High Sec Is Rough

What happens when you find s 4/10 in Caldari high sec space which is already being run by someone else?

A lot of insults and a bounty.


EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Alikara
Blue101 > dont be a fagot
Blue101 > leave
Blue101 > waht a huge fagot
manbelly big > 12 b&
Blue101 > fuck you
Blue101 > u fuckign peice of shit


Bounty placed on you
From: CONCORD
Sent: 2012.12.22 20:49

Blue101 placed 3 000 000 ISK in bounty on your head.

The loot was crap by the way.

Plex Wars

Running DED complexes in Cladari lowsec can be insanely profitable.

My associate's Tengu more than paid for itself with loot from just two 5/10 plexes: a B-Type Medium Shield Booster and a B-Type Invulnerability Field.

But with higher rewards comes higher risk and stronger competition. While in the Bleak Lands one can run dozens of plexes undisturbed, in Caldari space someone will probably finish a 4/10 before you are done probing it down.

Last night, my associate spotted a number of cosmic signatures on scan in Hakonen as well as two Tengus and a cloud of core scanner probes, a clear indication of exploration activity. As he scrambled to pinpoint the sites, I came into Hakonen myself in a covops frigate and decided to try scaring off competition with combat probes.

My associate resolved a 4/10 and started clearing it - a very easy task in a Tengu but we had to be on alert, switching back and forth between overview tabs to kill rats and check for probes or incoming ships. Unfortunately, the site only produced a shield trasnfer mod, not worth much.

I returned to probing and located a 6/10 in the same system, already being run by one of the Tengus I had seen earlier. The pilot welcomed me in local as my covops went in to check his progress, meaning he had a cloaked scout outside. I moved on and found him in the middle of clearing the second room out of four.

Well, if he refuses to be scared out of the plex, I will have to use force, I reckoned, moving two jumps into a system where I had a PVP Drake. The second gate, however, was camped so on my way back I had to take a different, longer route, making me a bit concerned about time.

The Tengu, however, was still not done and warped out leaving me with several NPCs in the third room and venting his frustration in local.

Competitor > I did leave you alone in the Scout Oupost
Competitor > To bad my other toon is to far away atm
Competitor > Good luck finishing the plex though

In most DED plexes, the last room does not really need to be cleared, you just grab the loot and warp off, so I brought my own Tengu pilot and proceeded to finish the complex. Unfortunately, I was rewarded with the same type of module as before, just of a better variety.

Oh well. I mailed my competitor, informing him of the poor haul. Turns out he had at least got something out of it.

Re:plex
From: Competitor
 Sent: 2012.12.18 00:15
To: Nursultan, 


I'm flying dangerous all the time.. hense the low sec :)

The plex did give a dread stasis thingy halfway though.

To bad you didn't get a nice drop.

Fly however you like and do shoot others :P

.-)

--------------------------------
plex
From: NursultanSent: 2012.12.17 22:07
To: Competitor,

the drop sucked
and i really hoped for a fight, shame your pvp char was away
gl, fly dangerous 0/

The Entitlement Complex

"NEW NPC AI completely changes complexes. It's almost impossible to run any of them, especially 10/10 or 8/10. Switching targets simply makes it impossible. I personally don't have 3b to get some high specialized marauder. I don't have time and patience to run missions in high sec making 20-30M/hour. I like to shoot and I don't like to do market stuff. My accounts cost 1.2b every month that i need to pay to keep my accounts alive. It was already on the border now, spending most of my free time in weekends running damn complexes so survive another month. But now it's over. I don't see any way how to make ISK anymore!

I will wait one month if CCP realizes they totally ****** it up. After that I don't see any other way than letting my accounts expire and wait what happens.

Very bad job CCP, you really need someone who understands this game from inside ! Thumbs down !"

 The quote above is very representative of what I often see on Eve forums: "Due to such and such change I can no longer PLEX all my accounts, hey CCP, you're losing a customer!"

Do these people realise that they are non-paying customers? CCP spend money on design, coding and infrastructure and get nothing in return from these guys, apart from their interactions with other players. Yes, these are also important in a MMORPG but they don't pay bills.

Looking at the PLEX/GTC price, which has doubled since I started playing in 2008, it seems that either many more people are buying them these days (more likely in my opinion) or fewer people are selling - both bad news for CCP finances.

CLARIFICATION: I know people paying with PLEX have their bill paid in RL money by someone else. What I believe is that the growing PLEX price (ignoring speculative spikes and drops) shows that for every PLEX generator, there are more and more PLEX users appearing. Which, in turn, means that average revenue per user goes down. Of course, only CCP know the breakdown between their variable and fixed costs and can tell whether gross or per-user revenue is more important to them. Again, only CCP know how elastic PLEX supply is with regards to ISK price.

When CCP tried to introduce alternative ways of boosting revenues, players revolted, so it is to be expected that they will at least try to reduce ISK generation.

No one has promised players they will be able to play for free AND spend very little time grinding the required ISK. Nuff said.

The low-level plex debate

As you might have heard, CCP plans to remove static 1/10 and 2/10 plexes with tomorrow'a patch and some players, such as Miura Bull and Kane Rizzel - guys I have a lot of respect for - are campaigning against that.

Now, I myself am torn on the issue. One the one hand, these plexes do indeed provide good arenas for frigate fights and I've had many myself. I've also made quite a lot of ISK (for me at the time, at least) from them.

On the other hand, a dedicated farmer/camper can either lock them down by sitting in the final room or kill everyone who comes in using a nearly invincible multiboxing setup (e.g. high DPS frig with web and point plus Sentinel, backed by skirmish links).

Still, I think they make sense in lowsec but not in highsec where there is no way to kill farmers.

Timmy, Johnny, and Spike in Eve

Time and again, the debate about seeking good fights vs playing to win comes up on the official forums, r/eve and individual blogs. Both sides accuse each other of playing the game the wrong way, taking it too seriously, being mad and butthurt, you name it.

I wanted to look at it from a different perspective.

Wizards of the Coast, the developers of awesome card game Magic: the Gathering, have identified three major types of players in their audience - Timmy, Johnny and Spike.

Let me just quote MaRo's blog and add my comments:

Johnny is the creative gamer to whom Magic is a form of self-expression. Johnny likes to win, but he wants to win with style. It’s very important to Johnny that he win on his own terms. As such, it’s important to Johnny that he’s using his own deck. Playing Magic is an opportunity for Johnny to show off his creativity. Johnny likes a challenge. Johnny enjoys winning with cards that no one else wants to use. He likes making decks that win in innovative ways. What sets Johnny apart from the other profiles is that Johnny enjoys deckbuilding as much as (or more than) he enjoys playing. Johnny loves the cool interactions of the cards. He loves combo decks. Johnny is happiest when he’s exploring uncharted territory. Like Timmy (mentioned below), Johnny cares more about the quality of his wins than the quantity. For example, let's say Johnny builds a new deck that has a neat but difficult way to win. He plays ten games and manages to get his deck to do its thing… once. Johnny walks away happy.

This one is very easy to translate into Eve. Garmon, Kil2, Matari Exodus guys, people who use creative setups, handicap themselves with "honour" rules such as not blobbing and not using ECM, are willing to spend hours looking for that one perfect fight.

Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory. Spike cares more about the quantity of wins than the quality. For example, Spike plays ten games and wins nine of them. If Spike feels he should have won the tenth, he walks away unhappy.

This guy represents the opposite end of the spectrum. "IF YOUR IN A FAIR FIGHT YOUR DOING IT WRONG!!!1111LOL." We all know them, rolling with Falcons/cynos up their sleeve or at the very least a reinforcement fleet one jump out.

Timmy is what we in R&D call the "power gamer." Timmy likes to win big. He doesn’t want to eke out a last minute victory. Timmy wants to smash his opponents. He likes his cards to be impressive, and he enjoys playing big creatures and big spells. ...What sets Timmy apart from the other two profiles is that Timmy is motivated by fun. He plays Magic because it’s enjoyable. Timmy is very social. An important part of the game is sitting around with his friends. Timmy cares more about the quality of his win than the quantity of his wins. For example, Timmy sits down and plays ten games. He only wins three games out of ten but the three he wins, he dominates his opponent. Timmy had fun. Timmy walks away happy.

Now who is this guy in Eve? At first, I'm tempted to say this describes "elite PVP" groups like PL and R&K but these guys are not happy to win one out of ten fights. Does this describe people like Gevlon who want to do "stuff that matters", namely win and hold sovereignty? Or is it about people who fly pimped-out battleships or solo in supercaps? Unlike Magic though, Eve is unforgiving to such players.

In a later blog, MaRo breaks down the archetype further, explaining that Timmies can be:

• power gamers (looking for domination)
• social gamers (obvious one)
• diversity gamers (trying out new stuff all the time)
• adrenalin gamers (pretty obvious as well)

Check out the blog for breakdowns of other types.

MaRo also describes hybrid types such as Timmy/Spike or Spike/Timmy (which better matches my impression of PL/R&K and the like), Johhny/Spike or Spike/Johnny (the EFT warrior who insists that his build is better than all the rest), Timmy/Johnny or Johnny/Timmy (erm, DHB Wildcat?) and, finally, Timmy/Johnny/Spike, the guy who wants "to play big cards, have innovative decks, and yet still win as much as possible".

What do you, hardly-ever-commenting readers, think?

The Lazy Wormhole PI Guide

Due to having little time for space combat, I have recently concentrated on money-making opportunities, specifically those that do not involve spending a lot of time online. One of the obvious options is planetary interaction (PI).

Now, there are many PI guides out there but most of them are either introductory or focused on maximising output and profit. I had tried the maximum output approach in the past and burned out rather quickly because it involves splitting extraction and refining and this requires a lot of hauling.

This time, I decided to try a lazy approach, minimising my interaction with planets.

This means refining on the spot and limits you to P2 products. While this means that you lose some efficiency, it allows you to leave the planets unattended for a longer time. It also requires that you operate in 0.0 space, preferably wornholes as they get the best output regardless of class while the productivity of k-space nullsec plants varies depending on security status.

The required skills are:

• Command Center Upgrades V - to put all those facilities online
• Interplanetary Consolidation - as high as possible because why bother with PI at all otherwise, but you can add extra planets later
• Planetology IV - I've heard V is even better for finding hotspots but IV is a prerequisite for the next skill
• Advanced Planetology IV - to optimise your extractors' placement
• Racial Industrial IV - to use your race's largest hauler and minimise trips
• Hull Upgrades II - to use Expanded Cargoholds II; you can rig your hauler with another character

Remote Sensing is irrelevant in w-space where all your planets will be in a single system.
If you are committed to your corporation, you can train these skills on an alt (or multiple ones) on the same account or a separate one. Like, the one where your T3 booster sits.

First of all, you need a w-space base of operations. Join a wormhole corp or, if you have a few alts or friends, set up a tower in an empty system yourself. Ideally, it will be a C1/C2 system with a hisec static connection, making hauling very easy. A C1/C2 with a C1/C2 static will also work, and will probably have less traffic.

Next, survey your planets and figure out what to produce there.
Here are your options by planet type, with lowest Jita sell prices based on eve-central data:


Note that planets do not always have good supply of certain resources, limiting your options.

Now, put your command centers in your cargohold, preferably while staying under POS shields, and start deploying your colonies. Apart from a fully upgraded command center, you will need:

• a launchpad
• two extractors (one for each raw material)
• six basic industrial facilities (for 47-hour cycles, significantly longer cycles require less processing power)
• three advanced industrial facilities (one per two basic ones)

Put them down close to each other to save on link costs and make sure everything is connected to the launchpad. Now, install the necessary schematics at AIFs and BIFs and launch the extractors. Make sure to route everything through the launchpad which serves as a buffer. Arrange extractor heads so that you get roughly equal numbers of both of your raw mats, otehrwise you risk clogging your buffer with bulky P0.

Your setup should look like this.

Such a setup will produce about 250-350 units of P2 per cycle, depending on raw material abundance, yielding you 1.25-1.75 million ISK per day if you go with the most popular commodities. This means 225-315 million ISK before tax per month for a character running all six planets. Not much money but not much effort either since all you do is log on every other day and restart extractors. Plus, this is meant to be done with multiple PI alts.

Hauling frequency will depend on your output. Having an Orca makes life much easier but with a static hisec hole I think regular industrials should be fine.

 Have I missed something here? Please tell me if so.

HML Changes Revised

CCP developers have revised their plans to nerf heavy missile damage projection.

While the 25-percent range nerf this is still going to hurt large long-range HML Drake and Tengu fleets, it looks like both ships will remain viable for solo and small-gang PVP where fighting mostly occurs within overheated and gang-boosted point range.

The ships just might have to trade some tank rigs for damage or rate-of-fire ones.

Still, HAMs are becoming an option as well. Overall, looks like a healthy change.