Life in Solitude: Week Four

Diplomacy: Crybullies and fair play.

Crybully: Noun. A person who does things to other people, and then plays the victim when things are done in return.

There is a certain type of person that perceives the natural consequences of their behavior as unprovoked attacks. If they insult you, and you insult them back, they cry foul. Consequences are grave injustices. For them, turnabout isn't fair play, and they are perpetual victims. They're not simple crybabies - they're crybullies.

Andiedeath is one such crybully. I knew Andiedeath a few years ago, when I was in the Rifterlings [RLING] corporation. From what I remember, he seemed like a decent enough bloke back then. So when he popped up in Local one day, I said hello and we started chatting. It wasn't long before our corps set blue standings, and I joined them for a couple of small gang roams, mined with them in Toustain, and was looking forward to having more friends in the area.

But there were signs of bad stuff to come. The first was when Andiedeath's corp began strong arming friends of ours - Garsa Corp - into transferring their structures over ("nice Athanor you got there... you should sell it to us at a 'fair price'... would be a shame if it were to suddenly explode one day..."). This was inconvenient, because it meant we had to bug him for ACLs. The second was when Andiedeath's corp joined <STFU> alliance - who are our enemies - which meant that these structures were now in hostile hands. We remained blue, but, really, it was only a matter of time before things went south.

The time came when I was eating some <STFU> content cookies, and Andiedeath opened fire on me. I got my cookie, and moonwalked out of the engagement with a fresh killmark on my Hecate, but I was confused. I asked Andiedeath why he was shooting blues, and he explained that we were no longer blues.

[ 2021.04.15 13:13:13 ] Andiedeath > we arent blue I told your CEO we had to reset you at DT
[ 2021.04.15 13:15:16 ] Xuixien > So is that why I can no longer dock in certain structures to do reactions?
[ 2021.04.15 13:15:45 ] Andiedeath > yeah

Okay fine - so we're red and we can't dock at your structures, which means a lot of people in the area will be canceling some expensive and time-intensive BPO research lines and having to asset safety them. So - you're now enemies?

Architeuthis Rex > xu you prick

Okay, fine by me. The pilot shown above was pretty pissed, but I don't know what he was expecting. I'm fairly certain we show up orange to <STFU>. Do you expect to mine in safety when hostiles are present? I tried to explain that it was nothing personal, and really, their CEO should have told him that no place in Solitude is safe for [QUOKA] to mine anymore, since no place is safe for <STFU> to mine.

Andiedeath's response to the gank is gold, and provides a perfect example of crybullying:

Turnabout is fair play. Sorry bro. You shoulda checked the killboard:

Also, we don't have access to any structures now and <STFU> would never let us join their alliance, since they wouldn't even let us join a blue alliance. A herpaderp try to keep up dude.

Not sure how to fit this into the story, but: [QUOKA] brought a Bhaalgorn and two Guardians to engage... [-XXX]'s Catalyst and Garmur, and my Stratios. Hardly seems like a fair match up, does it? A pIrAtE bAtTlEsHiP not only piloted by an ~eLiTeLoWsECpVpEr~ but also supported by two healboats. Luckily what we lacked in bigpants ships, we made up for in ... grasp of game mechanics. It was only a matter of time before a lack of situational awareness and overconfidence led to two unfortunate losses:

The smacktalk from the Bhaalgorn pilot - about us "hiding behind HiSec mechanics" while he was hiding behind logi - was cute. Of course, bringing logi is ~elitepvp~, but using game mechanics in a clever fashion is cOwArDiCe. He asked us to try again in LowSec - where he wouldn't have to think so much.

<STFU>'s coalition is falling apart.

Murderers Inc. has reset standings and joined the fight against <STFU>! The enemy of my enemy, and all that. Apparently, <STFU> was under the impression that [-XXX] was providing me intel, such as the locations of <STFU> mining operations, as well as warp ins so I could gank them. The funny thing is: right until the moment they got AWOXed, Murderers Inc. hated my guts. I was providing all my own warpins through clever use of small AU quick-probing or simply using a cloaked ship to make a bookmark 3km off my target.

I had been receiving intel - just not from [-XXX]. It seems a lot of <STFU>'s blues don't actually like <STFU>, and are eager to share information. And a director in <STFU> also doesn't seem to like <STFU>, and was more than happy to link me to a recording of their 'state of the alliance' meeting.

[ 2021.04.16 23:28:42 ] Aldrin DragonBorn > yeah thats great intel

[ 2021.04.16 23:28:46 ] Aldrin DragonBorn > we "form for ventures"

[ 2021.04.16 23:28:47 ] Aldrin DragonBorn > lmao

Bruh:

I fucking love living in Solitude.

Life in Solitude: Week Two-Three

Building Things

So as we all know, Industry is in for a huge shake up. To briefly summarize some of my findings:

• Tech1 Battlecruisers and below will be fairly cheap to build, using only Tritanium, Mexallon, Pyerite, and Isogen. These materials are found primarily in HiSec and R4 moonrocks. Isogen is found in LowSec belts. Gneiss is a good source of Mex, Pye, and Iso.
• These Tech1 ships are going to be slightly cheaper for the time being, but will not see their prices really drop until the market stabilizes. I am not at all worried about Tech1 production in the long-term. Even with 'Scarcity' and an unstable market, in-house, at-source production will be so easy it won't be a problem.
• New reactions and uses for R4 moon materials and PI.
• Battleships will cost about the same to build - trading Tritanium for moongoo and PI. They will most likely go up in market value due to the increased complexity and value added steps involved in their production (the new battleship components and reactions).
• Industrial ships - barges, haulers, Orcas, freighters - are going to become more expensive. Covetors going from 55m to 75m build cost and Epithals going from 2m to 3.5m. The exception is the Venture - we will see the cost to produce mining frigates drop to that of any other Tech1 frigate. Orcas will cost about 3b to make.
• All faction ships are going to become a lot more expensive to produce. For example, Dramiels are going from 1m in materials to 53m in materials. This does not include the cost of the BPC. Faction battleships will see the least increase percentage wise, but the largest raw increase.
• Caps are going to skyrocket in build cost. Revelations will go from 4b in materials to 9.8b in materials.
• My predictions: Life will get easier for newbros - unless they want to mine, in which case, they will be stuck in Ventures for a bit longer. Caps will be harder to replace and as a result less prolific (good). Expect to see a lot of conflict throughout New Eden start to look like HiSec wars; lots of Leshaks or other assortments of battleship/battlecruisers with logi support. More Tech1 stuff being used. LowSec ~elitePvPers~ will continue shelling out the ass for their fancy pirate hulls.

The last week or so has been very busy for me as far as mining and production is concerned. I've been hitting the LowSec moons pretty hard and selling the goo to buy Nocxium for my current projects. With the current state of industry Nocxium is a constant bottleneck. I've harvested perhaps 2 billion ISK worth of moongoo out of LowSec Solitude and some lucky NullSec WH connections and most of it has been spent on Nocxium alone. I've burned through perhaps 1 million +/-  Nocxium producing faction ships. Most of this was from my own stockpile but eventually I had to start buying it off the market. I've been doing a lot of mining, setting up PI, and burning through some old faction BPCs that I've had sitting around since I left FW (back in... 2013).

My first capital build... enough of a pain in the ass without the upcoming changes.

Current status of my production. I'll be adding more frigates and cruisers unless the patch drops tonight.

Special thanks to <STFU> and Murderers Inc. for bankrolling the Nocxium I needed to buy!

I have research jobs running on all 6 of my mining/industry alts. The plan is to research every Tech1 hull from frigate to battlecruiser + all the assorted fittings. SW-TC will definitely be ready to provide new members with free fully fit T1 frigates/destroyers in the coming weeks, though there will be some gaps. The plan is to advance that to cruisers by the summer and by the end of summer to be researching the last of the battlecruisers. Ultimately I don't want any member under a year old to have to pay for anything (unless they want to fly Tech2 in which case: get fukt).

So that's really all I have to report on for the indy side of the game. Just lots of logistics and building. I plan to continue building battleships and faction ships until the patch goes live. I'd build more caps, but I don't feel safe enough - would really suck to have a half built carrier and suddenly the patch goes live and it's dead in the water.

Farming Content

A lot has been happening in northern Solitude for the past week. Relationships are coming into clearer focus - such as who will be friends, and who will be enemies content.

One of the first things I did when I moved out to Solitude was map all the Athanors and Tataras. Moongoo makes for some of the most lucrative mining in the game, even with unboosted Ventures. But more than that, ninja moon mining is just fun and a great source of content. There's something about sneaking into someone's backyard garden to eat all their cucumbers that just fills me with a bubbly euphoria. And when they finally figure it out and try to gank you it can become a wonderful game of cat and mouse.

But people in Solitude really don't like when you mine their moons I guess. People take that personal. They don't mind shooting you on a gate, of course, but don't you dare touch that moon! There's rules and stuff! One group in particular, the I Will End Your Whole... <STFU> alliance, is not only mad, but they're holding a grudge. Over this:

I don't know about you, but 500mil in moonrocks doesn't seem worth getting worked up over. I didn't complain about my Stratios they killed shortly after I moved out to Solitude. That's the game: NBSI. It's nothing personal. Am I supposed to say "yes MASSAH, you can blow me up, no MASSAH, I won't touch your moons"? Heck no, I'm gonna mine that shit and buy a new Stratios. NBMI. No gods, no massahs. If we're neutral, I'm not beholden to you or your rules.

The geopolitical landscape in Solitude is a bit like a bowl of spaghetti: it's a complicated tangle of relationships. Some alliances are hostile to each other, but individual corporations within those alliances are blue to each other. We tried to reach out to <STFU> and open diplomatic channels, but they were really buttsore about the fact that I had, while we were neutral, engaged in ninja mining. They never offered reparations for my Stratios which they had, while we were neutral, blown up. Interesting, isnt it?

SW-TC decided that joining the Greater Solitude Commonwealth <GSC> alliance would be the best way to sort out the spaghetti bowl of diplomacy in Solitude. We've been building a pretty positive relationship, and their members are starting to show up on our Discord server. Joining would set a lot of hostile groups blue to us, and make working with GSC easier. But <STFU> and Murderers Inc. take their moonpixels so seriously that when SW-TC entered the alliance, literally within hours, <STFU> and Murderers Inc. threatened the entire GSC alliance with hostilities because of it. So, not wanting to cause problems for <GSC> (who are actually a really cool group of folks - I mean, really, who else is going to give a fleet of Ventures dank ass Rorqual boosts?), we left. Which works out fine for me, because I'm once again free to mine moons taxfree and to blow people up when I feel like it. In other words, it's a smorgasbord of free content for me.

And content there has been. While mining one of Murderers Inc.'s LowSec moons - which I had done for a couple of days without incident or interdiction - few neutrals showed up and began mining their moon as well. I hadn't seen these folks before. They hailed from the "Brown Supplies" and "Galaxy Lords Newbies" corps. Everything was peaceful; they were mining their side of the field, I was sticking to my side of the field.

That is, until 3 Murderers Inc. pilots jumped into system, and landed on the very rock I was mining a few seconds later, as my Ventures were entering warp to a ping. I know it wasn't combat probes; they were in system and landed on grid much too fast for that, and I'm an obsessive Dscanner. The only way they'd have been able to pull this off that I can think of would be shared bookmarks. I wonder who? Oh yes, the neutrals that Murderers Inc. didn't seem to be shooting at - these guys:

A shame. Turnabout is fair play, though, right? To add insult to injury, a few days later SW-TC deployed a 12 man mining fleet to their HiSec moon, and devoured over half of the field. Murderers Inc. has been pretty mad about all this. I wonder if these were their mining alts? Murderers Inc. has tried at least half a dozen times to bait me into an engagement while having 6 or so dudes on a gate ready to jump in, and then talking smack that I won't take the fight, while themselves refusing to engage with less than 3 on grid. You know, the same old boring predictable chest-beating frat boy stuff. Really, since they're so good at staying docked and not engaging, most of the content from Murderers Inc. has been in the form of Local rage:

Why thank you. I will. And have been. ^-^

And then there was this. Don't ask me how. I guess flags and timers are hard?

The TL;DR of all this is that there is ISK to be made with the upcoming industry changes. Start stockpiling dreadnaughts and carriers. There probably isn't enough time to build them before the update, but you might get away with a few faction hulls. Also, Solitude is an active area of space full of hilariously dopey people who are eager to provide free content. Come out to Solitude and say hello!

Big Pictures: Industry Changes

What Everyone's Missing About the Indy Changes

There has been a lot of negative discussion about the coming industrial changes that were recently announced. People feel an understandable sense of unease and anxiety whenever there's a major change, especially a change that impacts them personally. As with all discussions re: EVE Online, a lot of the discourse gets lost in the weeds and focused on increasingly nuanced minutiae. But let's take a different view of what these changes actually mean for the future of the game: A Big Picture view.

The Big Picture view is this: as time goes on, players quit the game for various reasons. That's just a fact of MMOs: nothing lasts forever. As older players leave, newer players join the game. There is now a balance; players leaving vs players joining. The population goes up and down. It trends in one direction or another. CCP has the unenviable task of trying to retain veterans - those players who appreciate the complexity, challenge, and loss of the EVE of Ye Olde Times - while also trying to retain a younger generation of gamers who are looking for a more casual experience.

This has been a seemingly intractable problem for years. Tune the complexity and risk up - newbies can't "get into it" and leave. Tune it down - veterans get mad that the game is being "dumbed down for kids", and leave. Remember the kerfluffle over Alpha clones? And then injectors (which I still think was CCPs biggest mistake).

How can this dichotomy be resolved? CCP tried to circumvent the problem by focusing on what they call the "New Player Experience", or NPE. A lot of manhours have been spent on acquiring and analyzing data, trying to figure out the reasons newbies leave the game, and what in-game experiences correlate with retention in the first few hours, days, and weeks of play. Much of the development work has been geared towards the tutorial, trying to make it as engaging and streamlined as possible, hoping that players will "get hooked" and stick around after they have completed the "NPE".

A lot of good work was done, but this approach has had one major conceptual flaw: the "New Player Experience" isn't the first few weeks in the game - it's the entire game itself, across a wide set of activities and across an indeterminate period of time. It doesn't matter how interesting and fun the tutorial period is if players are still facing the same exact problem that the tutorial was meant to alleviate in the first place. Namely: EVE Online's complexity and learning curve. An updated NPE isn't going to help retention if players are still hitting the brick wall of EVE Online's depth and complexity when it's over. All the tutorial has done in that case is postpone the inevitable. 

EVE Online's old learning curve

The Solution: Creating Gentler Curves and More Niches

CCP Hilmar has stated numerous times over the past couple of years that he wants to completely rearrange the relationship between the players and EVE Online's complexity, risk, and reward. He has stated, and I'm paraphrasing, that newer players shouldn't have to be, by necessity, subjected to the same sorts of complexity and losses that senior players are. I interpret this in terms of "level" of gameplay: gameplay that's available to those with low SP, flying frigates and cruisers, vs gameplay available to those with high SP, flying battleships and above. And also - gameplay available to solo players vs what's available to those who are part of alliances or fleets.

Another statement made on by CSM Kenneth on an episode of Talking in Stations, again paraphrased, is that "CCP wants T1 ships smaller than battleships to be cheap and easily replaceable. So if a newbie loses a destroyer in a level 2 mission, we want them to be able to easily buy and fit up a new one without breaking their bank and placing a huge level of stress on them." To this end, the overall material requirements of T1 ships are being homogenized, reduced, and the rare minerals (Zydrine, Megacyte, etc) removed from the input profiles for these ships. Not only will this make those ships cheaper and more easily replaced, but it will also make it easier for new players to manufacture; all the materials they need will be available where they are: in HiSec, with perhaps quick forays into LowSec.

Complexity is increasing near the top end: battleships and above will require new components which will need inputs from PI, gas, and moongoo reactions. These ships will become complex to build and expensive to purchase; they will once again start become aspirational. They will also require a wider variety of materials from diverse areas of space; R4 reactions (available in HiSec, even though you still have to do the reactions themselves in LowSec). PI materials. WormHole gas. This creates more opportunities for even low SP players to get involved; Gas Harvesting V is only a 5 to 6 day train.

It would seem to me that these industry changes are in line with what CCP Hilmar envisions, that is to say a more sensible and gentle distribution of complexity and risk until you get to a certain point, and then it curves up sharply. Something that maybe follows a J curve. I think this is a great idea; it's gentle on the newbros, allowing them to engage in the game without the huge overhead of having to spend hours reading about stuff and losing their whole net worth because their T1 destroyer got blapped by Triglavians. It also maintains, and even adds, complexity for higher end gameplay: as soon as you start playing with battleships, and especially capital sized hulls, things start getting much more complicated and sourcing materials becomes much more risky and laborious.

The curve CCP wants.

There Hasn't Been a Better Time To Start EVE In 10 Years
(Plus Obligatory Recruitment Plug)

In light of several changes and actions taken by CCP in the past few years - changes to ISK sinks and faucets to arrest EVE's inflation problem, changes to mineral distributions and scarcity to reduce the amount of asset bloat - this is the best time to get started in EVE Online, or just come back to the game and check out what's new if you've been away. More changes along this vein are coming.

The game is going to become much easier for players to get started in. Players are getting the option to rise to their level of incompetence; that is, the ability to select the amount of gameplay complexity they are comfortable with. Do you really like the idea of working in a large team, sourcing many different materials from difference sources, and engaging in complex production chain relationships? Join a group that builds capital ships. Just wanna dabble in production? Stick to T1. A healthy "intermediate" might be battleship production.

I predict that once the dust settles from these changes, EVE will be revitalized and we'll come out the other side with a larger and stronger community.

The corporation I'm part of - Solar Winds Trade Conglomerate - plans to take advantage of these changes and leverage it for the recruitment and growth of new players and those returning. We are currently building a library of researched T1 BPOs. Our plan is to be able to give all joining members:

• A generous allotment of T1 fit ships for PvP and ratting.
• T1 fit mining barges and Ventures (with ore, ice, and gas harvesting modules).
• A set of exploration frigates.
• An assortment of BPCs so they can do their own production right away.

We live in Solitude, an area of space that is starting to see increased activity and attention from other players. We want to provide players opportunities to engage in a variety of gameplay activities and get their feet wet in PvP and life in LowSec. If this sounds interesting to you, check out our recruitment thread and contact me in-game.