Ahead of the November 4, 2014 patch, Nullsec started to begin preemptive shakeups and shifts to prepare itself for the coming changes. With all the news and leaks surrounding this topic, Hendrick once again makes sense of it all for us idiots.
For those curious, he uses the EVE SOV maps which are maintained by members of the EVE community to do the visuals for these videos, The maps are updated daily, and can be found on this very site HERE.
The situation is extremely clear: as the definition of “win” is “reaching your goal”, if paying real world money gets you closer to your goals, you are paying to win. All the excuses are wrong. The pay-to-win people usually claim that their win is not guaranteed by the payment. It’s true, but irrelevant. Just because it’s possible to win a soccer game 10 vs 11, bribing the referee to ban one of the opposing team without reason is still cheating. Playing 11 vs 10 is a huge advantage. Just like having gold ammo or being able to spend all your game time on fighting because you bought dozens of replacement ships from $.
The “my real world income is higher than the $1-2/hour I can earn in the game” is wrong for three reasons:
your income is $0.00 while playing a video game. Unless you are an RMT seller, you create absolutely no monetary value. Being more productive while working than while playing is obvious.
if you can earn 50-150M per active playing hour, you are either very newbie, very “just smelling the flowers and watching the scenery”-casual or fail very hard
finding that paying gets you in-game progress easier than playing is an obvious criteria for deciding to pay to win. Saying it loud isn’t more of an argument than “I cheat because it’s easier to progress this way”.
Now the trick in EVE, compared to World of Tanks is that you don't pay the developer to win. In WoT, you buy gold ammo and you can pop enemy tanks like they were tissue paper. In EVE, you buy a PLEX from CCP, but it doesn't make you any stronger. However, you can trade it to better players for their power.Te common saying among many EVE players is "ISK doesn't buy you PVP skill". There is no better way to say it. The fact of the matter is that even if a large number of players invested personal out of game wealth into the game for the purpose of creating a formidable and well-fit fleet. Their understanding of game mechanics, overall coordination, and general skill at manipulating the game and its players is laughably poor.
A small but skilled force will always outclass a richer force as they have the means and understanding to utilize tactics that will confuse and disorient the newer players, nullifying their ISK advantage.
This is where the hiring of skilled players comes in. An entire industry exists within EVE for exploiting the relative weakness of players with little skill but, lots of wealth. Hiring a merc alliance to distract your enemies can work. If you use that distraction to your advantage to build up your own forces or devise new ways of hiding from your enemies. But most players who go this route never take it that far. Most don't even bother to fight back. They take their lumps and continue with the same activities that made them a target in the first place.
What is worse about this cyclical behavior is that these players are often driven from the game entirely because they cannot cope with the sense of constant PVP of all forms that EVE embodies to its core.
While buying PLEX does make a player stronger in the sense that they have POTENTIAL for better resources and the means to engage and overpower their enemies. The true strength lies in the judicious exploitation of that potential. Why buy a brand new fleet of ships without the adequately trained pilots to fly them?
It would seem that the the obvious conclusion for anyone that understands EVE, is that the game will never be what most undretsand to be "Pay to Win".
An Against ALL Authorities alliance mail has been leaked, revealing their intention to target Northern Coalition. This will be done as a “Coalition” alongside Afterlife, c0ven and Soviet-Union. The main fleet doctrine will be shield ishtars and they will be staging out of 4GQ-XQ in Stain. The alliance mail is below in both Russian and English.
Пришла пора участвовать в большой войне.
Наша цель NC. и их ситы.
Хоть нас и мало, но мы можем надрать им зад и хорошо помочь коалиции.
Будем летать во флотах с Afterlife, c0ven и Soviet-Union.
С этого момента все кто живой, активный и желает присоединиться (мы не заставляем) переезжайте в систему регруппа наших союзников 4GQ-XQ. До патча осталось 3 дня, используйте их для переезда, пока капиталы могут прыгать безнаказанно.
Для КТА и роамингов используются тимспики Ковенов и Афтерлайф.
Инструкция по регистрации будет отдельно.
Скоро заработает коалиционный джаббер.
Основной формат на текущий момент: шилд иштары.
Надеятся нам не на кого. Из болота выбираться мы можем только самостоятельно.
Те кто кемпит Брейвов – отвлекитесь немного, мы всегда можем к ним вернуться.
У нас есть шанс получить хорошие зарубы, пощупать супера врага.
—
It is a time to engage in a big war.
Our aim NCdot and their citizens.
We have small numbers, but we can kick their ass and help to coalition.
We will fly in fleets with Afterlife, c0ven and Soviet-Union.
From now on all who alive, active and willing to join (we do not force) move to regroup system of our allies – 4GQ-XQ. 3 days left to Phoebe, use them to move until the capital can jump unpunished.
For CTA and roaming we will use C0ven and The Afterlife. comms.
Instructions for registration will be shortly.
Soon the coalition jabber will work as well.
Main fleet doctrine: Shield Ishtars.
We can not hope to anyone. From the swamp, we can only be selected independently.
BRAVE campers – we can always go back to them, take a break.
Hi space friends!
CCP karkur here to tell you about a few often-requested changes that are coming your way in Phoebe.
Asset Search and Advanced Search
Many of you like organizing your assets into station containers, which is all well and good, that is, until you need to find that Polaris Engima or that ‘Nibelung’ Mining Laser you have misplaced but know you have somewhere. The Asset Search you are used to has not searched inside your containers.
That’s changing in Phoebe– items inside containers in stations will be included in the search results.
I should note that for those who have thousands and thousands of neatly organized items in containers, fetching the information on the items might take a bit longer than you are used to. However, after the data has been cached the searching should be really fast, and you can actually find the items you are looking for
Some of you may know that we have pretty powerful advanced search functionality in EVE. However, I’ve found that surprisingly many citizens of New Eden either don’t know it exists at all, or don’t know how to use it.
We wanted to raise the visibility of this powerful tool, so we have added a little question mark icon in the Asset Search tab, which will show a handy tooltip that lists all the keywords you can use and how to use them when you hover your mouse over it. For further information on the advanced search, please take a look at this dev blog by CCP Frellicus.
(Click image for a larger version)
The Overview States and “Always Show”
The ability to have a “war target”/”fleet member” only Overview has been a commonly requested feature and it is arriving with Phoebe. We will be adding a third entity display setting called “Always Show” to the overview. Before I explain what that means, let me go over how the display settings currently work:
Entities (ships, drones, etc.) on the same grid as you in space are displayed in the Overview as long as they do not match a state that is filtered out. This can be quite tricky and confusing because any one entity commonly has multiple states (war target, outlaw, etc).
For example, you can have a corp(1) and alliance(2) mate in the same fleet(3) as you, but is also a supspect(4) with security level below 0 (5), and he‘s neutral(6) to you. If you filter out any of those 6 states he matches, he will not appear in your Overview, which is not always ideal. This has for example caused war target hunters some issues, because in order to have war targets in the Overview, they cannot filter out all those random neutrals they meet on their travels, since their war targets might be neutrals too.
So what is this new display setting? As I mentioned above, we refer to it as “Always Show”, and what it means is that if an entity has a state that is set to “Always Show”, it does not matter if any of the other states it also matches are filtered out, the entity will always appear in your Overview.
If an entity does not have an “Always Show” state, it’s displayed by default as long as it does not have a state that is filtered out, just like before.
To summarize:
Always show
Entities with this state will always be shown regardless of the display setting of additional states they may have
Filter out
Entities with this state will be filtered out unless they have additional states that are set to always show
Show by default
Entities with this state will be shown unless they have additional states that are filtered out
These changes are compatible with all current Overview profiles, which are simply treated as having no state with the “Always Show” setting.
It‘s worth mentioning that although we talk about “Always Show”, nothing will override the settings in the Group tab. That is, if you have chosen to not see Battleships in your Overview, your fleet mate in the Raven will not be in the Overview, no matter how your state display settings are.
With this change, we’ve had to change the interface where you control the display settings of the entity states. The states are back to being in one list, but now you have 3 radio buttons (“Always show”, “Filter out”, “Show by default”) to choose from for each of the states.
You can click each of them individually, or select many states in the list and set them all at once by clicking on the header icons.
Scanners
Many have asked for the ability to have both the Probe Scanner and the Directional Scanner open at the same time, but none have pleaded more than the wormholers among us who are not only constantly scanning with probes but also need to be on the lookout for someone sneaking up on them. These two very useful scanning tools have lived together as tabs in the same window, along with a lesser used tool, the Moon Analyses tab. In Phoebe we will be splitting them apart, giving each its own window, and these can of course be stacked just like any other windows.
Shortcut for Directional Scanner
We have added a shortcut to directly open the Directional Scanner.
The Rest
Lastly, I want to mention a few small changes we have implemented recently but not had the opportunity to tell you about:
Added a Booster Timer that clearly shows you how much time you have left on your active boosters, their benefits, and side effects. This timer is displayed next to other timers such as Weapon and Limited Engagement timers.
Added the ability to select which overview preset to use when scanning with the Directional Scanner.
Added a visual timer in the HUD on modules (such as micro jump drives and cloaking devices) that have cooldown time to indicate how much was left of the cooldown.
Added the ability to name your jump clones. This can be done through a right click option on the jump clones in the Character Sheet
We hope these small changes make your stay in New Eden a little bit more pleasant.
Fly Safe,
In a rather unfortunate turn of events, two spuercaps died within hours of each other. Mostly due to poor tactical choices by their respective pilots. One BL Nyx was downed by a bomber run in Nakis.
The travel fit Nyx was hit by a mixed groups of stealth bombers in Nakis on Oct 30th. The most embarrassing thing about this kill is the complete lack of any substantive tackle on the attacking fleet's side. Which leads one to wonder how this even happened.
Nyx 2 was even stranger. A Nyx was sitting on a POS in GE- apparently with no FF on the POS, and even though the Nyx was fit for combat, it lacked any serious protection in the form of bombers, drones, or subcap support. And was just happily camping out assigning fighters. Not that any of that matters when you get dropped on by a dozen titans of various makes. It seems PL wanted to exploit a golden opportunity to cause some chaos in one the most infamous systems in Catch for lulz.
Another archaic anachronism of EVE’s notorious UI is set to get a badly needed makeover in next week’s Phoebe update. The elves of Team Banana Stand have been getting down to brass tacks, making several major quality of life improvements for those running NPC corporation and tutorial missions.
Rather than having to constantly refer to the Journal panel to see how a mission is progressing, or where to go next, missioneers will have easy access to critical information via an updated Agent Missions panel in the top left section of the screen, near the current Route and System panels. The update brings tooltips and other nifty features that promise to simplify the process.
In a beautifully crafted piece of understatement, CCP SoniClover has described the current mechanism as an “old bastard in many ways”, in a devblog highlighting how the new system will be implemented.
Capsuleers over at the /eve/ subreddit summed up the changes in their typical larrikin fashion. Seasoned denizens of New Eden, especially those with little to no regular PvE interaction, may scratch their heads over this change. For newbies, this represents a great leap forward in simplifying information delivery and generally cleaning up the interface for newcomers suffering information overload and, ofttimes, cognitive dissonance as they confront the vertical nightmare of EVE’s learning cliff.
The Directional Scan, Probe Scanning, and Moon Analysis features are now split up into separate windows
Lowered the volume of the most commonly dropped items in exploration Data Sites from 1.0m3 (and above) to 0.1m3.
Lowered the volume of all Datacores and Decryptors in exploration Data Sites from 1.0m3 to 0.1m3.
Null Security space Data and Relic exploration sites can now also be encountered in Wormhole Class 1, 2 and 3 systems.
The spawn frequency of the Besieged Covert Research Facility has been increased.
The drop frequency of faction POS blueprints in all Data and Relic sites has been increased.
The drop frequency of 'Optimized' items in all Data sites has been increased.
Various Faction Materials have been added to the exploration Data site loot tables. These can be found in the Manufacture Research Materials Faction Materials section of the Market.
Various Industrial Goods have been added to the exploration Data site loot tables. These can be found in the Trade Goods Industrial Goods section of the Market.
The percentage chance of encountering rarer Expeditions from combat sites has been increased.
Expeditions now have completion messages, congratulating the player in various ways on the death and destruction that followed in their wake.
'Guiding' messages have been added to some, but not all of the dungeons where an Expedition could possibly occur.
Team Jigsaw has claimed bragging rights amongst the Elmos and Smurfs after winning top spot among the sixteen teams contesting the 45b ISK, 5v5 Tyrian Trophy tournament last weekend to cap off a month of RvB's fifth birthday celebrations.
Jigsaw consisted of Master Broski, Bob Mississippi, Joe Grayne and was skippered by Nylund. They defeated Will Dance For PLEX, represented by Shecky THCFan, Gomlee, Cheech Duff and reserve pilot Velosim, skippered by Scyleth. Jigsaw took the title 2-1 after losing the first round in the best of three finals.
The tournament was largely a drone fest, with the rules being brutally min-maxed by keen RvB pilots - leading to many teams fielding a core double VNI, Vexor composition. Will Dance For PLEX had brought out neut Myrmidons and Navitas logistics frigates to good effect in earlier rounds with Jigsaw banning the Navitas in the final two matches, forcing a major rethink on team composition for their opponents.
The tournament was the brainchild of RvB director and CSM representative Mangala Solaris who funded the bulk of the mammoth prize pool out of his own wallet.
The winning team took home a sweet billion ISK apiece along with a pirate battleship of choice. Second place earned themselves 750m ISK and a their choice of navy battleship. Bronze medallists took home 500m ISK and a pirate cruiser. RvB members also chipped in with a range of donations to the cause. In game medals were also handed out. Corniel Azizora, skipper of Condor Under No Trouble and Will Dance For PLEX’s Scyleth both responded to TMC’s questions. TMC: How was the tournament? Any particular moments you recall as being either hilarious or tragic or tragically hilarious?
“First match, when we landed our VNI right on top of the other team’s VNI (first match of the tourny) at that point we pretty much knew we would be fucked if they would go for the logis. We didn't managed to catch them, so yeah we got raped,” Corniel Azizora said.
“Other than that we had to go through the torment of MECHcore, one of our team members, singing every national anthem from every country while we where waiting for our next match,”
“The tournament was great fun, finishing in second place I was extremely happy with my team and what we managed to accomplish,” Scyleth said.
“Playing a total of 10 matches caused havoc with our logistics and player fatigue was a concern but we were up for the challenge.
“The tragic moment for me was reading in local that my teammate Shecky THCfan managed to lose his vexor navy issue to concord.
“Then finding out that it was Shecky's last vexor navy issue.”
TMC: What kind of weird ship fits and combinations did you come up with?
“We planned 5 concepts, one of them included a dual cyclone, we wanted to run a blackbird with dua moa and a thorax. But didn't get the chance to test it out,” Corniel Azizora said.
“I don't believe we made any weird setups that were out of the ordinary,” Scyleth said.
“Looking at the points system for the first time I knew I wanted to use logi frigates so they quickly became our core ships.”
TMC: What kind of team-bonding exercises did you get up to in the lead up to the tourney?
“None, we struggled to get a solid team from the start, so we only managed to confirm the full team on last wednesday before the tourny,” Corniel said.
“None, it was rare to see 3 or more members online at the same time to really do anything,” Scyleth said.
TMC: How was turnout and attendance from your team?
“100% we were the first team in system, I had hauled all our concept the night before, we just had to fiddle a few things (doing runs back and forth to jita to take booster pills). Everyone was there on time,” Corniel said.
“All of my pilots were online and active for the entire weekend. We did have a member disconnect during a match but thankfully we were out of danger by that point and just needed to clear up the remaining support ships,” Scyleth said.
TMC: Any ideas on future tourneys?
“Entrance fee of 50 mill would prevent players from signing up and then going afk when they are assigned to a team,” Cornel said.
“Ban the Gecko.” was Scyleth’s forthright response.
Mangala Solaris had the following thoughts on the event.
“I personally think it went well,” Mangala said.
“Like actual sporting events it had its drama, no matter how daft that looks in the light of day!
“Overall though good fights, great atmosphere and some brilliant publicity for RvB. I have to admit I do enjoy showing off that players can create things like this and in ways rival CCP by doing so.
“Any fight Scyleth captained seemed to end really close and really enjoyable.
“I tired of the VNI meta, so any team that brought something other than that grabbed my attention, Way Too Tight and again Will Dance for Plex with their Myrm setups had me screaming like a soccer mom.
“Huge shoutouts to the commentators, Sard Caid, Thecla Elarik, Ceofore Aideron and Julianus Soter.
“Show hosts were myself and Xan Drakov. Clean up crew was mostly my MTU, Thecla and the referee Ophelia Yotosala.
“Extra mention to our awesome camera crews, Tyrendian Biohazard, Boci, BlackwingDMG, Dale Gaterau and noXza.
“I like to think that by running such tournaments and doing so publicly via stream, I am helping to foster an environment that will encourage other player entities to do the same.
“This weekend we successfully demonstrated how a player event can be run without any interference from anyone, and if a big name like RvB can manage that, then Joe WannabePvPer can do the same with his corp/alliance.
“The more player run tournaments and events we see in New Eden, the better for all.”
Mangala Solaris has also announced he will not be standing for re-election to the CSM after this term, his second, finishes. He has not ruled out a return in the future. In a post on the RvB forums, Mangala said, in part:
“Its time I did more to reinvigorate my EVE experience, and that of others both inside and outside of RvB. So many projects I want to get off the ground. Things I cannot do while CSMing and working heavily in RL. Somethings gotta give, in this case my career in Space Politics has to make way for actually playing with spaceships.”
The complete set of tournament videos and commentary are available on YouTube.
Nullsec Pirate data and relic sites now appear in Class 1, 2, and 3 wormholes. This will no doubt increase wormhole traffic and offer more opportunity for those explorers out there who aren't afraid of the unknown.
Although small in terms of actual value lost. This just goes to show that PL are committed to finding content wherever it lies.
A mixed force of PL capitals and subcapitals were able to entrap the CoW ships in a brilliant mix of luck and timing. CoW was apparently moving supercaps out of it's home in Insmother through the Derelik region. Ostensibl;y with the purpose of redploying assets to support N3's gains in Delve and Querious.
PL scouts had spotted the small force moving through and set an ambush in the system of Uanzin. And as the supercaps were moving through they sprang the trap. All of the CoW ships were lost in quick succession.
Hello Capsuleers! This is CCP SoniClover on behalf of Team Banana Stand, telling you about one of our new features in Phoebe: Mission Objective Guidance. Mission Objective Guidance is a system intended to aid people in completing missions they’ve accepted by giving hints on what to do next to progress or complete the mission.
There were several reasons for going for this feature, the two main ones being to reduce likelihood of players becoming confused or frustrated when doing a mission and to allow us to start delving into the pretty arcane agent/mission code for future work on the framework of missions.
In deciding on how the feature should function, we had two general rules of thumb. One was to make this as unobtrusive as possible and the other was to avoid having hints lead the player by the nose too much. As such, the guidance provided indicates the general direction or area to focus on, but should not be completely brain-dead instructions to follow. This is of course a fine line to tread, so please let us know where you feel we stand here.
So let’s go over how the Mission Objective Guidance system works in a bit more detail.
The system uses the Agent info panel in the upper left corner of the screen. This means you can turn the guidance system on or off alongside the panel (by clicking the human silhouette icon to the left of the header). To the left of the mission name in the panel, there is now an icon that hints at the state for that mission. Here is an example:
This icon is then updated when the player does something that progresses the mission to a new state. Here is another icon example:
When a mission is completed, the icon changes to the mission complete icon:
To get more information, the player can mouse-over the mission to get a tooltip with further information. This information depends on the mission and the current state of it. Let’s look at a few examples:
Notice here that the hint tells the player what item he needs, but doesn’t tell him where that item is.
Another example:
This is a common tooltip for instance when you need to kill all NPCs to activate the acceleration gate to the next deadspace complex area.
This is not an exhaustive list of all the states or tooltips. We’ll have that in the patch notes, so check them out when they are published for more details.
The mission system is an old bastard in many ways and creating a generic system to cover all the ancient snowflakes still floating around in it is far from easy. So while the Mission Objective Guidance system does cover the vast majority of missions, there are a few for which we can only give very vague hints. Often, this means simply telling the player to refer to the Journal for further information.
To help players a bit more, we have a few graphical elements to emphasize what’s going on.
When a state changes, the icon in the agent info panel blinks to indicate this.
When the mission is specifying a particular object, for instance a structure to destroy, clicking on the state icon will move the camera to show the object. This will only work if you have the camera tracking on. This is an exception to the rule of not giving too strong hints, because we want to improve how players can find objects in the space scene without having to resort to the overview.
If the tooltip references a specific item, clicking on the name of the item in the tooltip will bring up the show info window for that item. This includes destination system, allowing you to set destination.
Future iterations on this feature will cover more of the special snowflake missions that we can’t track adequately at the moment and will possibly offer further polish on the visual side, especially in making people more aware of mission objectives in their surroundings.
The Mission Objective Guidance system is on Singularity right now, so head over there if you want to test it and please give us feedback if you run into anything strange. [ Original Dev Post ]
Hello capsuleers, CCP Leeloo here with some excitement about all things CSM! If you don't know what the CSM is, then check this out! CSM9 Summer Summit
Remember I said we would release the minutes on 31st of October? Well, that was not true. BUT! Don’t start throwing tomatoes, rocks and small furry animals at me, we will actually release the minutes earlier, in fact, RIGHT NOW, so click the image below and enjoy your warp through time to read 146 pages of declassified goodness about the Summer Summit! Click Here for CSM9 Summer Summit Meeting Minutes!
Secondly, since I'm writing this, I would like to make a few more announcements regarding the CSM right now. Plus, one paragraph is not enough to be a dev blog! CSM9 Winter Summit
So, since we just visited the past, it's time now to talk about the future! Tune in for the CSM9 Winter Summit that will be held from 20th to 23rd of January 2015. Yes, you are seeing it correctly – we have increased the duration of the CSM Summit by 1 day. We feel that cramming the summit into three days sometimes leads to burnout for CSM members and can result in the last or first few session of the day dragging out a little. We want to make sure that both the CSM and CCP get the most possible benefit out of each summit, as it's something we take incredibly seriously. This extra day means that the CSM will be even more involved in our work than ever before, and have further access to development. CSM10
Unfortunately, while CSM9 has additional time for the summit, they won’t have any additional time for their actual term. Furthermore, they will be a short-term CSM as we will be announcing the new council during the keynote at FanFest 2015, which has been moved forward to March 21 to coincide with a solar eclipse here in Reykjavik.
For all people who want to try themselves at this tough job, I will start accepting the applications for CSM10 on January, 30th and the elections themselves will happen on February, 25th.
Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about the process, I will be publishing another dev-blog regarding the elections closer to that date. Internal changes
With the new release cadence, we have realized that we need as an efficient team as possible and we can’t afford to have a CSM that is only partially functioning. We simplified a lot of internal processes and we are also working on updating the CSM White Paper right now. There will be more discussion of this and finalization at the CSM9 Winter Summit.
The main change that some of you might have noticed – we found a new way to deal with resigning members. This is thanks to your feedback from this thread, by the way!
Before now, we would just run a short staffed team. This will be changing and we will be replacing members if they decide or have to leave (we are also looking into a possibility to deal with inactive members).
We will be removing the person who has left from the ballot and re-running the elections with an updated ballot.
However, this will only be done if there are three or more release cycles left till the end of the term. We are still polishing this idea, so please, leave your feedback in the discussion thread for this dev blog.
Please expect more information about this and other changes with the CSM later in the future.
<3 @CCP_Leeloo
CFC and allied BL., NC., along with PL forces skirmished in a string of systems on October 28th.
The battle started in 4-ABS8 and as it progressed spilled over into J-CIJV
BL, Nulli.and PL have been seen hunting together in search of good fights, quite a lot recently. This was no exception. A long term CFC presence in 4-ABS8 system in Pure Blind was the target of a coordinated strike from the opposition late Tuesday night.
With 4-ABS8 being within a few jumps of both highsec and lowsec, it has always been a system that people pass through on their way through certain areas of null. Pure Blind being right in the heart of GSF SOV, it's no coincidence that anti-CFC forces struck there.
The fight began when NC. and PL forces moved into the system presumably from a lowsec staging point, And as more CFC forces came on grid, BL was called in to help.
The fight kicked off when CFC and S2N forces arrived on grid with the
J-C stargate at roughly the same time: the CFC Tengu fleet landed at
zero, while the S2N Cerberus fleet landed at a perch. Reagalan ordered
interdictor bubbles deployed between the two fleets to keep S2N from
retreating to J-C, and his fleet maneuvered to the side so that he could
warp on top of the hostile force. S2N beat him to the punch, and the
fight started when the S2N Cerberus gang warped in on him at zero.
Antimatter was loaded in the CFC Tengus, and the order to tackle
everything was given just as the CFC Cawk fleet, numbering approximately
100 pilots, arrived on grid about 50km away from the Cerberuses. Heavy
losses among the Cawk fleet ensued, as dozens of assault frigates
charged headlong into the fire of Rapid Light Missile Launchers to swarm
the Cerberus gang and pin them down. Another broadcast went out to CFC
jabber services for a Celestis fleet under Lemba.
As the fight escalated and the anti-CFC decided to evac it's forces, the battle was rejoin in the nearby system of J-CIJV when they were caught in gate camps. With both sides suffering some major losses. With several hundred pilots involved at the low end, the number and value of ships lost overall is a staggering more than 600 ships and ~70 Billion ISK.
With all the changes in Null recently, from Kadeshi and NC. seizing former CFC SOV, and the BRAVE/PROVI war being called off, it was only a matter of time before someone tried to pull a mass op against the CFC to try and capitalize on their withdrawal from PB, Querious, and Delve.
For some people an End of Life (EOL) or Mass Critical (Crit) hole whilst scanning means leave it and just move on, one of our newest recruits Akillya decided to jump though an EoL/Crit hole. Whatever is on the other side must surely think themselves safe as only crazy people would try to get them.
As Akillya started passing intel about the site runners people got interested and a plan was hatched, a conventional T3 fleet would have no way to jump through such a hole as it would collapse before we got enough ships in, trapping ourselves and not being able to kill things, so we decide to bring a Triage Nidhoggur and put the bulk of our T3's in it's ship hanger with only a few Legions jumping with plates off swiftly followed by a gaggle of pods and finally the Nidhoggur which collapsed the hole.
On the far side a Sabre warped in to bubble the capitals on field whilst the Nidhoggur ejected our T3's as the boarding range is 6km, this meant we didn't have to slow boat as far to get to our ships from the ship hanger (2500m), as people jumped in their ships the carrier initiated warp so it would arrive moments after the T3's, what followed was a text book execution of neuting and focus fire to slowly bring down our targets, this was easily one of the most exciting site ganks I've done in a while as there was genuine risk involved as even the extraction of our carrier took quite some effort let alone the set up and execution.
Ok boys and girls I have a lot of ground to cover, so get your reading glasses ready. I DO NOT suggest skimming this post. READ IT! READ IT TWICE! For those of your corp/alliance mates that are illiterate, READ IT TO THEM! Tell them you have a bedtime story, then read them a fucking SWOT, but with the changes coming we cannot have members roaming around aimlessly going “derr… I didn’t know that”.
Overview:
I hope it is obvious, but if not… This deployment is going very, very well for us. We have had some really fun fights, including good capital combat experience for our members along with some very nice capital kills. Honestly I am a little surprised at how well the fights in the North have been going.
In this campaign, our group (GCLUB/Nulli/BL) has been the Vanguard force. Our position is grill to grill with the primary CFC forces, and they have made no secret of the fact that they can freely waive their Epeens with Titans, Supers, and massive blobs. We came here expecting to fight difficult (even overwhelming) odds, and we expected to take heavy losses. That is our role in this campaign, and arguably ours is the most fun (especially when SRP’d :)). However, on a more “objective oriented” note, there is also much more going on strategically, than can be seen from the rank and file on the front lines.
I am sure it is apparent by now that the N3 coalition intentionally divided into multiple groups, and we are attacking the CFC on multiple fronts. Our presence (and our constant offensive) in the north has been forcing the CFC to choose what they defend and where; ultimately betraying the level of value placed on each of their allies. As the CFC is forced to choose, and protect only those things (and allies) that they REALLY care about, a very powerful point is made to those who are not so lucky.
For the CFC this is like a really nice ass whoopin. When you are getting hit and kicked from all directions you have to make choices. You have only two hands. You can use them to cover your face, you can cover your ass, or you can cover your balls. However, you can’t cover everything from a standing position. You have to lay on the ground, curl up into a ball, and take your beating on the floor, fetal position, hands cupped around your nut sack!
So… up here in the north… well we are here to kick balls! It isn’t all that surprising that we are getting the bulk of their attention. The only thing that surprises me so far is how many shots we have delivered to those tiny tender testicles!
Even outnumbered and outgunned, we are pulling even draws and sometimes decisive wins. Though not necessary to complete our objective, this is icing on the cake. Our fights have gone far better than I expected, and all of this is made possible with 3 basic ingredients: Good numbers, good choices, and excellent FC’ing. Those are the ingredients for what I like to call “pussy tear soup”. So let’s keep cooking it up, and serving it to the CFC!
Specifically for GCLUB, I am very proud of what we have accomplished in such a short period of time. We are getting bigger, stronger, and gaining in experience and pilot skill. Our development has been phenomenal, and believe me… it has been noticed! So great job all, keep up the good work, and keep pushing numbers, training queues, and proper priorities. At our current rate of growth and development, imagine where we will be in another year…
Mandatory Doctrines:
Doctrines are never easy to coordinate at the coalition level. Each alliance has their own member base, average skill level, preferences, prejudices, and history (i.e. inertia). Doctrine synching is a very delicate subject, and does require compromise. This is a reality that I am sure you are all used to by now, and sometimes it is one of the most frustrating things I have to deal with. There have been a lot of things mentioned, or half announced in TS by various FC’s and individuals. I have recently made clear that all GCLUB doctrine changes will come from myself and Rhaeghar. Period!
We have managed to sit down and hammer out a more cohesive and coordinated approach to doctrines. We have already adopted a lot of changes since the start of this deployment, and for now… THAT IS ENOUGH. So to re-iterate, after CBwT, our current doctrines are:
Bombers
Ishtars (now shield)
Cerberus/Scimi (with both RML & HML fit options), and a temp preference for Basilisk Logi
Zealot/Guardian
Loki/Scimitar
Those are still the official GCLUB doctrines, and those are the ONLY ships that are mandatory for our members. Recent changes include some fit tweaking, and a temporary preference for Basilisk with Cerbs (which is a direct counter to CFC Tengus). That is enough for now, and we are going to give you guys some time (at least several weeks) to solidify those before we consider anything else.
Nulli Doctrines:
It is no surprise that we will continue to work very closely with Nulli and will try to stay largely synch’d in terms of doctrines. Nulli is considering a number of doctrine changes that are likely to be announced in the coming days. Largely their doctrine changes will be much more in line with ours, but they will likely have another ship or two on their doctrine list that will NOT officially be on our mandatory list. GCLUB currently has a large span of pilot skill:
We have some pilots who are frantically trying to get settled into our doctrines. Believe me I get that. If you think I don’t, I can sit down some time and tell you horror stories of being in Nulli with <5m skill points (and less than half combat). I feel your pain, and I work very hard to make our environment a thousand times more forgiving than that which I experienced. At the same time I gotta push us toward excellence, and ultimately we have to have good fleets. So to our lower skills pilots, I can’t promise it will be easy, but I can promise that it will be realistic, and as long as you do your part, you will have the time and patience to get where you need to be.
We also have pilots who have very high SP, who can easily shift to new doctrines (with little or no training). So for the other doctrines Nulli may roll out, I will tell you for now that you will likely be encouraged to Train, buy, and field them once you have our primary doctrines covered. You will be encouraged to field them in coalition fleets, and they will be SRP’d (provided they fit within our SRP parameters in terms of risk/reward). This will fall into the “strongly encouraged, but not mandatory” category. It is my hope that we have a good number of pilots who do this, and we will be working out alternative solutions for those who can’t (i.e. what GCLUB will field if the coalition is fielding X doctrine). This process will never be perfect or easy, but we are working hard to improve it.
Are We Going to Remain Deployed Through the Patch?
I can’t say for sure, however for sub caps I will say it is extremely likely, and it is possible that our deployment position will be shifted before the patch. The truth is that we have made huge progress, and the advantages of our current strategies are going to be amplified by the November 4th changes. I don’t expect that we will wipe the CFC off the map, but we have an excellent opportunity to cut them down to size, and bring the pain.
We have to remember something: These mother fuckers attacked us last year. They tried to wipe us out, and despite their best “heart stabbing” efforts, we quickly re-claimed everything that was lost (and more), and here we are six month later, right back in their faces, and on the attack. So on some level:
“Revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold… in space.”
~Khan (Stardate 8130.3)
What About Caps before November 4th?
The big question on everyone’s mind. Unfortunately it is also one that I am not going to answer at this time, but will have an announcement on very soon. What I can tell you is this: There is a plan; it is a good plan; and we will (as always) leverage our assets toward the maximum benefit of our alliance and coalition.
Just in case you are concerned: Make no mistake! I am quite well aware of the coming changes; I am quite well aware of the implications of those changes; and I am quite well aware of the date. So relax!
One thing to keep in mind (whether it be now, or in the future), we will have times that part or all of our cap force will be forward deployed. Even post patch, our caps will travel, our caps will fight in distant locations, and our caps will die in glorious, Titan melting fires! We have been building up to this for some time, and we are at the cusp of an entirely new level of combat in Eve. So trust your leadership, enjoy the process, and pay close attention to announcements!
Immediate Changes To Our Deployment:
Ok, so I am going to go ahead and announce the following, and ask you to sort it out over the next week or so.
We are moving our Zealots home, and we are moving our Lokis & Chimeras to Tartoken. Here is a list of what you should have and where:
In Tartoken:
· Bomber (at least 2)
· Ishtar (shield fit)
· Cerberus/Basilisk
· Loki/AB Scimitar (Ready to re-fit MWD for Cerb Fleet if no Basi)
· Dreads
· Carriers (Archon and Chimera)
· Roam & Fun Shit (Talwars, Recons, BLOPs, etc..)
In CKX:
· Bomber (at least 2)
· Cerberus/Scimitar
· Zealot/Guardian
· Supers and Titans
· HD Shit (Ferox, Brutix, etc..)
Note: You will notice that we want our Cerberus fleet in both locations. This is NOT a typo. This is the first step toward a new paradigm, so get used to this idea. Some doctrines will be duplicated and staged in multiple locations. At present you should have the Cerb doctrine BOTH in deployment AND in home space.
Also very much worth noting, I really want people to get used to the “Isk Deployment” concept (details posted HERE). So if you have a Zealot at home already, and bought one for deployment, you can liquidate it (or keep in the area). However, be sure you have a Zealot/Guardian and a Cerb/Scimi at home. We need to be combat ready from home at all times!
Asset Review:
If your like me, you have a fuck ton of extra ships laying around. I have Geddons, Maelstroms, Scorpions, and shit in various locations throughout the universe. In CKX I have 3 extra Domis, a couple Mega’s, several Brutix, a few extra Scorpions, and a fuck ton of misc. small shit I don’t sue. I strongly encourage members to re-evaluate what they have where, and what they still need and don’t. There are three reasons for this:
#1 – If you do have a bunch of extra, useless ships laying around in CKX (or anywhere else for that matter), that you just haven’t gotten around to moving out and liquidating… remember it is going to be FAR more difficult to do this in 2 weeks. So you might as well take advantage of the long carrier jump ranges, and get that shit moved now if you don’t need it in CKX.
#2 – One of the realities of coming changes is that we will need members to maintain multiple “weapons caches” in various places. We will try to keep this as reasonable as possible, but it does mean that you will possibly need to own 2 or 3 of some doctrines, and if you are short on isk for this, converting that old Mega or Domi or whatever (useless to us atm) into an extra cerb or zealot (or two) would be a far more useful form. Remember all ships are just isk in another form.
#3 – I am very confident in our sov position in Immensea post patch. That said, we are entering a time of change in the Eve Universe. I have ALWAYS encouraged people to be intelligent about unnecessary and excessive isk accumulations in conquerable stations. In the coming months anything can happen. Honestly, I see way more opportunities than threats for us, but we are moving into a more dynamic universe, and being intelligent about asset positioning is always a good move.
Summary:
I am probably going to be releasing a LOT more information on a number of subjects in the coming week or two. I strongly encourage taking the time to read it.
In the meantime, please keep doing what you are doing. Keep pushing numbers to fleets, and get your ships positioned in the appropriate locations ASAP!
Quick history lesson: once upon a time there was no skill training queue and much use of alarm clocks and other reminders was involved in “optimizing” a skill-training plan. There was therefore great joy when the skill queue was released in the revered Apocrypha expansion in 2009. This joy was only slightly tempered by the limitation that skills could only be inserted into the queue as long as they started within the next 24 hours.
In Phoebe, by removing the 24-hour window for inserting additional skills, we will be providing the possibility of skill queues containing multiple skill entries requiring many more than 24-hours to train. We believe the value of this for you, with many of you needing to manage your skill training alongside busy and varied schedules throughout the year, will be considerable.
Since the skill queue will now be opened up to provide for skill training plans that are not limited by a short installation window and be effectively unlimited in time, there are a few points to note.
Trial accounts will remain limited to the 24-hour window for inserting skills into the queue.
Strictly speaking the skill queue will have an installation window of 10 years. Further, the skill queue will remain limited to 50 entries in total for the time being. These limits are being maintained for safety as this significant change to the skill-training system goes live, and are not set in stone.
We wanted to focus on (effectively) removing the arbitrary time limit without getting lost in new user interface design or additional features. As the skill-training system is so central to EVE, we felt that it is important to take small steps and not change too much at this time.
All that said, as you can see from the example above, a training queue can now be many months long and it is certainly possible to construct a queue that will run for years, even with the 50 entry limit.
While making this change we have noted further areas for improvement and very much look forward to your feedback and ideas about the skill-training system and related gameplay.
On Saturday, 25th October 2014, an alliance meeting was called for Black Legion. to issue orders in preparation for Phoebe release on the 4th November 2014.
The first point made was that Infomorph Psychology and Synchronizing are to be trained to level 4 at least to make rapid movement across the universe easier and so that BL. can re-deploy quickly if required. It will help BL. retain a certain amount of mobility post patch and seems to be something a lot of the alliances are thinking of.
Orders also still stand for everyone to move everything to Tartoken by the 29th October, so that when the next move op happens, everyone will be moving from Tartoken with the cyno chain that will be supplied by BL.. As to where they are going, a document was released to BL. members that showed the pro’s and cons for regions including:
Curse - which would put BL. in the locality of INIT, HERO, PROVI and PL but may cause TZ issues and put them a long way from the CFC, if they are still going to try and take them down.
Lonetrek - which is nice and close to Jita and within hit range of a number of CFC regions and certain low-sec entities for content but any gains in CFC space would likely be temporary as CFC will probably turn up in force.
Venal - which is right in the middle of CFC space and would make for good content creation with lot’s of people to fight and there will be enough PVE content and moons to set up a good source of income. However this will make movements for caps difficult as all mid points would be in hostile space and PVP content would depend totally on CFC as no one else is around to fight or, if not blueballed by CFC, they will likely get blobbed when the CFC DO decide to fight. Also high potential for hellcamped stations by bored CFC members.
Fountain Core – close to ‘money moons’ which will either generate ISK for the alliance if flipped or generate fights if others come to defend. A number of outer CFC alliances would be close by. PVE content for individuals would be good through Angel and Serpentis missions as well as exploration. However this will need a mid point in hostile space for JF’s to get to high-sec and there is a low chance of either getting hellcamped by CFC or their local allies.
The document also asks four main questions:
Do BL. want to take SOV post Phoebe?
Do BL. want to continue taking on the CFC blob, maybe without friends like the rest of N3 to help?
Where will BL. find the most fun content?
Do BL. decide to take a easy option, like Lonetrek? Or a riskier strategy like moving out to Venal?
As to where they are going, it seems like BL. are looking either towards Fountain Core or Venal, once that is decided, with the help of an alliance vote, the BL. leadership have declared that this will be the alliance home for the foreseeable future.
BL. seems to have also come to terms with the fact that the old EvE ways will be dying after this patch and that the will need to adapt and improve in certain areas to help them be successful in what will soon be a totally new game of EvE. BL. have said they will stop looking at the entire universe and just focus themselves on certain regions and their local area. Hopefully this will increase their effectiveness as an alliance.
BL. leadership have promised that they do have a plan for the alliance for the long term. This will be unfolding over the weeks after the Phoebe patch and when they know what the new ‘occupancy affected SOV’ will entail.
Orders in regards to supers are to not sell them, infact the BL. orders are to buy as many as they can possibly get their hands on. Titans are prefered over supercapitals and Leviathans are the preferred titan of BL. at the moment.
Over the past week, NPC Venal residents Out of Sight. (OOS) have been attacking various CFC-held towers in the region. Yesterday CFC alliance Circle-of-Two (CO2) caught them sieging a tower in 6W-HRH and dropped by to introduce themselves. Today a similar incident erupted into a brawl in HBD-CC between Black Legion. (BL) and CFC forces which incurred an estimated 26 billion ISK in losses among the involved parties.
Prior to the battle OOS dreads were spotted jumping out of their staging system by CO2 scouts and soon after attacking a RAZOR Alliance tower in HBD-CC. CO2 and CFC military leadership were made aware of the situation, and separate broadcasts went out to CO2 and to the greater CFC to form fleets at 17:53 EVE Time. While the CFC formed up a large Harpy fleet in its military capital YA0-XJ under Reagalan, CO2 assembled a dedicated tackling fleet of approximately 20-30 pilots, of whom only one got through the first bridge before the insertion cyno ship was destroyed.
While another CO2 cyno ship was en route to HBD-CC, the CFC Harpy fleet got set up on a titan in YA0-XJ and began moving its own cyno to D-SKWC - one jump out of HBD-CC, which itself was outside of titan range from YA0-XJ. Known to the CFC, but deemed irrelevant to the situation at hand, BL was in the middle of a planned State of the Alliance meeting with approximately 250 pilots logged into their staging system of Tartoken.
Cyno ships for both CO2 and the CFC eventually reached their target systems and at 18:02 EVE Time tackle was confirmed; CO2 interdictor pilot Zuquar Bonaparte had single handedly held down the OOS dreadnoughts for the better part of five minutes while evading hostile fire. The rest of the CO2 tackle fleet bridged in and promptly littered the field with interdiction spheres, guaranteeing the dreadnoughts would not escape. The CFC Harpy fleet, by now numbering approximately 180 pilots, arrived at 18:10 and began focus fire on the dreadnoughts one at a time. Reagalan directed fire first onto the two Moroses, which each took several minutes of sustained fire to kill. During that time CO2 members Sebastian Saintfruqsuin and gigX prepared their titan characters to execute drive-by doomsdays.
Sebastian jumped his Ragnarok in first at 18:22 and instantly destroyed a Naglfar before warping off to a safe spot. gigX followed two minutes later, also obliterating a Naglfar, but there were now combat probes on directional scan and BL cyno characters had entered local. In the time it had taken the CFC forces to kill the OOS dreadnoughts, BL had formed up a Tengu fleet led by Elo Knight and arrived to pounce on gigX's exposed Avatar.
The CFC Harpy fleet immediately engaged the BL Tengu fleet, focusing fire on their Scimitars, while the Tengu fleet promptly headshot Reagalan's FC character. Lyris Nairn took over the CFC Harpy fleet, contiuning to focus on BL support ships while sirens started blaring on CFC jabber and mumble services reporting the tackled titan. BL was reported to be forming a capital fleet and supercapital forces from Northern Coalition(dot) and Pandemic Legion were reported logging in. BL lit a cyno on grid and a single triage carrier made it on grid before the cyno ship was destroyed; meanwhile, heavy TiDi was reported in YA0 due to the number of pilots logging in. The CFC was marshaling its own capital and supercapital forces as well as forming up additional subcapital fleets: a Baltec fleet under Dabigredboat and a Celestis fleet under Reagalan, who had been podded during the fight.
BL and CFC subcapital forces continued to brawl near the tackled titan over the next several minutes while pilots all across EVE were being urged to pile into fleets in preparation for what might have easily escalated into a huge supercapital slugfest. Whether due to temperance or lack of confidence, that fight never came. Instead, the CFC capital fleet led by kcolor arrived on grid to engage the BL tengus and the tackled titan's doomsday timer came off cooldown whereupon the BL triage Chimera was promptly destroyed. Having lost most of its logistics and its second FC during the brawl, as well as suffering from an AFK fleet member having errantly received fleet boss, the CFC Harpy fleet disengaged and fled the field to regroup while the CFC capital fleet cleaned up. In the time it took for the CFC Harpy fleet to warp off, reassemble in a safe spot, and arrive back on grid - with Lyris Nairn now in a fleet member's borrowed Harpy - the BL tengus had also fled the field and were reported to be going home. The CFC Harpy fleet remained on grid to cover the extraction of the titan, then of the capital fleet, before also heading home via the CFC jump bridge network.
As the changes of Phoebe loom on the horizon and the major Null entities get ready for the inevitable clusterfuck, HERO and PROVI have attempted to end the border dispute that has since become a proxy war involving PL, N3, RUS, and others.
An allegedly leaked image above details the agreement between the two groups.
Some may have enjoyed the progression of the dispute took over the recent months, but it made perfect sense that this would happen at some point. Catch will be a very hot target in the coming months after Phoebe as more groups look to join the "fun" in Null. And holding what they have should be the primary concern.
I'd bet my bottom dollar that we will see both groups pour resources into capitals and supercaps for the coming weeks. And with PL returning to it's roots as a "burn it all" merc group, we may see a very big dustup between them and HERO soon.
Another interesting point is how both groups will seek to define the common enemy portion of the agreement. And whether or not it leads to seriously bad outcomes for either.
Let’s talk more about the dark side of Phoebe and the jump changes.
First, let’s state the problem that plagues all competitive multiplayer games but open ended games like EVE the most, the n+1 problem:
All else being equal, the side with n resources is at a disadvantage to the side with n+1 resources.
In EVE, n can refer to the amount of ISK, skill points, friends, experience, etc. Basically, there is always an advantage to have more of things available to you than your opponents. This is a fact of gaming life. As well as business and life in general. There is a constant need for more resources. Or as the last George Carlin put it, "The meaning of life is just trying to find a place for your stuff.".
In gaming this inherent advantage is addressed by caps on players, either direct or indirect. Limiting points, items, money, or other in-game resources. Limits in skill discrepancies, always trying to find ways to give the "little guy", i.e. the side on the lower end of the n+1 problem, the ability to punch up against the “big guy”. Adding in diminishing returns, or more of a particular item or mechanic to try and bring "stuff" in balance.
A common complaint about any changes to nullsec is some variant of “this change benefits the big coalitions more than the little guys you want to balkanize null sec with because they have more of [insert specific resource here]“. Well, DUH! The larger and more organized group will ALWAYS have an advantage over the smaller and less organized groups unless the former choose not to take it. This is not a surprise. The goal of changes should be to give so many decisions and actions for large groups to take that they cannot press the advantage in all areas at the same time. To diffuse their advantage across multiple areas to the point they still have an advantage, but so that the opportunity for smaller groups to enter into the scuffle is always there.
This is what the jump ship and fatigue changes in Phoebe are trying to do: limit power projection of all capital fleets AND force large coalitions to make choices about how they use their n+1 advantage to the best effect, hopefully leaving opportunities open for smaller groups to gain footholds in the game. Right now, there is no choice to be made when faced with the question of smashing a smaller group because of the ease of tactical and strategic deployment of capitals, or rather the only choice is “do I feel like it?” and that’s not a good gameplay design.
So we get Phoebe. And one of the responses is “well, the large capital using coalitions will just put caches of capital ships all over the galaxy and use jump clones or interceptors to get to them when needed”.
Yes, yes they will.
The groups we are talking about are some of the most organized and affluent in EVE’s history, there is literally no mechanical solution to force projection they cannot buy and/or maneuver around with enough effort. But that’s the key word there, isn’t it? Effort.
Yes, they will create stockpiles of capital ships in various NPC stations and POS around the cluster (easier with regular caps than with super caps). Yes they will be able to avoid the jump fatigue mechanic with interceptors and/or jump clones to get to the caches as they need them. Yes, they will recruit or create more specialty accounts to accomplish this. Yes, they are still going to be able to throw their weight around considerably.
But hopefully the effort of making and maintaining these caches in an operational and ready to go state adds enough complexity to force projection to cause these large powerful groups to have to make decisions that leave gaps in the defenses. The point seems to be that these concessions will force a train of thought that means these larger groups will not only have to expend vast amounts of resources to maintain their holdings. Creating the opportunity for exploitation by smaller groups with a keen eye and ear to the ground. A small group with proper planning and good intel could easily cause havoc for these larger groups, mostly by gumming up the deployment of these caches. Thereby forcing redeployment and restructuring. A very cat and mouse game may emerge.
I will just throw this out there - my view on the Plex price.
The Plex price has broken above 800m ISK yet volumes are on the decline.
Worth considering that the supply of Plex is not related to the demand for Plex in the same way that minerals and ships hulls are related, for example.
The demand for Plex is perhaps easier to think about. The demand is some sort of a function of the growth in the Eve population and the wealth of the Eve Population. As those increase then the demand for Plex should increase. So far, so good.
The supply of Plex though is less obvious (or it may be and i am merely missing the point!).
The question i am wrestling with is why does a player want to buy Plex for $15? Clearly, the answer is that the player wants to buy ISK (or, occasionally spends US$ to dual train etc).
If so, then the more ISK that $15 of Plex creates then presumably the less total US$ the player need spend to buy the total ISK that they require.
For example, if a player wanted to buy $4bn of ISK, today they would need to buy 5 Plex = spending $75. One year ago, that $4bn of ISK would have required about 7 Plex = $105.
In other words, for a player to achieve a level of ISK then that player need not buy as many Plex today and so the supply of Plex has gone done.
(For now, lets assume that 4bn of ISK today would get the same as 4bn of ISK a year ago).
Hence, we have a situation where the demand for Plex is rising and the supply is falling. Leads to a self-fulfilling price rise in Plex until one of the demand factors breaks and then we get a self-fulfilling price fall in Plex! The inflation in terms of the dropping value of plex purchased looks to be not be reducing anytime soon.
Of course, someone with a load of Plex could dump on the market and cause a fall, perhaps temporary.
CCP then has a balancing act on their hands - rising inflation leads to more ISK being required by players buying it using Plex (good for CCP, bad for the Plex price). But rising inflation also leads to more wealth and so a rising demand for Plex (good for the Plex price). Which will win, not clear.
Alliance Updates are intended for an internal audience and should be considered propaganda or taken with a grain of salt.
This update will cover what we will be doing for the next 10 days
right up until the release of Phoebe and how you can get ready. Please
read the entire post thoroughly and work hard over the next week to
findtime to complete any preparation that you don’t already have done.
Most of you won’t need to do anything, for the rest of you this should
take virtually no time to get ready. Our plans for Phoebe are simple,
and we’re incredibly excited about some of the ideas we have for these
new game mechanics. Here are the 5 steps/announcements/stuff of our
simple Phoebe plan:
1) We will be moving everything out of Tartoken and deploying to a new staging system on Sunday, November 2nd:
The exact time of the move op will be posted on
the calendar this upcoming Sunday after our corp leadership meeting,
but expect it to be around the 19:00-20:00 range. There has never been a
more important move op, if it is at all possible for you to make it to
the scheduled move then you need to do so. I know this is cutting it
close to the November 4th Phoebe patch, but because we only have dreads,
carriers, and subcaps in Tartoken, this should be a move we are capable
of making successfully before the jump drive changes. We have very
good reasons for waiting this late to shift to our final destination
before Tartoken, and they outweigh all of the obvious issues that moving
this late might cause. We will do our best to run what is basically a
constant cyno route to our new staging system for the 48 hour period
between when we move and when the Phoebe patch is deployed.
However, I know there will be some of you that
will legitimately not be able to make any move op between Nov. 2nd and
Nov. 4th. If you know that you will not be able to make those ops, or
are in any way concerned that you could miss those ops, then you should
pack up all of your things and talk to your corp members to help get
them moved during the move op. We will be making more than one trip to
go back and get all of the capitals and subcaps, so there will be plenty
of opportunities for your corp mates to get your stuff moved. You have
8 days to determine whether or not you will be able to make the move op
and plan accordingly.
I can not stress this enough, and will be pinging about
this every single day until Nov. 2nd, BUT YOU NEED TO EITHER MAKE THIS
MOVE OP OR GET YOUR TARTOKEN STUFF TO SOME CORP MEMBERS BEFORE NOVEMBER
2ND.
If you have pvp assets in Kheram that you
would like to move to our new staging system, then you need to move
those assets to Tartoken before the move op. Our new deployment will
still be a combat deployment, so you still only need your combat assets.
All Titan and Super pilots have different orders that
are on the supercapital forums. If you are a super and titan pilot and
do not have access to those forums, that sounds like a problem you
should get fixed.
2) You need to finish training the mandatory jump clone
skills we asked you to train during the Tartoken move op. For those of
you who don’t remember, these skills will be mandatory for everyone to
have by November 4th (you can easily train all this in time):
Infomorph Psychology V
Infomorph Synchronizing IV
Advanced Infomorph Psychology IV
We would actually like everyone to have all
those skills ready by November 2nd, as we will be strategically placing
jump clones during our move op (as well as during the week before it).
However, if you are going to be cutting it tight to make the deadline,
We would rather you train Informorph Psychology V first, then Infomorph
Synchronizing to IV, then Advanced Infomorph to as high as you can get
it before the op (and then obviously finish it to IV as soon as
possible).
Every combat pilot, including dread and carrier
pilots (but not supers or titans) is required to have these jump clone
skills trained. This is as mandatory as mandatory things get as far as
I’m concerned. It’s a quick train, but more importantly, so much of our
plans post-Phoebe will revolve around our new Jump Clone strategy. We
will go over in detail our methods and plans at the Nov. 2nd meeting,
but for now you need to start minimizing the amount of jump clones you
have for personal use. With the required skills trained, you’ll be able
to own a maximum of 9 jump clones. Right now we are trying to decide
between requiring you to have 5 or 6 of your jump clones reserved for
alliance use. It’ll be at least 5 (but I’m pushing hard for 6). This
will leave you 3 or 4 jump clones for personal use. If that's not
enough for you currently, then you need to find a way to make that
enough. I wish we could be flexible on this, but we can't.
Orders for where to place the jump clones will
come out this Sunday after our corp leadership meeting. This should
give people who can’t make the Nov. 2nd move op plenty of time to
teledeath and install a jumpclone somewhere.
3) Once you have finished training the required jump
clone skills, we need you to spend 4 days following these skill training
orders:
While not as crucial as the jump clone thing
above, it is very important that we get as many of you as possible to
follow these next instructions before November 2nd. The more of you who
do this, the more effective we will be:
On any account you own, pick a character that you think
you will lose the least post Phoebe (or make a new one if you have an
open slot). It’s important that this character is not your main PVP
character, or isn’t a character you plan on Jump cloning a lot.
You will then pause the skill training on this account
for whatever character is training so that you can train the 4 day skill
plan below. This is why it’s required for you to finish the jump clone
skills before training these skills. I know that no one likes wasting
skill training time, but this is a 4 day skill plan for even the most
basic character. All we are asking for is 4 days.
The skills you need to train are listed in this forum thread: http://forums.nullis...and-aid-fleet/
If this character is not currently in a nulli corp, he doesn’t need to join one yet, we will take care of that on November 2nd.
IF YOU ALREADY HAVE AN ALT CHARACTER THAT IS NOT A PVP
CHARACTER AND HAS ALL OF THESE SKILLS, THEN YOU CAN USE THAT CHARACTER.
That should save you some time.
4) We are relocating Nulli’s home base/asset storage
location from Kheram to UW9B-F in Curse:
http://evemaps.dotla...ap/Curse/UW9B-F
We told everyone a few weeks ago that we would
be discontinuing Kheram as our home base as it is no longer practical to
keep assets their with the Phoebe changes. We have finally decided on
UW9B-F as a place that fulfills the most of our needs in a “home system”
for whatever that will mean in a post-Phoebe world. UW9B and it’s
adjacent system have good 5-LY jump ranges for various jump routes, and
of course some of you will remember that this was the same system we
used to pool our assets after the 0-W hellcamp. Some corps already have
offices, and there are plenty available either in system or within one
jump for every corp to have an office.
Basically, everything you have now in Kheram
that you don’t want to leave in high sec and don’t want to take to our
next deployment, needs to be moved to UW9B-F. The focus should be on
things that can’t be moved in a jump freighter, as JFs will still be
able to move around pretty freely post patch.
5) There are no orders to evacuate anything out of any
conquerable space that we currently own. However, if you have things in
a conquerable station that can not be moved with a Jump Freighter, and
you do not want/need to keep it in the conquerable station, then the
place you should move that stuff to is UW9B-F.
Basically, there is no space we are planning on
purposefully conceding or not defending. So if you are doing industry
things, or ratting things, or whatever down in our sov, then there is no
reason for you to evac those assets unless you feel that you wouldn't
be able to get them out quickly in an emergency. If you have assets
that are much larger than a few jump freighter runs (a.k.a you’ve been
saving cap parts for a super/titan), or have assets that can not
physically fit in a jump freighter, then you will need to discuss that
with your corp leadership after this upcoming Sunday. Your corp
leadership will be getting information as to what we plan to do with
things like super and titan building and other heavy assets of that
nature on Sunday, and will then plan accordingly on what to do with your
stuff.
Conclusion/Summary/whatever:
That's it, do those things. Morale speechs and
narrative crafting and shit like that will be saved for the November 2nd
alliance meeting. You should all make an effort to ensure that not
only are you prepared and finished with all of these things, but that
your corp is as well. I'll be pinging this thread and information about
it every day multiple times a day. We will still be running fleets
from Tartoken, so there's no need to leave here except to do stuff that
is detailed in this post.
