ThePuce Moose for CSM20 - PvP and Systems Reworks

Council Of Stellar Management CSM Campaigns
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Hi Folks, I’m ThePuce Moose.

I am a PvPer, FC, and co-leader of the Lowsec small/midgang alliance Watch This.

I’m a veteran player of EVE, having started in 2008 and lived across a variety of space. I’ve run missions and DEDs in Highsec, pressed F1 and farmed PI in Nullsec, grown a PvP corporation and run an Alliance in Lowsec, and watched C-Beams glitter off the Aldranette gate.

I am currently a Lowsec resident, but I aim to take a holistic view of the whole of EVE. I understand that no area of space exists independently, and a change to any area has a knock on effect to all others. My objective is to improve content across the sandbox.

While my day to day is currently small group PvP, having played as an FC since 2021, I also have long, lived experience in a wide variety of EVE’s gameplay. I believe that for PvP to flourish, other areas must also be improved to keep players in space, engaged and having fun with the game.

EVE has been around a long time, and so have many of its systems and mechanics. Many parts of the game have largely been ‘solved’ by players and are long overdue some TLC to rejuvenate them.

Stagnation has led to the decline of playstyles, underuse of many ships and modules, and the monopolisation of space by large groups. I believe by focusing efforts on these systems, we can breathe new life into EVE and usher in a new golden age..

Some subjects I would like to work on (expanded detail at link below):

  • Frequent ship balances to increase variety of choice and refresh the overall meta.

  • Provide new tools to reduce the pain of moving home stations.

  • Fleet projection changes.

  • Structure grind and safety.

  • Collaborative, attention-friendly PvE

  • Faction Warfare improvements to remove pain-points e.g. Awoxing.

  • Outdated systems reworks e.g. Standings.

I have been observing CSM goings-on for many years, and know I have the drive, experience and passion to be an effective communicator between the playerbase and CCP. As leadership of a small alliance I am truly independent and beholden to no-one but myself, and the EVE community as a whole.

You can expect:

  • Frequent, open communication with all players, regardless of their group.

  • Lobbying for ideas that benefit the game overall.

  • Calm and thought-out communication with CCP. No “demands” or tantrums.

  • Open (and excited) to participate in content I am not an expert in, to build knowledge of your issues and experiences.

A longer list of changes with more detail can be found at my campaign website:

If you have any questions, ideas or just want to chat, you can find me:

At my CSM/Alliance Discord - Watch This

Direct on Discord - pucemoose

In-game - ThePuce Moose

Videos:

Asking the most important question at Fanfest '25.

CSM Interview on Untethered.

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Held for future stuff.

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Strong post :flexed_biceps: and some interesting direction. I just wondered if you had any thoughts at all on enhancing drone PVP? That would be very interesting for me and many others. I think you are my favourite.

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As we spoke about before, I’d be quite cautious about buffing drones whilst PvE multiboxing remains as it is.
I’m always willing to hear ideas though, I think your points about automatic recall on warp and repairing drones with paste and are both good QoL changes. Both of those are on my personal list to explore.
I also think utility drones (web, neut, tp etc.) need to be looked at. They are extremely underused and could give some nice variety to droneboats.

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Thanks for sharing!

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I do not understand. Drones get no love after CCP halves the benefit of drone interfacing, does three nerfs to the Ishtar, one to the dominix, lowers the % of a drone damage amp, but lightning bolt ratting that goes 10x as hard is ok ?

Actually yeah that is really good, +1

Can’t assist them to the bunny and their effects are weak. A TP sentry drone would be just swell for PvE. Argument for a T2 version like salvage drones and mining drones ? CCP won’t be able to resist by adding a new X12 skill ‘Electronic Warfare Drone Specialization’ right ?

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Mr. Puce Moose has always stood firmly behind low-sec. He has consistently been an advocate for small- to medium-scale groups, as well as larger organizations, within the low-sec and faction warfare communities. Over the years, he has participated in numerous streams and discussions on these topics, demonstrating a deep and practical understanding of the challenges that have been affecting our ecosystem and others across New Eden.

He’s never been afraid to speak his mind, but just as importantly, he’s always shown a willingness to work with others toward building consensus. Mr. Puce Moose combines knowledge, compassion, and resilience in a way that makes him an excellent candidate for the CSM. He would be a strong, effective voice for our communities and if he doesn’t get top 10 would be a fantastic choice for selectee position in order to bring that added diversity to the CSM.

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Whats there not to understand? Drones are too good in PvE because they can easily be “assisted” to a bunny and people are running content with 5-10 chars at once instead of teaming up.

He advocates for a new PvE design that makes it a lot more benefitial to run Missions/Anos whatever as a team where mutiple ships have a role, a purpose that requires attention and concentration instead of low-apm multibox grinding for maximum ISK/hour. Something that you can’t conveniently multibox.

And he is absolutely right in that. I absolutely like the recent change of limiting Drone Assist to 20, but you can already notice that people are simply switching to Gilas for Drone DPS now, because then you can still assist 10 Gilas to a single bunny… if It was up to me, Drone Assist would be limited to 5 and replace your own drones in the process. And both chars would need a high multiplier “Remote Drone Control” Skill for doing it. Mass Multibox Drone PvE cannot be nerfed enough.

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I like your “List”. You have some very good points on there. Especially limiting Fleet Projection and removing ACL-management from Citadels. Both gives way too much power to the largest groups in term of “power projection”. Go on, most of your ideas show quite some understanding about the roots of some of the game’s problems!

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The bunny is now limited to 20 drones, so at best that is like 10 rattles and at worst that is 4 of any other no AT ship.

It was called incursions, then CCP took away half and haven’t increased the payout in over a decade.

People are not using a fleet of 5 dominix to clear havens so fast they have to wait for spawns. No. Nerf the vorton projector fleets, then look at making other weapons platforms worse/better, especially in the context of how lag is huge damage ‘nerf’ that disenfranchises anyone not with a good ping to the server.

I double checked “The List” to see if this was true. Yikes.

Why did I immediately think of that south park meme where the people are rubbing their chests after reading this ?

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Good thing, at least better than before. Not as far as I had pushed it, but well enough for now.

Different story. What CCP does or has done doesn’t change what he stands for. And it is the right course. PvE should be much more like Abyssal, except from the lowest activities maybe.

Nullsec isn’t the center of the universe. I don’t care what Nullseccers do or don’t do to grind their Anos. If 5 multiboxed Domis would kill the waves faster than they spawn, another reason to re-design the sites in favor of less multiboxing and more teamwork.

Another issue, but I would agree. Like PvE sites should have “Anti-Drone” NPCs, Design should also bring “Anti-Arc waves”. By letting them spawn wide apart from each other, giving them very low sig and high speed so they can’t be oneshotted and will then orbit the Vorton Fleet in close orbit, so they hit each other all the time. Bringing NPC-minidrones (see Vila-NPCs in Abyss) that soak up large parts of the Arc. Bringing extremely high eHP 1-ship waves where Arc-Fleets get really low killingspeed.

No idea what goes on in your mind. But the point shows that he is indeed one of there rare players who have understand how much all those “Holding Concepts” hurt the gameplay.
It should simply not be possible to own a station and let out-of-owners-corp chars fuel/gun it. Period. If you want to have 100% control over something, do 100% of the work yourself.

Citadel design in general is one of the worst mistakes CCP has ever done in their game design, being responsible for the political mess and large-scale stagnation we see for years now.

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Dont let the fact that his corp is eclipsed by the better corp in his alliance - TheBased Moose has lots of great ideas that he’s actually thought through and is always willing to discuss and critically think through new ones. Great candidate for LS and the game in general

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This year, I absolutely feel that there are multiple candidates running who I trust to carry the realities of what Eve needs to CCP far better than I could. I am not running this year specifically because I believe that several, with Puce at the top, are the right people to assist CCP with getting through the noise to the most important issues.

ThePuce Moose 2025!

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Thanks for voicing your concerns. I am by no means saying that vorton ratting is “OK”. However I don’t think we should ignore one problem area because another exists.
That being said, I don’t currently know enough about the prevalence of vorton ratting. It’s gone on my list of things to learn more about!

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With limited dev time to draw from and how poor CCP is at applying small ‘balance’ changes ( ie, DBS and MESS should have been applied months apart, not same day ) to gather data and make adjustments accordingly, messing with drones ‘again’ is a missallocation of resources.

Drones are not the problem, everything else is, everything else is getting neglected since probably surgical strike, therefore it only looks like drones are the problem.

e.g.

Laser based battleships got a recent buff because their cap stability sucked and had sucked for years. On that note, ever notice how a laser is just a bigger target painter, but does not give a target painting bonus? Rails don’t do piercing damage, missiles don’t do AoE damage anymore, neither does Artillery nor for that matter do Blasters do a cone shaped mini-boson.

Vortons are a problem maybe not ‘the’ problem. If the other weapon systems had an attribute that could be leveraged in the same way the AoE effect of a Vorton could be leveraged, especially for weapons that used to do AoE that had it removed for ‘performance’ reasons, there would at least be some kind of parity, right ? People certainly would not be fussing about drones if a citadel torpedo damaged everything in the explosion radius or a laser boat destroyer could point defence incoming missiles and bombs like a defender launcher, the meta might see some diversity.

No, drones are not the problem.

Drones are for the poors, Vortons are for the rich. Its two different users with asymmetric impact engaging in the same activity. With 4 large vortons in an a haven it can be run in less than 5 minutes. The only reason it is not the ‘de facto’ standard is the high cost of entry and depending on the space, how quickly everyone else gets annoyed they cannot get haven/sanctum sites.

I do not Vorton rat, but on more than one occasion I have been in a cloaked ship watching them destroy sites like emperor palpatine going all edward taserfingers on skywalker. Its even more effective than the old days of smartbomb ratting in macharials, as long as a NPC capital does not spawn.

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It does really only has to do with “performance” in the end. Piercing damage would require to have an actual “object flight path” being calculated to detect if anything is “behind” the target. And that for every shot on grid. Same for AoE damage of missiles. It would increase serverload by a lot.
If you ever have done a 7-bomb-run against a big enemy fleet, you can literally feel the server aching when it comes to the damage calculation. You can see the delay before the damage messages and killmails drop in. Doing that for basically every missile hit on Grid, impossible.

Vorton Arcs are limited to 10 and it’s a simple range calculation. AND it is easy to balance if they are found to be too superior. Arc range can be reduced, Arc number can be reduced, Application can be reduced and raw damage can be reduced. MUCH easier from a design perspective than balancing AoE missiles or Piercing Guns.

Just as “explanation” why such effects aren’t added to other weapon systems, it’s just a performance thing.

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Agree that dev time is better spent on things other than brand new mechanics but AOE is already coded. We have bombers, smart bombs, ecm bursts, links- most of which happen en masse in large scale fights.

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There is a magnitude orders higher amount of missile hits per given timeframe than bomb hits, links or ECM bursts. The point is, if missiles would do AoE damage for example, the server would need to check for possible hits within that AoE range at every single missile impact on grid. Which can happen by the hundreds or even thousands each tick during a large battle, depending on how many ships spam missiles at each other.

Compared to that, the number of Fleet Links activated or Bombs launched or ECM bursts activated is almost nothing, even in a larger battle. The point isn’t how many ships are affected, the point is to query positional data at every hit, which would probably bring the server down to it’s knees as soon as people begin to spam missiles. Which is the reason they decactivated AoE damage on missiles, because initially they did work that way. But as the battles grew larger, it was simply impossible to keep up with the performance.

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To this…

…and this…

Keeping this in mind

If missiles were ‘limited to damaging the closest 10’ and hybrid ‘piercing’ ( though there is a difference between ‘does proportional damage to shield and armour of same target’ and ‘killing hits excess damage applies ships behind’ and a more global ‘misses that would hit the ship next to them are hits’ ) was a simple ‘range’ calculation, they do not necessarily create any more of a performance problem than simply using Vortons, right?

Or does the fact endencom ships are not a standard doctrine the real reason nobody is complaining about performance issues?

Honestly with most of the missles their explosion raidius is so small until you get to maybe fury heavy/cruise/torp the target is so big the AoE would be minimal, if it were not for the fact EVE Fleet PvP usually devolves into a congo line of 30 something cruisers trailing behind an FC all occupying the same ‘space and time’ that would not otherwise be possible.

I am all for getting behind candidates, even those that might be seen as incumbent ‘null block’ or ‘niche’ parts of the game and I liked a lot of the items in :“The List” but if after 12 months the only item achieved was ‘nerf drones more’ its a vote I would regret.