Why Did CONCORD agent Christer Fuglesang Get Promoted?

Those who read the March 5 patchnotes might gave notices this line:

• The CONCORD agent Christer Fuglesang has been promoted from level 2 to level 3.

 

 There was even a thread on the official forums asking about the reasons for his promotion but CCP Fozzie's answer - "CONCORD rewards dedicated and loyal service to the cause of Justice" - was as vague as possible.

So what did Christer Fuglesang (who is a Swedish astronaut in real life) do to earn this promotion?

According to Russian Eve forums he was very generous, perhaps too generous, with rookie pilots.

A new character with minimal training (Afterburner I, Weapon Upgrades I, Social II, Diplomacy III, the Russian guide says) and a cheap combat frigate fir for maximum DPS could get  the standings to access Christer by attacking a station in hisec - thanks to the way Diplomacy works.

Then, they would turn down mission offers until Christer offered them a good +5% implant and blitz the mission by killing a single structure.

The cycle could be repeated indefinitely by biomassing characters and starting new ones. People could even do that on trial accounts, apparently, and some made billions off the agent.

Christer's promotion means pilots need higher Concord standings now and trial accounts cannot access him at all. If you have the necessary standings, pay him a visit in Autaris.

Interestingly, another Concord agent, Jeremy Tacs, got suspended indefinitely some time ago for doing the same thing and allowing people to farm Machariel blueprints and deadspace modules. Concord really need to make sure their human resources policies are applied consistently.

Looking for Fights in Low and Null

I spent almost a week in Liparer trying to get some kills and failed. Every time I logged on, local pirates were either smacktalking each other while playing station games or camping a gate with too many ships for me to deal with.

On one occasion, I crossed blasters-and-lasers with one of locals in an empty neighboring system but had to retreat after my Talos took too much damage from his Oracle before we even were in point range.

Finally, last Saturday, I decided to just bait them and try to kill a tackler or two. Making myself seen to their gatecamp, I warped off to a belt and aligned to another celestial. After a while, a stealth bomber warped in and cloaked, indicating they had established my location.

No quick tackle warped in though as I kept moving away from the belt.

Then, a Pilgrim recon - who had obviously warped in to the bomber at range- decloaked some 7.5 kilometres away from me. Instinctively, I activated the MWD to burn further away before he could use a scram but he managed to put one on me anyway. Fortunately, I was at about full speed by that time and inertia carried me out of scram range.

More ships started landing next to the Pilgrim as I was burning away and, because I had held my mouse over the overview targeting them one by one, I missed an approaching Taranis. He was about 40 km away when I noticed him, too close for me to lock and shoot without ending up warp scrambled.

I warped off to my align target, closely followed by the Taranis, then to a safe to catch my breath, and then to another belt where the interceptor soon spotted me again.

This time I was position better and locked him from far away, opening fire as he was about 40 km away. The first round stripped his shield and half armour... but then my guns stopped applying any damage. He switched to manual piloting and started spiraling towards me rather than burning in a straight line. I hate when people do that to me.

The good thing was, this had slowed him down and I was able to warp off again, to a celestial where his fleetmates were still waiting for me.

Fortunately, I landed at range, got out and eventually docked.

The engagement, although anticlimactic, had my heart pumping and reminded me why I love Eve.

I still wanted blood, however, and decided to try nullsec. After positioning my cloaky Loki booster in KBP7-G and observing its three stargates for a while, I saw a lonely Coercer on the Dital gate and quickly bought and fitted a standard dualprop Taranis.

I jumped in and burned towards the destroyer who immediately aggressed me. By the end of my MWD cycle I was already in deep structure. Let's deploy drones, NO, I DON'T WANT TO SHOW INFO, I WANT THEM OUT AND FIGHTING!!! Expecting to die to the next volley, I turned on my overheated afterburner, mitigating most - but not all - of the incoming damage.

The Coercer was clawing back shield, although not quickly enough to keep up with my damage. Then his reps stopped and armour melted quickly. But I was already in 40 percent hull. Thirty, twenty, BOOM. The Coercer exploded and I warped out to a random belt, exchanging "gf's" with the pilot.

Turned out he had a medium ASB and an oversized afterburner, quite a deadly combo on a high-DPS boat such as the Coercer. I'm pretty sure I would have lost without the Loki boosts which allowed me to catch up with him quicker and them get under his tracking. Of course, I could have also tried just warping out since he had no scram but I suspect he would have fried my ship as it tried to align.

I left that Taranis in a highsec station close to KBP and came back to Kurniainen in a Talos, a decision I almost regretted last night when I probed out a Zealot in a deadspace pocket in Kurn. I was browsing my ship hangar looking for something small and fast and all I saw were cruisers and larger ships. Eventually, though,  I found a Comet which I had never used before but which was fitted and stocked with ammo.

As I came out of warp inside the deadspace pocket, I saw the Zealot about 50 km away and decided to burn straight for him, hoping to get tackle before he sniped me. I got hit by two volleys but then it was just a matter of orbiting the HAC and chewing through his defenses. I'm pretty sure the pilot had been aware of my plans and decided to gamble and see if he could snipe me.

Nice to see (non-FW) mission runners in lowsec again, such as the Zealot and the deadspace-AB Cane I killed earlier.

Mission: Get a Fight

It's about 20.30 EVE time and I feel like fighting someone after months and months of mostly PVE. I want to get a kill, preferably not a gank.

Location: Kurniainen, The Bleak Lands, station whatever-it's-called-there's-only-one-anyway.
Ship: cookie-cutter blaster Talos

Local shows mostly faction warfare fighters in system. Undock, scan out beacons, there they are. I don't feel like going into plexes in a kiting battlecruiser so instead I hang out at range from the entry gate. Lots of people, many of them flashy, move in but nobody chases me. No luck baiting in a belt either. Time to move.

Oyonata, Sahtogas. Two FW Cynabals on gate immediately engage me. A tempting situation but d-scan shows plenty of other ships in space and I suspect this will end badly for me. Re-approach the gate, jump back. I linger on the other side, giving them a chance to de-aggress and follow but, just like I suspected, they are not going to take risks.

Kovorix or Kil2 would have probably soloed them and their support as well.

Let's go the other way: Sosan, Tararan, Asghed... WTF dude, wrong turn... Tararan, Arzad, Ezzara, Vard, Siseide - nothing really interesting. Time to visit Mother Amamake.

Lots of PL people in local, caps and supers on scan. Warp to cyno to see what's going on but it looks like simple midpointing. Warp around for a while, choose a FW beacon, warp in at range and wait.

Fortunately, this time I don't have to wait long. An Omen soon warped in about 20 kilometres away from me and started burning in my direction.

This was a very good position for me to start a fight as the Omen's potential reinforcements could not warp directly to him so I was glad to return fire when he started pointing and shooting me.

I was already aligned so I just turned on my MWD and overloaded it to make sure the cruiser does not get under my guns.

It only took a few overloaded Neutron Blaster Cannon II volleys to turn the glass cannon Omen into a wreck.

Scoop the loot, dock and repair. Mission accomplished.

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.