Hi friends,
I am Sven Bauer, Youtube Content Creator, Theorycrafting enthusiast, dreadnought enjoyer, and now also a CSM 20 candidate!
There’s a good chance you have already heard of me, whether through my YouTube channel, the groups I’ve flown with, or community spaces like the EVE Discord. You may also recognize me from a mention in the Community Beat, or from CCP Swift’s shout-out during the Fanfest opening ceremony.
For those who dont know who I am, I’ve played pretty much every day since 2019, investing over 12,000 hours into New Eden. I’ve taken all of Detorid in a 10-man alliance, helped lead trillion-ISK dread brawls in lowsec, and tested myself in every part of the sandbox. From Rorqual mining to small-gang roams, heavy armor brawls, black ops hunting, capital crabbing, and dreadbombing titans in hostile staging systems, I bring experience across the full scope of the eve sandbox EVE.
Actions speak louder than words
Even without the tools of the CSM I have been fighting to improve EVE, successfully having gotten multiple changes implemented into the game.
I was the main driving force behind the much needed re-balance of Smartbombs, as well as improvements to UI clarity with changes such as color-coded Isotope Icons.
I have also successfully advised multiple current CSM members on specifics of ship-balance, with my feedback playing a part in us recently getting some of the best balance patches in years.
I take great pride in helping improve the game we love and I hope to successfully tackle many more issues if selected as a member of the CSM.
Goals
These are the high level goals for what I plan to accomplish on the CSM:
Continue my ongoing efforts to Improve EVE’s UI customization and accessibility for everyone
Reduce Capital prices to make both PVE and PVP in capitals fun and rewarding
Continue helping keep EVE’s ship balance healthy
Further down in this post I have a long and detailed breakdown of my opinions on relevant issues and topics.
Come talk to me!
Discord: sven_bauer
Hit me up with anything, be it your most niche frustration or a funny meme. I love talking about EVE and I want to hear what you have to say.
Detailed Standpoint Breakdowns
EVE is a complex game with complex Issues, if you want to know more about what I think on a certain topic, feel free to send me a DM on discord
Accessibility and Quality of Life
More UI customization and accessibility options
Missing important information because its a 5x5 pixel square on the screen really sucks. EVE’s UI should be able to accommodate the needs of all pilots.
- Scaling Options + Different styles of capacitor/health UI
- Fully unrestricted placement of Capacitor/Health UI
- Options for Overview font size and space between rows
- Wider selection of standing colors
- Ability to Re-Size Watchlist HP bars
- Options for larger Local-chat Standing’s Icons / Standings based colored text background
Unique Icons for all modules
The ECM Burst Jammer and the Multispectral ECM Targeted jam both share the same Icon, to the utter dismay of all widow pilots.
Example Icons I made for unique Burst jam / targeted jam Icon suggestions
My suggestion on the left for the burst jam, inspired by the SRS
The target icon could also be used to differentiate the targeted ECM
There are no size indications on Shield Extenders / Armor Plates / Propulsion Modules / Neuts etc. leading to many cases of mistakenly using undersized modules.
Missing Skinnr Features
Skinnr has had a lot of great additions added over the last few expansions, however, it is still missing a few important features
- Selectable lighting and sky-boxes to see how the skin actually looks in space before spending plex on sequencing
- Transaction history for skinnr sales
- Fitting-style text exports of a skin’s colors and pattern layout to share skins outside of the game client
Adding ‘Broadcast Target for Repair’ to the broadcast radial menu
There are unused slots still available!
ACL Based Hangars/Wallets
LP Transaction History
UI Sounds (Shield/Armor/Hull alarms, etc.) without the significant Ram and CPU usage of the full sound engine
Ability to Export and Import Key-binds
A Visual representation within the settings of all key-binds and their layout
Here is an example with my current key-bind layout
Capital Ecosystem
Inflated Ship Cost
I believe that a majority of the frustrations of the current capital ecosystem stem from inflated cost
- The Risk-Reward for using Caps in PvE only makes sense under an umbrella
- Dropping Caps in PvP for the ‘fun of it’ is only available to the richest players
- The cost of feeding dreads to punch up and punish large overconfident groups is too high for most groups to afford
- Super-caps are only very rarely used in combat as a chance of losing even a single super-capital usually doesn’t outweigh the benefit of dropping them
- Cheaper caps mean you don’t need game-breaking amounts of ISK/h or extreme safety to risk them in space, leading to healthier and more engaging PvE activities
CRAB Beacons
CRAB Beacons just kinda suck for both the PvE and PvP players, yet are the only widespread capital PvE
Here’s a full recording of what running a crab beacon in a dread looks like if you havent run one before.
The PvE perspective:
- They are extremely boring with very low APM, spawning a mere 2-5 rats every 1-2 minutes
- There is zero player agency with deciding how they want to play, such as running riskier hyper/full damage fits for more income
- No skill expression such as using fighter bombs to blitz a big wave, or bosoning the right spot to clear the rest of an entire site
- CRAB’s show on the map, meaning it doesn’t make sense to run without an umbrella
- Extremely Low ISK/H compared to the cost of the ships required
- Limited number of beacons per day
The PvP perspective:
- Crab beacons are run on a static grid meaning Cyno characters can sit at pre-made bookmarks
- The static nature of CRAB’s also means that target capitals are only ever going to be near full-tank fit
- All the challenge of finding and catching targets has been taken out of hunting through map interference, which for many hunters is the fun part that keep them motivated
- Whaling crab beacon runners is a binary equation of, can you kill the target before he warps his cyno in from his bookmark and lights
Pre-Scarcity crabbing and whaling of supers and dreads in combat anoms was more engaging for all participants, leading to more people in space having more fun while doing so.
Carriers
Carriers have received some very useful abilities, however, none of the changes so far have increased their usefulness in direct combat. Limiting carrier fighter control range to 300KM would allow for significant buffs to the application and speed of carrier fighters while simultaneously removing the ability to sky-net fighters onto gates for defensive fights.
Diminishing returns
I have already done a deep dive into the math and mechanics of the issues with diminishing returns that I wrote up into a summary for the current CSM.
tldr:
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Diminishing Returns kicks in too hard for faxes against capital DPS
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Diminishing Returns punishes many small reps more than one big Rep (Subcap VS Fax)
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The formula has rounding issues leading to unintuitive behavior
Link to the document: Diminishing Returns
Rorqs in space!
While the economic effects of the Rorqual era were devastating to the health of the economy, the amount of exciting and fun content created between the counter-play of whaling fleets and defense fleets is sorely missing from today’s ecosystem.
Negative effects of Mobile Observatories
The implementation of mobile observatories completely overlooked their impacts on both the process of moving capitals as well as using caps behind enemy lines. I suggest capitals should have an available ‘heavy cloaking device’ with a heavy fitting downside but increased cloak stabilization, allowing for more caps to die in combat and less while trying to simply move.
My EVE History
I started playing EVE in 2019, joining Pandemic Horde after being ganked in highsec by Goonswarm Catalysts. I spent my first three years in Horde learning the game and growing as a pilot. Eager to join a corp with a stronger identity, I first moved to Capital Fusion, which unfortunately wasn’t the type of culture I was looking for, and then to Fancypants Inc., where I got my first taste of how amazing the EVE community can be. During my time in Horde I participated in the highs and lows of the unforgettable WWB2. Fancypants was great, but after a few years in Horde I was craving new EVE experiences. This coincided with the signing of the South-East Agreement, which opened up the region for new groups to take sov space.
I packed my capitals with all my belongings and moved south. After a week of shuffling around looking for a fun group to join, a buddy of mine who had also just left Horde invited me to join a small alliance called Hard Commit. Helping run HCOOM was some of the most exciting yet stressful months I’ve had in EVE. At one point I was generating more than half of the alliance’s tax income through long hours of smartbomb ratting in XW2H. It was there I learned how stressful and unforgiving operating a small group can be, if you don’t do something, no one else will. We burned bright, taking all of Detorid, but were evicted a few short months later when Deepwater Hooligans rolled through with more capitals than we had characters in the alliance.
With the South-East Agreement being infringed upon by the blocs, we saw the writing on the wall. Not wanting to be bloc pets, we joined the very group that had just evicted us to get a taste of what lowsec warlording was like. We merged into current CSM Seddow’s corp, “Outback Steakhouse of Pancakes.” I spent the next two years in Steak having a blast taking part in massive dread fights and heavy armor brawls. Steak was where I really started deepening my understanding of the EVE sandbox. It was through my corp-mates in Steak that I learned to really multibox and hunt. Countless hours of fitting debates and heated dreadbrawl theorycrafting with the Deepwater team honed my knowledge and skills further. I had an amazing time in Steak and still hang out with the boys from Steak often.
However, my ever-present hunger to experience more of EVE, combined with the rumblings of a big Nullsec war on the horizon, led me to pack my bags once again five months ago and join the “tryhards” of Horde Vanguard. While the war itself so far has been a little disappointing compared to the chaos of WWB2, experiencing a major null conflict with my now much deeper knowledge of the game has been incredibly fun.
See you in space,
Sven Bauer
…and may the best will win ofc 
)
…add stack multisplit to this and I am in Bujan 
