I find it odd that Sinq Laison is in the top five regions for key performance indicators, given the gaps in supply and demand currently plaguing Gallente markets. It does make sense to have The Forge and Domain in the topmost slots, though, considering the superior market performance in Amarr. The question is, how can we rectify the shortfalls in Dodixie and Botane and improve Sinq Laison’s regional market flexibility?
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Maintaining your capital umbrella does not require skill. It requires having lots of capital accounts and ships. Secondly, I am not saying better organization does not deserve more safety in your space. I am saying things should be more balanced, and there should be a limit on how safe you can make your space, which should be way below the hisec level safety you have.
So I’ll just stop trying to convince you that organizing and motivating people at scale requires skill and instead ask you about the second part. So, bear with me while I play this out.
Let’s say you get your way and large groups are crushed with the nerf bat. Let say, for the sake of argument, that to support their current numbers Goons would be required to spread out over three regions, making capital rapid response impossible by more than a couple ships. To make the space livable hundreds of billions of Isk are invested, deployed by thousands of pilots investing tens of thousands of man hours.
Then a lowsec PvP corp moves in next door for the dank fragz. They can, during their prime, field a hundred and fifty pilots. They can now lock down anything within ten or so jumps and there isn’t fuckall the null residents can do about it besides form a PvP fleet every day, all day, and wait and hope they don’t get blueballed again.
That lowsec corp, on the other hand, has zero vulnerability to anything. They live out of an untouchable NPC station, they make their money doing almost perfectly safe highsec incursions, and they contract out their logistics to black frog. They are untouchable, able to attack when and where they choose against enemies mechanically prevented from responding with equal force. And the null residents would be doing all that work to protect a lifestyle that, as you say, doesn’t even pay very well.
So I’ll agree that null needs to meet Mr. Nerf in a dark alley if you agree to a few things:
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The removal of any source of income from highsec that pays better than an alpha clone running a low-end anom in a vexor. After all, they enjoy highsec levels of safety there!
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The removal of invulnerable stations from lowsec. Let the elite PvP crowd have homes that can be destroyed.
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A drastic reduction in the cost, time, and effort required to live in null. After all, if you want to make it almost effortless to burn by any group with a few dozen pilots then it should be easy to fix too.
I think in this scenario you’d divide your capital umbrella into three, or residents of each region would be responsible of maintaining their own umbrella.
So yeah, you can still use your capital umbrella. It’s just you’ll need to be smarter about circumventing cyno inhibitors.
I generally agree that null and wormholes should be more rewarding than what they are today, compared to lowsec and highsec. But that goes together with making it riskier.
They don’t have access to your kind of rewards in lowsec though (anom running, docking capitals, capital production, and much more). They can’t have titans and supers inside stations. You can always kill their citadels. So I am not sure their stations provide them with so much stuff. Again, this is about risk/reward. They have lower reward, thus their low-risk situation is warranted.
Besides, you are thinking about this in terms of “nullseccer pver vs lowsec pvper”. You need to be thinking about this more similar to an ecosystem. The person who does PvE is at the bottom of the foodchain. His motivation is to earn ISK, and his place in the ecosystem is such that he occasionally dies and provides content to everyone else. The interesting thing is we all become PvE persons when we do PvE. As an “elite whalehunter”, I do lots of wormhole krabbing these days and my killboard is full of PvE Rattlesnake losses. So if you fix the “running hisec incursions” part, there is nothing wrong with these lowsec people coming into your space and killing your ships, and you having nothing much to do about it. That’s how the ecosystem should work. Then again these people do their own PvE, they too should become somebody else’s content. And you as Goons also deploy blops fleets and kill other people’s Rorquals. And the cycle of content goes on.
For the record, though I can’t pull it up anymore because Themittani.com is now defunct, I wrote about how CCP should hire biologists and study Eve as an ecosystem back before interceptors became bubble immune. That puts the article publishing sometime around 2014.
You are thinking about this in terms a very basic ecological model, which is all well and good but rather simple. The second part of representing Eve as an ecosystem involves modeling the effects of predator behavior on prey behavior; the example I used was the re-introduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and it’s impact on Elk. If you send me an Eve-Mail I’ll be happy to send you the whole text with links to the studies I reference. It’s an interesting read on it’s own right, never mind our mutual spaceship hatreds.
However, to summarize, in the basic ecological model adding more predators, better predators, or weakening prey results in less prey. In the real world version doing this results in less prey and vastly altered prey behavior. Typically the altered prey behavior also prevents them from taking advantage of the “best” feeding activities because they are also the best hunting grounds, which leads to a steeper drop in prey numbers than you would expect.
So, why do I see this being a game breaking problem for Goons in Delve? Well, lets take the example of forcing the supercap umbrella into thirds. Right now attacking it is extremely difficult because it’s large enough to overwhelm a readily deployable force. However a third of it is markedly smaller than the capital force of numerous other entities. Some of those entities, like PL or other lowsec PvP outfits, could easily over-match ‘a third’ and would be positively ecstatic at the chance to do so.
So, actually, by forcing the split, the fleet would become useless for defense. The moment we tried 250+ rootless, untouchable nomads deploying from lowsec and rolling in incursion/L4 mission money would dread bomb our only effective deterrent against invasion. That’s the big thing here: we have a home to lose but most of our enemies have their defenses hard-coded into the game. That home cost untold sweat and tears to build, other entities that see us as prey invest nothing and risk nothing when they PvE. If you are looking for a way to promote risk aversion, well, there you have it.
Also, I have no problem with others coming into our space to kill our spaceships, in fact I wish they’d do it more. I hate having to fly 20 jumps to get a fight. But, on the other hand, I hated the way things were before it was possible to mount an effective defense even more.
In 2010 I remember flying for hours and finding nothing but asteroid belts full of wrecks and three safed-up locals per system. Back then, in the days before anoms, individual systems could support so few players that a five man gang represented an overwhelming attacking force until (and if) a response fleet could form. Now I at least know that at the end of those twenty jumps enough players live to give me a chance at a fight.
Now, I can see what you’re getting at with your argument. I really can, believe it or not. Problem is you are missing the forest for the trees; to make the changes you argue for actually work a whole mess of other systems would also need touched (and usually nerfed) at the same time. The moment you make nullsec not only pay worse than highsec (which it does now anyhow for the vast majority of players and even Goons) but also impossible to secure you just plain kill it as a serious place to find content.
So, before you advocate changes that would weaken the prey below the critical mass required for self defense, consider what it would be like to be an elite whale hunter in a sea nearly devoid of whales. Sure there would be an orgy of destruction as groups that tried to hold on were overwhelmed, but once they were gone what would be left?
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I too like thinking about Eve as an ecosystem. And I know the Yellowstone story. Here is what’s happening right now. Imagine a bunch of people going to the savannah, fencing most of the antelope in a small area, and giving them infinite food/water. For all predators, and predators hunting the predators, that’s a disaster. Now imagine the humans draw lots of water from the water supply of the savannah to feed the densely populated area of antelopes. That’s what CCP is doing right now. The predators can still get inside the fences from some openings, but it’s so hard that their hunting is nowhere near the amount that would sustain them (denial of content). Not only that, but their water supply is cut as well (plex inflation and other economic effects). Not only that, but the remaining antelopes in the area are now migrating inside the fence too (so the huntable population outside the fence shrinks). That’s not a diverse, vibrant, colorful savannah with full of content (that CCP should aim for). That’s a dying savannah.
Elsewhere I have argued to limit hisec and lowsec income (just today I just published a guide on how to make 1.5b/hr in FW). I recognize that the demand for making null and wormhole PvE riskier goes hand in hand with the demaind to keep it comparatively rewarding. If you agree with me that once we ensure null remains comparatively significantly rewarding, the increase in risk is warranted, then I’m more than fine. Because as long as comparative reward (comparative isk/hr) remains, people won’t care about whether they farm 300 bil minerals before losing their Rorqual (what’s happening in Delve right now) or they farm 100 bil of minerals before losing their Rorqual (perhaps a number that should be aimed at by CCP).
PS: At the moment your rivals mainly rely on renter income from nullsec and the capital umbrella. Not lowsec or hisec.
It is adorable how little you know about us. Also, how the hell do you consider 14 keepstars at all intimidating? It’s a pathetic number and I’m kind of embarrassed at our organization for having so few. Clearly, a growth area for us.
I didn’t see where he stated anything about being intimidated. Alas, you are right, 14 Keepstars is far less than what one would expect from a group of your size. Does it have to do with PI for a Keepstar not being afk-able enough due to at least a couple of million clicks necessary per unit?
This thread is an example of people’s general inability to let the lesson of the past override their bias.
Time and time again, events in EVE Online have proven that no amount of social engineering (via game mechanics manipulation) will ever curb human nature and human opportunism. EVERY change that CCP ever made meant to lead people in to some kind of desired behavior basically failed or mutated into something that some player learned to take advantage off.
The people complaining about what Goons are doing in Delve are probably people who welcomed the game mechanics changes of the past (like jump fatigue) that , ironically, have enabled Goons to do what they are doing now. What’s worse, some of them have the nerve to act like they didn’t champion those changes, and instead act like what’s happening now is all some big CCP conspiracy to help goons and null sec (rather than admit their own disastrously mistaken way of thinking tat lead them to support those things)
I noticed it the 1st time with Dominion Sov. CCP over-optimistically proclaimed that Dominion would provide ‘small group activities’ and ‘create instability among larger groups’. The posters who hate goons (and the older established groups of the time) and who (incorrectly) blamed the old POS based sov system on their lack of success rejoiced, even to the point of ‘talking noise’ to Goons. But Goon posters looked at the system and instantly recognized the advantages it would give them and other organized groups and warned against it. Yet the haters celebrated.
They didn’t know they were celebrating a system with LESS for small groups, a system that encouraged the ‘blue donut’ and a system that offer only rental slavery for anyone not in those big groups… The idiots were celebrating their own screwing…
This is why I say to CCP STOP WITH THE SOCIAL ENGINEERING (and not just in null, EVE wide), just make tools for people to use and let the chips fall where they may. Trying to ‘balance’ things via game mechanics ‘incentives’ and such leads to the kinds of situations we have now.
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But then, CCP is letting goons win and we can’t have that now can we?
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I’d actually be fine with that, I just think that due to the time and effort required of Devs it won’t happen. Not because they wouldn’t want to, just because finite resources are a ■■■■■. So I think a hardcore null nerf would be the far more likely outcome if you were to win this argument hands down, and I don’t think it would take much to break nullsec in the current state of the game.
As for our enemies current income sources, I know. That’s the easiest method right now, but there are other methods available that have been used in the past. Were null to take a hard nerf it would be annoying for PL et. all for a bit, but they would soon revert to one of their other models of income. It’s happened before.
On the other hand culturally null-oriented entities (The Imperium) wouldn’t have that fallback. Instead they would bleed out, drained of players by the endless and unrewarding grind to hold low-value space against enemies immune to retaliation.
Maybe this will help a bit with where I’m coming from: in my opinion the only real resource in Eve is player time. Players ‘spend’ time to make Isk, then use that Isk to fight stuff, which is fun. Now, this isn’t actually a bad thing. The grind-cost of a PvP boat is a big part of what makes fighting in it, and potentially losing it, exciting. Make it too easy to make Isk and Eve becomes a crap version of World of Tanks or Wow.
The more time it costs to get to fun the less people will play. Null requires a huge up-front capital expenditure (measured in player hours far more than Isk) to be worthwhile, and there are already alternatives that are, by many measures, objectively superior. Making changes that drive that cost up further, or even worse allow other entities to drive it up deliberately while expending far fewer player hours, are generally a bad idea.
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So… Delve has all the riches?
Guys, literally everyone should go to Delve for the weekend!
Well some may not like goons or even hate them, but they are showing that their level of organisation is the key to everything. Why other groups don’t copy+paste their ideas?
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That would be admitting mittens and co. were right.
On the other side, there are other way to run an alliance that also seem to be working. PL for example sin’t failing. It relies on some renter income but as long as people are willing to rent, it will work. There isn’t just a single way to do it imo.
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My opinion on a whole thing is that goons should attack someone lose some supers and kill even more create two or three days of internet news headlines it seems only fair.,i knew eve end years gonna suck just didn’t think they gonna be this pathetic and miserable.
Why would they? They are fortyfing their region, so have higher ground, everyone should come to them.
No casino money to motivate people to do it this time. Might be harder to pull off.
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So no motivation for the attackers. No motivation for defenders to get out their space and fight.
Let’s have same alliances led by same people occupying same spaces for the next decade of Eve. Let the builder alliances risk-free farm and have hundreds of Keepstars, passively waiting someone to come in their space. Let the militaristic alliances attempt no invasions because builders have built just too much, and keep it at small skirmishes and merely enjoy their rental income. Let nobody use their hundreds of capitals if it’s a lose-lose situation. And let Russians remain in their secluded botting lands. And let everyone keep blueing each everyone else in their 3-jumps blops range. And the biggest event we talk about should be how some metagame RL income mastermind got some dumb alliance leader banned, and how that’s an Eve accomplishment.
That sounds super interesting for a next decade of Eve.
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That pretty much nails it.
@CCP_Falcon since the MER for December will be in the works soon, can you include specific data about moon mining into it? That’d be awesome. 
Let’s just examine the recent example of the Blood Raider Sotiyo. The goons get robbed of the prize. And suddenly “it’s a bad game mechanic”. Meanwhile in the rest of New Eden players will steal during the Crimson Harvest and no one is crying. But it happens to the Goons, and game has to change for their benefit. When do you think the Damsel will drop in a secure container?
Introduction of Siphons. A threat the moon goo empire. Goons threatened black mail, they would spam them through Low-Sec if not changed. CCP acceded their demand, making Siphons expensive to manufacture for the return.
The Star Alliance War-Dec - Goons begged CCP to annul it. They started it, 9000 member vs 1000. But Jade opened to any ally. The Goons cried about being dogpiled?! The rules of the environment, use those rules to best effect to gain an advantage - it just happened to not be a advantage for the Goon. “not intended they cried”. So what? Didn’t learn the rules?! But CCP still annulled it.
Shall we continue to pretend here that Goons have not been successful changing the game favorably when it suited them?
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