CSM 9 voting list

The Election is almost on us, and that means suggested voting lists. As you can’t just put me 14 times, I have a number of suggested candidates. Other than myself, I’m not really suggesting any particular order (me first!). Pick people that are appropriate for your play style, or where you live.

If you’re an industrialist, consider voting for the wormhole candidates, as they’ll have a clue about the pain involved with working with POS, as they live out of them.

  • Me! Steve Ronuken.
  • Mangala Solaris – A good understanding of small gang warfare
  • Jayne Fillion – Another good understanding of small gang warfare, with good theory crafting skills.
  • Ali Aras – An incumbent who’s done a good job keeping lines of communication open.
  • Sugar Kyle – A low sec trader. Lowsec needs work, and Sugar knows.
  • Proclus Diadochu – Wormhole candidate. Wants to hit on POS and corp management.
  • James Arget – An incumbent wormhole candidate.
  • Mynnna – Yes, he’s a goon, but he knows his stuff. Incumbent.
  • Mike Azariah – An incumbent for the ‘casual’ player.
  • Xander Phoena – Another goon, yes. He’s, on the other hand, loud and opinionated. Which isn’t a bad thing.
  • Psianh Auvyander – More small gang warfare, and the merc perspective.
  • Matias Otero – BNI is a wonderful concept.
  • DJ FunkyBacon – I don’t agree with him on everything, but he’s not generally /that/ wrong. And he’s another Lowsec advocate.

Yes, I know that’s only 13 people. can’t expect me to do all your work 😉

 

Vote match may be of interest.

CSM – NPC Corporations

I’ve had someone asking me about my feelings about NPC corporations, on Twitter, and while I answered him, I thought I’d give a fuller answer here.

NPC corporations are fine. But there should always be an advantage of not being in one. Also, you shouldn’t be able to use one to avoid consequences.

So, let’s go through various play styles, and see how I’d like to change things.

Mission Runners

I’m fairly happy with the current settings for them. Possibly add an LP tax, which converts LP into LP for their NPC corp. Perhaps slightly lower standings gains for other corporations or ‘opposing’ factions. Those are pretty minor though.

Miners

Right now, there’s little reason for miners to leave an NPC corporation. It exposes them to war decs, but other than social aspects, they gain little. This is less than ideal. However, I have other plans that I’d like to implement for mining, involving the removal of static belts, a prospecting system, and the ability to stake a claim on discovered sites, for your corporation. Mine in a claimed site, go suspect. So, NPC corp members can only claim for the NPC corporation, which means any other NPC member can come along and take the ore you spent time finding. It’s a similar downside to now, so it’s not exactly a nerf, with the benefit of additional game play. As an associated idea, I’d like for Mining missions to have regular ore, where you pay a tithe to the corporation, for the right to mine at their claim.

Gankers and Greifers

I know they’re not the same. But they get the same benefits from being in an NPC corporation. Someone can’t get help to retaliate. In this, there’s no way to do it without an ability nerf. I’d suggest automatically shunting people to the faction warfare corporation, when they drop below security status -1.0, maybe -2.0. Allows for mistakes, doesn’t allow for evading consequences so much. Military service for ‘hooligans’.

Industrialists

As long as you do all your industry in station, there is no reason to leave an NPC corporation. I’d like to see limitations on all industrialists in NPC run stations, capping the number of slots you can use per station (3 perhaps) with the addition of an industrial array you can anchor in space, for easier slots, with a lower entry cost than POS. Renting would also be good.

Haulers

I can’t think of a way to incentivize PC corp haulers over NPC corp ones. Everything that came to mind also came with a simple way to bypass.

Dedicated PvPers

No real benefit from being in an NPC corp. No real downside.

tl;dr: I’m not a fan of people staying in NPC corporations because it’s the best idea for what they do. So there need to be bigger changes than just taxes and the ability to anchor a POS.

Fiction – Claustrophobia

I never used to be claustrophobic; If I had been, I’d never have entered the Capsuleer program. Spending all the time in such a tight enclosed space would have sent me running for the hills.

These days, getting into, and out of, my capsule gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. That time after the capsule closes, to when the neural implants hook up and my perspective soars. Getting out is worse. I don’t know if it’s common amongst Capsuleers, or just me, but after I spent a week hooked up, barely docking, just soaring free, getting crammed back into my head was almost more than I could take.

It’s hard to explain, that feeling of being trapped to one view-point, when you used to be able to send your vision flying through space. When you could talk to someone light years away, just by thinking about it. Sure, you miss a few things -food mostly- but they’re easy to ignore, when you’re bathing in starlight.

I don’t know. I still force myself down to a frail mortal form. But it’s getting harder. Especially after that Naglfar.

 

End Entry. Save.

Registration – A suggestion for Fanfest

I’ve been to a couple of Fanfests now, and my least favourite part of it has always been Registration. With the long line outside Harpa, in the freezing cold, just by the North Atlantic.

Now, registering a couple of thousand people is never a fun job, especially when you have a bunch of different accents to deal with.  I’ve dealt with systems for events in the UK, where English is everyone’s first language, and those don’t run quickly either.

So, what would I suggest in my vast experience? Bar codes. The moment you have to type something in, or speak, you’re introducing a possibility of misinformation.

So

  • Send out a mail to everyone, containing a unique bar code, ideally one which isn’t a contiguous number.
  • They print this out (or have it on their phone)
  • During registration, attached to each of the machines being used, you have a cheap hand-held barcode scanner
  • When it scans, it first sends a key combo which sticks the cursor into the right field, enters the number, then hits enter.
  • At this point, you have their details up on screen. You confirm it’s them, it updates the (hopefully central, but you could consolidate later) database showing they’ve registered
  • You then hand over the tickets.

If you want to get really fancy you could throw in printing for the badges as well, but that’s probably excessive, and increases the initial cost significantly. Black onto plain white credit card sized plastic is around 9p per card, amortized over the lifetime of the card printer. Preprinted cards increases the cost. Thermal printing onto the tickets is possible, but also not cheap.

Might only shave a few seconds per person, but that stacks up when you’re doing a thousand people.

 

 

In case you’re wondering, most barcode scanners these days act as usb keyboards, just typing a preamble, the code, then a postamble. You could get fancy and use QR codes, but those scanners are more expensive and slower. Basic barcode scanners will set you back around £40 each.  I had to put together a solution for work for this kind of thing, which has been pretty successful.

Retooling Industry in EVE. Blue Sky

Industry in EVE needs work. It’s not been touched, save for the addition of new things to make, in quite a while. When people talk about it, they tend to talk about things like changes to the UI, to make it simpler to put in jobs in batches, or adding a queue. What I’m going to suggest here is more involved than that. It’s not a ‘This should happen’ piece, but more a discussion point, to see if it sparks any ideas with people.

Industry in EVE, except for big multistage projects like capitals, can be very reactive to market shifts. It’d be interesting to introduce something which interferes with this. Which promotes longer term planning. The easiest, and simplest, way to do this is to introduce a retooling delay. So to install a job, you’re going to have to wait a little time for the facility to get ready to produce your things.

You could probably get away with having the ability to ‘prototype’ a thing, reducing the retooling delay, for an increased cost and time per unit. So if you just want one thing, you can get it made custom, for double the cost of mass production, but quicker.

It would be wise have a cost involved with the retooling as well. Materials, rather than ISK. Another use for R.A.M. and some PI things perhaps.

This would favour long runs, over short ones.

It would probably be worthwhile to change the process to get away from the ‘Put a job in to cook, come back a week later and hit deliver’, and move to the ‘set up the production line, make sure it’s kept fed, and you can retrieve the product when you want’ that you have with PI. You can always leave it for a long time, but you don’t need to. beneficial from a cash-flow perspective, as you don’t need to tie up your isk for a very long run.

This would impact of the use of low run BPCs. So you’d use those as a material in the production line. As long as you can keep it fed with new BPCs, you can keep it running. Run out, and the line comes to a halt, waiting for you to reload it.

We’d have to move to personal production facilities, as station lines would become clogged. With the code in place for personal structures, I don’t think that’s a major issue. Though you’d want to be able to chain facilities together. Say, a central storage facility, that nearby manufacturing facilities can pull from, at a corp level (Ideally something with a decent permissions model)

The PI model really would work quite well, as long as you could reduce everything to a drag and drop. Having to set up routes for 15 odd materials would be a pain. Being able to drag and drop multiple at a time from a storage facility would be easier.

Multipart ships could become a more complex thing, instead of the ‘make all the parts, then make the ship’ you could do ‘make the parts, and have them feed into the ship building as they’re made, requiring X of each part to get past each milestone. With each milestone taking a minimum length of time.

So, for milestone 1, you’d need X capital construction parts, and takes a minimum of 4 days.
Milestone 2 would up the requirements to an additional X capital construction parts, Y cargo bays and Z engines, and take a minimum of 5 days.
Milestone 3 would take the rest of the parts, and another 5 days.

You could just build all the parts at once, then build the ship, but then you’d be looking at the time to make the parts + 15 days. Or you could set up the lines to feed the ship build. If you’re making multiple ships at once, then you can change it to flow differently. So you have lots of lines doing capital construction parts, and not many on engines and armour.

T2 already does this in places, with the requirement of the T1 module/ship. Some T1 things could have their complexity increased.

It would be important to have ‘running a production line’ and ‘owning a production line’ being different things. Players who don’t use their own/corporate facilities have to pay the retooling cost, or a fee to keep a line inactive. Personal lines could be set up then mothballed (Materials fee after it’s been inactive for an extended period, to bring it back up to spec), or left running.

The entry fee would have to be fairly low, in terms of skill and material costs, so as not to disadvantage dedicated new players. Add a skill to cover how many lines you can manage inactive?

So, thoughts?

Navy Doctrine Fits

There have been a few criticisms coming out of the recent live event, which saw a bunch of people leaving high sec to attack a target in NPC Nullsec. Most of them were people whining. Some were more valid, mostly focusing around in game organisation.

This post flows from one of the latter.

One of the biggest differences you’ll find between a Fleet from a large, well organised alliance, and a scratch fleet drawn together from randoms, is that the alliances fleet will contain ships which are far closer to each other in fit. You’ll have your DPS ships having similar ranges, everyone in the same kind of tank and so on.

That’s difficult to manage with a scratch fleet, as there’s no central source saying ‘Fit your ships this way.’

A side issue is: Newbies and noobs have this tendency to fit their ships badly. Newbies can break themselves from this, generally with the help of their corporations, and sometimes sites such as Battleclinic, or Eve Uni’s fittings.

However, it’s a bit difficult to send players off to look at third party sites, from the tutorials.

What would be good, in my very humble opinion, is if the Navies of New Eden (read CCP) were to publish some Doctrine fits. Tying it into ISIS would be great, though possibly a trifle excessive.

Then, when there’s a live event being run by one of the Empires, there can be a link to the doctrine fits, which may help shape the randoms into something a little more cohesive.

The moment that CCP release the SSO, I’m planning on sticking together a Doctrine storage system, for those groups without dedicated IT resources, which could be used. But something basic from CCP would be good. We don’t need a fit for every ship, but it would be nice to have the basics covered, both the T1 version, and the Navy version. Possibly some core T2 ships too.

Then you can add doctrine fits for some other things. Such as exploration fits from SOE, or fits from ORE, which fit a decent tank on the miners.

Teaching players to fit ships isn’t a simple thing. Examples go a long way.

CSM ‘Manifesto’

The use of the word Manifesto is perhaps a trifle misleading, from how many people think of the word. There will be no promises of action, no ‘If you vote for me, you’ll get this’ statements.

The use is, however, correct. The CSM exists as a lobbying body, and as a feedback loop for CCP. As such, it’s important to understand the views of the people you’re electing to it; to make sure that their views, and your desires align along basic lines. So, here’s a post which I’ll see about updating every so often. in addition, I’d suggest having a read through my CSM posts which can go into more detail.

If you have anything you’d like to get more detail on, tweet me, or comment here and I’ll see about updating the page with an answer, or just answer in the comments if it’s really specific.

There’s no particular order to the following thoughts.

  • Carriers, Supercarriers and Titans should be able to take sub capital ships along with them when they jump, with a tonnage+ numerical limitation depending on what they are. Titan bridging should be removed. Changes the meta when it comes to power projection.
  • High sec industry slots should be replaced with a rental system for player owned slots. Ideally anonymous slots.
  • A read only CREST endpoint with caching for market data should be released
  • Local shouldn’t be an intelligence source. Should cost to maintain something in Sov null. NPC null should be standings based access to the NPC owners source.
  • Small gang warfare should have its place in Sov Nullsec warfare.
  • There should be a bigger downside to NPC corps, though with a difference between the ‘training’ npc corps, and the ones for older characters. With people being pushed from the schools after a while. Corp level negative standings, for example.
  • Corp Roles need serious work. Ideally so you can get really granular on them, but also allowing for grouping. so groups of structures having privileges granted to groups of characters. CREST would be handy for setup here.
  • There are potential ‘rewards‘ which can be given to people for out of game actions. These shouldn’t be in game objects which can be traded. And should be cosmetic. the linked post has some options. I’m leaning to the no benefit ones.
  • It should not be required to use 3rd party software to compete. So any releases with CREST will have to take that into account. Opening the industry interface or market interface completely with CREST would have you pretty much requiring it. Limits would have to be put in place which make it a little less efficient than using the client. Lower update rates. Maximum numbers of updates. That kind of thing.

In Game Rewards

This may seem a trifle self serving, in that I already have a fan site account from CCP (more for the tools, than the blog, I think). I don’t deny I like getting things (like the spiffy monocle I’m sporting in game, which I won from the pre-Vegas blink promo)

Part of me likes the idea of getting neat in game stuff, without ‘soul binding’. The whole idea of items which you can’t sell to someone else kinda goes against the grain in the ultimate capitalism of Eve.

On the other hand, anything that’s rare is valuable, regardless of the actual utility, and just ‘gifting’ that kind of thing means interfering a little in the sand box. I don’t think it’s as major as some people think, a few billion here, a few billion there, it’s not a major deal. It may be worth asking the community in a survey, rather than depending on the forums for this.

As my prescience is currently in the shop for repairs, I can’t say what the community would say it believes. But I can make some suggestions about alternate options, which cement people into the story of Eve. Options which confer no in game benefit, or a benefit which while tangible, makes sense why it’s not transferable. The second category is a lot iffier as it still involves changing the rules of the sandbox. Or rather, adjusting the variables.

Everything would be with CCP’s approval, of course.

No Benefit Rewards:

  • The right to name a High/Low/NPC Null Station/Planet/Moon
  • A monument to that person, or a something that they designate, as a permanent landmark in Eve. You want a monument to a particular someone? Get that instead of to you.
  • A new module with your, or your corporations name on it. Perhaps a replacement for a standard meta module. Or a ‘reskin’ of it. An ‘Otherworld Enterprises’ Strip Miner?
  • Your name on something everyone gets at Christmas. A meta version of a ship. A trading card.
  • The right to name an Agent.
  • Being able to pitch a mission to the CCP Staff. Fancy yourself a writer? Reduce the chance of people having to save that damn damsel.

In game Benefits:

More controversial.

  • A boost to standings with a particular corp or faction. Corp would be less problematic. Ideally not one of the corps for a trade hub. Though that’s a reward in itself. Reduced taxes.
  • Reduced taxes in a particular station.
  • A blueprint for a branded module. Ideally T1 or Meta 1 stats. See the ‘Otherworld Enterprises’ Strip Miner. A GoonFleet Rifter? Ships should just be skinned T1. Modules Meta 1 could work.

Have any comments? Suggestions? Vile imprecations on my lineage? leave them below.