Theory of PvP for Pi

PvP Gameplay Center Warfare & Tactics
21

Since Planetary Colony slots are worthless to me, yes. And since I can literally make 70mil isk per planet per day off Robotics, that’s saying something.

I’d rather BLOCK my enemy’s production so they can’t be autarkic.

I’m also deeply sorry that you’re so ■■■■■■■ stupid that you can’t understand the concept.

There are really only 3 strategic Pi resources that everyone NEEDS to produce fuel blocks and structures.

Water, Noble Metals and Felsic Magma.

SINCE High Sec and Low Sec are non productive planets, they don’t count. AND SINCE most wormholes don’t count either, there’s really only about 10,000 planets even in all of Null Sec.

SINCE my “enemies” (or your enemies), don’t own all of Null Sec. There’s really only maybe 2,000 planets in any given major-alliance.

SINCE I don’t need to care about gas-giants, ice-planets, temperate-worlds, etc. I only need to care about Plasma, Lava, Oceanic, Barrens, and other than Barrens the others are rarer…

There’s roughly 300 such planets in any given Alliance.

AND SINCE most alliances control where Pi is done…there’s less than that.

AND SINCE each player who doesn’t do Pi for profit can devote 18 colonies for NO EFFORT, it would take an estimated:

16 players or 16 Omega Accounts to effectively impact an Alliance’s Pi production.

SINCE you can literally fly around your enemy’s territory and scan their Epithals/BRs etc, or watch who goes where, or you can just land a test colony and observe how the hotspots change, a little recon would go a long way to targeting your enemy’s most productive STRATEGIC (water, mech, felsic) planets.

Are you really SO ■■■■■■■ STUPID that you think there are 65217 important planets in New Eden?

22

I’m not sure I understand the way you worded this but I also think you’re German (Dutch?) or something as a first language.

The X-valuation you are asking for is less important.

Right now, I drained a Low-sec barrens with 15% Noble Metals in ~1.5 hours. There’s not a single “white” hotspot left on the planet for the last 2 days when I haven’t even mined at all.

This phenomenon would be true for all my alts with colonies on the same planet. None of them would get the higher values which currently were about ~9,000 units per cycle per extraction head. Now they are depleted to about ~4,000 units per cycle in the remaining “hotzones” which are mostly … greenish now.

More interestingly is how slowly this planet is taking to recharge. 2 days of “dearth” for 1.5 hours of intense extraction.

Granted it’s only a 15% planet but most Noble Metal Barrens in Null are going to be only in the 30% range at best.

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23

Maybe I’m not smartest in the world but I understand your concept and there is no reason to call me stupid. I wished you good luck. What else do you need? You have everything planned, go for it and conquer the galaxy.

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24

Hehehe, they are in their grandiose mode right now, nothing can break through, megalomania forever!

Venom

25

They’re not worthless, you could sell that SP for ISK.

People who have the PI skills can get money out of it (either through PI or selling the SP) and people who don’t have the PI skills cannot block enemy planets.

Blocking enemy planets may be possible, but it’s a very small niche for players that do have PI skills, do not want ISK for PI goods or ISK for extracted PI skill SP, and do care about blocking enemy PI.

But I think it’s nice that you have found a use for your colony slots!

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26

I apologize, but I do like to “troll-lala” sometimes.

However, what frustrates me is the very 1dimensional thinking you display. If you can, then do so, think multi-dimensionally. There’s only a FEW important planets that need to be targeted in this form of warfare.

So the 65,000ish actual planets is unimportant. Data without context is NOT information and is therefore NOT actionable intelligence.

Everyone could benefit from a few years of operational planning in the military, just saying.

27

If you’re that hard-up for isk you got other problems.

But, a non-skilled Pi colonist (Omega account) still has a baseline of what…9 planets? That’s not-negligible. Especially since a low-skilled or low-effort skill into Command Centers (CCIII for instance) will give you the ability to pack a HUGE PUNCH in damaging a planet’s productivity.

28

Thank you.

So maybe I’ll give some context for my opinion… yes there can be maybe few important planets in the neighborhood of your target but are they irreplaceable?

Taking into account that these are extraction planet then no complex setup will exist of them - just regular harvesting colonies, easy and cheap to decommission and rebuild somewhere else.

Just quick thoughts what target can do after they notice their planet is dry for no obvious reason:

  1. Use other planet of same type, maybe slightly further away.
  2. Switch production on affected planet to produce something else.
  3. Buy missing product on the market.

While 1 and 2 might be limited or also impacted by your actions then the last point enables access to all 65K planets in the game (ok. less with that few important resources but still thousands) because removes any need for close proximity of planet.

Defender can manufacture any different resource, haul it to Jita, sell, and use that ISK to buy what’s needed and avoid empty return trip. ISK wise - almost zero loss (1-1 exchange). Hauling - maybe, but usually there are always other reasons to go to Jita, so adding some cargo probably won’t hurt anyone too much.

If they are big and consume large quantities of resource - then they most likely have access to many solar systems. If they are small - then they consume small amount of resources and can haul them without any issue.

What’s worse all three counters (and they are just quick thoughts so might be more) are completely not detectable by you.

You will keep resetting extractors while no one else will keep using that planet anymore.

Now speaking about the costs for attacker and defender… they still have their planetary colony slots available, so they can make ISK out of any planets in the universe (be it in their area, wormhole or anywhere).

If they do extraction that doesn’t require presence in the system, just one visit to establish command center and then go from time to time to collect products. They can also use this ISK to buy products which you blocked losing very thin margin on taxes and maybe hauling.

On attacker side… you are losing money 24/7 on the opportunity cost. You could do lazy P2 production on your own and earn ISK. Instead your planetary slot is used to harvest enemy space without making any profit for you.

Let’s assume… 9.6M ISK per character (5 planets) per day (240 units x 8K ISK x 5). That’s 288M ISK wasted during one month. And you are talking about 16 players… this is ~150M ISK lost per day… 4.5B ISK / month.
Like whelping small gang fleet everyday without killing anything, or self destructing capital ship once per month.

For defenders even one month of inconvenience will not make big difference. After that month they will just adapt and go around problem of dry planets.

Unless you have spy there is zero guarantee that any damage is actually done and even don’t know when to stop or where to move next.

But as I said… this is sandbox - nothing stops you from trying this tactics.

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29

I’ll go through your post piecemeal but nothing is irreplaceable, rather this is a cost-calculus.

I have guys not doing Pi, put them to work by diminishing returns on my enemy’s Pi. It increases value of my Pi producers in the long run, it creates “player-generated content” and not just the colony work, but the recon/espionage too.

For me, this idea is a “comprehensive” plan of war. The embargo/blockade of the American Civil War required totality, it wasn’t: let’s blockade south carolina but not north carolina because north carolina isn’t as valuable.

Similarly, through recon of the enemy you’d determine the most crucial strangle-point. If we had to pick ONE crucial resource out of all of them, I’d say it’s Noble Metals, but it might be Felsic Magma. Water is a close runner-up.

As such…let’s say our manpower is thin. I’d determine the strategy to require hammering Noble Metals. You identify all planets with Noble Metals over…20% or so.

Because frankly if the Noble Metals aren’t over 20% they will be knee-capping themselves just trying to meet demand.

One colony on one 20%+ planet will devastate the resources of that planet just a few 1hour jobs per day, and a few relocations of extractor heads.

So, a small team with 9-18 total colonies among their alts could do A HUGE impact against just Noble Metals. For example.

And you would expand from there.

  1. Raises cost of their productivity (every jump is fatiguing and raises opportunity to pvp their supply lines.
  2. Not useful - Water, Noble Metals, Felsic Magma ARE REQUIRED for strategic materials to Structures/Fuel Blocks
  3. Because a producer now becomes a consumer you’ve effectively RAISED demand for a product your own alliance can produce. (provided you aren’t being embargoe’d either).

If the defender starts producing another resource for resale, they will lower that resource’s price, thereby you have achieved the strategic objectives of:

  1. Raise costs for your enemy by adding both real price changes (higher demand of strategic Pi raising their buy price, and higher production of non-strategic Pi lowering their sale price,) AND transaction costs.
  2. More importantly you open them to blockade by importing strategic materials.
30

Remember how much damage I did to that planet I tested on?

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I haven’t reset an extractor in 2+ days.

What this tells me is someone is on that Barren with a 1-to-2week extraction job and hasn’t come back to check it SINCE!

You can infer what your enemy is doing once you have colonies established because you get direct insight.

As such, I know I don’t really need to do anything more on this Barren. Being 14% I estimate there’s probably ONE typical harvester on this world running at a 7-14day cycle. They are happy with the modest 3-5million isk profit per day.

At this rate, I just cratered their profit to probably less than 1million isk a day.

For very very minimal effort.

On a 30%+ planet it can probably support 2 or 3 colonists at 7 day intervals. Maybe even at 2 or 3 day intervals.

31

As Andersen Geten will tell you, hauling is a very overlooked cost…and it’s actually not unsubstantial. Just use Push-X to estimate the impact costs of making an Alliance haul anything. Pi is very easy to estimate because everything is very predictable. If you consume 10,000 fuel blocks a day, you know exactly how much you have to transport if you lose internal-production (autonomy/autarky).

32

Lastly. The opportunity cost is outweighed by the strategic cost. Alliances NEED to be autarkic. They need to reduce exposure to blockades. They NEED to produce in-house. This is how they preserve their monopolies and sovereignties. If they were exposed to Jita prices and Haulage…the wars would have more substantial impacts because it opens a whole new theater of war along the jump bridge corridors.

As such, I estimate it is very realistic a HUGELY strategic success to get an Alliance to have to buy Pi from outside sources.

Even as recently as a day ago I had old friends now in Null trying to negotiate me back into producing Pi for their Null Sec corps. I just don’t have the time or energy to bother so I’ve begun educating said friends on what can be done.

Pi production inhouse is of strategic importance.

As such…the opportunity cost isn’t as simple as isk-for-isk.

The most important victory is can you create a blockade of fuel to your enemy.

If you cripple their Pi, yes you can.

Ice products would be another target.

33

Let me remain skeptical.

I’ll just list few points which doesn’t fit to overall argumentation and actually step back from the discussion because you seem to be excited and convinced with your plan so it is better to just test it and see if it works or not…

This seems to be main point. My question would be is if that increased cost outweigh your loses.

That was my point earlier. Your alliance can’t produce anything because your slots are taken by colonies on enemy planet. So maybe someone else will earn on this but not your own alliance.

I would assume alliances don’t use Push-X services because they can easily run their own jump freighters.

Must be huge alliance then? And huge alliance has many members, friends, partners, planets, alts? I might be wrong but I doubt they are able to sustain 10K fuel blocks/day production with these just few planets you are able to block?

Sure. But still it sounds for me we are talking about temporary crisis because in short period they can accept the slightly increased costs and next step will be just adapt…

They can’t destroy your colonies, but you can’t stop them from doing what they do.
Just a little annoyance to them with huge costs on your side…

34

I really love that you’re putting a lot of thought into this.

This is incorrect. Those planets are 100% tax for Joe Neut. For members they’re probably around 10%.

35

What strategic situations would merit the deployment of the tactic?

My first impression is:

  1. If one alliance is much larger than the opponent; the ability to spare a number of pilots/alts to train up enough PI to hit all or most of the smaller side’s PI would be worthwhile.
  2. If one alliance is much more diversified in income and the other depends primarily on PI.
  3. If an alliance’s warchest is exhausted, and they are dependent on current incomes to prosecute the war.

I have virtually no grasp of sov politics, aside from the old hand-wavy complaints of moon-goo funding these endless wars. How many pilots would it take to put a significant dent in the income of one or the other of the two major blocs? Would this work to choke off smaller members of the opposing bloc one at a time?

36

So if you can get 30 dudes together to do something, then get into vedmaks and shoot the pocos. Thats the best way to PI pvp

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