Stitch Kaneland for CSM 18 - Ship and Ecosystem Balance

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
, ,
1

Hello everyone,

Running for CSM again this year and will be primarily focusing on Ship and overall Ecosystem balance. This includes lowsec, nullsec and WH, primarily from the solo, small gang and small guy™ perspectives.

If you are not familiar with me, i’ve been able to implement multiple changes into EVE without being on CSM just from good posting. I am able to apply critical thinking to a problem and find resolutions that tend to fit the confines of EVE and what can be changed realistically.

EVE has a very diverse and complex ecosystem where changing one thing can affect 5 other things, sometimes without realizing it. Changes can’t happen from a singular perspective and try to force it through. So I try to look at things in the big picture and how it will affect things around it.

The one unique thing about me compared to a lot of other candidates is that I remain a single account character. I PVP, PVE, exploration, do industry, trade etc with my one account/character. I try to maintain what can be accomplished as a “casual” player or a way to try not to intimidate newer people on what you need to be successful without a bunch of alts.

Your EVE Online story

I’ve played since 2011 and i’ve lived and have experience in all areas of space except pochven. Most recently i’ve returned to living in FW LS since the FW rework (used to live in a C5/NS C2 wormhole for several years).

EVE hooked me with the ships and near limitless ways to fit ships. I enjoyed taking a ship and doing something it wasn’t necessarily supposed to do, or went against the grain. In this way, i’ve found a lot of underlying strengths to ships or weapons that people don’t realize, which has enabled for fun fights, new fits or proposals to balance changes that get implemented.

As I had fun tinkering with non-meta fits and tactics, I decided to create a youtube channel to showcase these ideas and fits.

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?

Compared to most other candidates, i’ve likely had the most ship or balance related changes implemented into the game, even with some of them having been on the CSM, while I have never been on the CSM.

Here is a list of items that were added to the game from either my ideas or posts about the topic in chronological order:

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)

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)

2020 - BLOPs Rebalance (My Thread )

2022 - Battleship shield/extender role bonus (My Thread )

2022 - Muninn rebalance (My thread )

2022 - HAC Targeting Range Nerf (My thread )

2022 - Navy Battlecruiser Feedback (My Thread)

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

We are down to only two now, compared to last year’s CSM post!

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

2021 - Weapon Tiericide, Range Creep and Ship Ecosystem (My Thread )

As you can see, these changes aren’t necessarily focused on a solo or small gang PVP mentality, but a larger ecosystem balance. Hopefully these give you some perspective and idea on how I approach issues and provide feedback/alternatives.

The way I look at it, either my ideas are good enough for CCP to use or my ideas align already with CCP’s thought process, which makes collaborating and recommending things even easier and more streamlined.

A lot of candidates can claim big ideas. But the thing that sets me apart is that my ideas have actually been implemented into the game.

Why are you applying for the CSM?

To provide a knowledgeable, non-biased and extensive perspective for ship balance and ecosystem balance. I think there are some gaps in knowledge, especially with ship balance in the past CSM candidates. There are too many singular focused CSM members and not enough who try to look at the big picture.

What can players expect from you?

  • Non-biased input to CCP on ways to improve the game as a whole, not just “my space”
  • I am a neutral entity for wormholes, I don’t have an agenda, I just lived there
  • 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)

Contact me through Discord at Stitch_K or comment below if you had questions on anything or wanted to discuss something further.

18 Likes
2

Stitch is a true homie and one of the most ideal candidates for this job. He’s got a great head for balance and is one of the more even keeled CSM candidates year in and year out. Regardless of who else you are voting for, you simply must put Stitch at or near the top of your ballot - you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t. My man is an easy choice.

5 Likes
3

You will have my vote (given the case that CSM candidates can vote too).

As you focus on balance: What is your thought regarding long range T2 ammo (Gleam, Javelin and Quake) do you think they need a damage buff to bring them in line with the shortrange coutnerparts?

What do you mean with the challenging eve’s alt focused nature? Meaning you want to make multiboxing harder?

2 Likes
4

I think the T2 short range ammo for LR weapons is mostly in an ok spot. The problem that people may be experiencing is the T2 short range ammo’s don’t seem to matter too much on the biggest weapons of their class (for example 720’s or 250 rails). On the smaller tier weapons of their class (dual 150 rails, 650mm artillery and quad light beams) I think the T2 short range ammo on LR weapons is quite decent, because its tracking bonus scales a lot better with the smaller weapons.

I’d rather see the smaller tier weapons reworked/buffed (tiericided) to incentivize their use more, rather than everyone trying to cram the biggest gun with the most DPS/Range and then be less satisfied with how the T2 short range ammo scales with tracking.

I don’t think they need a significant DPS buff. I wouldn’t complain about 5% more dps, but I wouldn’t want to see some huge % jump in DPS.

In a way yes. But I don’t want to limit multi-boxing in artificial limitations like “you can only have 3 characters active” or something silly like that. There are plenty of legitimate, non pvp uses for multi-boxing that i’m fine with.

Its more that i’d like to see additions that raise the skill ceiling that make it organically harder to multi-box a bunch of combat ships easily.

For example, if you need to focus on 3-4 things at a time while fighting with a single ship/module/role, it intrinsically becomes harder to scale that easily to multiple other accounts.

My goal isn’t to take anything away, its to try to help guide CCP in making changes that require more attention when associated with a new module or ship. Not just a simple 1 button press and you get everything without needing to pay attention. Examples of this are things like the ADCU. If for example the ADCU also had a cap draw or an agility penalty that went along with it, that you needed to manage, then it would inherently become harder to multi-box say… a bunch of ram jags.

1 Like
5

I remember the time when a Stitch Kaneland reddit post greatly helped steered us clear of the disaster the nullification changes could have meant for fleet Interceptors. (If the module had remained a low-slot as originally planned)

I’ll most definitely have Stitch at the top of my ballot again this year.

2 Likes
6

It’s time stitch makes it on!

6 Likes
7

Thanks! Yeah, i forgot about that post.

Nullification module introduction was such a cluster lol. Didn’t get every issue solved with it, but at least made it tolerable in most instances.

8

Get this man in already, it’s about god damn time. Even while being out of the CSM he did plenty for the game and continues doing so.

2 Likes
9

Stitch I think I will give you my vote. I watched you the other year on Asterothi’s site and you have good ideas.

I am asking a few CSM candidtates this:

I’m looking for a candidate that will hope to persuade CCP into getting rid of the 1000 vs 1000 blobs and getting rid of renting.

Do you have any thoughts on these matters?

10

I don’t think you can persuade CCP to actively shoot themselves in the foot and purposely remove 40k+ accounts and players (of course this number includes their alts).

I would reframe it more as big null blobs is still a valid playstyle, but i’d like to see some more limitations on how much the nullblob playstyle can encroach into every other playstyle and how much space they actually need to function.

I 100% agree that the rental aspect of nullsec needs to die. I’ve been in favor for the past year or two of returning back to passive income. Passive income helps decouple big null blobs from needing large swathes of space for renters/bots and it also means smaller pvp entities don’t need to do soul crushing mining ops just to get isk for their pvp activities.

Passive income also encourages people to fight over resource generators if some space/systems have better generators than others. That is a big issue right now, even with the big blocs, there are no objectives, goals or reasons to fight. There needs to be things you want that the other guy has.

A simple example of passive income would be you can set an athanor to become automated (maybe a module that requires new resources) with the moon frack. But passive frack is only maybe 15-20% of the actual frack amount, while active mining retains the full 100%. This helps keep both playstyles intact (passive and active mining).

Alternatively, you could introduce new sources of passive income. My personal favorite so far is introducing sun mining. There is 1 sun per system, and then you can tie resources to sun colors and make some color suns have high resources output, or more rarer resources which means people will want to fight over it. It also means that there ONE passive income node per system that you can easily find and harass.

I’ve also tinkered with the idea that this passive income stream would tie ansiblex projection to the sun type in system. So if you shut down the passive income stream, you shut down the ansiblex (think of the sun like a pylon from starcraft, where its power output is a radius on the map, which dictates the range of the ansiblex).

But I digress, since i’m just day dreaming on ideas.

Key Points That I’m Focused On

  1. Crush rental empires and the need to own large swathes of space

  2. Limit/rework ansiblex projection (this can be a whole separate topic I can touch on later if you want)

  3. I want small groups to live in null without needing to be part of a null bloc. I want them to be able to carve their own area of space out of the thousands of systems without null bloc approval

  4. With gross over expansion of systems, null blocs become more vulnerable on their fringes and can’t just teleport in minutes to put out every fire. This also ties into passive income to limit how they might try to expand if passive income were to return.

1 Like
11
  1. Crush rental empires and the need to own large swathes of space

CCP seems particularly lost on this front. Their current opinion is that players should be nomadic. This is stupid. EVERY aspect of holding sov runs counter to the notion that groups should be nomadic. It is far too difficult to pick up and move crap around New Eden for this to ever become a reality.

No matter the incentive you will not have groups pick up everything and move. That means they will hold on to their homeland, and then project into the other areas to take those resources. CCP has NEVER been effective at inducing conflict.

At least with rental empires it creates SOMETHING to fight over. The problem is that nothing in null space is valuable enough to cause the scale of conflict needed to take it.

  1. I want small groups to live in null without needing to be part of a null bloc. I want them to be able to carve their own area of space out of the thousands of systems without null bloc approval

EVE is a sandbox. The best that CCP can hope for is that the players sort something out here. This should not be for CCP to try and dictate. If a group cannot survive in an area then they will need to adapt. Currently the null blocs have an agreement to leave several regions open for exactly this. This is a better arrangement than CCP trying to dictate something.

Bottom line, there needs to be something worth fighting over.

12

This is probably the worst example to try to explain away mechanics as “working” because it highlights the fundamental problem of the currently enabled mechanics.

The southern agreement was made because nullblocs saw that there is no feasible way for small groups or medium groups to form in nullsec due to the projection mechanics CCP has enabled.

It highlights that the system works when nullblocs can’t just teleport at will wherever they want, whenever they want.

The problem with saying this should be up to the players is that there is no mechanical restriction on the Southern Agreement. Its all just words and at any point in time, the blocs can go “what Southern Agreement?” and steamroll to their heart’s content because there is nothing stopping it.

Also, I believe PH have already been encroaching in the space that was formed from the Southern Agreement. So like I said, it means nothing and is just fluff to try to distract people from seeing the actual problem, which is ansiblex/projection mechanics.

We know projection limitation works for allowing more groups to form and filling up nullsec. It has been done before back with the Phoebe expansion. You had groups setting up freeports that were fun roaming spots. There were numerous smaller independent groups. We can literally point back to previous expansions and show that it worked.

And all sandboxes have borders and limitations. You can’t just say “its a sandbox” to explain away broken or imbalanced mechanics. CCP is in charge of the borders and limitations, not the players.

You can say for a small group to adapt to impossible odds, but why can’t the gigantic blob adapt to restrictions to their projection? The door swings both ways. EVE is a game about adapting, but there are limitations on both ends. That is where we discuss the compromises.

Currently a small group cannot “adapt” because they can’t even put their foot down without a nullbloc teleporting to shut them down (or force them to rent) due to ansiblex and massive projection, hence why nullsec implemented the Southern Agreement. They know there is no way for a small group to get a foothold and explore sov mechanics without them allowing it.

I’m not saying to make them nomadic, I agree, that is stupid. I’m saying their footprint and projection needs to be smaller. Which is why I want passive incomes to return as I already stated. Passive income removes the needs for rental empires.

Rental empires do not make people want to fight, if that were the case, where are all the giant, media grabbing fights? Why aren’t the big 3 rental empires fighting each other? If anything rental empires perpetuate complacency and reduce the chance of systems changing hands and fights happening.

Passive moons such as the old R64’s made people fight because there was inherent value in them. There is no inherent value in the majority of systems now, its all been homogenized. Rental empires and current nullbloc bloat was made to act as flood plains to dissuade invasions. Thats right, the current system is setup that they want people not to fight them.

1 Like
13

Thanks, I appreciate it!

14

What would prevent people from simply anchoring a Fortizar or 2 or 12 on the passive income generator grid?

In my opinion that is the main problem with any proposal of passive income in the post-Citadel era. We live in a time of unlimited fortification potential, whereas a POS represented only a very limited potential for fortification on any particular grid, especially one that had to sacrifice fitting space for moon harvesting.

1 Like
15

You make a good point if we consider it through current mechanics (as in, CCP does nothing to address this with the introduction to passive income).

The first idea i’ve had for passive income is you tie it to a service module slot for a refinery (Athanors/Tataras). Where it becomes an automation module that would automatically harvest a moon frack, but you’re only getting maybe 15-20% of the yield and it would disable weapons/utility modules (or reduce the number available, so, -1 hi, mid and low for example). This also keeps both game play styles viable, since you can passively get materials for low return, or active mine moon fracks for high return.

With this idea, then you can’t anchor multiple citadels to defend the passive income because they all have to be a certain distance from each other anyway. On top of that, the passive income source has less or no defense, so it would have to be defended by the people that live there or nearby.

The second idea, if passive income becomes a completely new resource, such as sun harvesting or whatever. Is that the structure itself just has a radius where you can’t anchor citadels next to it or within a certain distance. Which has been implemented on other structures already, so it would be easy enough to add that restriction.

16

Among many ships and outfits rebalances. Do you think you can propose and support more combat and gameplay QoL additions such as my suggestion regarding Warp Bubbles?. I’m pretty sure you have a lot more QoL suggestion made to suit your playstyle and others.

17

There is an icon for the ESS indicating when you’re in a bubble or at least indicating warp disrupting, so it would seem reasonable an icon could be made to indicate when you are or are not in a bubble in the other cases outside an ESS.

I’ve also experienced similar frustrations with not knowing when I was fully out of a bubble due to camera positioning/server ticks, so a simple icon would be good.

1 Like
18

@Stitch_Kaneland would you back any idea mentioned below as CSM member?

  1. Insane idea - pay with PLEX in NES for extra dev time
  2. Quafe+ is from "biomass" (...or corpse reprocessing)
  3. Little things / Small QoL suggestions - Better Visibility Of Other Players’ PI Networks
  4. Little things / Small QoL suggestions - 13 requests for Stack Split enhancment since Jun’18
  5. Little things / Small QoL suggestions - PI KB-shortcuts for toggling between groups of structures
19

#1. Yes, you’re right it is a bit insane. It would be abused very easily by parties that inherently have isk to spend on PLEX. Such as botters/RMT’ers or just market traders etc. Not to mention, CCP would never go for it anyway.

I could see it turning into a major time sink that CCP doesn’t really have the ability to manage anyway. There is already people complaining about ticket times, imagine someone giving 100k PLEX to CCP to “make PVE Funner” and then get mad at CCP because they didn’t do it in the timeframe they expected (as in, right now).

#2. I’m not necessarily opposed to it or any kind of corpse harvesting depending on the material/outcome. I could see corpse reprocessing causing any recovered implants to be “downgraded”. So lets say you harvest HG implants, any you get from successful extraction becomes MG implants, or MG becomes LG etc. LG either stays LG or you just can’t extract them (they are destroyed).

#3, 4 & 5. Sure, these seem reasonable

1 Like
20
  1. What have CCP done correctly?
  2. What have CCP done incorrectly?
  3. What do you wish existed in-game that doesn’t?
  4. What exists in-game that you wish didn’t?
  5. What exists in-game that you think ought to continue to exist?
  6. What doesn’t exist in-game that you hope never comes into existence?
  7. How would you improve PI?
  8. How would you improve the entire corporation UI?
2 Likes