0BAKEE for CSM 21
Protect the Sandbox. Make Every Undock Matter.
Hello, everyone.
I’m 0BAKEE, and I’m running for CSM 21.
I’ve played EVE since 2009. Most of my time these days is spent in lowsec, usually hunting, doing solo or small-gang PvP, taking part in Faction Warfare, or getting involved in fights that start much smaller than they end.
I’m not running because I think pirates need someone on the CSM to make life easier for us. I’m running because I believe the CSM benefits from having people at the table who come from different parts of EVE, especially players who aren’t backed by enormous organizations or established voting blocs.
The large alliances deserve representation. So do wormholers, industrialists, FW pilots, small corporations, highsec miners, pirates, and the player who logs in a couple nights a week to fly with a handful of friends.
My three biggest priorities are risk and reward, unstructured PvP, and new-player retention.
But before getting into my background, I want to be clear about a few positions that shape how I look at EVE.
Where I Stand
Risk should matter. Risk isn’t just the chance of losing a ship. It can mean ISK, time, logistics, knowledge, opportunity cost, and exposure to other players. If an activity requires significant investment and danger, there should be a reason to do it. If exceptional rewards can be earned while nearly all meaningful exposure is removed, that deserves scrutiny too.
Highsec should be safer, but it should never be completely safe. High security space should have strong protections and meaningful consequences for aggression. That’s different from immunity. If highsec ever becomes disconnected from the danger, competition, and player interaction that define the rest of New Eden, I think we lose something fundamental about EVE.
Multiboxing should supplement social gameplay, not replace it. I’m not against multiboxing, and I’m not proposing some arbitrary account limit. Scouts, haulers, cynos, miners, logistics pilots, and specialized alts are deeply embedded in EVE. My concern is the extreme end, where one person can effectively substitute twenty or thirty accounts for an entire group of players. I think it’s reasonable to ask what that does to recruitment, cooperation, competition, and the social nature of an MMO.
Not every fight needs to be fair. Preparation, intelligence, deception, positioning, numbers, and surprise should matter. I enjoy a good 1v1, but I also enjoy overwhelming somebody with a Black Ops drop. Both belong in EVE.
And finally:
New players don’t need an EVE without danger. They need to understand the danger they’re facing.
Those ideas are at the center of my campaign.
My EVE Story
I started playing in 2009, and I’ve moved through quite a few different parts of EVE since then.
PvP has always been the thing that keeps pulling me back. I enjoy lowsec hunting, piracy, gate camps, solo fights, small gangs, Black Ops, and Faction Warfare.
I originally got into Faction Warfare for two reasons: I wanted to learn how to PvP, and I needed some ISK to pay for it. I’ve mostly fought for the Minmatar Republic over the years. I tend to grab a frigate, run complexes, help push the warzone, make a little money, and see who comes looking for a fight.
Frigates are cheap, but more importantly, they’re fun. You can lose one without ruining your week, replace it, and get right back out there.
I’ve done other things too. During slower periods, I mine around my home systems. If a gas site appears, I’ll harvest it. If something valuable spawns, I might pull out a few barges, compress everything, stockpile it, and eventually haul it back to market.
I’m not running a massive industrial operation. Usually I’m trying to build up a few hundred million ISK so I can buy more ships and ammunition.
I think that perspective matters because a lot of EVE players operate the same way. They mine a little, haul a little, run some PvE, sell what they have, and use the proceeds to fund whatever part of the game they enjoy most.
I’ve also lived in nullsec, although that was almost a decade ago. I participated in territorial fights and response fleets, but I was much less experienced then. Most of the time I was doing what newer pilots have done for years: fly the interceptor, get tackle, and try not to die before everyone else gets there.
I’m not going to pretend that makes me an expert on modern sovereignty. It doesn’t.
But it taught me something I still believe:
You don’t have to be the FC or fly the most expensive ship on grid to matter.
Sometimes your entire contribution is holding point for another thirty seconds, and sometimes that thirty seconds changes the fight.
What Do I Bring to the CSM?
My strongest areas are unstructured PvP, lowsec, small-scale combat, and risk versus reward.
I also think I understand the perspective of players who don’t have massive organizations or nearly unlimited resources behind them.
What I don’t know is everything else.
Nobody understands every system in EVE at the same level as somebody who’s spent ten years specializing in it.
If I’m elected and we’re discussing wormhole mechanics I don’t understand, I want wormholers telling me where I’m wrong. If an industrialist says I’ve missed an economic consequence, show me the numbers. If a current nullsec logistics director tells me something that sounds reasonable from lowsec would create a disaster at alliance scale, I want to hear why.
I’d rather say “I don’t know” and find someone who does than bluff my way through a subject because I’m sitting on the CSM.
Anything covered by the NDA would, of course, remain under the NDA.
Factional Warfare
Faction Warfare is one of the places where I learned to fight.
I like it because it gives relatively inexpensive ships a reason to be in space. You have an objective, you can make money, you can contribute to something larger than yourself, and while you’re doing it, someone may come through the gate and try to kill you.
That’s a pretty good recipe for EVE.
I want FW to remain a place where someone who isn’t rich, famous, or part of a huge organization can grab a frigate and still matter.
Unstructured PvP
This is probably the area I care about most.
I love fights nobody planned.
You go roaming and find something. A gate camp gets challenged. A frigate fight turns into a cruiser fight. Someone escalates. Someone else escalates harder. Before long, half the people involved are wondering how the situation got that far.
Those are some of the best moments EVE creates.
I don’t believe every fight needs to be fair either. If I’m protecting something important and I can get three pilots for every one of yours, I’m probably going to do it.
Preparation matters. Intel matters. Surprise matters. Deception matters. Numbers matter.
That’s part of the game.
At the same time, I enjoy a good 1v1. Sometimes I want the close frigate fight. Sometimes I want the Black Ops drop. Both should exist.
The best fights in EVE are the ones that make you feel something.
Excitement, anger, regret, relief, adrenaline. Sometimes all of them within five minutes.
That’s difficult to find in another game, and I want to protect the conditions that let those fights happen.
When Fenris changes travel, intelligence, resource distribution, safety, structures, or force projection, one question I want the CSM asking is:
Does this create more opportunities for players to interact, or fewer?
Ships, Gameplay, and the HUD
I’m much stronger on ships and gameplay than I am on UI design.
I particularly enjoy smaller hulls because they make risk more accessible. Losing a frigate is easier to recover from than losing something that took months to afford.
When it comes to balance, I think context matters. Sometimes the ship is the problem. Sometimes the mechanics surrounding that ship are what make it a problem.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
For the interface, my position is simple:
Complex gameplay is good. Fighting the interface isn’t gameplay.
EVE should take time to learn. Fitting, transversal, scanning, capacitor management, industry, markets, logistics, and aggression mechanics should reward knowledge.
But making somebody click twenty times when five clicks would do doesn’t add meaningful depth.
Another way I’d put it is:
Remove pointless friction. Preserve meaningful friction.
The interface shouldn’t fight you.
Distance, logistics, imperfect information, competition, and consequences sometimes should.
Industry and Markets
I’m not going to present myself as an industry expert.
I mine, harvest gas, compress resources, stockpile them, haul them to market, and sell them so I can spend the money on PvP.
That’s about the size of my industrial empire.
But it gives me a fairly simple view of EVE’s economy:
Production and destruction need each other.
The miner needs someone buying minerals. The industrialist needs demand. The hauler needs something worth moving. The trader needs active markets. The PvP pilot needs another ship after the last one exploded.
Eventually, some of those ships need to explode.
So when we talk about changing an economic activity, I don’t want the only question to be, “What’s the ISK per hour?”
I also want to know whether it gets people into space, creates movement, generates demand, exposes players to each other, and gives them a reward that’s actually worth the time, money, and risk involved.
Sovereignty and Logistics
I’m not a modern sovereignty expert.
My direct nullsec experience is almost ten years old, and a lot has changed since then. My logistics experience is mostly limited to moving my own assets and resources relatively short distances.
If Fenris wants detailed feedback on current sovereignty mechanics, I want current sovereignty experts involved in that conversation.
Where I think I can contribute is from the outside looking in.
Large organizations should be powerful. They should be able to build, organize, defend territory, and benefit from the work required to do that.
But other players should still have ways to interfere with them.
Raid them. Catch their logistics. Exploit mistakes. Create local problems. Occasionally punch well above their weight.
Ten players shouldn’t have the strategic power of ten thousand.
But those ten should still be able to matter.
Highsec and New Players
This is one of the areas I care about most.
I hunt people in lowsec. Sometimes I kill someone and only afterward realize they’re genuinely new.
I remember being that player.
You work for a new ship. Maybe it’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever owned in EVE. Then somebody kills you and you don’t even understand what happened.
That’s hard to deal with.
When that happens, I usually send them a message or EVE mail. I’ll explain how I caught them, what they could’ve done differently, and point them toward something like EVE University where they can learn more.
A lot of the time, I’ll also send them enough ISK to replace what they lost and then some.
Not because I regret shooting them.
I’d probably shoot them again.
I do it because I want them to come back.
Maybe six months from now they’re the one hunting me.
Good.
More players today means more content tomorrow.
I don’t think the answer is making EVE harmless for new players. I think the answer is helping them understand what happened.
There’s a huge difference between:
“I died and I have no idea why.”
and:
“I know why I died, and next time I’m going to be ready.”
That second player learned something. They’ve also got a reason to log back in.
That’s what retention means to me.
EVE Vanguard
I’ve played Vanguard some, and I enjoyed it.
What interests me most is what happens when the two games actually begin affecting each other in meaningful ways.
Faction Warfare is an obvious example. I’d like to see the actions of Vanguard players matter to a larger conflict taking place in space. Large sovereignty wars may offer opportunities too.
But there’s a line I don’t want crossed:
Your contribution should matter, but you shouldn’t have to play the other game.
An EVE player shouldn’t have to grind Vanguard just to remain competitive in EVE. A Vanguard player shouldn’t feel like they only exist to support spaceship players.
Integration should give both communities more opportunities.
It shouldn’t become homework.
My Three Priorities
1. Risk and Reward
When I talk about risk and reward, I’m not only talking about the chance of losing a ship.
Risk can be ISK, time, logistics, knowledge, opportunity cost, or simply putting yourself somewhere another player can interfere with you.
If something requires significant investment and exposure but there’s no strong reason to do it, players eventually stop doing it. That means fewer ships in space and fewer opportunities for everybody else.
The opposite matters too.
If an activity provides exceptional rewards while allowing players to remove nearly all meaningful exposure, that’s worth examining.
I want choices to matter.
2. Unstructured PvP
Not every conflict needs a timer, and not every fight needs an objective Fenris put on the overview.
Sometimes one player simply sees another and decides to shoot.
That’s EVE too.
I want roaming, piracy, bait, home defense, gate camps, third parties, hot drops, and those ridiculous escalations where everyone involved has forgotten what started the fight.
I don’t want Fenris to script every encounter.
Give players reasons to collide and let us create the fight ourselves.
3. New-Player Retention
Eventually, the veterans playing today are going to leave.
That includes me.
If EVE is going to continue, the rookie who started this week needs a chance to become the veteran complaining about balance changes ten years from now.
Fenris has a responsibility here, but so do we.
Teach people. Fight them. Recruit them. Answer the basic questions we all once asked. Explain why they lost. Help them find good people to fly with.
And every now and then, send the rookie you just killed enough ISK to buy another ship.
We need those players.
A Little More on Multiboxing
I expect this to be one of the more controversial parts of my platform.
That’s fine.
I’m not against multiboxing.
There are many good reasons people use multiple accounts, and EVE has been built around that reality for a long time.
My question is about scale.
At what point does adding another account stop helping one person participate and start replacing another person entirely?
If one player can operate twenty or thirty ships at once, I think it’s fair to ask what that does to recruitment, cooperation, markets, resource competition, and the social nature of the game.
I’m not coming into this with an arbitrary account number that Fenris should ban.
I want the data.
If the evidence shows the concern is overstated, I’m willing to hear that.
But I don’t think we should dismiss the question just because multiboxing has always existed.
Accounts should help people participate in EVE. They shouldn’t make other people unnecessary.
Why Am I Running?
I want to give something back to a game I’ve been playing since 2009.
More than that, I want an outsider perspective at the table.
That doesn’t mean I’m anti-nullsec or anti-bloc.
I’m not.
Large alliances are some of the most impressive things players have built in any game, and they deserve representation.
This is a pro-representation campaign.
I want the CSM to hear from people who may never own a region, FC a thousand-person fleet, operate an industrial empire, or have thousands of followers behind them.
They still matter.
The independent pilot matters. The small corporation matters. The pirate matters. The industrialist matters. The wormholer matters. The FW pilot matters. The highsec miner matters.
They’re all part of New Eden.
I don’t have a massive voting bloc behind me, and I’m not going to pretend I do.
I have to earn support one conversation at a time.
I’m comfortable with that.
What Can Players Expect From Me?
First, I’m there to represent players, not rule over them.
Getting elected wouldn’t make my opinion more important than yours. It would give me a seat in conversations that most players can’t personally attend, and I’d like to use that seat well.
I want to be accessible. I’d like to hold in-game office hours, participate in Discord Q&As and forum discussions, and use short videos when something makes more sense as an announcement than a conversation.
I’m a social person, and EVE is a social game. I think its representatives should be accessible too.
I’ll also respect the NDA.
I’m not going to leak information, hint at secrets for attention, or play the “I know something you don’t know” game.
Sometimes the answer will simply be:
“I can’t talk about that.”
When I can talk, I will. When I can’t, I’ll tell you.
And please challenge me.
If you think I’m wrong, say so. Bring evidence. Explain the part I missed.
I’d rather change my mind because somebody taught me something than spend six months defending a bad position because my ego got involved.
Working With Fenris
I think players sometimes underestimate just how complicated EVE is under the hood.
We have fights involving numbers of players that most games never attempt to support. We’re also talking about a game with more than two decades of systems, code, player assets, markets, and strange edge cases stacked on top of each other.
That doesn’t mean Fenris gets a free pass when something goes wrong.
It means criticism should be informed.
Understanding why a problem is difficult doesn’t mean accepting a bad result.
It means we can have a better conversation about fixing it.
That’s the kind of relationship I’d want with Fenris: represent the players firmly, listen to the developers, ask questions, push back when it’s needed, and understand that sometimes the answer really is more complicated than it looks from our side of the screen.
Why Vote for Me?
I’m not going to tell you I’m the only good candidate.
I’m not.
Read everyone’s platform. Ask uncomfortable questions. Make us explain ourselves.
Then vote for the people who best represent the EVE you want to play.
If what I’ve written here lines up with what you want from EVE and from the CSM, I’d appreciate a spot on your ballot.
If someone else represents you better, vote for them.
That’s how this is supposed to work.
0BAKEE for CSM 21
Protect the Sandbox. Make Every Undock Matter. Represent the Players.
**(Edited for space, formatting, clarity, grammer)