Pando for CSM 21

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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Hey there,

I’m officially running for CSM again.

Why?
I think I have done some good stuff as a CSM 17 delegate, but I also felt like there was still plenty left to do. It didn’t feel like it was realistic to get the needed changes until recently where Fenris demonstrated that they are willing to make bigger changes.

Where you might know me from:

  • Served on CSM17
  • FCing for INIT since 2012
  • Helped lead the alliance for a few years
  • Led the eviction of Rage (Hard Knocks)
  • Became a decent bomber FC (landed the biggest bombrun ever during WWB2)
  • Invented/popularized a few doctrines: Chemo T3s, Stukas, Kikis, Booshravens
  • All-time rank top 10 on zKillboard
  • Roam a lot solo or in small gangs in nullsec
  • Helped CCP/Fenris with the livestream for Fanfest 2025
  • Stream live on Twitch as “zehPando”
  • Used to do a podcast called FC Chat
  • Make YouTube videos from time to time

My areas of expertise:

FCing and content creation with a broad set of experience: from massive coalition-sized battles down to daily small gang roams over wormhole evictions and everything in between.
And not just a little bit of everything, but a lot of everything: One of the most active players in the game for a long time.

Solo, small gang have been my focus for the past few years but my real passion will always be fleets. I think it’s this mix of experience that makes me a good candidate cause I know both sides of the PVP coin very well. I want the best for the game as a whole and not just for a specific playstyle. And i truly believe for one playstyle to be fun the other doesn’t have to suffer.

Another set of skills that comes in handy on the CSM is general people skills. Experience from alliance stuff helps a lot but I also think I’m a pretty chill and patient guy to begin with.

There will be areas I won’t know much about like Industry and markets and I won’t pretend to know things that I don’t.

What you can expect:

An honest and straight forward (not rude) sounding board for Fenris. I will tell them what’s working and what doesn’t (like i always have).

My EVE Online story:

2008-2009

  • Started playing and got into Faction Warfare pretty quickly
  • Enjoyed the absolute chaos that were the early days of FW
  • Dipped my toes into nullsec but RL got in the way and i had to take a break

2010

  • Friend talked me into coming back and joining his corp/alliance (The Initiative.)
  • Corp CEO was crazy but alliance was great so i switched the corp within INIT.
  • New corp (that i’m still in today) was all about PVP
  • Learned a lot from the old guys

VIDEO: The Inititative. Firewall (4:45)

2011

  • Started getting competent at solo roaming and taking people along for the fun
  • Didn’t realized i was already FCing
  • Discovered my passion for theorycrafting (miss you EFT :heart:)

2012-2014

  • Started out with RR domis as a proper config to FC
  • Came up with RR Assault Frigs (config we use to this day in a similar way)
  • Started running cloaky gangs called ninjas to play around in hostile stagings
  • Ran tons of other smaller “more traditional” roams

VIDEO: DCON RR Kartoffeln (5:33 - German comms)

2015

  • Fleets became bigger and more alliance focused
  • Lots of roams still but also stratops to take R64s and such
  • Started running Bomber fleets more often as actual bombwings

VIDEO: Transformers (4:42)

2016-2017

  • Discovered my love for booshing with a doctrine called snatch (it snatches people)
  • Crafted a config known as Booshravens to fight hostile capitals (used to call them 3 Guide Ravens but GOT references make me sad now)
  • Came up with “chemos” (Cloaky T3Cs to smartbomb ceptor fleets cause they were considered cancerous at the time)
  • Came up with a doctrine called stukas (primarily a mobile bombing fleet at first)
  • Started hunting caps with Stukas and kept developing/adding new stuff to the doctrine

VIDEO: First Chemoloki fleet ever (1:00)

2018-2019

  • Experimented with other fun stuff like Heavy Stukas (Blaster Nagas)
  • FCed one of the biggest evictions ever (Eviction of Rage)
  • Got falsely accused, banned and unbanned (a unique experience i don’t wish on anyone)
  • Got into streaming (mostly hunting fleets) and started a podcast Called “FC Chat”
  • Added the new Kikimora to the Stukas and hunted even more

VIDEO: Heavy Stukas #1 (5:53)

2020-2023

  • World War Bee 2/Beeitnam happened (landed the biggest bombrun ever)
  • Scarcity happened so i stopped hunting
  • Focused more on streaming (including solo, small- and midscale fleets)
  • Started running public fleets
  • Focused a bit more on Pochven
  • Got elected for CSM 17

VIDEO: PAPI You’re a Firework (1:51)

2024-2026

  • Retired from Alliance life almost entirely
  • Focused even more on streaming
  • Tried not to rant about projection constantly (failed at that)
  • Did some insane Public Fleets
  • Started making more videos including in depth stuff (more to come!)

VIDEO: Projection Balance (33:11)

If there are any questions left or you want to know my take on specific things always feels free to jump on my Discord or simply ask me in chat whenever I’m live on twitch!

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Thanks for your topic and presentation.

Are you ready to answer a few (simple) questions here at the forums?

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I’m wanting to spin the wheel of Eve and take it in another direction. I’m advocating for a big change in Eve making it a more polished product. I want to run for CSM but don’t have my passport right now, or a job.

Food that boosts stats - Be a foodie in game, learn skills for cooking food and farming on planets. Grow food and spices on planets, with the Dune spice being on lowsec and nullsec planets. Do distribution missions for food corporations to get blueprints for cooking.

Drugs that improve your character stats are important to lowering the level timer in the game to level up your skills faster spend money and do drugs.

Expand Science and Trade to include improving low grade loot to high grade loot.

Add a new kind of mineral to mine that looks like jade. It’s used in improving technology and should be added to the materials lists.

Add more exploration sites that include ore sites, more gas sites, and salvage sites.

Make more missions, when people have to play a game 20 years to get the most experience make it more fun please. Add new missions and aim for milestones of 100 to 200 missions. 1200 missions would be great.

I would love if you could help me advocate for these things if I don’t make it as CSM.

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Suuuurrrreee… why not :smiley:

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Thank you. ^^, Lets go:

  • What is - in your opinion - the single most pressing issue FC should adress immediately?

  • Would you agree that there is actually too much power in too few hands in the game? / Too little real competition/rivalry in the top ranks of political/military powerhouses?

  • Fights in EVE are often somewhat meaningful because they are costly and stuff really is destroyed, things don’t simply “respawn”. On the other hand those costs need time and effort to be replaced, so they are a large deterrent for many players to even enter fights or engage in PvP at all. Do you have an idea how this “problem” could be solved and fights keep their (economical) impact while the (casual) player can still participate without too much hesitation about all that ISK he might lose?

Thanks for your time!

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  • Next big issue on my list is Citadels and their mechanics. They don’t promote fighting and sadly touch every bit of gameplay.
  • It seems like a weird way of phrasing that the blocs are too centralized/big.
  • Fortune favors the bold. The ones willing to risk it should have the benefit of a better ship. I think there is not much Fenris can do about human nature beside perhaps the perception of loss. So no i don’t have an idea how to make people more willing to lose their stuff without it feeling less meaningful.
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Interesting point. Like to share some thoughts about what is currently flawed in their design?
Small and big groups obviously disagree fundamentally about what a station should be capable of. For the large group it’s annoying to remove lots of them during a campaign so they want them to be easier to be removed. Small groups want them to be as strong and durable in a conflict as possible, with a lot more force-multiplication power because the few they own are their home and backbone and they are mostly attacked by groups that can outnumber them in ships.

Which side to please?

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The main issues are the unlimited amount that can be anchored and the missing drop rate. I dont wanna go too much into detail here but I think having some form of hard limit for anchoring would be beneficial but it has to leave room for offensive placement. And a drop rate that scales with the amount of citadels an alliance owns or has in their space (gotta make sure alliances cant just avoid it with alt alliances) would be good so it might be worth killing citadels unlike it is now where it’s simply an annoying chore for alliances.

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Pando, how would you bring proving grounds back? Proving grounds would be a source of destruction and content for those who don’t have the time to go about roaming or large fleet fights

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You have to pitch it the right way. The main reason they stopped was the low number of participants towards the end. With the hype it would have right now that problem wouldnt be there. But they can’t make the same mistake and run an arena every weekend.

Also i replied to this in full live on stream with a few more details. 00:16:30ish on the vod

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If you had to list 3 goals in priority order for your next term on CSM, what would they be and why those items in that order?

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  1. Make sure they stay on track (perhaps help them accelerate things a bit)
  2. Bring enough attention to the problems that Citadels cause so they commit to fixing them
  3. Help prevent mistakes/missteps
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  • Do you believe Cyno-Projection of large groups (BlackOps Fleets, Titanbridges, Caps) are too oppressive vs. smaller groups trying to do basic/casual PvP (small roams/skirmishes, camps, stationgames without escalationpotential behind it)?

  • If so, what do you think is the biggest issue here: The huge range, covering sometimes hundreds of systems within immediate jump range? The speed those forces arrive on grid? The power of the ships being able to jump/bridged?

  • Do you have ideas how to enable small groups to do smallscale PvP without being busted easily by larger groups from afar?

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I do think that they will need to dial back cyno projection sooner or later but i don’t think that this is the right time for it.

I think the issue is a mix of all these factors. Range, ease of use, low risk but also the massive power gap between subs and caps. Would be different if faxes couldn’t repp subs that well and haw dreads didn’t apply as much. Every form of projection should have a strong side and a weak side to it so it all comes down to Fenris to decide what they want the to be.

For small groups the biggest content-deniers are citadels i believe. Not only can’t you fight in range of them but there is also simply too many of them (lots of citadels need lots of manpower to remove them). Would be nice if you could go mess around on a fort undock unless its being actively reffed right?

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The right time would probably have been like 10 years ago, but lets skip that here ^^ :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

This is an interesting statement. Like a “signature modifier” similar to capital neuts?
HAW dreads I also agree, if they need to be in the game (what I would question), their application should be still significantly worse compared to large weapon systems used on a subcap hull.

Thats a surprise. From the perspective of a small group, “lots of manpower to remove” is the only layer of protection they have to not get their home destroyed every week. And I have problems imagining what kind of fights someone seeks there? The ships undocking are tethered anyway? Ships trying to flee will dock up anyway… I remember “station games” from the old Lowsec times, but NPC stations don’t have tether and people can dock while tackled, which basically enables those games…

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I respect Pando for his dedication to EVE, and as a prolific PVPer. I think he has EVE’s best interest at heart and I hope to get a term with him on the CSM.

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Thx man! Likewise