, organizing them, but I do like being part of a team.

So, after I finish bookmarking Syndicate, I think I'm going to get serious about finding a good nullsec alliance. I would really like to join Important Internet Spaceship League, specifically the Association of Commonwealth Enterprises. I'll have to find out if they'd want a dude like me. They might not.

I'll write about PvP in the future. Just not the solo kind.

Life in Stain - Chit-Chat and Offers

I'll mention by foray into Syndicate before getting into Stain. Already lost my first Ares. Two jumps in. FD-MLJ. I know of the danger of this system. I was killed there twice before. Once with 1.2B ISK in Outer Rings cargo. So I recognize the danger in the system, especially when entering Syndicate from Orvolle. I was hoping the camping would be light at this time of day, that I'd be able to scoot on past the danger.

I'll just have to enter Syndicate from another system in Empire. Lots of them to choose from. Once I get into Syndicate, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a lot of bookmarking done before getting the next Ares blown up. I just need to get in and past the initial ha-ha-empire-people gate camps.

I Have An Offer For You
I was contacted the other day about an offer someone wanted to make concerning my collection of Stain bookmarks. Basically their offer revolved around the notion that they can make a complete copy of my 451 bookmarks in eight minutes. Thus, they'd offer to a) copy my bookmarks for me, b) be my salesperson and sell the collection for a reduced price of 150M ISK (which they felt was more reasonable.) In return, for every sale they would keep 100M ISK and I'd get 50M ISK.

I politely turned them down.

I can copy my 451 bookmarks in about twenty minutes. Twelve minutes of savings is not worth 200M ISK in lost revenue to me. Not too mention the other red flags. Someone I don't know. Giving up the collection to someone else to manage. Trusting that their sales would be accurately reported to me.

451 bookmarks seems more than worth 250M ISK. If someone feels it isn't, then spend the 15-20 hours creating a similar collection. Afterwards tell me you wouldn't have rather ran seventeen hours of incursions.

Advice: Scout
About a week ago, a fellow from Babylon 5 contacts me. He wants to give me travel advice on getting through Stain. I won't call it guilt, that would be wrong, but I get the feeling this has something to do with my two losses at the hands of his alliance. Perhaps he feels I am depressed or despondent over the losses. Maybe he thinks I may pack it up and return to Empire space. Perhaps it's as simple as him thinking me a complete newb. I'm a bit of a nullsec newb, but not so much so that I don't know up from down and left from right.

It was a good thirty minute chat which boiled down to scouting. To move around safely in Stain, I needed a scout alt to roam ahead of my Stain alt. That you move around solo, jumping blindly into systems was complete suicide. I'm not going to call it bad advice. It isn't. If I had lots of ISK earning potential, maybe I might set up a scouting alt. On the other hand, does one really need a scouting alt in Stain? The region is really not that busy.

The following screenshots are the hourly activity filters for Stain and Syndicate -- ships lost in the last hour. From this you can get a good idea of where danger lies, without a scout. You won't know the complete picture, but you can certainly make some informed decisions, travel plan altering decisions based on the information obtained from this particular filter.

There's likely a single gate camp happening in Stain, just north of the major east-west pipe. A not unusual location, but out of the way for anyone travelling through Stain, from Period Basis to Catch. The entire pipe between those two regions is devoid of any serious activity over the last hour. Stain is not a particularly dangerous place.

Sure, there are activity flare ups from time to time, but you don't need to get over-paranoid with the scouting, just to move around. It's active, but not so active that you need to be in PvP-mode 100% of the time. There's no need to be running a scout alt just to get another character safely about. I can tell via the starmap's last-hour activity filter what systems to be concerned about, possibly avoid.

Syndicate, on the other hand . . . .

Guess where the gate camps are in Syndicate? I would hazard that there are five strung along in the north, all along a major thoroughfare. And then a couple of odd ones down in individual pockets owned by various alliances, no doubt defending their digs or capturing strays.

I appreciated the conversation and the concern, from the Babylon 5 gentleman, but I understand what it means to move about solo in nullsec. I understand that it will mean ship losses from time to time. The starmap doesn't double for the pure data that an alt scout would bring. But I understand and accept those future ship losses. And that's okay.

Life in Stain - Lick the Frog

I was tired of being broke. I bought some GTCs. Now I'm hiring Black Frog to get me a bunch of stuff down to Stain for the alt. Three spare Viators. Five Dramiels. All the modules to go along with them (plus some, for possible sales and profits). And skill books.

The Dramiels will be for missioning. The alt might as well work for a living while down there, rather than sponge off the main. He should start pulling his weight. Plus, building up Sansha rep can't be half bad.

The Black Frog rate was cheap. A contract worth 1.3B ISK in collateral, moving down nearly 77K m³, and it will only cost 95M ISK. I may have to wait 14 days for it to arrive, but hopefully not that long. That would be the maximum. Seven expiration, seven day completion. I was under the impression they were going to cost a couple or a few hundred million ISK. So to have their calculator spit out 95M ISK, well, that seemed a pleasant surprise.

(Edit: the Black Frog contract was fulfilled in slightly under four hours.)

I've scaled back the planetary interaction somewhat. Dropped the idea of doing Supercomputers. Will stick with High-Tech Transmitters. Can more easily do that on four planets. It's a little less hectic, production-wise. When I tally up about 250K units of the P1 commodities (Industrial Fibers, Oxidizing Compounds, Chiral Structures, and Plasmoids), I'll convert the temperate planet into advanced production, have it build out the Polyamarids and Transmitters, and then those into High-Tech Transmitters. With the bloody import/export tax rates so high, we'll see what sort of profit can be wrought. I'm currently spending about 1.3M ISK per day running the planets, mostly the taxes.

Poetic just contracted four Ares and fittings out to a station on the edge of Syndicate (15M ISK reward for 11K m³ cargo, because I respect haulers.) My plan is to bookmark this NPC nullsec region. Not quite as completely as Stain, though. There'll still be observational bookmarks on every gate. There are just too many damned stations in Syndicate, that I won't be bookmarking every one of them. If there are multiple stations in a system, I'll choose one station to bookmark. I'll also bookmark every station that has a repair and/or a cloning service. Thus, for a travel purposes, all the bases will be covered.

As a travel exercise, this should be a lot more interesting endeavour, what with a lot more dangerous and active alliances being in the region -- Rooks & Kings, Agony Unleashed, Rote Kapelle. I expect to lose more Ares than I did in Stain (two), though I will try my damnedest not too.

Gambling Degenerates

Gambling is one of the meta-games available to capsuleers. There are tonnes of options out there. From the basic lottery systems. Raffles. Full-on Texas Hold'Em poker. There are the imitators. There's even the obvious long-con scams.

I take part in some of the gambling. I'm not very good. But I enjoy the thrill of it all. Just in game, mind you.

My gambling is finally in the black, so time to discuss it, with some detail of my own degenerate history. It's less embarrassing now that I'm out of the red (at one point I was down nearly half a billion ISK.)

I'll only cover the games of chance that I'm most familiar with.

Somer Blink
Somer Blink is a raffle. There's the regular blinks with consist of eight ticket raffles, and the mega blinks which are sixteen ticket raffles. They also give away lots of free shit in promo blinks. Every time they reach a multiple of 10T ISK, they have a bunch more giveaways, plus some special raffles. They also have achievements. They also have an occasional trivia contest called Pres Butan (which I can no longer play, because I was caught selling answers; I made 50M ISK doing that, but I am a sad bear that I can no longer test my EVE trivia knowledge.)

Mr. Somer has really studied the psychology of the gambler, because this game ropes you in and keeps you roped in. It's also a very pretty and well-designed website.

During my time in the University, this was most certainly the most popular gambling among the student body. It was hard to pass on the game, because people were always calling out the promos (as a courtesy) over Mumble. People were explaining Somer Blink a few times a day to the inevitable "What's a promo?" questions.

Every blink is for some in-game item. Usually a ship, but not uncommonly PLEX and implant sets. If you win, you have three options for payout. You can turn your winnings back into blink credit (never do this), you can accept the item as a contract (out of any major trade hub), or you can accept an ISK payout. Only the last two options are worthwhile (if you want to actually have winnings). Which is more worthwhile is a matter of checking the market. You'll know the ISK payout (it's right there listed with each blink as the buyout value.) But the value of the actual item fluctuates with the market.

For instance, PLEX. Somer will pay out in ISK, 445M ISK. Yet a PLEX is worth, on the market today, 477M ISK. Far better to take the PLEX and sell it yourself, than take the ISK payout. Again, you'll have to check the market with every winning to see what is the better return. Sometimes the ISK payout works out to your advantage, sometimes receiving the actual item and selling it yourself means more ISK in your pocket.

Important tip. If you buy GTCs (Game Time Code), consider buying them via the link on the Somer Blink website. It's an almost definite way to earn extra ISK. Buy one GTC, get 100M blink credit. Buy four GTCs, get 500M blink credit. I've bought eight GTCs through Somer Blink, and earned an extra 730M ISK that I would not have earned otherwise.

EOH Poker
EVE Online Hold'Em. This rivals Somer Blink in popularity. If you're any good at poker, you can earn vast amounts of money. A dude in the University, Ninevite, funded all his accounts playing poker, plus contests and PvP incentives for the students during times of war (old days, obviously.) I enjoy poker, but mostly suck at it. I don't have the patience for it. I tilt a lot.

This is the one game you cannot play with the in-game browser, due to a Flash interface.

There are, basically, two ways to play EOH poker.

The first, deposit money into your EOH account and join games currently in progress. Sit at a table and win or lose. These are known as ring games.

The second option is to join two separate in-game EOH channels, sign up for tournament games run by the EOH bankers. There's no need to deposit money into your EOH account. You pay the banker the sit-down fee, wait for the tournament to start. If you win, the banker pays you your winnings (minus their fee.) There are a lot of different tournament games to choose from, though the most popular are the double- and triple-throughs (the top three players on six and nine person tables win ISK.) There are also headhunter games, heads up play, and all-in first hand games (sort of dumb, since it's pure chance; when poker is a mix of skill and luck, why play something that is entirely luck?)

I've lost a fair bit of money at poker. But it's still a fun way to pass some time.

Phaser Inc.
There is something to be said about the long cons. These obvious scams going for the big score. It takes a lot of patience and fortitude on the part of the grifter, not to lose sight of the big picture, not to get greedy before the ultimate goal. If one can get in on the ground floor of such a scam, your likelihood of making a profit is reasonably good. Long cons like this work because they have to be legitimate for some period of time. You're not going to pull in the reticent folks until you prove good faith over a period of months. Once you've got that good faith appeal, folks will start pouring money into you. There seems to be this overwhelming wish that this could be that one honest to goodness EVE player who is willing to turn player eggs into golden omelettes.

I sent Phaser Inc. 10M ISK. It's not much money. Was worth the risk. I thought I was getting in near the start of their venture. I should have done better research. I actually got in near the tail-end. Received a few returns. Lost 8.4M ISK total.

The Big Lottery
The Big Lottery is just a straight up lottery. I played it once, back when I was a three week old newb. Never played it again. I'm not much of a fan of the games with the long odds. It is popular and has a following though. It may be operated by the EOH Poker folks, since most of the prize money seems to be donated via EVE Online Hold'Em.

My Gambling History

EVE Blog-a-Day #018 - Do you gamble?

What is EVE Blog-a-Day?

Similar to the EVE Blog Banter, which occurs once per month, EVE Blog-a-Day will pose a short simple question for EVE's bloggers. It's meant to give bloggers a jump start into posting. You want to post something, but you're stuck for a subject? EVE Blog-a-Day can help. Feel free to use it every time a new question is posed, or only when a new question piques your interest.

Even though it is called EVE Blog-a-Day, questions won't come daily. Probably in daily spurts here and there. It might disappear for awhile, but it will return when inspiration strikes.

Question #018

Do you use any of the EVE Online meta-gaming/gambling sites? If so, which ones?

My Response

I've made frequent use of both Somer Blink and EOH Poker. (More on all this in a post that is currently being written.)

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Life in Stain - Earnings and Taxes

The sale of the Stain bookmarks hasn't been the flood of orders I'd hoped. But neither has it been a complete bust. In twenty-four hours, I've sold two sets of the 451 bookmarks. That's 500M ISK that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Though, I certainly could have made 500M ISK much faster in other ways, considering the amount of time it took to create that many bookmarks across 132 systems.

I didn't make an exact counting of the time spent, but I'd gather it was on the order of 15-20 hours of work. I figure my break-even point on the project is about 2B ISK.

I've decided that if I can make 3B ISK selling the Stain bookmarks, then I'll look towards creating bookmark collections for other regions. I'd likely start with Catch and Curse. Two busy areas. Plus, the three regions together should sell as a nice package unto themselves.

About the only pain in the ass associated with selling so many bookmarks is the copying process. Five at a time from People & Places into station cargo. I've got a little system going, and it takes about 20 minutes to make a copy of all 451 bookmarks. (That system: sort each list by name -- makes it easier to keep track of where you are in the process; also, resizing the People & Places window so that it shows 20 bookmarks at a time -- knowing that one full window is 20 bookmarks helps to keep mistake free in the copying process.) Not so much a pain in the ass as a tad annoying, is having to break up each sale into three contracts, since contracts have a 200 item limit. Due to this, I've trained Contracting III, so that I have enough contract slots in the event of a mini-rush on the collection.

Anyhow, I'll keep up the advertising. Poetic is back in Jita now, ready to copy and contract bookmarks to whoever needs them. She's also building out a Proteus, which I'll probably bring back down to Stain; probably use it for security status ratting.

The alt is still in Stain, of course. He's ramped up his planetary interaction. He has four planets going full on production at the moment. Stockpiling tonnes of P1 commodities, on the way to eventually building P3 commodities, having decided upon Supercomputers and High-Tech Transmitters.

What the fuck are with these new export tax rates? Looking over my spreadsheets, pre-Crucible, over a 64 day set of commodity building, I spent 2M ISK on export taxes. Post-Crucible, 10 days in, I've spent close to 10M on export taxes. That is quite the goddamned jump in tax rates in a single update. That kinda makes me angry, and I wonder how CCP rationalizes that level of price hike. Really cuts into the profit margins, especially considering that there's a substantial amount of export and import taxation to build P3 commodities.

Taxes, aside, I am learning to break out of old habits. Especially docking at station habits. Considering the amount of bubbling that occurs at the undock of NPC stations, I've learned to dock only when absolutely necessary, and only when the undock area is clear of hostiles. The habit I'm working myself into is to always log off in space, never in station. In Empire space, logging off in station is the norm. It's almost the preferable practice. So that habit will have to die hard, if I want to get anything done out here in nullsec. This is probably the most important lesson I've learned recently.

Life in Stain - Stain for Sale

I finally bookmarked all of Stain. Long and painful process. Only lost two Ares in the process, both in the Babylon 5 area of space. Those guys do not like people roaming their pocket of Stain. No hard feelings about it though. All's good. Chatted with one of them last night actually. I'll talk about that in a later post, but he was good people.

So, what did all that work get me? So far, 451 bookmarks. Lots of fun copying them to cargo too. Five at a time. Woot! Now to see if this will sell. I need the money. I keep envisioning my bank account overflowing with billions of ISK from bookmark sales. I'm likely kidding myself.

I just posted my ad on the EVE-O forums:

Travel Stain quickly and easily with the STAIN TRAVEL BOOKMARK COLLECTION.

Includes bookmarks for every system in the region of STAIN.

Each system includes an observational bookmark (180-225km) on every gate. An instant dock bookmark (at 0km) on every station. An undock bookmark (650-1250km) for near-instant warping from a station undock.

This collection contains 451 bookmarks.

COST: 250,000,000 (250 million) ISK

EveMail POETIC STANZIEL with the character you wish to receive the contract. I will then send you three contracts (contracts are limited to 200 items each). Two contracts for 100M ISK, and the third contract for 50M ISK. (250M ISK total.)

The contract will be based out of Jita.

(If you wish me to place the contract in any other location, that can be arranged for an added fee. An extra 25M to 50M ISK depending on the location.)

Life in Stain - Who's Who

I apologize for the last post (which I've deleted.) I hadn't posted anything in about five days; was feeling anxious to post something. Excited at seeing all the changes occurring in the northern half of the influence map, I figured I'd yammer about that. Other than the bare basics, that of Goonswarm wanting Branch and their intel telling them White Noise would put up little fight, and of Solar Fleet and Shadow of xXDeathXx going to war, I know nothing else. Raiden is poking into Branch too, so what happens when Goons and Raiden meet? Are they loose allies? Enemies? Did they agree to split up Branch? Are the sovereignty changes in Branch pretty much complete? Someone at EVE New 24 should do a primer on the alliances between the influence map alliances, loose and tight.

Back to Stain. Only seven more systems to bookmark. Babylon 5 territory remaining. These are the guys who popped my Ares a few days ago. They blew up another tonight. They're mountain lions in their territory. They will stalk and shadow the hell out of you until they find the opportunity to pounce. It's annoying to have to fly around Stain all over again, trying to equip another Ares, but no hard feelings towards them. It's the territory they marked out for themselves (the largest bit of territory in Stain that I've seen any alliance carve out for themselves.) More power to them, trying to stop interlopers, even if that happens to be a lonely Ares just trying to bookmark seven more systems.

So, the Dotlan map below. I've demarcated where I've encountered the major Stain alliances, where they seem to be setting up shop, the systems (as far as I can tell, having just passed through bookmarking) they're claiming as their own. The Babylon 5 and Against All Authorities pockets are the most active and the most dangerous to travel in. The others, less so. The Happy Endings area is pretty dead, no matter the time zone. Three of the other larger alliances, Stainwagon, Stainless and C0ven, they seem to roam all over and I haven't seen one system where they seem to congregate en masse.

I've been told there's a good Stain political threadnaught on the Failheap Challenge forums, but I've not yet found it. I might be too lazy to wade through Kugu to try to figure out the politics of Branch (in the west) and Oasa (in the east), but I'd like to at least try to figure out the politics of Stain, since I'm spending a great deal of time down here.

(click image for full size)

Life in Stain - Ruthless Russians

The main problem being in Stain is replacing ship losses, especially if you're poor. I'm down to under 500M ISK now. My alt recently lost a Viator, and a few minutes ago the main just lost an Ares.

I have to say, I'm really not enjoying folks who warp bubble the exit points of stations. I don't want to be a whiner or complainer. I'm not saying it should be banned, but NPC station guns should shoot the hell out of bubbles which cross into the docking ring (the <500m zone.) As it stands now, bubbling up an exit gives certain ship types zero chance of leaving a station, especially if there's more than just an interdictor parked outside. I'm not suggesting station guns instantly blow away warp bubble generators. Three or four shots perhaps. Force there to be some sort of strategy to laying them down at stations -- timing issues, multiple interdictors, etcetera.

My Viator did successfully leave a station with a single Sabre was bubbling out front. The Sabre was a pea-shooter and MWDing through its bubble was no problem at all; it was sort of shocking how little damage it was doing. On the other hand, I didn't attempt to MWD out of the station bubble when I was faced with a Sabre, a Muninn and a Machariel. That would have been death. Actually, it was, though I was attempting to warp to my undock before they could throw up their bubble. It seemed I was able too, but apparently it's a game of who has the best latency with the servers. So, whereas it looked like I got off the command to warp before the bubble went off, the server did not agree (plus instant undocks are not instant.) Sitting at 0km outside a station, unable to dock, I was a sitting duck for their weapons.

Repurchasing a Viator in Stain is silly expensive. But my alt has no other ships down there. So, it's either fly back to Empire space in a Velator (which isn't an attractive option) or fly 10 jumps and buy a new Viator for 120M ISK.

My new Viator has been trapped in station for over 24 hours. Every time I log on, there is a group of people camping the undock of the station. There's really no way for me to leave. Which is why I'm somewhat annoyed with bubbles on station undocks.

(I think if someone does want to base in Stain, it would be wise to buy a bunch of ships and modules, and hire Black Frog to get them down to Stain for you. It'll cost an arm and a leg, likely, but cheaper than repurchasing ships one a time down here. Black Frog isn't an option for me. Not currently. At one time it was, but now I'm poor; when I was rich, I was just happy doing hauling, so Stain wasn't on my radar. I'm still having a lot of fun, even if I am going about this Stain relocation all wrong.)

My Ares loss was to a bunch of Russians. Ruthless lot, they are. It was in the Babylon 5 pocket of Stain. They'd been shadowing me for about 10 systems, trying occasionally to get me on gates. Every two or three systems another would join their hunting party, until finally they overwhelmed me. At first it was just a Hurricane I had to worry about. Easy enough to outrun. By the time he was red-boxing me, he'd lose target almost immediately as I was out of targeting range. Then a Tengu showed up to help the Hurricane. Again, not much of a problem outrunning them at a gate camp. The number of them increased slowly until they finally overwhelmed me with two Lokis, a Proteus, a Tengu and a Dominix Navy Issue. In hindsight, I should have burned back to the gate and jumped through; that would have likely pulled a couple through the gate with me, thus splitting their forces. Jumping back through again, I likely could have used my speed to evade half the group. My speed was not much use against the entire group of them.

(And yeah, that Ares in the killmail is the original fit. I'll try to build the improved fit with the next one. Though module sales are scattered across the entire region.)

Predictions for 2012

Now that 2012 has begun, maybe I'll throw out a few predictions for the next twelve months. Some will be broad. Some specific. Some conservative. Others way the hell out there.

I'll revisit these predictions in December 2012, of course. We'll see if I got all of them wrong.

Nullsec

• White Noise and Raiden will be nullsec non-entities by year end.
• Shadow of xXDeathXx space in the east will have been swallowed and divvied up between Solar Fleet and Intrepid Crossing. The east will be a tripartite block of Solar Fleet, Red Alliance and Intrepid Crossing.
• Intrepid Crossing will actually shrug off an attack by Goonswarm later in the year.
• Test Alliance will fail-cascade later in the year, when Fountain begins to be whittled away by Cascade Imminent. Goonswarm will not assist, their larger sovereignty holdings (Branch and Tenal) claiming their attention.

CSM

• The Mittani will run for CSM7 and continue on as chairman.
• Kelduum Revaan will make it onto CSM7. He will pretty much parrot whatever The Mittani wants where non-highsec issues are concerned. They'll let him lobby CCP for corporate interface changes. He'll be known as The Spreadsheet Candidate.
• The Mittani will drop from CSM7 before his term is up. Burn out will be the reason.

CCP

• DUST 514 will be a moderate success on release. The major complaint of DUST will be that it feels like an incomplete release. Much like Incarna was a quarter of what it should have been, same with DUST 514. Far too few environments to do battle in, far too few vehicles and weapons to choose from. By the time the game is complete it will have drifted into niche territory, with currently subscribed EVE Online players the majority of the paying DUST 514 players.
• The Summer Expansion will be hailed an even greater success than Crucible.
• Pandemic Legion will win Alliance Tournament X.

Mechanics

• War declaration mechanics will remain as is throughout 2012. Fear that unhappy carebears will unsubscribe will be the unspoken reason (even though this has never been a problem in the last seven years.)
• CCP will introduce more mechanics to increase safety in high security space. Ganking will become more difficult. Hulkageddon V will be the last successful, impactful Hulkageddon.
• PLEX prices will hit 325M ISK before year end.