Life in Stain - Ball is Rolling

Just had my interview with The Littlest Hobos' recruiter. Was a good conversation. Supplied him with the API keys for Poetic and Scottish. I gave him access to everything, then learned they only wanted a subset of the available options. I don't really care and was too lazy to go back and limit the access to what they require. I've nothing to hide. And there's nothing damning in any of the evemails, to me or to anyone else. Just your regular run of the mill conversations about the CSM elections and anons trolling with fake information about the University (probably mostly Silentbrick thinking he's a saboteur and a genius.)

I'll likely bring both accounts into the Hobos if accepted.

Poetic, of course, for the PvP, roams, etc. Poetic's one year anniversary is coming up soon, so let's see if she can get herself on a Titan killmail before the birthday happens. That would be a nice cap to a year of playing.

Scottish as the nullbear ISK earner. There are already some choice planets I'd like to do PI on, but that the POCOs are controlled by Against ALL Authorities (-A-) corps. Scottish should be able to get access to those once part of the big -A- family.

There was some talk of current and future ops which I could get involved with (I won't be mentioning them here, even if nothing specific was discussed), though I was already aware of their possibility via EN24 and VandV's live Friday podcast. We talked about what I'd like to see myself doing eventually (scouting roles). What ships I can fly (pretty much up to battlecruisers fitted with T2 mods, battleships with T1 guns.) My current skill plan, which I'm dedicated to for the next 12 months, is entirely perception and willpower, strictly combat support skills in gunnery and missile operations. Every skill in those two trees to five. After that, another eight months skilling up all drone skills to five. Then back to ships.

It's funny how shit turns out. Three months ago, my plan was to see about joining Bagehi and Sindel in the Association of Commonwealth Enterprises (A-C-E), part of the Important Internet Spaceship League (BDEAL) alliance. Then BDEAL completely implodes, and A-C-E joins Test Alliance Please Ignore (TEST). Even though BDEAL was allied with TEST and had sovereignty in Fountain, they weren't TEST, so joining them was okay. But to join TEST outright? Not a fucking chance. There is no bigger group of conceited assholes than in TEST. Goonswarm are humble and modest, fucking Tibetan monks, by comparison. TEST has no reason for the conceit, all they do is swing from Goonswarm's ballsack.

It's weird, because Sindel and Bagehi are so very un-TEST-like. (Though they may one day be indoctrinated into the Extraordinary League of Asshats.) If I ever catch one of them using the term pubbie, they get a smack on the head. With a mallet or an anvil. They both have good strong minds though, so I would expect them to have fun doing what they're doing, while remaining free-thinking individuals.

Back to how shit turns out. I come down to Stain to do my thing in nullsec. Do it solo. Stain ain't so bad. Easy to get around in. Very rarely encountered bubble camps. Only ever came across them in 37S-KO (which is along the Period Basis-Catch pipe) or deep in alliance pockets (7R5-, which is -A- space in Stain, or X5O1-L, which is Babylon 5 space in Stain.)

As it turns out, playing EVE Online solo is dreadfully boring, and my time logging in started to decrease. I was missing people to chat with, go out in game to do stuff with. Time to join a corp. I was in Stain, wanted to remain in the Stain area (for the most part), so I should look at corporations based out of Stain. Remembering what Hong had said was the easy choice, "Stop playing solo 'tard, join a corp. I can get you a referral into my corp" (paraphrased). After looking into Hobos further, it became the best and most obvious choice.

The En Garde situation is very similar to BDEAL (though without the internal politics). A small alliance. Attached to a larger alliance. So you get to take part in 0.0 sovereignty issues, without being involved with it 24/7 hardcore. The Hobo portion of En Garde is laid back and chill, which is extremely important to me. I don't plan to and want to be involved in any situation where I have to call in sick to take part in required call to actions (CTAs). But I will take part in all that I can, as schedule permits. Some of these sov battles sound like a lot of fun.

I'll find out either Sunday or Monday if I'm in. Hopefully I'll get the invite. I'm looking forward to joining a good solid corporation with good solid people.

Life in Stain - Reevaluation

I haven't been logging into game much the last month or so. The solo experiment has not been successful. I need a community. I need Teamspeak or Mumble. I need folks to talk to, to joke around with, to do shit with in game.

That's the only thing I miss about EVE University, some of the players. Some of the dudes there I quite liked.

Time to find that connection with people again.

Hong WeiLoh has hinted that maybe I should join the dark side. I'm definitely going to find something in Stain. I'm here now. I want to remain here. The corporation that Hong belongs is based in Stain. I have no idea if I'll get in or not, but I'm going to start extending the feelers, first to Hong (yes, Hong, you get to hear about it here first), get a website, a link to an application, and start the process. See what happens.

I like Hong. I don't think I've ever talked to him (unless he was in the Uni during my tenure, unbeknownst to me.) I've never even seen him in-game. But I like him. I like his attitude in the comments on this blog. Dude keeps my opinions honest. I'm no Ripard Teg, I don't ruminate on my opinions for days before blogging about them. I just throw them out there for better or worse. Some have promise. Some are total shit. Hong's like Khan, both are brutal with the shit, and encouraging with the raw stuff that has promise.

The Littlest Hobos of En Garde. I was convinced the corp owner was Canadian. Until I learned that he'd never heard of Canada's most famous television show (maybe it comes second to Degrassi now). Canada's Lassie. The Littlest Hobo. A roaming German Shepard who wandered between small Canadian towns helping folks in need. Always moving on (few Canadians do not know the theme song.)

I don't know much about The Hobos. Less about En Garde. I think En Garde is on good terms with Against ALL Authorities, but I'm not positive. Something I think I heard once, and it's stuck since.

So this is the plan starting tonight and running through the weekend. Hopefully, if I get in with some good group of people, the Life in Stain posts will resume with more frequency, more action, more excitement.

CSM Revote - It's a CSM Decision, Not a CCP Decision

There are now calls for a revote from many in the community. Most feel, that with 10000 votes now invalidated, that any person that assumes the Chair, that they do not hold a mandate for that position. That's a valid argument to make.

(From what has been coming out of the CSM, none of the current top six members are particularly eager to assume the Chair. Because they lack a mandate, to do so would likely be political suicide in future CSMs.)

Most of the calls are for CCP to invalidate the previous election, to run a new election. The problem is that the decision is not one that CCP can make. They have their CSM rules in place. Someone resigns or is given the boot, someone else assumes their position. In this case, position fifteen makes it into CSM7, since CSM7 has yet to begin.

The only people who can make a strong statement for a reelection would be the soon-to-be-new members of CSM7. All thirteen members would need to resign enmasse.

If that were to happen, then CCP has three choices:

1. Select for the CSM the next fourteen candidates. This would likely not be a popular choice, and the riots we saw last summer would be dwarfed by the riots we would see if this were to happen.
2. Spend two weeks and run a new, quickie election. This is no skin off CCP's back. Reset the election software, activate it again. It's not like it costs CCP any money.
3. Disband the CSM for the 2012-2013 campaign year. Again, this would not be a popular choice.

CCP's only logical option would be to go with the second choice.

There's likely no danger to the current candidates (except Issler Dainze.) Every candidate that got elected, should get elected again. There might be some minor shuffling of positions. Of course, Trebor will lose another night of sleep, EVEmails will need to be sent out again.

The benefit to the current candidates is that a clear mandate for the chair will emerge -- likely whoever replaces The Mittani as the CFC candidate. Also of benefit, Issler Dainze will not get re-elected, someone more worthy and willing to participate on the CCP/CSM Skype channel would replace her.

I see little downside to any of the thirteen remaining CSM members if they were to resign with the express purpose of forcing CCP to rerun the CSM7 election. Only twelve will resign (Issler won't), but that should be enough of a message to force CCP's hand on the issue.

Personally, I don't care either way. I think Two Step would make for a fine CSM Chair, and over the course of the term, I believe any initial ill will would fade. In the end people would agree that he did a fine job in the role.

If you want to see a reelection, then EVEmail the current CSM candidates.

The Last Mittani. The Last Brennivín.

There is no way in hell that booze is ever going to be an official component of any CCP Fanfest from here on in. No more official dev pubcrawls. No more drunken alliance panels (thank goodness, because the drunken portions were always a waste of time.) No more live drinking game/quiz shows. The alliance panel might survive in some form, with breathalyzers given beforehand (you can pick these things up at a 7-11 now for a few bucks). Hell, the best portion of the 2012 Alliance Panel was presented by quite sober wormhole people. No one is talking glowingly of any portion of the alliance panel where the presenters were stone-cold drunk. Sober people find drunk people fucking dumb. Only drunk people find stumbling drunks hilarious.

CCP needs to put on a new face. So the 10th Anniversary Fanfest will be a different affair. There'll still be drinking and drunks, just not as part of the official proceedings. There will still be devs to hang out with and to crawl pubs with, but not listed on any of the fanfest informationals. The boozy get-togethers will be fan organized events. And that's cool. And as it should be.

CCP is moving forward. This is to be expected. I didn't expect the see the Alliance Panel in its regular format next year, even if no drama had erupted from it. Except for a couple of groups (who happened to be sober), it has become a colossal waste of time. There might be a fan organized alliance panel, it won't be at the convention site, and CCP is not going to touch it with a ten foot pole, nor will they allow any employees to attend.

As for The Mittani. It is a shame that he's been booted from the CSM. CCP had to do this, given the publicity. Obviously, before anything erupted, CCP was unbothered by what occurred. They were in attendance, after all. No action was taken until it all became radioactive.

It's a lesson in hubris for Alex. He's been feeling quite untouchable for the last year. That anything he did, he was going to find himself above the fray, no matter how many people he pissed off and outraged. He discovered the line this week.

I feel bad for him, though. His game has become the meta-game, and his persona has become that of the King of Space. This is going to be a harsh and sudden change for him.

I'm not sure he's going to enjoy being out of the spotlight. I expect he's going to be tremendously bored just playing space CEO. By this time next year, I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to move on from EVE Online to other activities. And if Mittens departs, many Goons will likely follow. The game will be worse for his departure. Worse with fewer Goons.

My Inferno Celebra-thon is Moot

I had a fantastic celebration planned for the release of Inferno and the new wardec mechanics. After doing due diligence, the plan is awash. The possible lols are moot.

I was going to offer 3 billion ISK to any non-University affiliated corp or alliance to take down the University POS. The potential lols of doing that were limitless. The University having to drop 1500 members to get standings up to replace their industry structure. Would have involved much hilarity, tears, and general screaming.

For the lols is, of course, a valid reason for war in EVE Online, no matter what super carebears might say.

But after asking around on Twitter concerning POS mechanics, and then asking Darian Reymont and Kelduum Revaan some questions on ownership and roles, the plan is kind of pointless. Three billion ISK pointless at any rate. Too bad.

Turns out the University POS is not owned by the University, but a holding corp in Ivy League. So even if the POS is destroyed, they can reanchor a new one without much hassle or delay. To make life a pain in the ass for a couple days is worth maybe a couple hundred million, not billions.

Oh well. Good fun idea, but for the mechanics of it all.

CSM7 - What The Mittani Should Do

Doing a segment on tears during the Alliance Panel was a fine idea. Lots of hilarious tears to go around in this game. Lots of rage worthy of recognition. There is a line though, anonymous or not. It was in poor taste to bring attention to someone with mental instability, even if it was your sober intention to keep their in-game identity anonymous. Mental instability holds little humour. It's just sad and sorry, personal and private. The Mittani has likely encountered enough tears in his career that he could have left this dude on the cutting room floor and went with any of ten other actually hilarious examples.

The Mittani has posted his apology. Which I accept as a member of the community.

That said, I still have a couple of problems with his presentation. His drunkenness during the panel is no excuse, certainly. It obviously pushed him over that line, the spotlight of the moment, the recognition, the encouragement, wanting to please the crowd that wee bit more. What I find a tad disingenuous, though, is that he was very likely sober when he was at home, powerpointing his presentation. So whereas he went over the line by naming the person in question at Fanfest, he did in fact, while sober, feel that mocking the Mackinaw miner (albeit with every intention to do it anonymously) was still a mighty fine and hilarious idea. If I'd been there laughing at his presentation, I'd have stopped the moment he opened up the poor gentleman's private life to ridicule and scorn. That shit ain't funny.

Unfortunately the damage has been done. People may forget about this dude. They probably won't. In essence, he's adopted a very public reputation he'd probably like to shed. Except that he cannot. Thanks to The Mittani.

What should The Mittani do to solve this problem? Offer a trade. Our CSM chairman, no doubt, has a number of alt accounts, accounts only known to himself. (He is the spymaster, after all.) He should offer to give one of those accounts to the poor, outed guy in exchange for the poor, outed guy's account. The Mittani gets the damaged account, the reputation given to it now null and void. The poor fellow can now have a new start in game, with anonymity. He no longer has to drag around with him the mistake of The Mittani.

The King of Space can throw in a couple billion ISK as well.

I do not think The Mittani needs to resign from the CSM. I quite like what he does for the community, for the game, and I think he does a good job as chairman. I would hope at future events he'll tend towards more soberness, and show more social awareness in-character and out-of-character while representing EVE Online.

***

I'll have more to say on the Alliance Panel itself, which I think has become an embarrassment to Fanfest. It's become nothing more than one-upmanship, each panelist trying be the bigger badder meaner asshat. (Michael BoltonIII wins this every year.) Going forward, breathalyzers should be given to all panelists before stepping on stage. The last useful alliance panel was 2010, I believe, EVE Vegas, with DNS Black. (The wormhole presentation at Fanfest 2012 was pretty good, but that's because those guys were nearly, if not completely, sober.)

Alts: The New Decshield

Ye olde wardec panel. Three issues in particular that I want to discuss.

Before that happens, I'd just like to say that I like the wardec mechanics as presented. They're not perfect, but neither are they horrible.

The new system is nothing radical. It's basically the old system, with all the holes patched up. The only new mechanic introduced is that of allies (or mercenaries.) Overall, the new system is familiar.

It's a sigh of relief, CCP is not promoting consensual PvP with the improved wardec system. CCP still carries through with the HTFU credo. Highsec becomes a tad safer, but in a manner that respects the core principle of EVE Online: PvP happens, deal with it. You don't want war, you don't want PvP, then stick with the NPC corps. Joining a player corp comes with benefits and risks. Most importantly, with the new system, CCP gives you tools to deal with problems, either through surrender mechanics, duking it out, or hiring muscle to protect your interests.

Capping Wardec Costs
The proposed cost structure for wardecs is based on the target size alone. The base cost is 20M ISK to target corporations, 50M ISK to target alliances. This is increased 500K ISK per member in the target corporation/alliance. This means that under the new system it would cost 800M ISK to declare war on EVE University, 3.1B ISK to declare war on TEST Alliance, 4.1B ISK to declare on Goonswarm.

These costs obviously need to be capped. I would suggest in the 750M - 1B ISK range. Gaming membership becomes the new exploit. Corporations will attempt to balloon membership with alts. Alts become the new decshield.

I'm not tinfoil-hatting about EVE University here. Moan about them as I have I very much doubt Kelduum would go down this road. Judging from recent comments, I feel he agrees with my assessment:

[The proposed wardec mechanics] are fairly robust as far as mechanics go, although I would like to see the costs linked to the value of ISK, and they need to check active members, but with a bit more detail and some of the obvious holes plugged, it should work fine.

Not quite sure how CCP checks active membership (it still feels like something that can be gamed), but it's a suggestion in the right direction.

Mid-sized Corporations Get Fucked
That costs are to be based on target membership alone creates target imbalance. Large corporations/alliances get a valuable shield against wardecs. It becomes more worthwhile to leave the large alliances alone and look towards smaller to mid-sized corporations for your PvP needs.

From a story perspective alone, this is a whack idea. CONCORD is all about creating balance throughout k-space. They are the fairplay cops, so to speak. The recent and very awesome trailer shown at the end of Fanfest 2012 speaks to this precisely. The trailer brings to life aspects of the latest EVE novel, Templar One. The Amaar discover Templar technology. CONCORD is not very happy with this. It creates a mighty imbalance between the four races. CONCORD schemes how to supply the other races -- Caldari, Minmatar and Gallente -- with the new sleeper technology. Bring balance back to the ongoing conflicts.

Yet, with the new wardec system, it is no longer economically feasible for large corporations to wardec corporations of a similar size. It's cheaper and just as effective to start deccing mid-sized corporations. The mid-size corporation becomes the sweet and juicy target of most wardecs going forward. They're in the Goldilocks zone -- the price is just right, the membership count is just right.

Some time ago, I proposed a system that calculated costs based on the size differential of the aggressing and defending corporations/alliances. I stand firmly by that concept, in principle (if not specifics), if membership size is the road CCP wants to travel. If they want to calculate costs based on corporation/alliance size, then they cannot simply use the target as the only calculating factor. If they want to ensure meaningful, hardcore wars, then they should create an incentive for similar-sized corps to bang it up together. Financial reasons are one such incentive.

Mercenaries
Not so long ago, I proposed an idea very similar to what CCP is now proposing. The ability for defending corporations/alliances to hire mercenaries to help defend them from war declarations. I'd like to think CCP reads my blog, but it's more than likely just a case of synchronicity.

I've no complaints with the system at all. Just wanted to comment a little on it. This development is fantastic. It opens an entire new career path for players (or at least makes it much easier to pursue the career path of the mercenary.) That CCP will allow players to peruse the entire war history of corporations and alliances will make choosing reliable and skilled mercs easier over time. Most of the scamming will likely occur in the first six months of the system going live.

I'm also going to guess that it will end up being fairly cheap to hire quality mercs. Mercs want good fights. They want a lot of them. They'll claw each other to get attached to good wars. Not too mention, if it's a good war with lots of targets, they have loot as an income source as well.

Conclusion
Overall, the proposed system is solid. It's not a radical departure from what we currently have, it's just some minor modifications and bug fixes. The only new mechanic being the addition of mercenaries. The entire propsoal, this is the right route to go for CCP. No need to develop something from scratch. Use existing components, fix and iterate on them. The KISS principle.

CSM7 - Who Predicted Correctly ...

These are the predictions I could find from blogs. The colour-coding is simple. Blue, correct candidate in the correct position. Green, correct candidate in the correct half (Circle of Seven versus an alternate position) of the CSM. Yellow, correct candidate in the wrong half of the CSM. Red, candidate did not make it into the CSM.



My predictions weren't too bad:

• Other than Lyris Nairn, the two I got wrong were at the bottom of the list.
• I was the only one who predicted that TEST would not get their shit together. Everyone thought Dovinian would land in position #2. I thought he would come in at a lower position. He ended up in the bottom half (I didn't think he'd end up that low, but it's a testament to how unorganized TEST alliance actually is.)
• Poor Hans did not end up in the Circle of Seven. I guess word did not spread as much as I'd hoped/expected concerning his candidacy. Being an alternate will only help him if he runs for CSM8, I would expect him to hit that top seven at that point for sure (given no major screw-ups.)
• No one expected Kelduum to finish in the top seven, yet he did. Shame really. I've no doubt his uselessness will become apparent as the year progresses.
• I mourn Mintrolio (he finished nowhere near last, so that's consolation.)
• Nobody saw Issler Dainze coming.
• I think Darius III is the big surprise. I don't think he's a bad candidate, I just didn't feel he was getting any traction during the CSM7 campaign. Apparently got some. Good for D3, though.
• Trebor's EVEmail campaign obviously helped him. I don't think he would have got a Circle of Seven position without it. He ends up with a mandate and solid support.
• I'm glad Two step and Seleene made it into the top seven.
• Kind of amazing that Mittens picked up 17% of the total vote, 23% of the non-throw-away vote.

Marc Scaurus, I would say, did the best at predicting CSM7's outcome.

CSM7 - Quick Results

Wardec Panel: Not Quite As Nervous

I'm not quite as nervous about the wardec panel, the soon to be announced development and mechanics, as I was just a day ago.

The reason stems from the EVE Keynote.

Mercenary contracts. The sole reason that assuages the anxiety and fear.

The rumour mill, 24 hours past, was churning with news that CCP was leaning towards a mutual wardec system, making highsec corps, alliances and their POSes permanently safe. If that were to be true, then why bring mercenaries into the equation? That makes zero sense. If two alliances agree to go to war with each other, there's little reason to hire mercenaries in such a situation. If two alliances agree to fight each other for a week, then outside muscle is unnecessary.

That's why my angst over the warfare panel is much lessened. Since Crucible, CCP has not been keen on wasting developer time and energy. Developing a consensual wardec system alongside mercenary contracts ... well, the two systems do not compliment each other.

The bellwether mechanic may yet be in safe hands. A little less trepidation about the upcoming wardec panel, replaced with renewed excitement about the impending announcements.

CREST

There are certain aspects of EVE that lend themselves perfectly to out-of-client play. When I started playing EVE, nearly a year ago, it amazed me that the offline play potential of EVE Online wasn't being realized.

CCP is now developing Carbon REST (CREST) to bring reality of EVE Offline.

Some minor items have been available via EVE Gate since its inception. Calendar management. Evemail management. Contact management. Profile management. I would consider these minor accesses. Important steps, but they have little to no effect on your character.

What sorts of activities are conducive to web play that have yet to be introduced? Skill queue management, that's obvious. Market trading. Clone jumping. Contract management. Hangar management. Corporation management. I've never used a POS, but perhaps POS management is a possibility, especially for research and invention.

I'd be happy with skill queue management alone. I'd love to see market trading, based out of whatever station my character is currently parked in. (Which makes allowing clone jumping an interesting option. Every 24hrs, you could jump between major trade hubs to transact in the economy.)

CREST. It might have taken longer than it should have to be introduced into EVE Online, but better late than never. Can't wait to start playing EVE Offline during working hours.

Fanfest Wardec Panel

I implore anyone who is at Fanfest 2012 to attend the wardec panel, especially if you care about PvP in this game. The rumour is that CCP plans to remove non-consensual PvP from highsec.

Apparently CCP's new Crimewatch system will remove can flipping from empire space. You can flip, you become a Suspect. Suspects can be attacked, but cannot attack back. Like, seriously, WTF? Read more about this at Liang Nuren's blog.

EVE University will be there, clapping and cheering the proposed changes. Everyone else should be booing the shit out of the presenting developer.

Let's hope this is not the case. Like ... fuck. Might as well start creating Hello Kitty and Pony skins now, CCP.

Our intrepid CSM7 hero, Hans Jagerblitzen, may have a job for himself this year. Advocate for us, bro!

CCP: Doing It Their Own Way, Pt. 2

I might have been a bit harsh in part one about the new launcher. I was a bit miffed that so many people were having problems with the damned thing, from not being able to install patches, to having to re-download the entire game just to get things working again. When bitching about the launcher, I should have kept the comments focused on QA and CCP's often lack thereof. Instead I went off on a rant about why the launcher was even necessary. Which was a dumb thing to go off on. What the launcher offers is going to be (mostly) invisible to us. The launcher makes the lives and jobs of a number of CCP employees easier. That's important. Just as redeveloping the core of the UI, as Carbon UI, was important.

So when I wrote the first post, it wasn't going to be a part one. It was just a one-off rant on various issues that peeve me off. But reading comments to the post, here and on EVENews24, most focused quite fairly on my unfair assessement of the new launcher, I decided that maybe I should also do a part two. Point out the things that I think CCP does great.

Hell, maybe there'll be a part three and a part four down the road. Or maybe not. For this post, I'm going to focus on some of the meta-game activities that CCP does extremely well. So, likely down the line, I'll do some more posts.

(Don't expect to see this on EVENews24. The last article made it without my specific request. This won't, nor will I request that it does. I like Riverini, but me waxing on about the stuff I like about CCP ... well, that ain't gonna get his news site hits.)

FANFEST: Doing the Fan Convention Hardcore
I wasn't able to go to Fanfest 2012 this year. I will go to one in the future. I've no doubt about that.

Three reasons for attending. In order. One. Iceland. The country seems fucking cool. Two. CCP. Three. EVE Online.

There is something unique about how CCP runs their company convention compared to any other game company that does similar. Unlike other gaming conventions and fests, CCP makes a real effort to connect at a personal level with their fan and customer base. This is not usual in the industry at all, even among companies running games with similar sized playerbases.

Most gaming companies fear connecting with their players. Flames. Anger. Entitlement. Companies don't want to deal with it. It's too difficult to be directly accountable to the people giving you their money. You don't risk mistakes if you don't connect. CCP is fearless, in this regard. After the Summer of Rage they could have shrunk away, drew further away from their customers. But they took the criticisms and anger like champs and worked hard at reconnecting even with the playerbase. They listened. They walked the walked rather than just talking the talk. And so far they've not slowed their connectivity.

CCP connects no better with their fans than at fanfest. It's an intimate affair.

ALLIANCE TOURNAMENT: Watching Video Games on TV Can Be Exciting
My first alliance tournament was AT IX. It was suggested that I give it a watch. I lol'd at the idea. Watch videos of coloured brackets? Really? There couldn't be anything more boring than that, I thought to myself.

But I gave it a try, one Saturday morning.

And I was hooked. For the most part, the battles are just a bunch of indistinguishable brackets. But CCP produces this thing like ESPN Sportscenter. Colour and commentary throughout each fight. The specialized UI for the battles helps considerably ... the shield, armour and hull health, watching them being drained and repped creates a nail-biting experience throughout most of the fights. Then there's the analysis between fights. Not too mention Soundwave's fucking hilarious humour.

I never thought I'd get excited watching damned video games being broadcast television style. But excited I did become, watching two weekends of tournaments. Rooting for one side over the other.

Every credit has to go to CCP -- the crew that produces the show and the crew that appears in front of the camera. The production values alone are stunning. That they fly in experienced commentators and analysis adds so so much to the event.

I can't wait until Alliance Tournament X. Go any alliance except Hydra Reloaded, go!

CSM: No Other MMO Company Would Dream of Doing This
Is there another MMO that funds a player advocacy group? Allows player elections? Uses the advocacy group as a tool and sounding board for future development? Not that I know of, certainly not in any game with subscriber numbers comparable (or higher) than EVE Online.

That CCP would put time and effort (and real ISK) into making sure the CSM is a useful tool between CCP and the customer base is remarkable.

* * *

Three awesome efforts by CCP that create the strong, devoted following to EVE Online. EVE Online is more than simply pixels, it's a devoted enthusiastic community.

CSM7 - Who Predicted ...

If anyone can find any other blog posts out there, people predicting the voting results of CSM7, I'd very much like to add them to the list before the EVE Keynote on Saturday, where the results will be revealed.

So far I've got my predictions. Riverini's of EN24. And Ripard Teg of Jester's Trek. Get me some more; I'll add them to the list.



My predictions will likely be the farthest off. I was predicting more participation from the community, in the neighbourhood of 70K-75K votes. We barely hit 59K. Plus, I bungled who the Russians were mainly supporting, as well as Pandemic Legion. (Though the candidates I did pick from both blocs should make it through, just in different orders.)

Come the results, I'll colour-code the predictions to highlight who got someone right (in the CSM), versus who got it right with regards the Circle of Seven and the Bottom Seven.

Again, if there are any other prediction posts out there, get them to me.

The Post Everyone Has Been Waiting For ...

Kelduum won the CCP tour contest today, as well as a twenty minute audience with CCP Soundwave in which he can propose a game idea to the master of all things big and little.

Lots of tweets today expecting me to rant and rave about it. Probably expecting me to don the tinfoil hat and call that the "Fix was in!"

As for ranting and raving. No such thing. No tinfoil hats either. (Though, in the video, it is interesting that the only person with a long sleeve shirt is the dude drawing the ticket. Things that probably shouldn't make you go "Hmm.")

Congrats to the Brit. It's a cool prize.

To the Soundwave audience. I would of course suggest that Kelduum lay out on the table his awesome, lengthy, year-in-development war declaration proposal. He spent a year of his life developing and honing the mechanic. He can't very well back down from it now.

On the other hand, if he wants to keep Soundwave's eyes from rolling right out of his head, he might want to stick to what he knows best. I'm not gonna suggest that Kelduum doesn't know the corporate user interface. He does. Probably better than anyone. He probably has ideas, real ideas, about it. Not too mention he's passionate about the corporate interface. His excitement about it alone might translate into getting Soundwave excited about it. Keld's been wanting changes for years. Nothing is on the radar at the moment concerning the corporate UI, so his best opportunity to put it on the radar will be with Soundwave across a table from him. If he can mock some interfaces up, all the better.

So yeah, congrats again to Kelduum for winning the awesome prize. Make it work for you, man. Present your biggest pet peeve about the corporate interface and get Soundwave to commit to fixing it, maybe he'll even pull Punkturis into the room to have a listen (she's one of the UI people, I believe.)

Back to those tweets I've been reading today.

Some people even suggest that I have a man crush on Kelduum. We'll have to wait to see what he looks like. I'm sure some Fanfest photos will surface. He could be overly obese with really bad British teeth. I ain't man-crushing on that.

If anything, Kelduum should be having a man crush on me. Hell, everyone should be crushing on me. Girls, guys, goat herders.

Look at that gorgeous hair. Damn. I'm man-crushing on myself now. Gotta run.

CCP Marches On Fearlessly, Killing All Player Creativity

The title of this post may be a bit of an overstatement. It's a riff on a lyric from the CCP Permaband's hit song HTFU. (Maybe their only original song?)

There has been a recent patch change that has killed a creative endeavour by a few imaginative players. Players extending the sandbox through will and ingenuity alone.

There's little reason that could be forwarded by CCP that can explain why they would kill off this player-created project. But kill it off they did.

So what's the project I'm talking about?

Project Compass, a research sub-project within the Arak'jaalan Project. Project Compass' mission statement was to determine the location of w-space (aka Anoikis) with respect to k-space (aka New Eden). And further down the line, to map Anoikis systems with respect to each other.

Fortunately, before CCP got around to removing game mechanics that would kill this player-driven enterprise, Project Compass, headed by Mark726 and Faulx, did get some preliminary data out:

While the Project Leads are still collecting data, preliminary calculations are ongoing and some tentative conclusions can be announced. So far, all Anoikis systems surveyed have been located in a cluster approximately 1250-1350 light years from the center of New Eden. This cluster is roughly located to the galactic southeast of New Eden, in approximately the same plane, though perhaps slightly lower than New Eden. More results will be announced as they become available.

How did Project Compass determine this? What was the game mechanic they used?

Control tower manufacturers have long included a little known function to their basic control tower designs: the ability to determine, down to 1/10th of a light year, the distance to all other anchored control towers owned by a corporation.

So that game mechanic along with a whole lotta math, known as trilateration, was the backbone of Project Compass.

How did CCP kill this off? With the last update. Crucible 1.5. Specifically this patch note:

Control towers in wormhole space no longer reveal distance in the Control Tower Management window.

And thus Project Compass died:

@webspaceships: With a little over 10% of w-space mapped, i'd like a moment of silence for Project Compass's upcoming demise :-(

@webspaceships: Tonight's #eveonline plan is also a little sad. 94 jumps around New Eden to take down the Project Compass POS's

What possible reason would CCP have to remove this mechanic? That it messes with a bit of lore? That Anoikis is supposed to be 100s of thousands of light years away? Who cares? Project Compass' result is easy enough to incorporate into lore, even extend it. Perhaps there was a cover-up by the powers-that-be? Who knows? But made up lore is mutable, and mutable in interesting ways.

The sandbox is mostly prescribed by CCP. The sandbox is PvP, PvE and industry. Yet, these enterprising players of Arak'jaalan extended the sandbox through their own imagination and creativity. Exploration and travel became more than just scanning down complexes. They were taking lore, factualizing it.

CCP should be celebrating these player initiatives, not curtailing them. CCP should be thinking about adding in more mechanics to foster this type of gameplay, since it expands upon the possibilities of the game as a whole, not taking them away when they can.

Very disappointing, CCP. Your vision is not as great as the vision of the players. They see the game in much broader terms than you do.

CCP: Doing It Their Own Way, Pt. 1

CCP have some great ideas, but they seem to often fall short when trying to implement those ideas. There are some good examples of this within EVE Online. Some recent. Some not so recent. But it seems to be a problem that is endemic with the company.

The problem might be a lack of talent, or CCP's ability to attract exemplary talent. I'm not saying CCP has dummies working for it. They obviously have some talented people, but those talents don't always have the breadth of experience that you see in game companies elsewhere.

It could be location. Living in Iceland might be unappealing to some. (Hell, I'd jump at a chance to live in Iceland. I love temperate middle-of-nowhere locales. But I'm an odd bird.)

It could be remuneration. They aren't a particularly rich company, so lack of funds to attract the best of the best, when it comes to folks with development and design chops, might be the major stumbling block in this regard.

Ideas are only ideas until implemented. CCP is chock full of ideas. We've seen them stumble time and again when realizing those ideas into EVE Online. They don't have the resources or the intelligentsia to bring those ideas into capable ready-to-play frameworks.

INCARNA: Reinventing the Wheel
There seems to be a self-esteem issue among Icelanders. Perhaps because they are a tiny country out in the middle of the North Atlantic, they don't want to be seen as inconsequential. CCP, who weathered the crashing and burning of the Icelandic economy, was taught no lessons, their hubris was not dulled.

In an effort to attract more subscribers (a goal any corporation should strive towards), CCP set out to incorporate actual characters into EVE Online, a game where you've always identified with a spaceship as an avatar. Rather than use existing and well-proven technology, such as the Unreal 3 engine, they set out to develop their own technology. Dubbed Carbon.

Why license proven technology when you can throw a tonne of good money at a problem you've little to no experience with.

This new Carbon technology is certainly pretty, gorgeous to behold, but it's also excessively resource intensive. It'll run a video card hot with only a single character in a single room. What Carbon has accomplished is demonstrating the immaturity that CCP has in this field. Their lack of experience in this area gave them an unoptimized engine, no shortcuts that reduced resource requirements while not comprising visual quality. That's the sort of experience you have to steal away from other companies, or it takes years and years to develop on your own.

Based on their inexperience, there was no way they were going to get establishments up and running, with multiple characters wandering the same rooms. Systems would burst into flames. Another few to five years, perhaps newer hardware would allow their tech to run cooler, better, faster, allow people to leave their lonely quarters and mingle with other players. Another ten to twenty million in development to give their coders more time to learn the 3D game engine space.

Whereas Carbon looks better than Unreal 3, Unreal 3 has over a decade of development and expertise under its belt. Carbon looks revolutionary, but it certainly is unable to play revolutionary.

Carbon is already falling behind. The Frostbite 2 engine looks as gorgeous as CCP's Carbon, yet is actually playable (i.e., Battlefield 3). CryEngine 3 introduced a few months ago. Unreal Engine 4 will likely be released in 2013. So by the time CCP actually develops actual expertise in developing 3D game engines, they are already going to be behind the curve when it comes to the space. Their technology will have lost its wow! factor.

One has to ask. How much money could CCP have saved by going with a proven solution? How far into Walking in Stations could we be by now? Establishments, gunfights on stations, all new gameplay that could be generating all-new kinds of tears.

That's not the Icelandic way though. The dream of Hilmar was to develop his own game engine, and the world would come knocking at his door to license his technology. What he got was a technology so immature in its implementation that it was released in a state that offered no gameplay whatsoever, because the technology was so unoptimized that it couldn't deliver gameplay.

THE LAUNCHER: The App with No Purpose
When Blizzard designed their new launcher, it actually had a purpose. Not simply to download updates and patches, but to download and install them dynamically, while you were playing the game. I quit World of Warcraft after our guild finally downed the Lich King. Approximately six months before Cataclysm.

About six months after Cataclysm released, I decided to take advantage of a 10-day Please Return trial. Check out the new expansion. That's when I encountered Blizzard's new launcher. Around 500MB into downloading the complete game, it allowed me to actually login and start playing. Holy shit was my response. I recall being in Ratchet at the time. I ran out onto the dock. Various objects were simply varying sized crates with question marks on them. Obviously they were objects not yet downloaded to my system. But being a dynamic system, the launcher, in the background, was immediately requesting and downloading resources as needed. Those question mark crates weren't such for very long, as they quickly transformed into chatty Goblins and other visual eye-candy for the surroundings. Blizzard took game launchers to the next level. When they set out to spend money on a new launcher system, they actually had a goal for that release. And delivered.

As fucking amazing as their new launcher was, that allowed me to start playing after only a fraction of the entire 25GB install had been downloaded, I uninstalled the game the next day. I had no interest or desire to climb back aboard the WoW treadmill.

Now, I don't expect the same level of magic from the CCP crew. Dynamic installation of updates and patches, while playing the game? I know CCP has neither the money to throw at that nor the expertise to implement it.

What I wonder though ... what exactly is the point of this new launcher? What does it do that the old system did not? I've had zero problems with the new launcher, so I'm not coming at this from a You broke my system CCP! angle. I'm just legitimately curious as to what value this new launcher adds.

I'm seeing the new launcher as Incarna-revisited all over again. CCP had some pie-in-the-sky idea about designing a new nifty launcher that would install updates and patches, but also do these really cool things called X, Y, and Z. After some extended development period, it turned out that the developers were struggling with the implementation of X, Y and Z, so they released a launcher that accomplished what the old system had accomplished. Since the old system worked for everyone, and this new system does not, one can safely call the new launcher a failure at release.

Why is CCP releasing technology that does nothing more that what was currently implemented? Take a Blizzard approach at the very least, have a goal, release the goal. If you're going to give us a new launcher, we, as players, should immediately be able to see why you've thrown money and developers at the solution. I don't think there are any players who understand why this new launcher needs to exist, in its current state of development.

UI: Hardcoded Nonsense
Carbon goes beyond just a 3D game engine. Whereas CCP failed delivering a new 3D avatar experience, they seemed to be successful in redesigning their UI framework. Apparently the old UI framework was so kludgy and old, that to make any fixes at all resulted in extended development that often broke other systems. The old system was a behemoth mess of spaghetti code and undocumented fixes from years past. The new Carbon UI framework was supposed to make design and development going forward much easier.

That seems to be mostly accomplished, with the rate of UI changes we've been seeing since November 2011.

But old habits die hard. I still see CCP making really poor decisions when it comes to UI design, especially with respect to hard-coding settings.

A perfect example comes to mind. Freezing the automatic sorting of overview elements, basically a method to lock elements in place so that they're easier to select. You don't want ships bouncing up and down the list as they are sorted in real-time (most people sort by distance.)

To solve this problem for the players, CCP implemented a mouseover solution. If your mouse pointer is hovering over the overview, then the sorting will be frozen until the mouse pointer leaves the overview.

A good idea, in and of itself, but it received complaints. CCP's solution? To hardcode in a solution that they hoped would satisfy everyone. Now, the overview sort will lock while the mouse pointer is hovering above the overview and in motion. If the mouse pointer remains motionless above the overview for some period of time (three to five seconds, or thereabouts) sorting will begin once again.

That is the exact wrong solution. Hardcoding a setting to satisfy all parties? Since when is taking control from the user the right solution when giving them control would be simple to implement (especially given the power of the new Carbon UI framework?) The correct answer to the problem would have been to implement a user-definable option, so that the user could control the behaviour of their overview. They could define whether the overview was locked all the time while the mouse pointer hovered above it, or they could set a timespan of their own choosing that would define when sorting would start anew if the mouse pointer remained motionless.

There are of course lots of other UI inconsistencies, that under the new framework, should be simple to sort out. Take specific hotkeys (A, S, D, Q, etc.) that only work when the overview has focus. Why don't those same hotkeys work on other windows, that display similar entities? Why does the S key only warp you to a warpable object while the overview has focus? Why does the S key not warp you to a bookmark when you have a bookmark selected in the people and places window? Hell, every focused window should capture hotkeys, and then determine whether that hotkey should perform an action based on what's selected in that focused window. Again, that shouldn't be difficult to implement given what we've been lead to believe about the new Carbon UI framework.

New technologies. Old development habits.

CONCLUSION
I'll give CCP credit for actually having great ideas. I can't really give them much credit for understanding their own limitations, which severely hobble those ideas.

~6.75M Skillpoints Later

The skillpoint distributions for Poetic and Scottish have changed since last posted back in November 2011.

Poetic at 16.35M skillpoints

Scottish at 7.9M skillpoints

CSM7 - Teh Dramaz

Since voting began, the CSM scene has been pretty quiet. The home stretch, where candidates are hoping they pull in the votes they need, with not much left to do to attract votes they couldn't already attract during the nomination/podcast/debate period. 83% of the votes are already in (assuming that based upon current trends, the total vote count just tops 60000), so there aren't many folks left of the inclined to vote persuasion to stump over. Ten thousand or so.

Lyris Nairn has just sent out a mass evemail, stumping for The Mittani (more later), so checking out the vote statistics tomorrow should be interesting, to see if there is a higher than usual bump in the vote count. That should determine whether the latest mass evemail campaign had any success.

There's been some drama, but nothing particularly exciting. Hans was not caught with a tranny in a public restroom. The Mittani was not caught sexting with male interns. Trebor was not caught sending photos of his penis to the 60 known female players.

Mintrolio Drops Character
This isn't as big a deal as many people made it out to be, but I was a little disappointed that Mintrolio dropped the goat herder persona. Mainly disappointed that he felt it necessary, that to get anyone to take him seriously, to discuss something important to him, that he had to break into perfect (relatively speaking) Australian English.

I don't find it all that difficult (anymore) reading Mintrolio in character. I could have easily got the message had he made it as the goat herder. I suppose I'm in a minority in that regard, because Mint felt he had to break character to talk about spam.

I suppose that's the second disappointment. He needed to break character to discuss the EVE Online EULA and, what he regards as, spam. Spam, for godssake. Spam isn't even important. It's a non-issue in the game. Hell, what Trebor did wasn't even spam.

Trebor Mass EVEmails Everybody Asking For Votes
We've been so lacking in any community-wide drama lately, that this is what gets everyone in a sixty page threadnaught tizzie over.

Everyone is calling this spam.

It's not spam. Trebor didn't send it twenty times. He didn't send the mail five times. He didn't even send it twice. He didn't tell you how to enlarge your penis. He didn't offer you a mail-order Russian bride. He didn't send you porn links (though, many would have hailed him a hero had he done so.)

He sent his campaign message once to every account he could get his hands on. It's just a mass evemail. Getting out a candidate's campaign message and platform.

I received the evemail. I deleted. No anger. It was that easy. It was all of 10 seconds out of my game time. Trebor doesn't owe me ten seconds of game time. He was doing what he has to do to try to make it back onto the CSM. He knows he's in for a tough fight this year.

The Mittani Mass EVEMails Everybody Asking For Votes
The latest mass evemail comes from Lyris Nairn. Obviously at the request of the big boss. But that's the strategy behind this particular mass missive. Seeing the blowback that Trebor received over his campaign message, The Mittani, in his quest for 10K votes, decided to get one of his underlings to do the mailing. Plausible deniability. "Lyris did this of his own accord. He will be punished ... with tech moon profits!"

I've yet to check out the forums, but a threadnaught is probably already forming over this, right?

The interesting thing about this evemail is how late in the game it has come. It's obviously meant to corral some of the apathetic into voting. There's likely another 10K votes among the inclined to vote, and another 20k-30K votes among the apathetic. The inclined likely already know who they want to vote for when they decide to get their lazy asses in gear (so this evemail is not convincing them of anything.) The Mittani here is trying to convert as many of the apathetic into votes as possible. A good number of the apathetic likely know who The Mittani is, so using the name brand now is good strategy.

*****

That's it for drama. As lame drama as it is. It would be nice to get something juicy before the polls close.

The Daily Stat with @CCP_Diagoras (Mar 09-14 2012)

PvP

• RvB kills this weekend: 1,823. EVE total: 30,588. RVB was 5.9%. That's a lot for a single organisation!
• Top killing alliances this weekend, exc capsules/rookieships/shuttles: RvBBlue 910, RvBRed 873, AAA 651, NC. 474, Goons 404, PL 365.
• 21,371 ships destroyed this weekend in PVP (Sat+Sun only) if you exclude rookie ships, capsules and shuttles.
• Top ship types destroyed in PVP this weekend: Drake 1557, Rifter 1260, Hurricane 1164, Thrasher 707, Kestrel 631.
• Top blown up ship groups in PVP this weekend: Frigate 4945, Battlecruiser 4088, Cruiser 1553, Destroyer 1275, Battleship 1256.
• Top final blow scoring ships in PVP this weekend: Drake 2059, Hurricane 1837, Tornado 992, Tengu 796, Thrasher 704.
• Top killer groups in PVP this weekend: Battlecruiser 6851, Battleship 2400, Strategic Cruiser 1846, Cruiser 1828, Frigate 1627.
• Final blows this weekend by weapon group: Projectile Weapon 8,322, Missiles 4,797, Energy Weapon 3,238, Hybrid Weapon 3,005, Drones 1,725.
• Kills by covert ops ships this year so far, all victim ship types: Helios 516, Cheetah 309, Buzzard 201, Anathema 195.
• Rookie ship kills so far this year: Velator (1593), Ibis (544), Impairor (316), Reaper (238).
• RvB scored 1,784 kills in high sec this weekend (excl. rookie ships/shuttles/capsules). The high sec total was 5,991. That's 29.8%.
• Exhumers destroyed in 2011: Hulk 27,806, Mackinaw 11,669, Skiff 654. Of the 40,129 total, 11,770 were lost in PVE.
• 52,811 mining barges destroyed in 2011. Retriever 38,102, Covetor 11,537, Procurer 3,172. 22,981 of those were lost in PVE.

PvE

• 8.94 million NPCs met their fate this weekend; 5.76m high sec, 0.23m low sec, 2.79m null sec, 0.16m in wormhole space.
• Top jumps by ship type yesterday, Capsule 163k, Drake 141k, Tengu 121k, Iteron V 115k, Caldari Shuttle 76k.

Industry

• Exhumer production in 2011 by type: Hulk 68,519, Mackinaw 32,293, Skiff 4,290.
• Mining barges produced, 2011: Retriever 127,981, Covetor 113,714, Procurer 18,317. Over half of the Covetors were used to produce Hulks.
• Jan+Feb 2012, most produced ship groups: Shuttle (605k), Frigate (573k), Battlecruiser (183k), Cruiser (148k), Destroyer (125k).
• Least produced In Jan/Feb 2012 (excl. supercaps): Rorqual (388), Jump Freighter (636), Black Ops (770), Dread (1,348), Marauder (1,850).
• Alliances with most characters that have used PI this year: Goons 1,195, Shadow of xXDEATHXx 951, Intrepid Crossing 659, TEST 568.

Other

• Vote numbers: 9th March, 15:30: 36,625. Same time for CSM6: 25,675, CSM5: 15,905.
• CSM7 voting numbers have now exceeded the CSM5 total.
• Supers being flown as of midnight: 880 titans, 3413 supercarriers.
• On active accounts, characters with more than 5m SP, the top 3 "active" ship groups: BS (29.8k), BC (28.7k), Industrial (28.6k).
• Followed by 20.9k active chars with >5m SP whose active ships are Frigates, 20.6k Exhumers, 20.3k Strat. Cruisers.
• >5m SP active chars, active "useless" ships: 17.4k Shuttle, 15.2k Capsule, 10.7k Rookie ships.
• Capitals being flown on active chars with >5m SP: 9.1k Orca, 7.2k Carrier, 6k Freighter, 2.6k SC, 1.6k JF, 1.1k dread, 930 Rorq, 743 titans.
• 1,769 capitals flown by chars with under 5m SP on active accounts. 1,316 Freighter, 452 Orca, 1 Jump Freighter.
• Active chars with >5m SP, top currently active ship types: Hulk 15.5k, Capsule 15.2k, Tengu 13.2k, Drake 12.4k, Orca 9.1k.
• Most flown battleships (active and above 5m sp only): Dominix 3.5k, Machariel 3.2k, Raven 3.1k, Maelstrom 2.7k, Abaddon 2.3k.
• Stealth bombers being flown, same criteria: 6,565. Manticore 2.4k, Hound 1.7k, Nemesis 1.3k, Purifier 1.2k.
• Of the 28.7k BCs, 12.4k Drake, 5.4k Hurricane, 2.2k Myrmidon, 2k Harbinger, 1.5k Tornado. Only 375 flying a Prophecy and 490 in Cyclones.
• All these "currently active" numbers are based off a snapshot of EVE from midnight btw :)
• Ship groups with the least as character's "active" ship, same criteria as before: EAS 230, Black Ops 453, HIC 699.
• EAS being flown by type: Kitsune 93, Sentinel 51, Hyena 46, Keres 40.
• Covert ops being flown by type: Buzzard 4734, Cheetah 3672, Helios 3377, Anathema 3178.
• Of the 3,546 command ships being flown, the most flown: Nighthawk 1345, Sleipnir 618, Damnation 412.
• 9,783 T1 cruisers being flown by >5m SP active chars. The highest: Vexor 1189, Caracal 1174, Thorax 934, Cynabal 813, Rupture 803.
• Frigate use amongst active chars with >5m SP... 20,908 total; Rifter 3379, Kestrel 1948, Dramiel 1284, Probe 1229, Heron 1073.
• Of the 2,280 active characters in RvB at midnight, 928 were in frigates, 257 cruisers, 256 capsules, 180 destroyers, 151 battlecruisers.
• Top 5 currently active ships for active chars with more than 100m SP: Capsule 583, Tengu 480, Thanatos 256, Orca 230, Drake 221.

Life in Stain - O'Reilly Advice

On Sunday, I did my first O'Reilly since the tutorial. (I think. If there are no hacking missions in the tutorial, then this is my first. It's been close to a year since I did the NPE.)

It took me close to two hours to complete. I need a one ship fits all solution (not counting what I use to scan down the anomalies.)

Scanning down the radar site was no problem. Used a Helios for that. It was doing the O'Reilly that was a bit of a pain in the ass.

There a probably a bunch of different radar site configurations, so I'll just describe the set-up I completed, as memory serves.

Warp in. There are three (or four) clusters of Sansha ships (all of which seemed to be frigates of varying strength.) There is also a cluster of 4 missile towers and 2 stasis towers. The stasis towers seem to have a large range, larger than the missile towers at any rate. If I recall, I was between 50-60 clicks from them on initial warp in and they were webbing my destroyer, whereas the missile towers were coming nowhere near hitting (they started hitting around 35km out.) The groups of Sansha ships don't seem to aggro until I start attacking the towers.

Since taking out the stasis towers was of prime importance, warped the destroyer out, got the Helios, cloaked up and scooted on in to get a good warp in within autocannon range for the Thrasher. I was going to have to pop them as quickly as possible.

Brought the Thrasher back. Was able to get both towers down quickly, but was taking very heavy damage from the missile towers. While killing the stasis towers, a couple of the groups of Sansha started aggroing, which added to the damage. One was warp scrambling as well. Needless to say, I lost the Thrasher. Bad choice of ship. Live and learn.

I reshipped into an Ishkur. The goal was to take out all the missile towers are quickly as possible. This of course aggroed all the groups. When warp scrambled, I'd switch targeting to kill the scrambler as quickly as possible. The Ishkur drone bay helped with that a lot. This stage of the endeavour was basically an exercise in warping away, repairing and coming back in. Was a tedious process. Once I got all the missile towers down, I was more or less able to withstand the damage (had to warp out once to repair), taking out the ships one at a time. Lost a bunch of tech two drones (a tad different than running missions, where I rarely lose drones.)

Once I killed all the rats and towers, flew back to pick up an Ares I'd equipped with a hacking module. (I wanted to fly in quickly and get out quickly if need be.) Learned that sitting and hacking will spawn more rats. So had to warp off and go get the Ishkur, again.

Also learned that after all the rats die, there must be a timer on all the hackable structures, because at some point, after warping off (because cargo was full), and then returning, the two remaining structures that I had still left to hack had vanished. (The system was empty the entire time, so it wasn't someone else hacking them out from under me while I was gone.)

Looking for some advice from folks who run complexes, especially radar sites, in nullsec. Looking for some ship loadouts. Destroyers seem not suited to the task (or I just didn't have a good destroyer setup), and the Ishkur, while survivable, seemed unsuited as well. I should head up to a battlecruiser or battleship, I'm guessing? I'd like a ship configuration where I can use the single ship for clearing the hacking complex and use it to hack as well. No warping out to reship (that's a pain in the ass.)

(Concerning destroyers: It might be that the Thrasher was unsuited to the task. Being a shield tank, trying to stick a codebreaker into the mid-slot makes the ship less defensible. A Catalyst might be more suitable, since armour tanking is all low-slots.)

Any advice, tips, would be appreciated.

(ISK-wise, I figured I broke about even, what with the Thrasher loss and the drone losses. A few nice datacores and some Bloodraider manufacturing/research items. Time-wise, definitely did not break even.)

Goonswarm - Friend to All

I saw this image on an inspirational poster via Drackarn's blog, and, well, I saw Goonswarm in it immediately. It needed an EVE Online message.

All Over New Eden

The combined travels of Poetic Stanziel and Scottish Play.

(click image for full size)

CSM7 - Mega Hans Versus Giant Mittani

The CSM elections have hit their stride. 2012 marks the year that the election meta-game became fully integrated with the game itself.

If CCP had considered doing away with the CSM prior to 2012, that seems to no longer be an option. To remove the CSM now would be to remove a major component of EVE Online itself. It's fully meshed with the community as a whole. The increased participation and interest among the general playerbase speaks to this fully and completely.

So far, 10000 more accounts have voted in CSM7 than they did in CSM6. The players are feeling more invested, more protective of their game. The playerbase has recognized the importance of these elections -- the CSM is the voice of the playerbase, the direct line of communication into CCP.

I've already written my CSM7 predictions. I've already written a short analysis. This post, I amend slightly the former, and add to the latter.

So where are these extra 10000 votes coming from. Ripard Teg, in a recent bit of CSM7 analysis of his own, figures that since the surge in interest from CSM5 to CSM6 came from nullsec voting blocs, that the surge from CSM6 to CSM7 is coming from nullsec voting blocs as well.

I could not disagree more.

First of all, the number of accounts in EVE Online roughly remain on par with what they were a year ago (perhaps slightly less, due to the Summer of Rage.) The distribution of the playerbase across New Eden hasn't changed. If anything, there are fewer large blocs. Whereas Goonswarm and Test Alliance remain as powerful as ever, the Russian bloc has fractured three ways in recent months. Goonswarm and Test don't have 10000 extra votes; they came out swinging last year, they don't have much extra to give this year.

I contend that the sudden surge in voting is coming directly from non-bloc voters, especially those in Empire space. There's always been a level of malaise and apathy with Empire players, voting patterns through the previous six CSMs spell this out well enough. The difference this year is that for the last year they've been told to shut the hell up. If they don't want to get out, vote a candidate of their own, they should stop their bitching and moaning about nullsec's control of the CSM.

I think they took that suggestion to heart.

I think the most popular Empire candidate this election season is far and away Hans Jagerblitzen. He's captured the most interest from all the commentators. He's all over the forums, moreso than any other candidate (except Mittens), and the vast majority of those references are positive. Hans has gone viral.

How does that affect The Mittani -- who has between 5000 and 6000 votes all locked up? The Mittani garnered 5365 votes for CSM6. At most, I can see him gaining another 10% this election. The Mittani's possible vote count has a cap. You can count Goonswarm in his camp, and then some much smaller proportion of votes from outside that bloc. That's it. The sky is not the limit for Mittens.

Hans, on the other hand. He can easily get 3500 to 4000 votes alone from the faction warfare camp. This is where I believe a large proportion of the new voting interest is coming from. The story does not end there, though. Hans is also trending very strongly across Empire space (where the rest of the new voting interest is coming from.) He's popular with lowsec pirates. He's popular with highsec carebears. Empire players trust his vision of the game, that it's about balance, not favouring any one playstyle over another. So take Hans' faction warfare base and then add in his support across Empire and you have a candidate that could challenge The Mittani for the CSM chair.

I now believe that Hans Jagerblitzen will finish, at the minimum, a very strong second in the CSM7 election race.

What might happen if Hans did win the CSM chair? Would The Mittani pack up and resign? He's stated clearly enough that it's the chair or nothing. He's stated that he wants a clear mandate for CSM7. What happens if Hans gets that mandate instead? How will The Mittani react? Ego is a large proportion of what drives Mittens.

Ego is not driving Hans' campaign. Quite the opposite. He's been quite humble, all told. People believe in him because they believe he runs for the CSM not for himself but for the game. Which is why, I believe, if Hans did win the chair, he'd attempt to make concessions to The Mittani. (He knows and understands the value of The Mittani on the CSM.) I can see Hans either offering him co-chair, or offering him the chair outright. I don't think being the CSM chairman is at all important to Hans, certainly not moreso than simply representing the people that voted for him and representing the best interests of the game.

Do I think Hans will win the chair? No. I think he'll come a strong second: The Mittani, Hans Jagerblitzen, Two step, Seleene, Dovinian, UAxDeath and Elise Randolph. But, I do not think that Hans winning the chair is a longshot. Either way, we have 11 more days of a most excellent race to watch and commentate on.

CSM elections. Does the EVE Online meta-game get any better than this?

The Daily Stat with @CCP_Diagoras (Mar 08 2012)

There were no tweet stats posted for March 5 2012.

PvP

• C-J6MT battle stats! Total PVP kills, 6th & 7th March: 1,453. 734 chars scored final blows, 893 chars lost at least one ship.
• Top killing ship groups: Battlecruiser 404, Stealth Bomber 274, Strategic Cruiser 207, Heavy Assault Ship 103, Carrier 85.
• Top ship groups blown up: Capsule 509, Battlecruiser 259, Stealth Bomber 128, Frigate 94, Strategic Cruiser 67.
• Top killing ship types: Tornado 167, Tengu 153, Hound 111, Drake 108, Sabre 70.
• Top killed ship types: Capsule 509, Drake 182, Tengu 64, Scimitar 43, Rifter 42.
• Top ship losses by alliance: Goons 183, TEST 129, Red Alliance 124, Against ALL Authorities 111, Ultima Rati0 104.
• Top kills by alliance: AAA 346, 0ccupational Hazzard 112, Pandemic Legion 93, Northern Coalition. 91, SOLAR FLEET 84.
• Kills by SP group: Under 10m: 20. 10-30m: 242. 30-50m: 361. 50-100m: 727. 100m+: 103.
• Losses by SP group: Under 10m: 183. 10-30m: 408. 30-50m: 368. 50-100m: 456. 100m+: 37.
• Corps with most kills: Macabre Votum 59, Black Aces 56, Blackwater USA Inc. 37, Silver Snake Enterprise 36, D00M. 33.

PvE

• 2,756,161 gate jumps yesterday. 2.1m in high sec, 0.47m null sec and 0.2m low sec.
• 62,949 jumps through wormholes yesterday. 46,283 from other wormholes, 9,530 in high sec, 3,835 low sec, 3,301 null sec.
• In high sec, 2,526,610 NPCs blew up yesterday. Zero Sec 1,379,704, Low Sec 111,412, Wormhole space 71,242. That's a total of 4,088,968.

Industry

• Sell-to-NPCs items from wormholes generated 346bn ISK yesterday. 10.43tn ISK in Feb 2012 total.

Other

• 32k votes cast now. Keep them coming! Every vote makes me smile. Making me smile is great!

CSM7 - Apathy? Not anymore.

CCP Diagoras tweeted the following today: "More votes have been cast in this election in the first 24 hours than were cast in total in any of the first four elections. Impressive!"

Of course, that's CSM1, CSM2, CSM3, and CSM4. There wasn't a lot of awareness back then, or even player interest, in the CSM. CSM1, for instance, had 24652 votes total. CSM7, in the first twenty-four hours, has had approximately 26500 votes cast, compared to the approximately 15000 votes cast in the first twenty-four hours of the CSM6 election.

I'll be closely following the numbers as the election progresses, but it's looking like the total CSM7 vote count could easily and handily outstrip the CSM6 total vote count of 49096.

What does this mean? If you're not pulling from a broad cross-section of voters, the likelihood of getting a CSM seat is going to be much harder than in previous CSM elections. Unless your voting base is Goon- or Test-sized, it is going to take a clever and well-run campaign to get onto the CSM, much less the Circle of Seven.

Take a candidate such as Kelduum Revaan, who was hoping to pull votes from beyond his core constituency (the members of EVE University.) If the total CSM7 vote count hits 65000 (perhaps even more), then on the E-Uni vote alone his chances of getting into the Circle of Seven are almost nil. His chances of getting any CSM seat on the E-Uni vote are dwindling (a respectable chance, still, although no longer guaranteed.)

Is Kelduum pulling votes from outside of EVE University? Judging from the support posts on his campaign thread -- all the I Voted For You Kelduum bumps -- it would appear he did not make any headway into the wider EVE Online playerbase. That's not a positive sign at all. Is the EVE University bloc large enough on its own to ride Kelduum to a bottom-seven seat, given that there's a reasonable probability that an additional 15000-20000 accounts are going to cast votes this year?

Why wasn't he able to break through to the larger population of players? Was it his widely panned war declaration proposal? Or The Mittani calling out one of Kelduum's more worrying suggestions? My continued criticisms of EVE University and lately of his campaign? His weak performances in the podcasts he attended? The lack of serious endorsements? Whatever the reason(s), his message did not catch on with the playerbase.

Now consider someone like Hans Jagerblitzen. This guy has solid ideas, performed like a champ in every podcast he attended, ran his campaign with aplomb and maturity, and has serious endorsements on twenty or so blogs. His core base, the faction warfare crowd, is larger than EVE University in population. That alone would guarantee Hans a seat. Not only that, he's pulling votes from every corner of Empire space. Hans is almost assured a seat in the Circle of Seven.

Two candidates with large bases, but the difference is whether either candidate can transcend that base. Hans Jagerblitzen has. So far it is looking as though Kelduum has not.

The Daily Stat with @CCP_Diagoras (Mar 06-07 2012)

There were no tweet stats posted for March 5 2012.

PvP

• This weekend in empire, PVP kills by region excl rookie ships/shuttles: Lonetrek - 3588, Sinq Laison - 989, Metropolis 786, Essence 736.
• Top 5 PVP systems this weekend (exc rookies/shuttles): Akonoinen 2277, C-J6MT 500, Hageken 434, WY-9LL 366, M-UC0S 324.
• Excluding rookie ships and shuttles, 26,951 PVP ship losses this weekend (Sat + Sun). RVB accounted for 2,905 of them. 10.7%!
• 2,265 of the 2,277 kills in Akonoinen were killed by a member of either Red or Blue. 1,309 kills by blue, 956 by red.
• PVP Ship losses in Akonoinen this weekend by group: Frigate 1530, Cruiser 450, Destroyer 273, Assault Ship 6, Battlecruiser 6.
• Losses by RvB this weekend: Frigate 1969, Cruiser 559, Destroyer 364, Capsule 53, Battlecruiser 51.
• Kills by RvB this weekend: Frigate 1915, Cruiser 536, Destroyer 357, Capsule 6, Assault Ship 6.
• RvB kills by system this weekend (all ship types): Akonoinen 2283, Hageken 421, Autaris 130, Funtanainen 8, Sobaseki 7.
• Of the total (all ship types) 2283 kills by RvB in Akonoinen this weekend, 381 chars scored at least 1 final blow, 600 lost at least 1 ship.
• 42 officers killed this weekend (Sat+Sun). Is this number surprisingly high or low to any of you? :)
• Top wars in terms of number of war kills on Sunday: RvBBlue vs RvBRed 1,519, BricK sQuAD. vs UPS 43, Moar Tears vs Cascade Associates 32.

PvE

• none

Industry

• Sunday: 12.2 trillion ISK of market transactions. 1,137,677 individual transactions. 1.8tn spent on contracts, 167bn on station trades.
• On Sunday, 47,114 Item Exchange contracts created. 5,134 courier and 625 auction.
• 229,279,355,133 ISK spent on Tritanium through the market on Sunday.
• BSs sold on the market on Sunday by ISK value: #1: Machariel (74.2b), CNR (41.1b), Maelstrom (38.3b), Vindicator (35.6bn), Abaddon (35.5b).

Other

• As of Monday, there were 85,631 corporations with at least one active member.
• Active characters/corporations had a wallet balance of 484.7tn ISK yesterday.
• Over 1k votes cast in the first 17 minutes. Hot damn. Let's keep this momentum!
• 2,850 votes in the first hour of the election.
• Two hours since polls opened, 5k votes cast. EVE players never let us down :) Keep calm, keep voting!
• 19,231 votes cast so far. Same point last election: 8,513.
• So, to compare 4pm to the same time for the previous two elections... CSM7: 19,519 votes. CSM6: 8,740, CSM5: 6,197.
• More votes have been cast so far in the CSM7 election than were cast in the entire CSM2 election. We're only 16 hours 27 minutes in.
• CSM7 votes so far exceeded the CSM4 total about 10 minutes ago :) 21,422 votes cast now (20,111 total in CSM4).
• 49096 total votes cast for CSM6.
• 24,661 votes cast. That's more than the entire CSM1 election, which had a total of 24,652! We're 20 hours in. Damn.
• More votes have been cast in this election in the first 24 hours than were cast in total in any of the first four elections. Impressive!

CSM7 - Votes Cast

I threw both my votes to Hans Jagerblitzen. It's important to try to get him onto the Circle of Seven. If you want to vote Hans, click here.

(Sorry, Alekseyev. I like your platform too. I had to make a choice.)

I wonder how many extra votes Hans could garner if he didn't look like the replacement host of Sprockets. Hans' character portrait never fails to disturb me.

One curious note. Just received Trebor's mass evemail on voting for him. The curious bit was the recipients list. Right after my name, on the list, are two corpmates from my previous employment, Arrakis. Neither have logged into game in about four months. Weird. Is he just pulling player names from evewho.com, by corporation? That would be my guess.

Anyhow, get out there and vote ... unless you're planning on voting for someone who's just trying to pad their EVE Online resume. "Well, I've been a CEO for awhile. CSM seems like the next logical step."

Insurance Payouts - Revisited

The insurance payouts proposal was cross-posted to EVE News 24, as I requested. It's a good place to see an idea bandied about, understand the pros and cons.

I didn't think that insurance payouts were that big a deal overall, that they could possible turn PvPers into risk-averse bears. That seems to be the consensus. I'm not sure I entirely buy the premise that changing insurance payouts would cause more people to flock to highsec, but why take the chance, I suppose.

Also learned some new stuff about sov mechanics, unrelated to insurance. (There's little in the way of sovereignty classes in the University, if you don't count Silentbricks's lessons on activating SBUs, and I wouldn't even know where to begin the reading.) Learned that sov people pay CONCORD some sort of rent on certain sov structures. Wow. That seems completely ridiculous to me. There's some roleplay reason for it, based on CONCORDs attempt to regulate against chaos and anarchy. Whatever. Folks should just build sov structures and the only cost associated with them should be whatever fuel it takes to keep them running. I realize the fees are some sort of ISK sink, but you can just replace that with increased fuel costs for the structures. I know jack shit about sovereignty, so take the preceding comments with a grain of salt. There may be other reasons why people are cool with CONCORD's involvement in nullsec (which seems to be legalized extortion.)

Anyhow, I can't much argue with most of the dissenting opinions (except the ones about ass cancer.) (Were there any endorsements of the proposal? I don't think there was a one. Not on EVE News 24, at any rate.) Everybody seem to feel as though insurance is fine as is. It probably is. It's a fairly minor mechanic, all told.

I was called out for forgetting about self-destruction. Oops. I knew I was missing something when I made the post. I was thinking about that a few days ago too. Slipped my mind come writing the post.

So, the only addition that needs to be made to the current insurance system is to remove insurance payouts to folks who self-destruct their ships. This is less a proposal and simply something that needs to be implemented.

I pull all those other proposals listed in the original post.

I add this new proposal, for discussion.

Decrease insurance payouts to anybody with a secstatus of -5 or less. Use a sliding scale, such that someone with a secstatus of -10 receives a 0% payout and a -5 secstatus receives 10% less than the norm.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the original post. And thanks to the EVE News 24 community for the invested comments.

PS The reason for the original proposal wasn't actually to mirror some sort of reality. My EVE is Real comment was parenthetical because I was being sarcastic. The motivation for the post was whether there was any balancing that could be done to the insurance system.