Stitch Kaneland for CSM 16

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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Hello Everyone,

I will be applying for CSM16 this year focusing again on Ship/Game Balance, Lowsec (Including both Faction Warfare and non-faction warfare areas) and Wormholes.

My perspective on EVE is a bit different than most, as my story all comes from playing the game with a single character (no alts). I explore, PvE, PvP and do industry and any other playstyle with my single character.

I won’t say this is some “pure” way to play EVE or whatever, its just how i chose to play as i didn’t like being told i “needed” alts to PvP or do other activities. I think EVE has a lot of assumed or “solved” ideas on how to play and I enjoy challenging those ideas. Its not about being right or wrong, but interpreting information from a more unique perspective and also reviewing information from other people and playstyles.

o Your EVE Online story.

Started EVE back in 2011, played for 2 weeks, left, came back a month or two later. Probably stayed in highsec for a few months before leaving again. Came back and immediately wanted to move on from highsec. Joined a small nullsec group and got to experience the “small guy” nullsec experience in 2012-2014 with Drake, Tornado, Tempest and ARMOR HAC fleets.

During this time, i thoroughly enjoyed theorycrafting all the ships in EVE and trying to push the envelope for ship fitting/theory, at least from a solo perspective. I think EVE hooked me more through the freedom of fitting and to be creative/resourceful, rather than from the pure aspect of pvp’ing.

I enjoyed being a wildcard and use off-meta fits and tactics to achieve victory and/or escape from groups much larger.

Overtime, I outgrew nullsec and the fleet pvp and politics became tiresome. I just wanted to fly and shoot whoever and whatever i wanted. So, after leaving nullsec, i joined the NPC Faction Warfare corp for Minmatar. Enjoyed 3-4 years of FW content until CCP essentially overnight, deleted most of the reason to be in FW with the release of citadels (why grind systems if anyone can plop a citadel down regardless of who owns the system?).

I then moved to non-faction warfare lowsec and lived a bit of a nomad playstyle, basing out of lowsec/nullsec choke points so i had options for roaming/baiting. I lived around Molden Heath for a bit and then N-RAEL. Hi VoC, you guys always were hunting my battleships!

After about a year of living in non-faction warfare lowsec, i decided to jump ship and live in wormholes to ease access to more areas of space and to also expand my knowledge base to include WH pvp and also small gang PvP, so i joined Tuskers.

I’ve currently been living in a C2 WH with Tuskers for about 3 years now. Using the static nullsec for roaming and roaming the WH chain for fights, logistics or exploration.

I’ve put a lot of my theories, fights in various playstyles all on my youtube channel for others to help showcase these fits or explain ways to fight while being completely solo.

o Your areas of expertise. In which areas of the game do you feel you are the most knowledgeable? What qualities set you apart from other candidates?

My areas of expertise, as mentioned previously will be:

Ship and Ecosystem balance
Lowsec (Faction warfare and non-faction warfare)
Wormholes

I’m most knowledgeable on ship and ecosystem balance. From my experiences everywhere in EVE (highsec, lowsec, nullsec, wormholes), i’ve dipped my toes in nearly every area of EVE whether as solo, small gang or semi-large nullsec perspective. This gives me a larger knowledge base compared to others that stay only in 1 area space and with a particular playstyle.

My proof of my knowledge can be seen through various changes CCP has made to the game with my own recommendations. Whether these were already planned or CCP took my advice is unknown, however in either case the changes made closely align with my initial recommendations.

2015 - Battlecruiser role bonus rebalance (My thread on how to rebalance)

2018 - Battleship scan resolution buff (My thread for scan res buff)

2019 - Torpedo fitting and range buffs (My initial thread for torpedo fitting/range buffs and my follow-up thread after CCP announced torpedo changes 5 months ago)

2019 - Mandatory ESS as a Content Driver (My thread for ESS, this does differ quite a bit from CCP’s implementation, but the basic principle remains the same)

Some well received ideas that have not been implemented (yet):

2020 - Muninn rebalance (My thread)

2020 - Swapping Armor Rigs to an Agility Penalty instead of Speed (My thread on the forums and on reddit)

2020 - HAC Targeting Range Nerf (My thread)

2020 - BLOPs Rebalance (My Thread)

Battlecruiser Role Bonus Range buff to improve the ship food chain - No thread on this at the moment, but will happily discuss to anyone who is interested. Essentially you can read my original post from 2015 which included keeping the full 50% range bonus. I can elaborate further though in the comments.

Hopefully these posts give you an idea on my position and perspective on ship balance. As you can see, these aren’t generally posts focusing on solo/small gang, but overall ship balance and ship interaction balance. Several of these posts are targeted particularly at nullsec PvP and fleet fights.

Its one thing to claim you have big ideas, but I feel its another to actually see your ideas come to light.

o Why are you applying for the CSM?

To provide a knowledgeable, non-biased and extensive perspective for ship balance and ecosystem balance. I am the swiss army knife of balance and can quickly learn or gather information on areas i may not be fully familiar with and provide feedback in an efficient manner. Which i feel is lacking through some of the past CSMs. There are too many singular focused CSM members and not enough who try to look at the big picture.

o What can players expect from you?

*Non-biased input to CCP on ways to improve the game
*I am a neutral entity for wormholes, I don’t have an agenda, i just live here
*Easy to contact and talk to for escalating issues to CCP as needed
*Willing to learn or gather information on areas that I may not be fully aware of all the intricacies of
*Not completely stubborn or refusal to admit i’m wrong (I can be stubborn if an argument doesn’t disprove my perspective and is more based on “feels than reals”).
*Passionate about new player SP requirements and ways to alleviate balance pains (SP Waste)
*Wanting to challenge EVE’s “alt” focused nature, specifically in regards to gimmick balances that ease alt usage further (“press button, receive bacon” kind of module interactions)

Feel free to ask me questions below. Particularly questions on my ideas to improve lowsec, FW, specific ships or whatever you feel like. I didn’t want to make this too long with those ideas, otherwise everyone will glaze over half way through.

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God, I was hoping you would run again. Love your vids man. I’m also running so I suppose I’ll ask you where you stand on my prize issue, currently there are tons of dead systems in low sec, would you be willing to push for CCP making more of the current low sec, into high sec, but putting more choke points that make routes faster, but more dangerous, similar to Hek to Jita having it be 10 jumps if you go through Rancer, but 20 jumps if you want to go around through high sec only?

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Like a true small ganger you continue the fight.

Goodluck friend. Your thoughts on balance and eve as a whole are refreshing and intriguing.

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I feel the way to deal with “dead lowsec” system is provide incentive or reward to live there.

I like to look at balance from several perspectives, but after playing EVE and watching how CCP balances things, i like to look at already active systems and ways that makes it “easy” for CCP to implement.

If CCP can an existing system and tweak it to add more variety and options in an area that wasn’t previously utilized, then i consider that a win/win. Both from a design and implementation standpoint.

My idea to improve lowsec (non-FW), as i mentioned is to provide an incentive to live there and utilize an already existing system. It also tackles multiple issues at the same time. The idea is this:

Remove or significantly nerf Pirate battleship BPC drop rates from DEDs. Move those battleship spawns into lowsec belts. If you’re familiar with Mordus, its the same thing but would specific to pirate factions.

So if you are in Angel lowsec, the belts have a chance to spawn special Angel battleship spawns that drop the BPC.

This means that lowsec systems with a lot of belts will provide incentive to live there and defend your “good” system. This is also an activity which you can do in a pvp fit or something that is do-able for a more casual player to make isk. This puts more people roaming systems trying to find spawns, more people in belts (meaning they can’t hide in a probed down site and run when combats come out) and overall more movement in lowsec from people trying to farm.

NPC Nullsec would still have LP stores to cash out on pirate battleship, but they now have to choose between HG implants or battleship BPC’s, which splits their LP pool.

This addresses the issue of Pirate battleships being similarly priced as Navy battleships but making them a bit rarer, but also provides a lucrative income for lowsec and incentivizes more people to live in lowsec, which means more people to shoot/pvp etc.

Moving jumps around could also help to provide more chokepoints, but i feel like we’ll still just have single area chokepoints that are “alive” while everything else is dead. I want there to be a reason for people to live there and make isk or pvp (or both).

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What ideas do you have for changes to Faction Warfare?

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Citadels

First and foremost will be citadels. Capturing or controlling a FW system should matter again.

Its a bit tricky because you have neutral and FW entities in FW lowsec. So you have 2 options of either treading carefully and assigning citadels to a faction or neutral or the 2nd option of kicking out neutral citadels (goes into abandoned state) or forcing them to align with a faction.

I’m not particularly keen on the 2nd option, as there are groups that are pretty well entrenched in FW that don’t necessarily partake in FW. On the flip side, it would streamline the entire FW system and make it much simpler as far as governing citadels.

Option 1:

When anchoring a citadel in FW lowsec, it asks what faction the citadel will belong to (Neutral or FW Entity). If neutral, you cannot dock in the citadel if you belong to a FW group, no matter if the entity who deployed the citadel is blue standing and provides docking rights. If set to neutral, you cannot dock if in FW (lore: something something, not being neutral if letting opposition dock and resupply so neutral entities stay out of the war).

If in FW and you anchor a citadel, you assign the citadel to your FW group. If the system is lost, the citadel immediately transitions into low power and then into abandoned in 24-48 hours. Meaning if you lose a system, you lose your citadel.

Option 2:

As i mentioned, not as keen on this option but it would simplify a lot of things on CCP’s side which is outright removal of neutral citadels. The entrenched groups could engage in FW to keep their system. Though, timezone plays a part and if a system gets heavily o-plexed during your non-peak time zone, you would inevitably lose the system. So not ideal.

However, it does keep FW much more focused and streamlined. Now citadels play a secondary role, instead of bypassing mechanics.

Some other options to tinker with:

  1. Owning a system provides some kind of citadel bonus (maybe to manufacturing, fitting or other tweaks to citadels specifically)

  2. Create actual Pirate factions that groups can assign to in FW. So if you don’t want to be part of minmatar/caldari/amarr/gallente you could choose an alternate pirate faction that could provide more unique mechanics for the entrenched entities to maintain their foothold without being pushed out by timezone issues. Pirate docking rights would be retained to only pirates.

I suppose the one issue i see is people using neutral alts in the neutral citadels, but this already happens even before citadels. Not sure on how to address that specifically tbh or if it couild be an issue.

Rookie Complex

There should be an actual novice (Rookie) complex that only allows T1 frigs in and does a check on implants. FW is a stepping stone for a newbie to get their feet wet in pvp. They aren’t going to learn the basic mechanics of pvp when they keep getting dunked on by someone’s 500m blinged out DD or dram with snakes against their meta modded kestrel.

A rookie plex would allow a newbie to at least learn some basic ship interactions on a semi-even playing field.

Keep in mind a rookie plex would not replace a novice plex. As all things in EVE progression is important. Once the newbie is more familiar with the basics its up to them to venture off into novice/smalls etc and then the current rules of bling/implants apply. I still feel its important that they can at least get some actual combat experience without getting helldunked on by tryhards.

CCP already has the code for most of this from the abyssal arena’s (which checks meta mod levels and implants), so that can be carried over to the accel gate check for rookie sites.

Recons in Mediums

This is one of those things that while its “emerging gameplay” i feel isn’t healthy for the area of space. This also falls back into the “won’t someone think of the newbies?!” category. We want people to stay in the game so we can fight and kill them later when they are flying shinier things. Having them warp their T1 stabber into a medium plex just to get jammed by a rook, damped by a lachesis and dps’d down by whatever else is in there isn’t fun or engaging. Saying “rely on combat probes” isn’t realistic and most people i talk to just outright avoid medium plexes due to the potential of recons.

The more experienced player will check zkill or use an alt fit with combat probes or other methods to confirm, but again we want newbies to play longer, not tell them to buy for a 2nd account just to have dedicated combat probes or use 3rd party tools which may be a chore just to try to find a fight.

For these reasons, i feel recons should lose the ability to be dscan immune in FW complexes, or when you approach an acceleration gate into a complex, it will provide a counter for the number of people in the complex. So if you see the accel gate showing (1) but nothing is on dscan (or (2) but only a maller is on scan), then you know there is someone either cloaked or in a recon in that complex (would not apply to larges since there is no gate).

FW Missions

Personally i hate FW missions and feel like all they do is attract bots. I’d like to see FW missions gutted completely and the LP shifted into active roles like capturing plexes, pvp’ing etc. The FW missions could be reworked to be more pvp orientated with specific pvp goals (though care would be needed to prevent alts from farming each other).

FW Complex Interactions

The FW rat in the complex should scram. This is primarily to deal with bots, so they can’t just warp off immediately if someone lands on the gate.

The complex timer should automatically count back up to its full timer if the opposition leaves the complex, instead of staying on its fixed value. This would also affect bots or players who just leave instead of fighting. Providing at least some punishment to the fleeing player, instead of the person who scared them off (by forcing them to sit in the complex to count the timer back up).

Those are a few of the ideas off the top of my head for FW. I’m sure i forgot a few more specific or unique interactions, but i feel most of those mentioned above are needed to get FW back into a healthier state.

I think expectations should be set that CCP isn’t going to immediately fix FW overnight, its going be through multiple passes. But if we can get a few passes like this through, then future iterations can focus on potentially new mechanics (like increased LP gain in contested border systems and decreased LP gain in back end systems etc).

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Easiest #1 slot pick ever.

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Really liked most of your ideas there. Particularly the idea with Rookie Complex. In regards to Citadels, I don’t think they should go abandoned if the owning faction loses control of the system. Low power sure, a mode similar to citadels without a core? Possibly. But abandoned seems a bit harsh. Recons in mediums is one of the best ways to combat bots as the bots rely on dscan and they will often go to mediums, I think it has the best LP/hr when calculating in travel time. Unless botting gets addressed, I don’t think CCP should remove that function. Also, I am perfectly fine with the FW rats pointing, but scramming would kill kitey ships. I

One feature that has been often discussed on alliance comms involves incentivizing Battleship and Battlecruiser usage. The way that we currently like would be to flip the length of plexes and have open and larges be the quickest with smalls and novices taking longer.

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I’ve voted for Stitch twice already. I will vote for him every time he runs. I feel like CCP really needs to hear what Stitch wants to bring to the table. He is someone I admire, and I wish him the best of luck.

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There we go! Best candidate coming along for another run at the CSM. I’ve been waiting for this. I won’t clutter this thread much, but just wanted to pop in and voice my support for what may very well be the best possible candidate for lowsec and PvPers in general. I have very rarely seen such an intuitive yet clear understanding of the mechanics, and a willingness to challenge them in one individual.

A genuine inspiration. Godspeed, Stitch.

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I was thinking of another mode or status to go here, something like “Contested” or “Under Siege” that limits timers or lowers the time between timers.

At the same time though, is abandoned really that harsh? If we go back before citadels, and you lost a system, you were locked out of a station (granted you could use neutral alts to recover) but it wouldn’t really be different here except your stuff would just go into asset safety. I suppose you lose the investment of the citadel, but i think a citadel should be something people think harder about before plopping down.

I don’t feel its a fair enough trade-off. While it may have uses in dealing with bots, its primarily used as a means for people to get easy, one-sided fights and degrades or limits a very common plex choice for newer players.

The way i see it, bots are going to be around for the perceivable future and i’d rather focus on improving player interaction within FW, rather than focus on playing whack a mole with bots while sacrificing player interaction. You still have other complexes that will be riddled with bots that recons can’t get into like smalls and novices.

I do want to address bots, just not at the health of other player interactions. Recons in mediums feels cheap. And yes, “EVE isn’t supposed to be easy” but i think there are some areas that are exceptions to help provide a foothold for people to learn.

The pointing/scramming from the NPC is one way to add further complexity to bots. Keep in mind the scram wouldn’t be immediate when you warp into the plex. There’d be enough time for something kitey to burn away. The NPC wouldn’t aggro immediately. Though, i’m not opposed to just changing it to a point, maybe even make it something like a 30-35km point just so the meta doesn’t change from afk brawl bots to afk kite bots.

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Hey Stitch, good to see you running again. <3

You’re def on my list anyway, but nevertheless, could you explain this in a little more detail:

*Wanting to challenge EVE’s “alt” focused nature, specifically in regards to gimmick balances that ease alt usage further (“press button, receive bacon” kind of module interactions)

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+1, I enjoy your rebalance recommendation threads and feel you’ve got your head screwed on the right way when it comes to changes that need to be made, good luck

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Lowsec dwellers get my vote.

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I think you may have the modes switched up. Abandoned citadels lose tethering, asset safety, and all reinforcement timers. Low power mode loses it’s shield reinforcement timer but still has asset safety. I don’t like the idea of you losing asset safety in a structure if you lose the system. Because if that structure does die under the current mechanics, your stuff gets locked up in the station.

I also, after some thinking, agree with your Recon change. I may or may not have fed to a Rook in that time, but that’s besides the point. I think Recons can have a place in larger plexes, but mediums probably not.

In regards to rats scramming/pointing I think that if rats had 8ish km scram that would be fine or 30 km point would also work. To do this, the rats should probably get a speed or repping nerf to make it slightly easier for an attentive player to clear it if a large gang is trying to jump you.

Did you have any thoughts on the idea of incentivizing the use of larger ships by changing the large/open plex timers?

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Glad you’re running again Stitch! I’ll be voting for you.

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Both of you will be getting my vote as well.

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Yeah, thats my mistake. I agree that my main focus is retaining asset safety but making the citadel easier to destroy/dismantle once the system flips.

That a good point about asset safety being locked up in the station that is within the system, since now it would fall under the standard FW rules where those items are locked out (unless you use a neutral alt).

A speed nerf is fair, since i think even the BC’s can go like 3k/s (WTB 3k/s harbinger). I don’t think the repping power of the rats is a huge issue and it persuades farming ships the need to fit more dps instead of more tank or agility mods. If the NPC’s are too easy to kill, then people can just omit dps and use i-stabs to align/warp out faster.

Its possible FW has changed a bit since i was last roaming there, but i didn’t see much issue with the large complex timer or interaction. And i was often using a battleship or battlecruiser to run larges almost exclusively.

My only fear is it may incentivize bots to farm those areas more if the timers are lower, but if NPC changes happen where they point/scram and aren’t super easy to kill, then it may make them less likely to be botted.

Feel free to elaborate on any concerns or things you’re seeing that would warrant the change that i may be missing though.

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I have a slight bone to pick in regards to how balance interacts with the spread of alts in EVE.

When i mention modules that are “press button, receive bacon”, its referring to modules that require no interaction other than pressing a button and receiving maximum benefit from it. Then you can alt+tab away or ignore it.

Some examples of this are:
Links
ADCU
Signature Radius Module (for battleships)
ECM (to an extent)

There are probably more, but those are the ones that came to mind first. Pilot skill should be important in EVE, not just clicking a module and then sit twiddling your thumbs.

There are some exceptions with links, like the link pilot needs to maintain awareness of link coverage outside of fleet fights (where the grid is more chaotic). But its not uncommon for solo/small gang pilots to have a bifrost alt that just orbits and provides links/RESEBO/Remote Tracking. Because those items all require no extra input.

Do I like alts? No, primarily because I don’t like the fact that when new players join the game, within 1-2 weeks of joining, they will most likely find themselves in a conversation with someone telling them to get 1-4 alts to do the thing they want to do in the game.

Do I realistically think that alts and the alt mentality can change? No. Its probably too far engrained into EVE at this point.

However, as far as balance is concerned, i would prefer to see balance changes or new modules that require more input or monitoring, rather than pressing 1 button and forgetting about it.

An example of this would be like the ADCU. If instead of pressing the button and you get 1 single cap drain and then all resists. The cap drain is sustained through the entire duration. So you may need to inject a cap booster, pulse your mwd or even get interrupted by neuts which would then turn off the ADCU. Which would punish alts or lazy gameplay/management.

Another wild idea to hamper alts proliferation (again, not that i believe this could be achieved from a balance or even business standpoint, but just as a talking point) is remove the in space auto commands (approach, orbit, keep at range etc). This would mean every ship needs to be manually piloted and would break up the alt meta and even potentially the fleet meta since everyone needs to control their ship and maintain distances on their own.

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Valid point, I actually think that would help combat botting as well.

What I meant was for the large/open sites to be changed to the time that the small/novice sites are currently and for the small/novice sites to have the time that the large/open have. Alternatively, the increase or decrease in contested level could be changed so that large/open sites get a larger increase or decrease per minute of plexing. Either of those two changes would either decrease the effectiveness of botting or have bots start using larger ships which are easier to catch and more expensive. Right now, there really is no reason to run larges/opens as it takes longer than a small or novice, which net the same increase or decrease in contested level. Most of my alliance wants there to be larger ships flying around in the warzone instead of groups of frigs and dessies.