If I were on the CSM....

With the disappointment of James backing down from running for the CSM, I currently don't know who to vote for. All these containers I keep finding on D-scan in wormholes are telling me to vote for Nathan Jameson of Talocan United, who seems to easily be the leading WH candidate. However, Highsec also needs someone to watch over it to ensure it does not become a themepark, and I believe Psychotic Monk is the right man for that job, but this isn't about who I'm going to vote for, it's about what I would stand for if I were on the CSM.

I'm quite a way off the minimum age required for running a CSM place, which I believe is 21, but this is how I would fix the game in general. This will be a consolidation of other posts on how various parts of Eve are broken, along with some new ideas.

Highsec
As we know, Highsec is broken. Nearly everything about Highsec is broken. Even the careiest of carebears will admit deep down in their heart that there is a negligible difference in the risk:reward ratio between Highsec and Lowsec. Whether they think this is good or not is another matter entirely, but due to the nature of Eve there should be a much greater difference between High and Low.

To fix this requires consecutive nerfs to Highsec and buffs to Lowsec. As I've said in previous posts, there is currently no reason for your average non-PVPing carebear to leave Highsec. Miners, mission runners and traders, to name a few, can make the same profit in Highsec as they do in Lowsec, with much less risk.

For example, because of the recent drone regions nerf, Highsec ore such as Veldspar is nearly as valuable as Arkonor, and many lowsec ores such as Jaspet struggle to compete. The solution here is simple, remove all Highsec ores except for Veldspar and Scordite, and bring the lower end ores from Nullsec up into Lowsec. This would mean only Tritanium and Pyreite would be supplied from Highsec, which would consequently deflate the prices and comparatively give Lowsec and Nullsec ores more value.

To take another example, mission running in Highsec can make too much isk. We can see this by looking at the completely stupid officer fits mission runners use that are featured on themittani.com. If someone has made enough isk to spend 10 Bil on a faction fit Vindicator with no knowledge of what a stupid idea that is, something's seriously wrong. I know L5's are only available in Lowsec, which is a good thing, but these have obsoleted in their role as group PVE by Incursions. I propose level 4's are removed from Highsec. Level 3's can stay, as they give out a neglible income compared to Level 4's.

However, I believe the worst example of how broken Highsec is is Incursions. Incursions allow a group of practically anyone to make hundreds of millions of isk an hour, with pratically no risk of being on the receiving end of a PVP engagement at all. The very notion that someone in Highsec could make as much isk as they could in a C3 wormhole is fundamentally wrong. To fix this, one of two things will need to happen. Either Incursions need to be completely removed from Highsec, or their income in Highsec needs to be drastically nerfed.

In order to bring the risk part of the risk:reward equation into line with the rewards, the risks of non-consensual PVP will need to increase. Wardec costs need to be brought down to the region of 10,000,000 isk per week, which is still more expensive than what they formerly were. In order to make things more interesting and explosive, and to stop floods of carebear tears, the defender in the war should be able to hire as many allies as they want for free again.

The other great tool against Highsec stupidity- ganking, should receive the well deserved buff it needs. Anyone who opposes this should be kindly reminded that Eve is not WoW and that they should stop thinking that this is what should happen. Ganking is, has been, and hopefully will always be part of Eve. To this end Concord response time should be doubled in all systems, bringing the response time in a 0.5 security system to a reasonable 50 seconds. Security penalties for all aggressive acts will also be halved, meaning more hammers can be delivered to the face of stupidity.

To summarise:

• L4 Missions should be removed from Highsec
• Omber, Kernite, Pyroxeres and Plagioclase should be removed from Highsec
• Ice in Icebelts should be made depletable
• Incursions should be removed from Highsec
• The cost of declaring war should be bought down
• Concord response time should be doubled and security penalties halved

Lowsec

Lowsec is broken, but in a different way to how Highsec is. In Highsec, the risk:reward ratio is positively skewed, in Lowsec it is negatively skewed. As I mentioned in the Highsec part of the post, there is currently no motivation to drive carebears into lowsec. At the moment, the only reason to live in Lowsec is to do PVP. Factional Warfare is the only reason Lowsec hasn't died yet, as it sustains the foodchain and stops the pirate corps living there leaving to Null or WH space for better fights. Lowsec therefore needs a massive overhaul to make it more profitable and lucrative.

I shall copy James' idea of the 'food chain' to explain what should happen. The miners, mission runners, traders and travellers represent the grass of lowsec. These are then fed upon by small gangs of pirates, which are in turn prey for larger gangs and fleets of pirates and general PVPers, which then get eaten by large roaming alliance fleets. The problem 

As I've already mentioned, all Highsec ores excluding Veldspar and Scordite should be moved to Lowsec. This will drastically cut down on the amount of AFK mining and force people to actually play the game in order to make a bigger profit.

Incursions will also be moved into lowsec. This will make lowsec Incursion constellations a hotbed of PVP activity, and will force people to fend off attackers. In other words, people will have to PVP to PVE. This will make incursion bears, who will be bears no longer, have to earn their ludicrously inflated payouts.

CCP have adequately fixed Faction Warfare for now, and there are a dwindling number of site farming alts. However, having being in the milita for several months I would like to see a system that rewards PVP more, considering the whole idea of Factional Warfare is to PVP. Faction navies that spawn when someone enrolled with the opposite faction enters the system should also face a slight nerf in DPS to allow for more Highsec combat between the participants.

Of course these changes will significantly increase the amount of traffic that goes to Lowsec, which will increase the number of gatecamps. In order to encourage people to go to Lowsec, I propose increasing the number of Highsec-Lowsec connections, as well as adding a new wormhole generating module (not as bad as it sounds bittervets) which I will elaborate on later. I do not believe that sentry gun damage should be increased in any way, as this would restrict PVP on gates and stations.

To summarise:

• Incursions, ores and L4 missions will be moved to here
• The foodchain needs to be restored
• FW should include more PVP incentives
• More HS-LS gate connections

Nullsec

Compared to the other three regions of space, I know little about nullsec. However using what I do read from themittani.com articles and other news, I do have a few changes I would like to make.

There should be less structure shooting. One of the many reasons the HBC and CFC didn't go to war was because of the amount of sovereignty grinding that would be involved, so instead they opted for a standings reset. I suspect that many other wars have gone like this, where there was not enough gain involved to warrant shooting stationary objects for many an hour.

Another key issue that (used to) pop up on the forum a lot was the issue of local chat. The removal of local chat from Nullsec would stop botting and allow PVP to thrive, with tactics similar to that in WH space. I can't really see a downside to this, other than the amount of nullbear tears it would generate. Come to think of it, that's not really a downside. 

To summarise:

• Less structure grinding
• No local

Wormhole Space 

In my opinion, W-space is mostly fine as it is. I wouldn't mind seeing a few more systems added with the ever growing population of wormhole space, and the addition of C7's would be interesting. The main problem facing WH corps is errors in the security and simplicity of the POS system.

I own a small research POS in Highsec, which I occasionally use from time to time on my alt. As it is, the system is somewhat complicated, and if you're the CEO of a WH corp where everything has to be stored in a POS, security is a fairly large issue. There are several easy ways in which CHAs and SMAs could be guarded from theft, including passwords and the ability to create more divisions. However it appears CCP may or may not be fixing this is the next expansion.

Other stuff
Wormhole Generating Module
This module will be able to generate short lived (1 hour) and high mass Wormholes that either go to Highsec, Lowsec or Nullsec, which the pilot can choose. This device will not be able to be activated from inside a wormhole. "But Tubrug, what is the point in such a device?" When I was the CEO of a new player oriented PVP corp, which had 120 members at its peak, we used WHs to gain quick and gate camp free access to Nullsec. The problem was we had difficulty finding a wormhole sometimes. We weren't really picky about where we ended up, just somewhere in nullsec or somewhere in lowsec that was close to nullsec. Such a module would help small gangs of carebears greatly. Considering this would not devalue the difficulty of WH logistics, I can't see anyone having a problem with this module.

Station games
A thorn in most Highsec wardeccers and Lowsec PVPers backside, station games could easily be solved by distance from the station more consistent with the model of the station, or at least the undocking part of it. Problem solved.

More stuff will be added as I think of it.

TUBRUG1 FOR CSM14!

A Rather Large Fight

Tis a quiet day in W-space. I am scanning chains and my corpmates are doing whatever they do while I'm scanning. Suddenly our batphone rings. On the other end is a German corp who were defending their staging POS from a horde of Russians. Something like that anyway. Not being the type of people who would let such a fight slip by, we accept the challenge and head off to the HS exit.

After a bit of a tricky trip there (All 5 C2's in our chain had LS statics), we fly past a large fleet consisting of T3's, BCs and Guardians on a gate, as reported by my alt.

However, our fleet, which has by now near fully formed up on the wormhole, appears to be much larger.

We were fighting in a C2 Magnetar wormhole, which meant a 1.44x bonus to damage, but with a 0.81x tracking speed reduction. This did mean my meta 4 Talos would be able to dish out over 1K DPS, but with slightly reduced tracking speed which makes it hard to hit even a Guardian.

Moments later my alt reported that they were warping, and the fight was about to begin. In a Tubrug1.blogspot.co.uk first, I will be linking a video that I frapsed.
CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO. HERE.
This is the text commentary that accompanies the video. In the first few seconds of the fight, it appears all WIS members were primaried for some reason. I got hit by a massive wave of lag from opening FRAPS hastily as well as several autocannons. I'm able to jump out of the wormhole again in 40%, at which point I start filming.

The rest of the fight is a beautiful scene. They only had one Guardian inside the WH, the rest were on the Highsec side repping people who jumped through. This would be a great idea if it wern't for the polarisation timer, which trapped them on the wormhole side for 4 minutes after they jumped through. Without sufficient reps in the wormhole, we quickly managed to disassemble their fleet.

After the smoke had cleared and the last Russians had died or GTFOed, we looted the field, including the wrecks of the shiny T3's...

I was rather pleased with this, and after it was safely stored we headed back, where a GENTS Thanatos and Rorqual were repping up the tower. They didn't return for another proper fight, instead opting to try and snipe us with Oracles and Rokhs, which didn't really work. Eventually after the POS was repaired and the Russians were gone, we buggered off back to our wormhole, some with our ships still intact and some not. 

Stabbed in the Back?

As many of you may be aware, James 315 recently pulled out of the CSM 8 race. This is a massive blow to Highsec, which desperately needed someone to stop CCP driving it to destruction. But why did he abandon his campaign when he was practically guaranteed a seat on the CSM?

The official reasoning he gave for it was because of the new way that CCP determines who goes to Iceland. While going to Iceland is a pretty important part of being on the CSM and being able to persuade CCP to change their ways, surely there would be no harm done if he didn't go.

According to James, the NDA would prevent him from writing on minerbumping.com, themittani.com and positing manifestos on the forums. For those who don't know, the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) exists to stop sensitive information about incoming content from being leaked, which could give other players an unfair advantage. Referring to these outlets of his works, he claims that he would have to put his 'unique' platform aside when he became a CSM member. Personally, I can't see how posting screenshots of miner tears violates the NDA. Infact, I don't see how posting his opinions on miner ganking, or even suggesting how to improve it would be a breach of the NDA.

So the question is: Did James really ever intend to run for the CSM? Was it just a rather successful attempt get publicity and voice his views on the CSM and how he would run it, which he covered more than adequately. It is true that CCP announced the new system after James had declared he was running for the CSM, but as he said the STV system would mean that he would be more likely to succeed to obtaining a high place in the election because of his popularity amongst nullsec and lowsec voters.

We may never know the real reason why James dropped out of the race, it could have been because of the new Summit system, or it could have been planned all along. Whatever reason caused it, I am slightly disappointed James promised so much but delivered so little- in fact he delivered nothing.

The Start of an Empire

Earlier today at around 20:30, the BattleBadger Coalition was formed by the union of my alt's corp (take #19 at corp management) and the Algoma Corp Hoppers. The result? The BattleBadger Coalition. But what do I hope to achieve by making a random Coalition in Highsec?

The main purpose of the BBC is to provide support and fleets to other corporations that do not specialise in them. For example, my alt's corp 'The League of Established Gentlemen" (and yes, I know that's an awesome name) specialises in PVP, which means we do little to no fleets on any other aspect of Eve, such as mining or missioning. What do those members who want to do PVP mixed with a bit of mining do then? They could solo mine of course, but is that as yieldful and sociable as mining in a group? No.

On the flipside of this, what does a miner in a mining corp do if he wants to PVP. He could take out his Rifter and head to nullsec, but wouldn't it be better if you flew with people who knew what they were doing with a chance of getting some kills? Yes.

Also, lone mining corps often get decced by one man corps that harass them. If the members of a coalition were to ally against the aggressor, he would quickly find himself losing the war. At the present moment this might not work against larger wardeccing corps but in time it will.

These mining corps produce ore, which in many cases will stay within the corp until it is turned into ships. This could benefit both manufacturing corps and PVP corps by the bulk sale of tax free ships, modules and ammo. Will we stay in Highsec? Perhaps not, if all goes to plan we may have enough power to take over some sovereignty in Nullsec. But for now it will remain in Highsec with the aims listed above.

Covert Ops Rebalancing

Since Fozzie inadvertently broke the gap in superiority with the T1 frigate rebalancing and T2 rebalancing doesn't seem to be on the agenda yet I thought I'd give my view on how Covert Ops should be rebalanced. Click here for my views on how to rebalance them.

Wormhole PI

In many wormholes, PI is a vital tool for its residents. Whether used for manufacturing POS fuel or to supplement income, the PI set up of a wormhole can change its value drastically.
In highsec, PI is generally not worth doing. From figures I've heard the maximum you can get is about 80mil a month per character with semi-decent skills. In lowsec, this figure is higher as more resources can be extracted from extractors, and in Nullsec and WH space this figure is even higher than that. In the system I live in, we have quite a good set of planets to play around with:

At first, I didn't really have a clue what I was doing here. Eventually I looked on this very helpful guide by Euni and decided to make Gel-Matrix Biopaste, which is the most profitable P3 commodity which can be made in the wormhole. 

 Yes, I know my handwriting in paint is s***.

 That rocket is 100% realistic.

The materials from these planets are then imported to the planet where the Biopaste is produced, an ice planet which also produces useless materials I never actually use.

This can pull in about 130mil a month according to my calculations, which isn't bad considering I'm using three and a half planets. Will I be bothered to continue it? Maybe. Maybe.

The Rise of Highsec Stupid

As some of you may have noticed, General Discussion, the centre of the Eve-Online forums, has become contaminated with stupid threads containing stupid ideas published by stupid people. Here we'll take a look at some of the more stupid of these threads.

As you may have expected, we start with an anti-New Order post. While this 'Pattrick Henry' chap is a bit of a silly person for posting an anti-NO post on the forums, he managed to go about it in a more literate manner than most people. That's not to say it's more informed and well reasoned, but it can actually be read. 

First he starts off with some stupid RPing statement, a theme which continues through the post. I've always said that RPing and Eve don't go well together, because internet spaceship business is serious business. He then drones on about this for several paragraphs, including this disturbing line: " By choosing to exist in this Space, we have thereby accepted the boundaries that CCP and Concord has put into place. They have created sectors in Space that have defined rules of engagement." It appears Mr. Henry is one of those 'Industrialists' that thinks Highsec should be 100% safe. Very troubling indeed.

He starts his rant against us, then goes on to say 'The New Order cult’s effort is about gaining power against the 99%... the hard-working, blue-collar Industrialist who is simply trying to survive, by imposing a random set of self-aggrandizing rules to give this cult some semblance of meaning in EVE.' At this point, I laughed. For a start he seems to be confusing his definitions of 'Highsec Industrialists' and 'miners'. We haven't got anything against the common Highsec industrialist, the station traders and haulers aren't the ones getting ganked. I'm also pretty sure 99% of the population of Eve, or even Highsec, are industrialists. 

He ends his post with a threat against the Order, which I'm willing to bet was fairly unbacked and flopped as all resistances do. Full post here. 

Moving onto:
Stupid Idea of the Week

I've checked this and I'm pretty sure it's not a troll. So your first thought on reading this will probably be: what? I too experienced similar thoughts on reading it, then I shook my head and clicked the back button. Then I clicked back on it again and shuddered, and clicked back. It was such a stupid idea, I didn't even facepalm.

And now:
Most Stupid Idea From a Butthurt Carebear of the Week
Because a good post is not complete without tears, let's look at this guy's proposal. I delved into the Features and Ideas forum to find this post, which is also a hotbed of stupid ideas, considering it's got ideas in its title.

Look at this stealthy proposal for the removal of non-consensual wardecs! Now this isn't your average "OhnoesIgotDeccedNerfPVP" post, but it's just as stupid. Earlier on than this post starts, he said how 24 hours isn't enough time for a decced corp to prepare. Apparently this causes them to 'Take heavy losses and disband'. Other people may refer to this as losing a war, but according to the poster it's due to the lack of preparation that can be done in 24 hours.

His idea is this: "War Dec's against other corps, the way it's done need's to change i.e against random corps. So, say you want to war dec a corp. You either need to be involved in a act of aggression with that corp i.e they shoot u, if you have a suspect flag, your corp then has rights for 24 hours to war dec that corp, this stops the random decs". Erm. Ok.

He then goes onto partially protect mercenary corps, but says that one man corps should only be able to take ransoms of 10mil, and five man corps should only be able to take ransoms of 50mil etc. He justifies this by saying "this will stop small tiny alt corps from deccing larger corps and ganking people." Surely this should work in reverse, as using one 'alt' to kill an entire corp takes a lot more skill than using five. Roime summarises this quite well by saying "So you mean the weak are getting culled out? Working as intended."

That's right folks, after all the nerfs Highsec wardeccing has received, the carebears are still not happy. What can we do to please them?

Return to W-Space

**Apologies for the lack of posts lately, I ran out of things to write and then I gave up when I did have things to write, hopefully I'll start updating this regularly again.**

After enforcing the Code some more, along with a bit of station trading, I've found a new wormhole corp. We live in a C3 with a lowsec static that the corp recently moved into, which meant there were a few important things to do like removing Customs Offices:

Of course there were more profitable things we did, such as running sleeper sites:

And running some LADAR sites, one of which was in lowsec and was surprisingly profitable for lowsec gas. 

We've also had plenty of missed chances at shiny kills, such as a Scorpion Navy Issue that was thwarted by bad luck, and later the accidental explosion of my Buzzard.

Still not too sure how that happened. More wormhole related adventures to come.