Live in Eve: March in Review

So with March in the bag, I thought I'd look back and see how the corp did, both in terms of killboard statistics as well as the harder-to-track but far more useful non-metrics of mood, morale, and accomplishments.

Corp Numbers

Our ship losses for march were pretty much the same as February -- just breaking 125 -- though overall the total value of the ships lost was lower. I'm completely happy with this -- it reflects the high level of activity in the corp right now -- most nights, someone was flying and fighting, and that feels like a good thing to me.

Conversely, our kills for the month nearly doubled, and the value of the enemy assets we destroyed tripled and very nearly quadrupled.  This left us about 78% efficient for the month, and made March by far and away the most active month our corp has ever had, even compared to the month of fights in the Eugidi cluster.

It's worth considering our losses compared to our wins for another reason: while we lost about as many ships in March as February, our spike in destroyed enemy ships means that we are selling our lost ships far more dearly.

We also saw a nice spike in solo kills: March tripled our number of solo kills over the next highest months, which speaks (I think) to growing pilot confidence and a willingness to engage and make something out of what looks like an bad  situation.

In short, we're flying smarter and being a little less careful.

We certainly have our bad days, but all in all, it's been great.


Top ships flown:

Frigates. There are a (very) few cruisers mentioned, because of one abortive op we went on with Daggers, but that's it. We didn't get a single kill in destroyer all month, either. I have no plans to change that drastically, but we will be flying at least some bigger stuff this month.

How about me, personally?

I had a pretty weak couple of months in January and February, so March was pretty good for me in a lot of ways. I broke 100 kills for the month (102: a personal best), and lost exactly the same number of ships as last month. Of those 102, 93 were actual fights as opposed to destroyed capsules, 11 were solo fights, and I managed to be top damage on 40.

Had you watched each fight, you'd have seen me in a Slasher about one third of the time, the Executioner and Atron a distant second and third, and the Tormentor and Incursus coming on strong in the last week as I fiddled around with different ships. Lots of other stuff saw at least some use: I flew at least 15 different types ships during successful fights this month, and possibly more -- I finished four fights in my escape pod, so I don't know what I was flying before the explosion.

And what about the War?

March was a pretty good month for Minmatar. While it was never hard to find Amarr willing to fight, many of those fights were in entrenched systems where the slavers have set up a lots of support in the form of off-grid fleet boosting and the like. We can manage fights there, but we need to kill and get out in a hurry, because the follow-up wave in those systems is usually some kind of ridiculously overwhelming response. (My personal favorite is the gang that attacked our six-man tech1 frigate fleet with armor-boosted cruisers and an assault frig (vexor, maller, enyo), and then brought in an Ashimmu when they lost two ships and couldn't kill us. GF?)

Anyway, the result of this tactic has been a downswing in fights in random locations around the war zone, and the Amarr down to about seven controlled systems out of 70. I've seen some 20+ Amarr fleets flying around, but I honestly don't know what they're doing or who they're fighting, if anyone; most of LNA seems to have gone to sleep again, and I don't know who else in the TLF is fielding fleets that size.

I'm not thrilled about this development, as it limits the level of activity we see from the other side. Early in the month, the Amarr and Minmatar were dead-even on warzone control, with both sides maintaining tier 3 for nearly a week, and I couldn't have been more pleased: it seemed the best situation possible to encourage high activity in both factions, and I'd hoped it would last a lot longer.

A few days from the end of the month, Minmatar managed to push warzone control the highest level -- tier 5 -- the first time that's happened since CCP made their most recent changes to the Faction Warfare control system.

Nice feather in the cap, but ultimately more trouble than it's worth.


This event triggered a rash of one-day-old alts flooding Minmatar faction warfare to leech Loyalty Points while the rewards were increased 225%. Gambit Roulette tried to go out and capture plexes during this time, but we kept getting distracted with good fights and -- I believe -- never actually collected an LP payment during the entire Tier 5 period. Whoops.

We also may, here and there, have pointed some unaffiliated pirates in the direction of particularly obvious LP leech pilots who needed a good ass-whupping. I consider it a community outreach and beautification project. Related: if any Amamake residents want to know who likes to boast in Minmatar chat about flying 'combat' ships with warp core stabilizers and cloaks on, give me a ping: I have a list.

And that's about it! We're planning to start April off a resounding thud of stupidity: who knows what'll happen after that.

Life in Eve: Local is Fine, and Here's How to Fix It.

First, a brief background, for the non-EvE players:

Like most MMOs, Eve has a number of text-based chat channels built into its user interface. The ones likely to see the most use are whatever corporation and/or alliance you're part of, any player-made channels created for specific purposes or interests...

And Local.

Now, to the outsider, the concept of a "local channel" doesn't seem that big a deal: most games I've played have some version of this: a channel that can only be seen by the people currently visiting a particular city are common, for example (though there's usually some question about whether or not anyone pays attention to it).

In Eve, that Channel is called "Local." It's always on, always there, and always includes whomever is currently in the same solar system as you.

The reason this matters (for the purposes of this post), is that all the channels in Eve have a Member List displayed alongside the chat window.

Like so.


In some less-common situations, the member list only shows people who have actually spoken in that channel since you logged on, but in most cases, including Local in all of known space, the member list automatically updates to show everyone who's currently in the same solar system.

This means that, in Eve, within known space (wormholes work differently), the very second that anyone enters the same solar system you're in, you know, thanks to Local.

As a result, Local -- specifically, Local's member list -- is more often used as an intelligence gathering tool than it is a means to chat with the unwashed masses of whatever backwater shithole you happen to be flying through at the moment.

I actually shrink the window so that the member list is the only thing I see.


Not everyone likes this.

There have been great fiery debates about whether or not Local's member list should remain immediate (like it is now) or delayed (the way it works in Wormholes and some private channels, where no one knows you're there unless you say something).

Which led to this conversation today:

"Man," Em said. "I really wish we didn't have automatic local out in the war zone. It's so lame to have that much intel at your fingertips. It'd be so cool to see guys on directional scan in a complex and have NO idea of they were friendly or hostile -- no Local list to compare it to and say 'Well, I see three ships, and there are only two hostiles here and three friendlies, so it's probably friendlies.'"

"Sure," I replied. "Though it would suck for us as well if they changed it."

"We'd cope," Em said. "Hell, we already deal with that every day up in the wormhole."

"Definitely, but that's the wormhole. Things should work differently up there. I mean..." I pondered. "We're in low security space, but it's still Empire space, you know? The infrastructure is kind of messed up, but it's still functional."

"Empire?" Em replied. "Why would the Amarr or Minmatar or... hell, anybody provide intel about their own troop movements to anyone and everyone who can see the Local member list?"

"Well... they wouldn't," I said. "But I don't think it's really up to them -- that's just part of the deal with the technology. I don't think they control it." I shrugged. "Maybe CONCORD controls it." I frowned. "Actually, I think it's tied to the stargates somehow -- like they're relays or something -- which is why the member list breaks out by star system, and why there's other channels like one just for the local constellation of systems you're in, and why it works the same way in High sec and Low sec and Null sec -- all the same stargate technology." Finally, I added, "That'd be why it doesn't work that way in wormhole space -- no stargates."

Bringing people together in more ways than one.


There was a pause in the conversation. I turned back to the ship fitting I'd been assembling.

"You know what would be cool?" Em said, voice almost dreamy.

"I --"

"What would be cool," he continued, "is if Local didn't add you to the member list until you either used the channel... or used a Gate."

I stopped, turning that idea over, then offered my analysis. "Huh."

"I mean..." it didn't even seem as though he heard me. "If it's all attached to the stargate tech, and you didn't use a stargate to get there, then..." He shook his head. "MAN that would be cool."

"Wormholes," I said, picking up on the idea. "You could -- I mean, when you dropped out of a wormhole into a system in known space..."

"No one would know you were there," Em completed the thought. "It'd make all those shitty class two systems with exits to Null sec SO much more fun."

There's a hole in your sky...


"It'd be like having a black-ops drop capability for people who can't fly black-ops ships yet." I blinked. "Actually..."

"... black-ops jump bridges bypass gates." Em finished.

Widow likes the idea. (It's smiling - trust me.)


"Regular Titan bridges too," I said. "I mean --"

"-- you'd see the beacon go up, but--"

"-- you wouldn't know who came in, or how many, without more recon. You'd just know a jump bridge happened."

"Who left the door open?"


We were quiet for a while.

"Wow," I said.

"Not like wormholes," Em said, "still it's own thing, and for most people flying around, it's basically like nothing really changed, because as soon as you use a gate to jump into system, you're loaded into Local, but... better than it is now."

"Yeah," I agreed. I shook my head, blinking. "You know what?"

"You're going to write about it." Em sounded amused.

"We need to tell people about this," I replied. "This is a good idea."

---

TL;DR: Wouldn't it be cool if, in known space, you stayed off the Local member list if you could manage to bypass the stargate when you entered the system? As soon as you use a gate (or talk in Local), you show up, but until then...

Not quite how it works now. Neither is it the way it works in wormholes. Provides a really neat way to work around the current system, in-character.

Dunno about you, but I like it.

Life in Eve: Gambit Roulette

Regardless of the game, I've never been particularly drawn to stealth classes. Rogues, Burglars, Assassins... you know the type. The long setup. The slow creep. The careful maneuvering. The final violent burst of action that was, for all that, almost anticlimax to the preparation that got you there.

I could do it well enough. I just didn't enjoy it all that much, or at least not as much as I did other possible options. I got my 'single bullet kill' achievements in Hitman II, but there were at least as many missions where I crashed the game because the engine couldn't render that many dead sprites at the same time. That one where you dress up as the fireman? With the axe?

Oh, bank lobby killing spree: you complete me.


Which brings me to wormholes.

About a year ago, I started to get... itchy, when it came to living in a wormhole full time (which I had been doing for roughly a year and a half). As interesting and inspiring as blogs like Tiger Ears were (and continue to be), I found myself increasingly dissatisfied.

To be fair, wormholes aren't for everyone. Wormhole living requires a lot of specialized knowledge about certain areas of Eve: the perpetual scanning; the living out of a player-owned-starbase that feels like camping full time out of twenty-year old modular tent with missing pieces; the ritual-and-requisite paranoia. No, it's not for everyone. It's not even for most.

But that wasn't really my problem. I'd just gotten tired of playing a stealth class.

There are certainly examples of other kinds of combat that happen in wormhole space, but day to day, for most pilots, that's the exception rather than the rule. In the life of a dedicated wormholer, pvp is about finding a target and, having found them, doing something with that knowledge before they know you're there.

The slow creep. The long step up. The careful maneuvering. The final burst of action. Stealthy stuff. It had taken me awhile to recognize it, but when I did it was a bit obvious.

So I left.

Well, Ty left, anyway, and CB decided to come with me. The wormhole stayed just as active as it had been, but we were off to explore other options, which led to Gambit Roulette: our foray into Faction Warfare.

Gambit Roulette: A convoluted plan that relies on events completely within the realm of chance yet comes off without a hitch.

If your first reaction to seeing the plan unfold is "There is no way you planned that!", then it's a gambit roulette.

The reason for giving the corp this name was straightforward: I didn't know what I was doing. Anything that looked like intentional success was obviously going to be, in truth, blind chance.

The first month of the corp's existence wasn't exactly draped in glory. I think we destroyed two enemy ships and lost seven.

I did a lot of solo flying in the months that followed, and managed to turn the kill/death ratio around, though never by any particularly stunning amount. 21:7. 18:4. Then right back down to a mediocre 11:9.

Through the early months, I was struck by the fact that, while there were obviously many groups flying around the warzone, I wasn't *in* them, and getting in -- becoming someone known and trusted -- was going to take time.

"How's that faction warfare thing going?" asked my buddies in the wormhole.

"Pretty good," I said, and it was true, for all that I mostly on my own. "There's always something to do."

"Nice," came the reply. "Maybe I'll bring an alt down and join you or something."

"Sounds cool," I said, because it did, but at the same time I thought: I need to pave the way for my friends -- to find the way into the good groups, and learn which are the bad groups -- so they don't have to do that slog work.

Something of a breakthrough came in that next month, as a veteran FW pilot I'd flown with a couple times invited me to a channel he seemed to use to sort out newer pilots he thought were worth the time.

He got me in my first fleet with the Order of the Black Daggers, a group of pilots who had fun, didn't get too riled up when things got hard, and (most importantly) had a good leader and times when they regularly and reliably "did stuff." I was happy - thrilled, really - to fly with them. Gambit Roulette ship losses per month increased by a factor of three; ship kills increased by a factor of six.

On fire, half dead, and limping away with the stuff off the other guy's wreck.


More importantly -- FAR more importantly -- I had found a group of good people to fly with. If my friends from the wormhole ever decided to check out this Faction Warfare thing (they did, and not on alts), I could simply say "these guys are with me," and that would be that. (And it was.)

First, we were two.

Then another guy joined us. A stranger, though someone who'd read the blog, started in a wormhole, and wanted to try something else.

"If he wants in the wormhole," CB said, "hell no. But if he wants to come out here? Sure. Blood for the blood god."

Then our old corp mates joined us. Em and Div and Shan and the rest, with a few particularly dangerous souls staying behind to keep the lights on back in Anoikis and destroy the unwary.

We joined Daggers in their alliance - Ushra'Khan - and joined the fight for the Eugidi constellation: the first time the war really felt like a war and not a roaming free for all.

After days of fruitless efforts to find an Amarr opponent, Em got a fight with a neutral pilot in a complex -- a guy who just wanted a fight; wanted to try something new in the game.

"Recruit him," I said.

"Already talking it over with him," he replied. "Going to get his buddy in here too."

That recruited pilot got in on a Titan kill a few weeks later.

We have our up months and down months. January was quiet, with many of us traveling.

February, which saw two new pilots join -- former wormholers looking for something different -- was not quiet. Record number of ship losses, and if the number of kills didn't spike by quite as much, we'll chalk that up to the learning curve. We still destroyed as many enemy assets as I did the month I started flying with Daggers.

More importantly -- far more importantly -- we'd found more pilots we really clicked with.

And suddenly it's now, nine months since this thing started, and we are the small group of pilots "doing stuff" on most nights.

This month, halfway through, we've nearly doubled the value of destroyed enemy assets from last month, with half the losses. Ignoring that crazy titan kill, it's already our second most productive month, behind only the Eugidi war.

And best of all, it's fun. It's fast.

And we rarely need a cloaking device.

---

The five-character Corp ticker for Gambit Roulette is IMPRV.

Some people read that as "Improv" and assume we're just making things up as we go.

Some people read it as "Improve" and think we're all about trying to learn and get better.

I think: Why not both?

Life in Eve: Tys R Us, now open in Sinq Laison and all points East

So about a month ago, it became evident that the pilots in our corp would need to get into replacement ships often, and probably in a hurry.

It also seemed as though, while all the pilots were pretty smart at building interesting ships, sometimes we didn't need 'interesting' as much as we needed 'good and effective'. There was nothing wrong with the ships we were flying, but there was some functionality I often wished we had in the fleet that simply wasn't occurring to anyone.

At the same time, I wasn't (and never will) hand down some kind of 'directive' on what people can and can't fly.

So, with all that in mind, I flew over to a market hub and spent most of an afternoon and evening buying the parts for about 50 ships, hauling them a few jumps away from the warzone, putting them together, and setting them up on corporation-only contracts, at cost.

The goal was two-fold:

1. Make it quick, easy, and cheap to get back into the action if you lost a ship.
2. Increase the odds someone would be flying one of those go-to ships I often wished we had.

And at the same time, if someone wanted to do their own thing, then no problem: this was in no way stopping them.

I got everything all set up, and Ty sent out a corp-wide message informing everyone that the storefront was open.

I probably shouldn't have used the word "storefront."

I also probably shouldn't have left the default name (mine) on every one of the ships I'd assembled.

Because this happened:

Our pilots love their terrible puns.


I'd like to say it stopped there, but of course it didn't.

I have a habit (I think it's a good one) of reminding everyone to turn on their Damage Control modules as we drop cloak and warp toward a fight. Mostly, I'm reminding myself, but if it saves someone else's ship, then all to the good.

Apparently, I say it often enough to be noticed.



And it's not always about me. The most recent addition to the advertising campaign celebrates how March has been going.

Personally, I like the duck.


I also like that it doesn't specify whether it will be our ships or the opponent's that will blow up -- whether the Slasher pictured is more deadly to the target or the pilot. This is what's known as "Truth in Advertising."

Nice work, Div.

Life in Eve: In Like a Lion

I want to say the month really got going when we got the escape pod with a set of low-grade Slave implants. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice surprise, but it's not as though that was a particularly tough fight. It's pretty hard to catch a pod in low-sec -- the guy clearly wasn't paying attention.

I kind of want to say the month started with Xyn and Ty taking down a Dramiel (and his Merlin partner) in a pair of Slashers. That was pretty sweet.

But no. For me, the month started with the very first time I undocked. I was starting late, and everyone else had already set out. There were enough pilots that they'd split into two smaller groups, both of which were kind of far away, so I set out on my own: hopped in a Slasher and headed into the warzone.

Right off the entry star gate, I see a Merlin. I want a fight. So does he. We go at it. I dock up afterwards, repair, and head back out.

Next up, I find a Rifter tucked into a complex. Good fight, good fight, and then got an Incursus on the way back home.

Not that any of these fights were easy (well, okay: the pod-kill was easy). All the real fights are close, heart-pounding things. Whether I'm solo or in a small gang of corp mates, someone has to re-ship or repair when the smoke clears: that's just how it works when you're in a bunch of frigates: even if you win, you're probably on fire.

Frigate Combat: I'm on fire? That just means I'll do more damage!


I'm not good at this. I forget basic stuff in the middle of a fight. I burn out modules I desperately need, or forget to turn them on. Or I get out-piloted, pure and simple. Or I try to fight stuff I should really leave the hell alone.

Sometimes I get lucky.

The pilots in my corp are pretty much same.

Sometimes we're in the zone.


Like an eight on eight fight where we were outgunned, outshipped, took down all targets, and only lost a single frigate.

... and sometimes something that looks fine goes horribly wrong.


Even so, it's been a pretty damn good month so far.

Life in Eve: Post-February Grab Bag

 

No time or inclination to put up an organized post, so instead you get a bunch of random stuff I've been meaning to share.

We did a lot of shooting this month.


February was our corp's second-highest kill total since the corp was formed. Only December (when we were part of Ushra'Khan and involved in many fleets violently and constantly clashing over the Eugidi constellation) was higher, and only barely. February was also (no surprise, really) highest in terms of ship losses, though we still came out well ahead in the end.

---

FNGs: We've brought in quite a few new pilots - mostly guys recovering from post-boredom wormhole syndrome - and they have taken to Faction Warfare like ducks to water.

Shark-ducks, swimming in bloody, chum-filled water.


Anyway: welcome to the corp and quit making the rest of us look like we're fucking afk. Jesus.

---

Our monthly combat efficiency would be better if we hadn't lost a bunch of pods early in the month (I was certainly not immune, and I have the newly-retrained Battlecruisers 5 to prove it :( ). That got a lot better in the second half the month, so I'm going to chalk that up to a string of bad luck and smart-bombs.

---

My dislike of ECM system has been replaced by the broken mechanics around off-grid boosting alts. It's getting harder and harder to find a fight with anyone who doesn't first "need" to get their their half-billion-isk tech3 cruiser in-system to hide at a safe spot and provide ridiculous boosts to a pack of shitty little frigates.

You seriously need your armor booster alt following around to support your solo punisher roam?


The guys in our corp could do off-grid boosting -- we certainly have the skills required -- but we don't because off-grid boosting is (in terms of risk to reward) broken, and I don't like using broken mechanics.

Following a particularly ridiculous fight with whatever I.LAW is calling itself this month, Em and I have established a new policy with regard to boosters: if you want them on the field, great. If you bring them in system and hide them off-grid, you are not going to get a fight. Period. Full-stop. No exceptions.

So: if your goal is to have everyone avoid you and have nothing to do, then congratulations - you win. If your goal is to actually play a PvP game and doing PvP things within that game...

You will have to find your entertainment elsewhere.


One way of looking at this is that it's just good target selection. To quote a certain FC: "If I see a fight, and know we have no chance of winning why should I fight?"

But it's not really about that, it's about rewarding certain kinds of behavior. To go back to my playground analogy, if you're trying to organize a dodgeball game, but you always bring a medicine ball and the flubber-enhanced sneakers, no one's going to play with you. Sure, it's legal. Yes, it's currently 'working as intended.' Fine.

But it's not behavior I intend to encourage. Sometimes, I censure my kids' behavior by simply walking out of the room -- if they want to be fucking annoying, that's fine: they're 2 and 7, their brain chemistry is ridiculous at that age, and maybe they can't help it. But I don't need to subject myself to it, and I'm not going to. I find the same sort of response is the easiest option for me in Eve as well; there are people who don't roll with off-grid boosting bullshit every day, and I can easily go and find them. Denying known off-grid booster addicts a fight doesn't hurt my game at all.

You want to leave the medicine ball at home, you're welcome to rejoin the rest of us. Until then, you can pound sand.

---

... and that's it.

We now return you to the regularly scheduled warzone, already in progress.

Life in Eve: Jesus Wept

Tormentor, Inquisitor, Fed Navy Comet all in system. All in different complexes. All with the same ship name. Hmm.

Tormentor's complex is hell and gone away, so I warp over there, hit the gate, and engage. I figure I have time to respond if both his buddies come, and maybe just the inquisitor will come in and I can kill him quick. Or "maybe" he's a multiboxer and he'll mismanage his backup. Whatever. I just want a fight.

I land, close, lock, TD, warp scram, start shooting...

And he leaves. Nothing but warp stabilizers in his lows.



Because having remote rep support and additional DPS on hand wasn't enough of a security blanket against my big scary slasher -- let's make sure you can run as well.

The only thing that redeemed the roam for me was a punisher pilot who had the opportunity to run (55km away in open space), thought about it, and said "You know what? Fuck it, let's dance."

Good fight, you filthy slaver.

Life in Eve: Losing While Winning

This is one of those blog posts that says "I haven't been writing about playing Eve very much, because of how much I've been playing Eve."

So, yeah. Pretty much that. Despite Em being out of town and Shan being pretty busy and Dirk and me both dealing with the academic tsunami, the corp has stayed pretty active, and we've added a few new pilots -- many of them former wormhole pilots looking for something with a bit more 'instant-on' kind of gameplay. We've all been learning a lot (especially me).

It's a good time to be flying internet spaceships.


This isn't to say we aren't blowing up hilariously on a pretty regular basis, but given that we're flying basic frigates and destroyers right now, that hasn't actually been a very crippling issue -- when we look back at an evening's hijinx and see that any one of the enemy ships we destroyed represents twice the value of all the ships we lost, it's easy to feel productive. The corp has destroyed 50 billion isk worth of enemy ships since joining the war.

It can still be a little demoralizing to run through a lot of ships in a single night (I build my Slasher attack frigates in packs of 10 right now), but with a little practice you learn to deal with it and focus on the fun.

"Hey guys! I got a new ship! It's really swee--"


One of our pilots commented "I've killed more ships just in February, so far, than I did in the two years I played Eve up to this point."

Maybe that doesn't sound like fun to everyone, but it definitely is for us, the pilots we fly with, and (I assume) the pilots we fly against. Sometimes the explosions are ours. Sometimes theirs. Often, both. These things happen. Sorry you broke your ship.

Get in something cheap, and let's go again.

Eve Online: The Point of a Frigate

I don't much care about my character's (or my corp's) killboard (the term for API-powered websites that list and analyze your PvP combat statistics in Eve). It is (and I hope always will be), something that's inadvertently and unmindfully produced as a result of my play -- just something that happens, not something I play toward. I think that the day that those numbers (my kill/death ratios, efficiency, et cetera) alter my in-game decisions should be the day I stop playing.

That said, sometimes it kind of fun to use those boards to take a look at what I've done, even if I don't think it's a good way to see "how I'm doing."

For instance, here's a fun fact: I recently lost by 100th ship in the game (I'm currently at 123). Interesting? Perhaps.

More interesting: 93 of those ships (75% of the total) have been lost since joining Faction Warfare (many of them frigates). This might make faction warfare seems like a bad idea, maybe.

Maybe.

Depending on which killboard you look at (they all count things a bit differently) I've blown up somewhere between 261 and 321 enemy ships. I'm going to go with 261, since estimating low keeps me humble and I suspect some of those other 'kills' are actually structures I helped blow up.

So: of those 261 explosions, 235 of them (a whopping 90%) happened since joining faction warfare. (Most of them weren't frigates.)

Now, with that second bit of information in mind, how do those ship losses look? To me, they look like I'm getting more out than I'm putting in: I wish everything I invested my time in yielded a better than 2.5:1 reward ratio.

All of those deaths have been about having fun, enjoying my play, experiencing all that Eve has to offer and learning something new. Training skills, fitting ships, flying with your friends, getting into new ships, these are all important things. But risk is the ultimate reward in Eve.

RISK = REWARD.

-- Rixx Javix, Dying Over 400x

A few nights, ago, I was out and about in a cheap little frigate - a slicer - capturing a couple plexes in heavily contested systems. There was a war target in the system, so while I wasn't surprised to see a ship warp into the complex and come at me, I was a little surprised to see that it was a neutral pilot, unaffiliated with the war. More, he clearly wanted a fight, as he target locked me and started firing from long range.

Long story short, I engaged, managed to outmaneuver him and get in under his guns' ability to track me, and won. More of a surprise: he didn't have a pile of friends he called in once I'd committed to the fight. it was a proper 1 v 1. (Heartfelt salute to that pilot: o7.)

After his escape pod warped off, I took a look at the kill information and quietly send him the ISK value of the ship he'd lost. Between that and the insurance payout, he should be slightly ahead after losing his ship. Why did I bother? Because he gave me the chance to have more fun (a lot more fun) than I would have otherwise. I didn't have much time to play that night, and it was likely going to be nothing but me capturing a couple complexes, shooting a few NPCs, and logging out.

Instead, an exciting 1 v 1 brawl.  We sometimes forget that half of the people we 'play' with every night aren't the guys on comms, but the dudes shooting at us - just as a chess match or poker game or a board game fails without opponents, so too goes Eve; in a lot of ways, it's much more like a typical game than most MMOs, because most games are player vs. player.

The only big difference is the adrenaline rush -- I was amped for at least a half hour after that fight. I've never had that kind of experience from any other game.

Now, maybe he didn't have as much fun. Maybe he was looking for a win and was really pissed he lost a ship. He's a long-time player, but he hasn't gotten many kills lately. Bad luck, maybe, or getting used to the new/old ships.

I don't want him to have a bad time. I want him to keep playing. So: a little donation. I've got the ISK, and it's just the cost of a frigate.

"It's just a frigate." I hear that a lot.

Frigates in Eve are like healing potions in other games, as far as I'm concerned: if you're not using them up periodically, you aren't really playing hard enough.

Make sure to show up for the fight with sufficient consumables.


We bring a lot of pilots into faction warfare from other areas of the game. Null sec. Wormholes. High sec. They like to make jokes about frigates -- shake their head in disbelief that they're flying such a cheap little ship. They miss their carriers, their Tengu strategic cruisers, their blinged-out Kronos marauders.

Here's the thing, though. I can fly a strategic cruiser. I've got... three of them? I think? Maybe four. Any one of them costs 100 times more than that slasher I was flying.

And there's just no way I'm going to get 100 times more fun out of one.

I mean, I fly LOTS of different stuff, but love jumping in a frigate. They've given me the freedom to try crazy stuff. To blow up 93 times. To blow up 235 other guys. To have fun.

Which is really the point of a game.

Life in Eve: Heavy Hangs the Head

This bit of reflection came out of a (sadly) half-finished conversation with Dave and Margie, where we were talking about my time with Faction Warfare in Eve, and their time playing Ingress.

The Minmatar/Amarr faction war zone has been a little crazy the last few months. Amarr units have been on an organized tear, capturing a sizable chunk of territory -- more than I'd ever seen them take over, actually -- enough to have a clear advantage in terms of system control. More, they've held onto it for quite some time.

Disconcerting, but also (weirdly) a bit of a relief. The last few months prior to that push, our group had been involved in occupying and defending a constellation of systems that, to be honest, we just didn't have quite enough people to manage, especially in the face of the previously mentioned Amarr offensive. We held on fairly well, and even managed to push our side's war zone control back up to tier 4 (out of five) for awhile, but it was exhausting, and eventually we just wore out and retreated to an area where we had more allies and fewer systems to worry about.

Now, with the pressure to hold ground gone, we're left fighting roving battles across a landscape that, thanks to Amarr taking a bunch of systems, suddenly presents many more targets of opportunity. This, like the rest, is a new experience for me. I came into the war at a time of Minmatar dominance (selecting Minmatar over Gallente primarily because I wanted to shoot slavers more than I wanted to shoot corpo-fascists), and often had to wander over to the Gallente/Caldari war zone and fight with my allies, because with the Amarr holed up in fewer than five systems (out of ~70), there just wasn't much to do. Things have changed: with half the war zone in Amarr hands, the question isn't what to do, but what to do first.

The current situation has given us many opportunities for spirited autocannon debate.


And in some cases, "what to do" ends up being "recapture lost systems." This opportunity arises because (as we've learned and the Amarr presumably are now discovering) holding big chunks of territory is kind of... wearying, and that seems to be by design.

See, a lot of the 'draw' of being on the winning side in a conflict is the idea that you'll reap nice benefits. This is true in faction warfare... to a point. It turns out dominating the whole war zone isn't really a good use of anyone's time. As you approach high levels of war zone control, it becomes far more difficult to hold it and/or capitalize on advantage. The costs of system upgrades increase exponentially, until you get to a point where holding the highest tiers of control cost more than you're making -- you're better off dropping down to a less resource-intensive, easier-to-maintain, albeit slightly less profitable level.

In short, achieving total dominance is a hollow victory: it's costly to keep up, the rewards gleaned at the highest levels don't justify the effort, and if you're just logging in for some quick and easy fun, the fact you pretty much own everything means (thanks to little enemy territory and a demoralized foe) you have no options for entertainment... which is rather the point of a game.

Conversely, now that the Minmatar are behind the Amarr in terms of war zone control, we have lots to do, but still have a good resource base to work with. It doesn't hurt that many of the main Amarr groups don't seem to have much patience for the slog of territory ownership -- the lure of a good fight usually prevails, and it feels to me as though they're getting bored with the drudgery of being on top.

That's okay: we'll seesaw our way to the top, if they're sick of it, then they can take it back, and on and on in perpetual, bloody, entertaining motion. I've seen far worse designs.

CCP has struggled to achieve this balance for a long time in Faction Warfare -- as my friend Dave has observed, it's not a problem unique to Eve -- and they've made more than a few slips and trips on the way, but it seems to me as though they've finally hit very near a sweet-spot that reminds a bit of Conan:  Lots of fun and rewards in the midst of struggle, but heavy hangs the head that wears the crown, and how willing the king becomes to throw down scepter and rejoin the fray.

I can't imagine CCP could wish for much more.

Life in Eve: How I Learned to Love Hating "Safe Zones" in New Eden

I didn't intend to write any more stuff about CCP and the development direction of Eve; it's not really what I do.

However, I was having a good discussion on Reddit about yesterday's post (someone put it up there and I dropped in to say hello), and one of the threads of conversation gave me what I think is kind of a cool idea. It started like this. Someone asked:

But don't you worry that it [restriction on non-consensual PvP] could compromise the unique identity that EVE has built for itself?

I think it's clear from yesterday's post that the personal answer I came to in regards to that question is 'no'. I said:

I love the scams, the free for alls, the Asakai's, the alliances disbanded from within, the wormhole ambushes, bomber's bars, freighter ganks on the way to Jita, and the 70-minute logi-assisted lowsec complex brawls. I love it all. But looking at it from CCP's point of view, I believe they've got to be asking hard questions about whether or not they can introduce a few [safe] systems in New Eden... like... hell, I dunno, the 1.0 and 0.9 systems and training systems, or something. That might be all it takes to reduce the number of "tried it, hated it, everyone's fucking evil on that game" guys who leave four hours into the trial period. If I'm CCP, and I have any faith in the game at all, I have to believe that if I can keep that trial guy around even a little longer, I'll secure another player.

Except I didn't say [safe] systems -- I said "Mandatory Safeties Green" systems.

Because that's all it would take, isn't it? Certain systems where everyone's safeties get flipped green and locked there until you leave the system. Easy, easy code.

More importantly, it gave me what I think is kind of a cool idea for building a storyline around this. Stay with me.

1. We have pirate rookie ships on the test servers right now.

Pretty cool, no?


2. Based on the existence of pirate rookie ships, we can assume (for a moment) that CCP is seriously considering a way for players to switch their allegiance to a pirate faction.

Y'see,  there's no way to get rookie ships of a particular faction in the game unless someone in the game is a member of that faction. So it follows that if these rookie ships exist, there's going to be some way for players to join those factions, sort of faction warfare style.

3. If that happens, imagine a significant number of pilots will do that, and damn the consequences.

I really don't think this is a very difficult thing to imagine, knowing our playerbase.


4. Let's further assume that being in a pirate faction is more than just vapid window dressing.

If the certain mechanics in the game are slightly different for pirate faction players (such as the stuff Jester suggested a few months ago), you see a sudden and serious upswing in player-on-player violence. I'm thinking specifically of the idea of pirate faction players getting paid bounties by their pirate faction not for killing NPC rats, but for killing empire players -- kind of like how faction warfare rewards you with loyalty points when you kill war targets -- and paying out especially well against those players with high sec status.

High sec status: that's important. It means that a veteran carebear who should know how to protect his shit is a far more attractive target than a two-day-old newb in his first catalyst.

5. In response to this upswing in "terrorism" (which, ironically, CCP engineered), CONCORD implements highly intrusive, insulting levels of "security" in certain high-profile areas of New Eden.

CONCORD reveals the ability to remotely lock a pilot's ship system's safeties to Green, something they've perhaps always been able to do and haven't had a good excuse to try.

It's security theatre, and offers no demonstrable levels of increased safety for anyone, but they do it anyway.

As an American who flies frequently, I'm sure I have NO IDEA what that's like.


6. People hate this new restriction, but (at least for the most part), they hate CONCORD for it, not CCP.

This effect can be ensured if CCP drops hints that it's just a "storyline" restriction -- a yoke we will be able to throw off later, if resistance in-game is high enough. In addition to player resistance, you can have some empire factions that rage against it (Gallente, Minmatar), some that seethe quietly (Amarr), and those that openly embrace it as a natural fit (Caldari).

The Amarr: great seethers.


7. The story concludes in summer of 2014 with some kind of in-game event.

In this event, capsuleers band together to say "This is not how New Eden works!" and shuts this CONCORD restriction off.

Seems to me this would:

1. Be a pretty neat story arc.


2. Combined with the pirate faction stuff that offers 'bounties' for high sec status kills, simultaneously add 'safe zones' and make New Eden more violent.


3. Sort of 'build the brand' of Eve - what a great story that would be for the news outlets, when all of New Eden rises up to state, as part of an in-game event: "Nowhere is safe, and we like it that way." What a neat way to get players to band together: sort of an in-character Summer of Rage, with beneficial effects (press) for the company and the game.


4. Give CCP a year-long window in which to cushion new players a bit.

I dunno. Seems kind of cool to me. Thoughts?

Life in Eve: Life on the Playground

My kids go to a charter school. This may not mean much to anyone reading this, so I'll sum up what it means to me by saying that charter schools are basically public schools with limited enrollment, where the parents are encouraged if not in fact required to be more involved. There's an after school program my daughter's in that literally would not be running at all if her mom didn't volunteer every week to come in and help the teacher with it, which she does because she feels it's worth the time commitment.

And in any case, we have to volunteer: every kid's family must log at least 40 hours at the school every year.

I do most of my volunteer time as a playground monitor for recess. I like it: I get to see my kids, meet their friends, play the gruff but affable grownup. Whatever.

And I get to watch the kids play, which is always... enlightening. The first time I ever did a session as a monitor, I found out that when my daughter isn't doing kinematic dismounts off the jungle gym, she plays soccer. Impromptu, full-tilt, free-for-all soccer. On the concrete basketball court. And is - literally - the only girl out there, among a surging riptide of boys who clearly aren't planning to cut her any slack. She makes her own choices. Good thing to know what they are.

During one recess, I spotted a kid making a different choice. Something of a reverse of Kaylee, he was one of the few boys not playing soccer. Instead, he'd found a railing to perch on, mostly turned away from the rest of the playground, and was eyeballs deep in a story, the hardback book about as thick as The Stand, though probably a bit less apocalyptic.

Oh man, I thought, I've so been that kid. And I had. Not always, but if I was in the middle of a really good story and recess rolled around? Kickball could fucking wait, you know?

Then, while I watched, a couple other kids crept over and dumped a backpack full of woodchips over the kid's head, which kicked my level of empathy up a notch. I'd been there too, once or twice.

What did I, parental playground monitor, do? Nothing. To my mind, as much as it sucks, it's not so very different from the challenging academic curriculum at the school -- it's the same reason I don't make the soccer players stop when one of them comes over with basketball court road rash all up his (or her) arm. Choices. Consequences. Good stuff. In any case, the woodchip backpack dumpers didn't repeat the assault, and the book reader just brushed off the pages and kept reading. If he wasn't going to reward them with a reaction, I certainly wasn't going to. A minute or so later, two of his friends (good friends, I think, one boy and one girl) came over and cleaned the wood chips off his head and uniform -- he hadn't bothered, not while anyone was watching -- then sat down with him and kept an eye on his six while he read them parts he liked.

(Okay, maybe I wandered over and stood in more direct line-of-sight of the kid's perch. But that's it.)

Would I have got involved if the kids had come back with another backpack full? Probably. If the backpack had been full of rocks? Obviously. If the kid had come to me for help? Sure, if only to offer advice. Otherwise? No.

But let's change the situation a little bit.

What if, instead of recess, this was some kind of independent after-school program: A massive playground, offering virtually every kind of activity any kid could want to do, but at a cost.

Further, I'm not a volunteer in this scenario, but an employee, and there are a bunch of other, competing, similar-but-different programs like this out there.

Does that maybe change the way I approach that situation? Of course it does. It's not about letting the kids have a 'tough love' experience that will hopefully make them a more self-reliant person. It's not, in fact, about education of any kind -- it's about making money by providing entertainment. It's about retaining customers, which in turn is about making those customers -- all of those customers -- happy.

With me so far?

Okay, let's talk about Eve Online.

---

The Eve Playground is a product -- it exists to make money for those running it, and while as a product it might satisfy many other needs among its playerbase (most of them social), when you get down to brass tacks, the company that maintains it serves no other purpose higher than "Be a profitable business."

And let's be fair: Eve is a pretty good product. Eve players like to joke about "this terrible game" (and it's true that at the end of a decade, parts are showing their age), but as far as full-featured playgrounds go, it's got a lot to offer: pretty much everything to offer, really, when it comes to playgrounds, whether you want play in a prefab treehouse, build your own treehouse, conduct mock battles between tree house kingdoms, explore the vast woods out back, play dodgeball, crawl around on jungle gyms, play in the big playhouse with surprisingly accurate hardware and fully functioning Easy Bake Oven, or even sit off on the side, your back to almost everyone, and read.

"You can do any of that," the pamphlet assures the prospective parent, and it's technically true.

But there are problems.

2012 was about spending time dealing with the things which build up in a game that has been running for nearly 10 years.

That's CCP Unifex, Executive Producer at CCP. To figure out what Unifex is talking about, look at what the company did with the game in 2012. I think a fair summary would be "make the game more accessible for new players, and give those same new players something close to a fighting chance against the kids who've been on the playground a lot longer." Yes, some of the changes did other things as well, but ALL of them affected new players. All the ship classes immediately available to new players: buffed up across the board. Major "late game" mechanics like logistics, brought down to entry-level gameplay. Improved (if still not great) tutorials. Ever-so-slightly simplified systems. A UI more like the UI of modern software systems. A vastly improved Faction Warfare model (already one of the better new-player-accessible, NPC-'controlled' systems in the game).

It's easy to see why to make the game more new-player accessible, but a lot of the effort with ships and so forth isn't so much about immediate accessibility as it is leveling the playing field. Why is that a big deal?

Well, this playground is pretty fucking rough on newcomers when you get right down to it.

CCP has always adopted a very hands-off approach to their playground: technically, you have the right to sit off in the corner and read, but at the same time, that other group of kids "have the right" to play dodgeball, and on this particular playground, that "right" extends to the fact that some of those kids will include anyone they feel like in their dodgeball game, even if the kid in question is doing something else and doesn't have the least interest in dodgeball.

Yes, if they come over and smash the book reader (or the jungle gym crawlers, or the kids playing cops and robbers) in the face with the ball, they'll get a minor time out, but no one's going to call their parents, and they will never lose their access to either the ball or the playground. Doing so would deny them the activity they want to engage in on playground, right?

Except their activity, the way they've chosen to play it, makes it impossible for those other face-smashed kids to use the playground their way.

To which the free-for-all Dodgeballer says "Fuck those kids. They're fucking lame anyway."

Fine.

Except those kids pay to use the playground, too.

In fact, there are a LOT MORE of those kids than Dodgeball kids, ESPECIALLY if you only count the dodgeball kids who forcibly include everyone on the playground in their game. That numeric discrepancy is a real problem if you're the guys running the playground, because (a) some of those non-dodgeball kids will leave --

("Fuck em" mutter the dodgeballers.)

-- and more importantly, a bunch of potential kids who have never tried out this playground never will, because people talk, and what they say isn't always good. "Come get a fat lip from a dodgeball while you're innocently playing house," isn't a marketable ad campaign.

Welcome to Eve. Here's a free wrench.


("Fuck em" mutter the dodgeballers.)

See, the kids on the playground are, collectively, pretty much shit at fixing this problem, because kids don't want to stop doing whatever it is that is most fun for them. Even the most approachable dodgeball players can only go so far as to offer sarcastic advice about how to change the way everyone else plays, or point out how the book-reader's habits made the face-smashing too much for a dodgeballer to resist.

"It's really their fault, you see," they explain. "If they were more like us, there wouldn't be a problem."

And they're wrong, of course. There still would be a problem. If you're the guys running a playground that says "Here is a place where you can play however you like, but you'll have to respect this playstyle more than any others", you will reach a point where everyone who's likely to find that playground fun is already there.

That's fine, if you're playing dodgeball: you have enough people to play your game.

That's not fine if you're running the business, because businesses need to grow.

And it could be Eve has already reached that point of saturation. Forget dodgeball: heaven help you if you're some kid who wants to build their own tree house (and really who hasn't wanted that at some point in their lives?): all the tree houses are controlled by four or five major tween gangs, and they will gleefully curb stomp anyone who tries to join in without an invitation and/or humiliating servitude. Dodgeballers are a Hello Kitty birthday party by comparison.

This is, if you ask the treehouse guys, not really a problem at all.


So what's CCP going to do?

Not what they 'should' do; I'm not arrogant or blinkered enough to pretend to know better than a company that's managed ten years of success -- I'll leave that to other bloggers.

No: what are they obviously going to (or must) do?

EVE is a universe where you can do all sorts of things, and we will continue [...] expanding on what’s available to do. We'll do this with releases that are themed around some aspect of the New Eden universe.

This means [...] we will find a theme that can connect features and changes that touch multiple play styles in EVE across a spectrum of activities like exploration, industry, resource gathering and conflict.

- CCP Seagull, Senior Producer, EVE Online Development

So: any expansions they work on, going forward, will (ideally) expand play options for everyone from the book reader to the dodgeballer to the treehouse warlord to the woodland explorer. Smart.

There are some people who [...] enable others to have fun in EVE. [...] We believe that helping these [...] archetypes achieve their own goals is the best way to have the sandbox of EVE thrive. [...] We want to make EVE more accessible [...] as a way to find new features to develop for play styles or time requirements where we have gaps today.


- CCP Seagull, Senior Producer, EVE Online Development

Eve is a playground, yes. Play how you like, yes.

But Eve is also a product, and CCP needs that product to reach more people. In order to do that, they need to level the playing field not just between new and old characters, but between play styles.

And that means that at some point, it's not the kid reading the book in the corner that's going to need to adjust the way they play, for the continued growth of the playground.

Maybe - just maybe - that means dodgeballers find out that it's a lot harder to involve unwilling participants in their game. Which, as a dodgeballer myself, I think is fine, because we hardly lack for willing players.

Maybe - just maybe - it will mean that it will become a lot harder to hold on to multiple treehouses, and a lot easier to hold on to just one. Again, I think that's good, because war games are more interesting with more people involved.

Do I think there's some place in Eve for a safe zone? I don't know, and guess what: I'm not being paid by CCP to come up with a definitive yes or no answer. I do think it's a question worth asking periodically: is non-consensual PvP really that big a part of what defines Eve and makes it a great game?

Food for thought: There were two big events in Eve last week, related to PvP -- events that verifiably brought in new players when they got out into the larger news: a single-misclick that turned into one of the most massive super-capital fights that low security space has ever seen, and 28,000 destroyed ships in a pre-planned free for all in null-security space.

You know what those two events had in common? They were consensual PvP. Yes, one started because of a misclick, but it was a misclick that -- even if it had been executed properly -- was meant to start a fight. In fact, any of the really big stories that have come out of Eve in the last 10 years -- the scams, the fights, the alliance-killing betrayals -- all consensual PvP of one kind or another, as defined by where it happened, or the people and groups involved.

High-sec mining barge ganks don't make the news; they don't bring in new players.

What to nail me down on something? I do think consensual PvP is better. More interesting. More compelling. More sustainably fun in the long run, for the largest number of people. I've done both kinds, and when it all comes down to it, I'd rather play dodgeball with the other kids who came to play dodgeball.

I didn't start out playing dodgeball, you know. I was playing cops and robbers in the 'safe' part of the playground, and played for long enough without getting face-smashed (much) that I got interested in everything else going on.

But I was lucky.

CCP really can't rely on "lucky" anymore. They're going to need a few more monitors stepping in if they want more kids paying the bills.

Life in Eve: I really should remember to buy insurance

I've been back for a couple weeks, but what with all the hijinx in the wormhole, and leaving our alliance, and rejoining faction warfare after leaving the alliance, and moving our assets around, and even doing a bit of recruiting, I really haven't had time to actually... you know... fly around and do fun things.

Last night looked promising, though: I got on later than normal, and while none of the usual suspects were around, our two newest recruits were online. Long-time wormhole residents, they'd been spending the day since joining the corp checking out all the bread and butter ships of faction warfare that usually never show up in the unknown depths of Anoikis.

I want to give them all the help they want, but it's hard to know when you're overwhelming someone.


"Have you guys got any ships near our staging system in the warzone?"

They answer in the affirmative, we hop on voice comms and set out for a little three-pilot roam. On a whim, I take us north into Siseide, planning to go from there up toward the Eugidi constellation, but I see an Amarr complex open and warp up to check it out.

Weird. No one seems to be in the complex, but there are a half-dozen wrecks around the entry gate, unlooted. Never one to look a gift gank in the mouth, I proceed to pick over the corpses of strangers, when a condor drops out of warp and engages me.

I'm not particularly worried about the Condor, since I know I can tank -- even if I can't catch it -- until my backup arrives: I did the same thing yesterday against a Coercer destroyer, which hits quite a bit harder.

"Jump into system and warp to Ty," I say. "This is sort of one of the home staging systems for I.LAW, but there aren't any around, so we should be okay for a quick fight."

There's a joke in corp that "warp to Ty" usually translates to "warp into a horrible situation and lose your ship", but I'm sure this time --

My guys jump into system warp to my location, and suddenly the local channel shows five or six new war targets in system... all of whom land on our position just as my guys arrive. It's not pretty, though one of us managed to get out.

Right. Reship and head back out. Still heading north again, but along a different route. A few jumps along, I spot an open complex and one war target in system. Here's hoping... and yes. Sure enough, I've got a punisher in the complex, jump in, engage, and call my guys in.

... and just as they land on the gate leading into the complex, six war targets (different group than before) who had jumped into system a few seconds after I engaged arrive on the gate as well and follow them in. I go down quickly, and try to get the new pilots out, but they're both already tackled.

Still, I can't fault their attitude.

"We're going to die," mutters one, "but this Punisher is going down first."

It's a bad trade, losing five frigates to (eventually) take out one, but it's their first kill in Faction Warfare, and still worth a bit of celebrating.

I really have to remember to insure my ships.


Once again, we reship, and this time head south into the wilds of the Bleak Lands region. My two fellow pilots are in afterburner fit combat frigates, and I'm concerned any targets we find will simply outdistance them, so I go for an Atron attack frigate that can shut down particularly fast ships.

But outside of an enemy condor and slicer who don't want to engage, I don't get a chance to test the ship out. We capture several Amarr complexes, earning enough in TLF rewards to cover our ship losses, and I spend the time explaining the mechanics and common tactics used both for defending and assaulting complexes, since our first two fights didn't actually involve the gates in any way. We dodge a small destroyer fleet and head back to station to stand down.

Not a great roam, but (for me) good to be back and flying, and (for them, hopefully) a brutal but fun introduction to the war zone.

---

Notable: The surprising thing I took out of both our fights is the current level of Amarr organization. The Amarr have always been willing and able to bring a fight, but what I'm seeing right now on their side is some serious coordination in terms of roaming fleets ready to jump in and come to the aid of lone plex runners. It's very unusual to see backup arrive so quickly, and it's not just one corporation or alliance managing this, but several, spread out over the war zone. I mean, I've been away for a few weeks, and I'm probably a little rusty when it comes to keeping my eyes on the fight, and d-scan, and local, and a dozen other things, but despite that I feel confident in saying our war targets have stepped up their game more than a little.

So: Lesson learned.

Life in Eve: The Perfect Storm

"Okay guys," I said over voice comms. "I'll be back in ten days. Don't lose Isbrabata while I'm gone."

I really should learn not to joke about things like that.

Not just any shit storm, either. The PERFECT shit storm.


Now, to be fair, when I got back from my residency, the Alliance had not lost Isbrabata... lots of people had done a lot of work to delay the inevitable, but that's what it was: inevitable. When I was finally able to log in for a few minutes, my Inbox was full of messages from Alliance command that basically read like this:

Guys, we've had a good run, but the fact is we're got too few people trying to hold too many systems, too far from the bulk of the rest of the militia forces to easily get help from other groups. The clock is ticking, so plan to move your stuff ASAP. Get on the forums, find the thread where we're voting on where to relocate, and vote.

(Note: This is not the same poll as the other one, where we're voting on whether or not to stay in Faction Warfare.)

I read that last line again.

What?


See, before I'd left for the residency (in other words, a couple weeks past) a topic had been started in the Alliance command area of the forum that basically started off with "Okay, Faction Warfare is STAGNANT and DEAD, and we need to decide how we're going to HANDLE THAT."

And the response to that thread amounted to a lot of people saying:

• We like faction war.


• Dude: This last month was the most successful and most active month of PvP our alliance has ever had, ever, in the history of everything. Seriously, go check the numbers. You're high.

I had agreed with the people who deserved agreeing with and thought nothing more of it.

But apparently, not getting the response they wanted from leadership, the two people who really really really wanted to move to null-sec decided to put the subject up for an open vote in the Alliance.

I checked the thread and had to laugh, because the votes went something like 80% in favor of staying in faction warfare. (Pro tip: if you advertise yourself as a pro-Minmatar, pro-RP Alliance, and recruit people involved in Faction Warfare, you're going to get a lot of people who want to stay in Faction Warfare and fight for the Minmatar.)

Right. I'll just ignore that thread, then. It's not like I haven't got other things to worry about, like moving a hundred or so ships that evening. I logged in that night ready to get to work.

"We have a new tower in the wormhole," Si reported.



"Please be joking," I said.

"Nope," Si replied.

"Please say you decided to put up a second tower for some activities," I said.

"Nope," Si replied.

"We have a new tower up in our system," I repeated. "And it is not ours."

"Correct," Si replied. "And there are pilots from at least two other corporations --"

"Three," Shan murmured.

"-- three other corporations besides the ones who put up the tower, currently active in here."



"So that's the bad news," Si said.

"Well I should fucking well hope so," I muttered. "I'm on my way. How heavily set up is the tower?"

"That's the good news," Si replied. "They got interrupted by one of the other groups, I think. They lost a hauler full of fuel, and their tower - a small tower - doesn't have any shield hardeners or defenses up. At all."

"Really?" This was almost as unbelievable as the bad news.

"Yeah," Si said. "We can't quite figure out what they were thinking, either."

Opportunities for education are everywhere.


The crew assembled, some of us grabbing new stealth bombers that got bonuses for the kind of damage the un-hardened tower would be particularly vulnerable too. This took awhile, and in the meantime, Shan and Si continued watching the wormhole.

"Umm..." Shan said. "We've got Proteus in system."

"Lovely," I said. "What's he doing?"

"... shooting sleepers?"

"Ha," I deadpanned. "Seriously. What's he doing?"

"Seriously," Si chimed in. "He's shooting sleepers."

"Do these people not even CHECK intel on these wormholes?"

"Apparently not."

Dirk and Bre warped around the system, trying to get a good angle to grab the Proteus while the rest of us moved into position to dogpile on the strategic cruiser once one of them had grabbed it.

"Okay, I'm ready," Bre said. "Is everyone else ready?"

Affirmatives came, and someone muttered "This is going to tell us really quick if there's anyone else in system with us."

Very true: One proteus strategic cruiser might look like bait and too risky to hit, but once Bre's Tengu decloaked, the prize kitty would basically double.

"I'm going in," Bre called. "Get ready to warp."

The proteus didn't last long. At all.


So, with a half-billion ISK kill in our pocket, we reshipped and started the tower assault, fairly certain by this point that there were no other enemies around.

But that didn't mean things were going to be simple.

"IF YOU'RE PART OF LEADERSHIP," someone called out on Alliance comms, "COME INTO THE LEADER VOICE COMMS, PLEASE."

"Okay guys," I said. "I'll keep shooting at the tower, but I suppose I better go hear whatever this is about."

I switched comms.

"... so, since our corporation are mostly capitol ship and super-capitol ship pilots..." a voice was saying "... our guys are all really in favor of going to null-sec. We made an agreement to take over a couple systems out there, so we're moving."

"Umm... okay," another voice said.

"... and since our corp is actually the administrative corporation for the Alliance..." the first voice continued, "... the alliance is going to null-sec, too."

I heard someone say "So why did you even bother with that poll?" and I switched comm channels again.

I find myself unimpressed.


"Hey guys," I said. "How's that tower coming?"

"Getting there," Em said. "Slowly."

"Good, good... say," I said. "We like faction warfare, right?"

"Love it."

"Sure."

"Ditto."

"Okay..." I said. "Then we're leaving Ushra Khan."

"... do we still need to move out of Isbra?"

"Yeah."

"And take down this tower, first."

"Yeah."

"Anything else?"

"Well," I said. "To leave Ushra'Khan, we're going to have to drop out of the war for twenty-four hours before we can join independently, so while we're in the middle of moving, both sides may potentially be shooting us."

Awesome.

Life in EvE: Year in Review

My actual anniversary with Eve doesn't come for a few more weeks, but I'm going to be away from home and very very busy for most of January, so I thought I'd do this little retrospective now rather than much (much) later.

January 2011 marked my return to EvE. I'd decided to give it another try after failing to find anything of interest back in 2007.

It's safe to say that I've found enough in the game to hold my interest on the second try.

For all intents and purposes, Eve has been the only MMO I've played this year. Kate and I did a bit of Star Wars when it came out, but that proved disappointing and frustrating. We have lifetime memberships with LotRO, but we can't seem to arrange our schedules to play together right now, so that means more solo stuff, and I don't normally play LotRO if I'm playing by myself. (Frankly, if my option for the evening doesn't involve Kate, I'm going to pick a game we aren't playing together.)

So what's my second year of really playing Eve been like? Pretty darned good.

Back in January, I was still actively living in a wormhole that was part of Talocan United. I was heading out into known space on the weekends for casual roams, and making pretty good money on the side by scouting out and selling unoccupied wormholes. Reading about some of the stuff going on then reminds me of the intra-alliance drama that was doing its damndest to keep me from enjoying the game. Whoopee. We also had to defend our wormhole from a pack of cloaky attackers from Surely You're Joking, though I didn't write about that until (most of) February.

(Also, I see a post back then detailing how much I hate Low Security space. In retrospect, that's funny.)

Outside the game, February and March was swallowed up quite a bit by Mass Effect 3, which I wrote about at some length.

March/April saw the return of cloaky ships from SYJ stalking the wormhole. At this point, I was pretty much done with getting targets painted on our backs because of trouble the alliance had borrowed, so we excused ourselves from the wormhole and the alliance and moved to a new wormhole. I wanted something more accessible from known space, with a good connection to higher-end wormhole space, and very friendly to passive income projects via Planetary Interaction. I threw quite a bit of ISK toward acquiring a system that met all my requirements, and managed to make that investment back well inside the first month in our new home.

We were not entirely willing to settle with something so simple, however, and spent a good month kind of puttering around high sec incursions and trying out membership in a class-6-based wormhole corp that seemed like a fun group of guys if you stood way back and squinted a lot. Didn't work out.

Ultimately, we all ended up in the wormhole I'd set up. Of course, as soon as we all got set up, we picked up a stalker for about two months in the form of a cloaked-up bomber/scanning-alt duo we could never quite track down or evict. Not as much fun as it sounds, but it did teach us some good lessons when it comes to covering our less-skilled alts while they run planetary interaction tasks.

June saw me still restless with life in the wormhole. I spent a lot of time doing exploration in nullsec, roaming with Agony Empire, and generally just looking for something I could really engage with as soon as I logged in. Probably the tension of knowing a cloaked up bomber was hanging around in our home system put a damper on life in the wormhole, especially since he knew our membership list well enough to know if we were setting up an ambush. Pretty much everyone was lying low, or sitting in space, cloaked up and scanning repeatedly. Life in a foxhole is exhausting.

This search for a new direction culminated in Ty leaving the wormhole corporation and forming a new corp with the express purpose of checking out Faction Warfare without making life impossible for everyone in the 'normal' corp. CB came along with me. That was just about seven months ago now.

My time with Faction War has bracketed all the really big changes CCP has implemented with that part of the game. I wasn't one of the folks who made stupid amounts of money off the (easily exploitable) first revision -- I made enough to pay for all the little ships I was blowing up, which I suppose was what they'd intended -- and I applauded the fixes that came in later and killed most of the truly parasitic levels of farming while promoting more fun PvP.

As a bonus, after a lot of research and a few missteps, I found some really fun people to fly with in Faction Warfare (though, weirdly, I've flown with them less since my corporation joined their alliance), which helped immensely.

About that: Right around the end of November, our little Faction Warfare corporation (now strengthened by several of the main pilots from the wormhole, plus some new guys we've recruited) joined Ushra'Khan, who can best be summed up as rp-light pro-Minmatar. Oldest alliance in the game, parenthetically.

A week later, I wrote on Google+:

I've killed as many ships in the 8 days since bringing my corp into Ushra'Khan as I did in the 192 days I was part of "Eve's biggest wormhole alliance." Is that a 24:1 fun ratio? Feels like it.

Another comparison. 163 kills since starting my FW corp (177 days membership), 41 kills with my WH corp (472 days membership). That a 3.9:1 kill ratio and a 1:2.6 time ratio. Works out to roughly a 10:1 "activity" (read: fun) ratio.

Conclusion: Faction Warfare was a good move for me.

To update those numbers a bit: even with spending most of November and half of December away from the game, Ty's averaged just a bit over one ship killed per day since joining Faction Warfare. I don't care much about the kill tally, except where it reflects the danger I've been in and (by extension) the fun I've had.

I like to have fun. And when I say "fun", what I really mean is danger. For in danger, I find excitement, adventure, and ultimately fun.

Maybe it's an odd way to quantify it, but I find myself agreeing with Rixx on this point (and several others) in his most recent post.

Where am I now?

Ty's been working on rounding out his sub-capital ship skills. I like having options, and I don't like having my options limited, so (especially in the last six months) I've really focused on being able to fly every class and faction of ship, fitted properly. This has meant a LOT of support skill training, and training to operate all the tech2 versions of all weapons systems that would fit on Battlecruiser-sized or smaller ships. At this point, I can fly virtually any sub-battleship hull, fit with tech2 modules from top to bottom, and I have battleship options regardless of the type of ships being fielded.

My current plans going forward are finishing the Battleship-sized weapons I don't already have trained properly, as well as tech2 Heavy and Sentry Drones. That should take me to midsummer, give or take, and then we'll just have to see.

Meanwhile, Bre's been in the wormhole, and I've been at loose ends with her training for awhile now, because I don't want to train her just the same as Ty and she's already maxed out at the sub-capital stuff he doesn't fly very much. So: she's now training for Capital ships. I'm excited about this, because it's not something I'm doing with Ty at this point, and really gives her a purpose. Soon, I'll have a bonafide carrier alt. That's just a weird thing to say.

Otherwise, I've been spreading the training love around a bit with my other characters. Berke's got his leadership and other support skills as high as I need them, so I trained up a solid wormhole defender to bodyguard all our planetary interaction pilots, and finally trained up a Market alt and (more importantly) figured out how to run them properly and turn an actual profit.

What I've Done

I thought I'd found my version of the end game with wormholes. Turns out that the end game changes as you change -- the game is so big and has so many different facets of play that it feels like I'm playing different-but-interconnected games, depending who I log in. Solo pvp. Small gang pvp. Fleet pvp. Solo and group PvE. Market trading. Manufacturing and other industry. Exploration.

Still no mining spreadsheets, though. There's a mercy.