Internet Space Misadventures

The blog of one Ali Aras, an FC, Provident, and member of CSM8.

[warp-to-sun]

This post will be hard, because the field is wide and the candidates are strong.

I am, of course, running myself, and I hope that you’ll be voting for me. One of the most active members of CSM 8, I plan to bring the same dedication to bear on CSM 9. I’m focused on improving the game for new players, preserving and expanding gameplay options for small independent groups in all areas of space, and continuing communication with the community.

My corpmate, Psianh Auvyander, is running on a platform of small gang PvP and support for small independent groups, as well as communication and transparency for the CSM. A strong candidate, he’ll represent the merc community and independent PvPers well. While we overlap somewhat, we have slightly different focuses-- I’m more focused on new players and have a great deal of “living in nullsec” experience, while Psianh has more PvP focus.

Following these two, my ballot will be mostly tactical (I want to maximize vote power), and may not precisely track my endorsements for those reasons. I’ll start, then, with the endorsements. These are the candidates that I think absolutely need to make it onto CSM 9:

Sugar Kyle. From reading her posts and listening to her interviews, Sugar would make an excellent CSM. As has been said all throughout this campaign season, CSM 9 needs a lowsec representative. It’s a valuable area of the game and CSM 8 was worse off for not having one. Sugar is the best person to fill this niche. She has a wide breadth of lowsec experience, spanning all of PvP, PvE, and industrial/marketeering. She’s got the right attitude to work well with the rest of the CSM and her feedback has already changed the game.

Jayne Fillon. Jayne is one of my colleagues and friends. He’s a good theorycrafter, a numbers nerd who’ll dive head-first into the spreadsheets. He’s an FC and community leader with the skills needed to represent a wide range of players, and he has a non-resident’s angle on PvP and nullsec that needs to be covered.

Mynnna. Mynnna has been one of the best members of CSM 8. He’s also a numbers guy, and he’s used those skills to offer insightful, constructive, and valuable feedback on nearly every proposal CCP has brought us. Several areas of the game have benefitted directly from his work, and he has maintained consistent activity and a remarkably apolitical perspective.

Xander Phoena. I’m a process person. This means I tend to prefer quietly but firmly telling CCP that they’re fucking up over big loud public furors, especially when I’ve seen the latter make life harder for CSM and CCP. That said, the last year has convinced me of the value of having a variety of personalities, and Xander has the right balance of passion and political know-how to be an incredibly valuable asset to CSM 9, and he’s already promised to bring his considerable platform to bear to help CSM 9 communicate.

Psychotic Monk. Highsec griefers and gankers are another chronically underrepresented group, with an interesting love-hate relationship with CCP and the game. Monk can represent them well, and not only that, he’s knowledgeable about highsec and the structural improvements it could use. I’ve talked with Monk a lot, both during the CSM campaigns and throughout the year, and he’s got good ideas and could improve the game.

Mike Azariah. Mike has been a fantastic member of CSM 8 and has provided both valuable perspective and valuable communication. He’s active on forums, even the threadnaughts where other CSMs fear to tread. He provides a unique insight into some balance and design discussions, and should return to do the same on CSM 9.

And then there are the candidates that are merely very very good-- like I say, it’s a strong field.

Mangala Solaris, representing RvB, is another knowledgeable highsec and PvP candidate. He’s been a good member of CSM 8, and he’s been a fellow keeper of newbie interests. Definitely should come back on CSM 9.

Progodlegend is another CSM alumn. He did a fantastic job at the winter summit, and will provide the high-level FC experience the CSM absolutely needs when evaluating ship balance and territory changes.

Steve Ronuken has 3rd party dev and industrialist experience that the CSM could use. He’s also a strong member of the community who’s been active and involved over the last year. He’d do a good job, and he’s worth a vote.

Proclus Diadochu, Corbexx, and James Arget. These are the best wormhole candidates for CSM 9. All three are very knowledgeable about w-space, and they each have different strengths. Proc has some of the best k-space experience, as the founder of fweddit. James is a CSM 8 member and has the most CSM experience, and did valuable work while there. Corbexx is a member of No Holes Barred and is deeply wormhole specialized.

I would happily see any of them on the CSM, and will be voting for all three.

Finally, although by no means last, Matias Otero, founder of Brave Newbies. Matias is the most strongly newbie-focused candidate of the set, and his campaign focused on some of the same optimism and enthusiasm that has defined Brave Newbies since their founding.

My former running-mate corebloodbrothers is also running again, on a similar platform as last year.

I said that ballots will be challenging. That said, here’s what I’ve voted (CLICK THIS LINK TO VIEW IN VOTE PAGE), and here’s what I’d recommend to anyone who wants to send as much power to good independent candidates as possible. Feel free to adjust orders or swap in mynnna or PGL or your favorite candidate I didn’t mention; if you’re in Providence, you should add corebloodbrothers in place of your least favorite candidate for additional NRDS support. If you’re in w-space, move the corbexx-james-proc group up to 2-4. I’ll have a post with more complex slates later.

Ali Aras Psianh Auvyander Sugar Kyle Psychotic Monk Jayne Fillon Mike Azariah Xander Phoena Steve Ronuken James Arget (wormhole three, reorder as needed) Corbexx Proclus Diadochu Matias Otero Mangala Solaris Mynnna or Progodlegend

[warp-to-sun]

Overhauling the Overview

So this post was initially a response to blog banter 53, but it sat, drafted but not edited, in my google docs folder for far too long. However, it's still relatively pertinent, and I wanted to post some more "ideas posts" / position paper stuff, so here it is.

Erlendur tweeted: “Is the overview really the best way to be aware of what is around you and where it is?”

Yes, it is-- the best existing way. That said, it’s still a pretty poor one. The game would be better off with the overview’s functions split off into several different pieces, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to articulate those for a while now.

As it stands on TQ today, the overview is both the best way to be aware of everything on grid with you and the best way to quickly navigate the universe. It’s average as a means of tracking where something is (good for distance, not good for vector or velocity), and it’s only average as a way of telling what’s around you (you see everything that fits in the list).

The killer feature of the overview is its scannability. It’s a spreadsheet in space-- maybe even the spreadsheet in space-- but the one thing spreadsheets excel at is displaying a bunch of data in a very small area, allowing for quick assessment and comparison.

That said, “spreadsheets in space” is a dirty phrase, and minimizing UI elements turns EVE Online into an incredibly rich, immersive space experience. But eventually it ends up like backpacking trips-- amazing views, but you start to miss everyday conveniences like “heaters” and “running water”.

So, what would a better alternative look like? To figure that out, let’s first break down what the overview actually provides for different users. For those just flying in space, the overview provides the simplest form of navigation and interaction with objects. Celestials of interest are clearly presented in a list, and if you set a route, the next warp is clearly highlighted and sorted to the top of the list.

Should this wayward pilot find themselves in a bad part of town, the overview provides the heads-up and some of the risk assessment. SOP upon jumping into a gatecamp is to take a deep breath and assess your chances of warping or burning clear, and those chances depend a lot on what’s on grid with you. Solo Dominix? Buhbye. Three rsebo’d interceptors with interdictors alongside? Yeah, you should crash the gate.

And then there’s combat. The overview is the way spaceship combat happens, period, and how well it works for this largely depends on how long the target list is. If it’s shorter than the overview window, you’re golden. Longer, and you’re looking at a nightmare. I’d forgotten how bad it actually was until I FC’d RvB Ganked recently. We took a big fight with Brave Newbies and my target calling at the beginning was abysmal. The mission-runner needs to hit the right rats, the skirmishing PvPer needs to see which targets to kill and when to bail, the grunt needs to lock and fire on broadcasts and sic drones on tackle, and the FC of a big brawl must organize an incredible amount of position and composition information.

Now that we’ve broken this down, let’s address each use case. Navigation is the easiest-- imagine (better) bracket filtering and highlighting, along with brackets “behind you” showing up around the edge of the screen. If you’ve indicated an interest in a particular sort of bracket, such as stations and stargates, they should be large and easy to see, along with their labels. A search function would aid in finding, say, a planet. Type ctrl-f and begin typing the name of the thing you want, and all matching brackets are highlighted. If there’s only one result, the tracking camera can swing towards it.

Navigating like this would be more immersive and perhaps easier than the overview version today. But that’s the easy problem-- harder is to address how to detect and react to threats on grid.

The strength of the overview in this area is in its scannability, so imagine enhancing that. With celestial data gone, all you’re looking at is fellow pilots on-grid and NPC ships hanging around. You may care about one or the other or both. Either way, you’re taking in important information quickly and flying your ship and all that jazz. You need a general overview sometimes, and you also need to drill down into specifics.

So, replace the overview with an informative HUD, perhaps across the top of the screen. This HUD would provide lists, breaking ships down in a manner similar to eve-dingo and similar d-scan tools but with perhaps more ability to selectively expand what’s on the grid (“there are 40 lokis? great, pull out just the lokis.”). Color ships according to the same metrics as the overview colors them now; show sizes to help the new player see what’s going to be too big to take on.

For the pilot who’s just flying in space, this provides enough information to make combat decisions. For a small enough number of ships, don’t even worry about breakdown, just show it as a floating list in space. Maybe make it easier to target people on their actual ship in space, by implementing some way to get “close enough” (although, trying to target brackets can get you dead-- it’s how I lost a Scimitar this afternoon).

That works for solo and small enough gang situations, but what about scaling? This is where the current overview works worst, and where an improvement would most be needed. For this, I’d like to see the tactical overlay repurposed as an FC view on a battlefield. Right now it doesn’t do much; it could do so much more. Imagine a view which zooms nice and far out and dims the background noise of planets and nebulae. In this view, show ships not as brackets, but as single dots, positioned in space. Highlight ships differently based on what category is selected, emphasizing the important ones and de-emphasizing the others.

In this way, you can distinguish your fleetmates and allies from others on grid while still paying attention to the important enemy ships. The tactical view should indicate visually which ships are within your fleet’s average optimal (assuming a roughly doctrinal fleet and computing without logistics ships, this should be fairly accurate) and falloff ranges. Stuff in space would be similarly de-emphasized, unless it’s relevant (e.g. “don’t crash into that asteroid”). Brackets are visible far-off, anomalies-- the system overlay-- are hidden.

Meanwhile, fleet *members* fly and fight on the normal space view, with broadcasted targets showing up in the HUD which would ordinarily show a breakdown of ships nearby. Those whose job it is to fly their ships can do so, and the FC can adequately command their forces.

While I’m willing to hear differently, this setup could work well for missions, too-- simply replace “players” with “rats” above, and “dots” with “red crosses”. In any event, there do exist options outside the overview-- CCP just needs to explore them. And then playtest. Extensively.

[warp-to-sun]

Litmus Test

I've found my Question for CSM candidates, originally based off a thing I posted to Xander's thread. The question is:

What feature over the past year do you see as the biggest failure, and either: 1) how would you change it to achieve similar objectives while avoiding the pitfalls in the present solution? or 2) why is the problem it addresses not a problem or not worth solving?

Mynnna posted a bit about being junior game designers, and this is, near word-for-word, how that interaction goes when you as a CSM are critical of a CCP design decision. You have to address the actual concept behind the thing, whatever it is, and either argue that this thing doesn't solve the problem in a good way, or that it's not a problem worth solving because _________.

[warp-to-sun]

CSM 9 and other updates

I'm running for CSM 9, to what I'm sure is everyone's great shock.

I've got a Jita Park thread up, and so far it's quietly active. Responses have been a bit slow, partly because my RL is exceptionally busy these past two weeks; that's clearing up now.

In the course of the thread, we've discussed platform (my CSM 8 record + a brief statement of philosophy I intend to expand on later), how the CSM actually works, and my thoughts on CCP HR. 

Providence politics reared their head, but calmed down before I had a chance to get back and post about miscellaneous issues and what I hope to improve on, followed by NRDS and player communication with bonus tutorial question.

One of the more interesting answers I gave was regarding bias and my drone assist posts. In there, I said,

Man, it’s interesting you bring up that post, because the thing that you (and a lot of people) seem to have missed in there is that I’m equally if not more annoyed at Goons for that stupid meme. Goons build and maintain the idea that their posting drives CCP changes, making them the unsung heroes of EVE Online. When the sentry drone change went in, they weren’t saying “our posting does nothing”, they were saying “SEE WE DID IT, WE SHOWED THEM.” It’s self-aggrandizing, it gives them some amount of political power, and it’s complete and utter bullshit.

Today, well, whaddya know, the latest GSF CEO update comes out and makes my point for me. Oh, propaganda.

[warp-to-sun]

The Politics of Drone Assist

A stopped clock is right twice a day, and if something is broken, it will eventually be addressed. Especially if a single team can address it in less than two weeks of dev time.

The announcement of the drone assist nerf has been met with cheers by many (and a few resubs!) but it's also been a point of politics: Goon smug versus N3PL frustration. That frustration takes the form of the old meme, "Goons can't beat things, so they get them nerfed."

Thing is, that meme just plain is not true.

If a thing is a problem, it's going to get fixed. If people have been complaining about it, they can take credit for that, but it's not the case that complaints lead directly to game changes. They can raise issues, but you don't just have to complain, you have to be right.

What does right look like? Well, let's take a look at the drone assist change versus the (shelved) changes to Margin Trading.

In both cases, there's a clear statement of why something is bad. Drone assist is bad because it allows a pilot to get kills through no effort of their own, and Margin Trading scams are bad because they're undetectable until you attempt to sell something to the dodgy buy order. This statement is the point of complaints-- you want to make CCP aware that there is a problem.

With the problem identified, there are a few questions to be answered before it's clearly a fixable balance issue. The first is, "are there non-problematic use cases?" The answer to this is almost always "yes"; this is EVE, and many mechanics do in fact serve some purpose. For drones, this is incursions, small-scale assist to circumvent ewar, and assisting light/medium drones for support work. For Margin Trading, this is the original intent of the design. In either case, while "just remove it" is an option, it's an option that'll remove something worth having in the game, and therefore not one that can be taken likely.

Having discovered that there is a non-problematic use and that that use is worth preserving, one has to look and see if it's possible to fix the problem and leave the good parts behind. For drone assist, this was a "yes"-- the problem was in large-scale fleetwork, and the fix allows most smaller-scale use cases to persist. It hurts incursions some, and that's notable, and the forum thread is full of refinements to try to make that not happen as bad anymore.

For Margin Trading, the answer to this question was "no". After a lot of back and forth, CCP Rise couldn't find a design that would work better to inform newbies but not hurt legitimate market uses, and as a result, that redesign got shelved. Margin Trading is still a problem. Margin Trading scams still hurt newbies (traditionally the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" of EVE Online, and often the intended beneficiaries of balance), and it still primarily benefits scammers (traditionally the "oh those psychopathic scumbags" of EVE Online, and often the ones negatively affected by loophole closures). 

It's really, really not political, and attempts to make it political make balancing harder to accomplish. CCP ignoring drone assist just because Goons were howling about it is exactly as dumb as fixing it because of all the noise. 

If, reading this post, you go "but what about x?!??!?" where x is some mechanic that is problematic and can be fixed with low effort without adversely affecting a legitimate use, congratulations! You've probably identified something in the balancing hopper. To be completely sure, make a constructive post about it on the forums. Drum up some support from other sides of the game-- something which is a problem for more than one group is more likely to be fixed. Contact your CSM representatives with a link to the forum thread you posted.

I bet you see it fixed. I bet you see it fixed in the same amount of time or faster as it would be fixed as if you went out and yelled a lot about it on the forums-- but feel free to do that too if you want! You could even find two such issues and A/B test them. Go hog wild. Just stop spouting logical fallacies on twitter.

[warp-to-sun]

Walk Softly, And Carry A Good Post

So hey, drone assist is getting nerfed. How bout that.

This has been one of those controversial subjects for quite some time. Back in 2011, Ripard Teg noted on his blog the rise of slowcat carriers. I myself groused about it when I was flying with Providence, as we had to try to find a way to deal with the inevitable drone-assisting carrier-blob. CSMs were mentioning it as early as June. Following battleship changes, with the Fountain war and the Halloween war after it, it’s taken center stage as nullsec fleet doctrines have converted over almost entirely to drone assist fleets.

While most of the playerbase has been howling about it, either for or against, the CSM has been talking. Various of us have mentioned it-- Ripard included it in an update a while back, and I made no secret that I was working against it.

But still, behind the NDA, we were talking, and talking quite passionately-- we’re not a body that lacks for strong opinions and beliefs. The goal, as always, has been to achieve a CSM consensus or near-consensus about the system, then use that to inform and shape our discussions with CCP.

After enough discussion, we had one, and we started posting internally about assist. We were able to get a discussion going, because we were willing to listen and to post things that were well-considered, even when they were also strong. Because the CSM was relatively diverse, we were able to represent the real breadth of areas where drone assist was a problem and a lot of the utility use-cases this fix preserves. The ability to have a real conversation outside of but informed by the political winds of the game is one of the better tools CSM has for getting things done. By the end of the summit, we were satisfied.

That’s what we do-- get stuff done, talk about stuff, figure stuff out, despite whatever political weather is going on outside. To do anything else would be irresponsible.

[warp-to-sun]

The ESS: Updates and more reflection

The ESS thread was updated by CCP SoniClover today.

The updated version looks a lot better. An LP bonus has been added, starting at 150 lp per 1mil bounties and going up to 200 at max reward. This means it's now unquestionably worth it for a ratter to deploy. Using an LP payout of 900 isk/lp (obtained using present values assuming you cash out in implants), you risk 15% of your bounty in exchange for 13% as LP, 5% as isk stored in the bounty pool (a total of +18% instantly, meaning it's now an increase to your income over present-day TQ without waiting or hoping on luck), and potentially +28% (10% as isk, 18% as LP). 

This means that, by deploying an ESS, you can now instantly increase your income in nullsec above present TQ values, provided you can extract the bounties from the pool. The LP bonuses now provide a welcome reason to deploy one ESS over another, as the canny ratter can respond to economic trends.

Extracting the bounties is now reasonably balanced: it takes 20 seconds to share out bounties, or 180 seconds to steal them. It points you when accessing it. There's no more weird can thing. This means that if you're ratting, you need good intel to clean up before the roaming gang gets into system. If the roaming gang goes to empty it, you have enough time to reship and blob them out instead of cowboying one by one into the ESS area.

If you rat with friends or a sufficient intel network, then, the ESS is good for you. If you have an insufficient intel network, you'll probably be better eating the 5% nerf.

There's been some concern about whether this is good for roaming gangs. I think it is-- the roaming gangs get an opportunity to steal from ratters who now have a reason to use the device, ratters now have an easy conflict point to defend. It's a better implementation of the farms and fields idea than it was initially. For all those saying it'll either be docking up or getting blobbed-- maybe, but some of my best fights in a small gang have started with someone going "aw fuck those stupid fucks in cruisers, let's undock and blob their asses out" and then they find out that those stupid fucks in cruisers are better PvPers than them, and get dunked. Or don't, and I learn something about kiting or keeping range or disengaging in time.

Those saying that roamers won't deploy the ESS onto their targets are right-- it's not that much HP to kill, although if a system has bounty in it, deploying an ESS will let you get that out (is there a way to tell?). But the ESS as now posted is worth deploying as a ratter, meaning the roamers can access it or fight about it or something. It's a way to increase your reward for doing things out in space.

There were some concerns about bluefucking with this: after all, if you're the only person in system, you don't have to hit "share all"-- no-one will know. I think these are mostly ameliorated by the announce-in-local, the LP bonus, and existing structures for dealing with corp thieves. If John Awoxer warps in and then the bounties are emptied, report them to your leadership the same as you would any other such incident. If you don't trust your fellow corpmates, warp to the structure and Share All before you dock up for the night. With the 13% LP bonus, even if this means you never upgrade the structure, you'll still earn more money than present-day TQ ratting.

Lastly, a note on CSM process with this. There was some anger about "where was the CSM on the ESS?!?" We did see it before it was posted to the public, and provided some feedback then, but I missed some of the points brought up later in the thread. Upon seeing them, I was able to pull them together in a megapost internally to CCP, which is a valuable kind of feedback-relaying. My previous post here covers the topics I discussed in that internal post. This provided a basis for a discussion, and the results of that discussion were a part of the updated version posted today.

That in my mind is the clearest synergy between CSM and community feedback: the CSM is able to catch (some) things pre-public post due to the NDA. After a public post, the community inevitably brings up something we missed or forgot or didn't see from our perspectives, at which point we can pull that out and relay it, boosting its signal from often-noisy threads. 

[warp-to-sun]

CSM at Work: The ESS.

Once again, I'm doing the thing where I (as a CSM and with the help of some other CSMs) try to take everyone else's posts and repost them in one all-together easy to read format in order to help CCP understand what issues people are actually getting at underneath the mad.

This time, it's for the ESS. Full disclosure here: I actually like the thing, in concept and somewhat in design. Risk your money for more payout later? That sounds good. An objective that you actually have to skirmish over? That sounds really good. A way to disrupt ratter income when they pos up for the 13855892398298234th goddamn time? Hells. Yes.

That said, the concerns on the devblog feedback thread are also pretty legit.

Here are the big ones I can see:

Because PvE ships are optimized for PvE, not PvP, the ESS will be incredibly hard to defend if attacked. PvE ships will fare poorly against gankers and thieves.

The bubble deploys instantly.

Ratters can just Share All whenever anyone gets near, so there'll never be anything to steal.

If ratters don't do this, they can scoop the ESS to cargohold and deploy it when the hostiles have moved on.

Perhaps the biggest: the risk/reward balance is off. The ESS asks you to give up an additional 15% ratting income, for a guaranteed 5% more. People aren't thinking about the extra 5% you can earn, because that's subject to extra risk, and 5% doesn't sound like a lot. You're risking 15.8% to gain a maximum of 10.5% extra. That's kind of crap odds-- it feels like you should be earning at least as much as you've wagered (the empires: the only honest isk doubler!)

The ESS can be used as an early warning system for acceleration gates. Because it can be scooped and placed wherever, a careful nullsec PvEer can place one on the warpin to their complex, and the ESS will dutifully notify everyone in local when a ganker shows up.

The ESS is nullsec-only, and does not affect highsec or lowsec.

And, of course, general bugs.

Am I missing anything? I'll say here, I'm pretty unsympathetic to the idea that nullsec ratting income should be untouchable, or at least "untouchable until ______". Nullsec right now is such a twisted mess that you can say that about any change, and the only thing worse than whatever change it is would be no change at all.

[warp-to-sun]

Okay, so, I've never done this before, and I know not much about the lore.

But here's how I'd write an in-media-res intro to EVE, along the lines of the excellent idea presented by Zan Callira on the EVE-O forums (and apparently by CSM7 before. Dangit, scooped!)

------------

Welcome back, Ali Aras. You're next to the Lightbringer, and we're deep in Sansha space. Their incursions into our empire's territory have been growing in frequency and severity, and we've formulated a little plan to strike back.

Here, take one of the Apocalypse battleships you see next to you.

We've taken the liberty of outfitting your ship with all the necessary equipment at its most advanced. You've got Mega Pulse Laser IIs, loaded with Scorch ammo-- it's a new type developed for the advanced gun, and it can shoot x% farther than the older Multifrequency crystals without loss of damage.

In your mid slots, you'll find two tracking enhancers, a microwarpdrive, microjumpdrive, and warp disruptor. The tracking enhancers correct for the Scorch crystal's poor performance against fast-moving targets, and enhance the range even further. The microwarpdrive will allow you to maintain your range against your enemies, and the microjumpdrive will move you quite a distance if you get in a tight spot.

While usually we would leave the warp disruption to smaller ships, we know the enemy has several purloined Revalation dreadnaughts in reserve, and if those show up, we'll need everyone available to disrupt their warp and jump drives. Should one jump in, get close, and activate your warp disruptor on it.

Your low slots provide your tank, and some damage-boosting heat sinks. The Amarr have always preferred armor tanks, and the Sansha who stole our technology do as well. Your ship's resists are well-tuned for their laser and EMP missiles, but if some get through, you will take damage.

I will not lie to you, Ali Aras, this mission is dangerous. But it's necessary.

Feel free to warp around and test it out. We rally in the station in five minutes.

<player warps>

It's time, Ali Aras. Warp to station, dock up, and join the Empire's fleet.

<bot chatter in fleet chat>

FC: Okay, listen up here. We are going to reinforce the fleet currently fighting at the 42-PRT gate. They were in Zealots, they got pasted, it's our turn to bring in the big guns and turn the tide of battle against them.

FC: Here's the plan. We warp in at 70 km from the gate. We know they've got reinforcements on the other side-- we just have to hold them off here.

FC: Our ships are longer-range than theirs. We've got to hope they don't bring in the cavalry, but if they do, we'll hold it down and try our best to kill it.

FC: So what I want you to do is this. Warp in at 70km, and then use your microwarpdrives to try to maintain range. If you let them get within 50 kilometers, you're gonna start taking a whole lot more damage.

FC: They've got some purloined capsuleer tech, too. We can't worry about that for now-- we're going to try to take their DPS out. Focus on the Nightmare battleships, and when they're done, mop up whatever's left.

FC: Right. Good luck out there. Everyone undock, everyone undock.

<undock button is highlighted>

FC: Align to 42-PRT.

Aura: You can align to gates using the <blah blah nav tutorial>

FC: Excellent, we're all aligned. Warp to 42-PRT at range 70km.

Aura: <shows how to warp>

<You land. The battlefield is a mess. Tons of wrecks. Tons of Sansha. Your allies are with you, fighting, exploding. You start shooting at a Nightmare. Suddenly, a cyno is lit.>

FC: CYNO UP CYNO UP. There's the Revelation. Primary is <name> in the Revelation, all ships fire on <name> in the Revelation. I need tackle and backup tackle. If you have a warp disruptor fit, get close and use it.

<you burn in as ordered and tackle the NPC rev. Upon activating your point, all the NPCs swap their aggro to you. One comes over and bubbles you. Aura narrates as your ship goes through first shields, then armor, then structure>

<finally, everything goes white, and you see your corpse floating in space>

Oh no...

Ali Aras, I'm so sorry.

Your pod was destroyed, and your consciousness has been downloaded into a new clone in your home system of Sarum Prime. However, your clone backup was configured poorly, and the clone repository corrupted.

While usually an un-upgraded clone would only result in a small loss of memory and learned skills, yours was worse than usual. You've lost almost everything.

Fortunately, you still have the skills needed to fly a basic frigate. Your old instructor is here, and he's ready when you are to help you get back what you've lost.

The Empire thanks you for your service. Thanks to you, we held the line a little longer and were able to extract. We hope you'll come back to us when you've recovered.

<cut to normal tutorial, incl section on how noobships work>

[warp-to-sun]

CSM8 Townhall Pre-Solicited Questions

Here they are, we'll be picking from and answering these on-air. Afterwards, I'll go through and try to answer the ones we don't get to. Most of those are going to end up being just :NDA:.

Update: Things we answered are in bold, and the podcast version is downloadable on eve-radio. For things we answered, listen your damn self. For things we didn't, I put small answers in the post.

Ransu Asanari: It costs more SP to train missiles to an equal weapon size compared to gunnery, but because it could be done without training the previous size fully, it allowed missile users to specialize faster. Now that this difference is being removed in Rubicon, can the CSM bring up a proposal on unifying Missile and Gunnery SP training times to address this imbalance?"

I didn't get to this one, although it's a little "can you make ccp". That said, you did ask *us*. This is something I'll look into and talk to Rise about. Frankly, I think missiles need a whole rebalance once we see how RHMLs and new RLMLs work out, and a skill change would fit there.

Frying Doom: Is Rubicon the patch with the least features we have ever gotten in EvE? Personally I cannot remember one with so little in it.

Answered.

None of the Above: how can we get those minutes faster?

Answered.

Freelancer117: 1) With so many leadership positions still open at http://www.ccpgames.com/en/jobs is CCP missing the right stuff to prevent future controversies like Somerset ?

This is very, very none of the CSMs business. HR is HR, yo.

Freelancer117: 2) With new spaceship games coming out soon, like X-Rebirth, Limit Theory, Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, will CCPgames do a PvE re-balance (including missions) to compete better against these new games? And will we see more and new storyline missions, the current 5 storyline missions are very good to play.

I signed an NDA.

Freelancer117: 3) With Eve Vegas 2013 I got the impression Dust514 will be released on other platforms soon, this true ?

The above question was "expectations management" NDA'd, meaning it's less a big deal if I slip, it just might lead to threadnaughts. This one is actually "the answer to this has business implications for CCP" NDA'd, so I'm really not going to tell you.

Freelancer117: 4) With Plex prices rising so high, is this a sign of a market bubble about to burst or out of control inflation, what does Dr Enyo think ?

We talked about this in the EVE Economy session. See if it makes it out of minutes hell.

Freelancer117: 5) ETA on CREST plz.

Dude, I signed an NDA.

Freelancer117: 6) what is CCP doing to combat TiDi and will we see anything worthwhile before the end of the year?

Answered

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai: Concerning PvE and specifically missions: what are the guidelines CCP is working on? Do they plan to add new original content, or just will overwrite the old one? That is, should we expect more content like "ghost sites" or more changes like "anti-drone AI"?

Thead Enco: Where are the minutes?

Answered

Istanchuk Fazmarai: Regarding population and demographics, and specifically how many unique users haves each security space:

a), has CCP Seagull implemented the human-counting methods they were talking with CSM 7? b), if those methods already exist, do they have useful data? c), if the data exist and are useful, will they be shared publicly? d), is the Hallelujah Plan a fruit of guiding game development according to those data?

Ok, I used my \rainbow{NDA} gif too early. Seriously.

Deka Ekato: What is the CSM position on the Somer issue, and why have you been so quiet on it? Are you going to do anything about it?

Answered

Ishtanchuk Fazmarai: I just came up with a question: what does the CSM think of CCP's habit of iterating features without asking the people actually/currently using them, so they end up serving somebody else's interests? Case in point: hisec PI vs POCOs

Highsec PI will continue to function exactly the same once highsec POCOs come out. The target of highsec POCOs was corps, not individual PI users, whose PI making will be largely unchanged. If people are fighting over your POCO, just find a different one.

Endovior: I'd ask a more answerable question like: "Overall, how optimistic (or pessimistic) are you about the continuing development of EVE?"

Answered.

Kinis Deren: Do CSM members (and CCP for that matter) consider the rise of PvE rental empires in sov null be beneficial to the level of PVP in sov null and do they see Rubicon having a measurable impact upon the level of PVP in null sec?

Answered.

Torijace: Has their been any talks between CSM and CCP about the economy of eve and the balance of isk sinks vers faucets

Answered [hint the answer was "read the minutes when out"]

Torijace: With the new changes like the high sec POCOs has their been any talk of player owned stations in high sec or low sec replacing some or all of high current stations.

Still NDA'd.

Torijace: On the thought of stations and eve as a brutal universe has CSM or CCP ever considered destructible player outposts

Answered, and I really oughta post about it too.

Torijace: What is CSMs thought on allowing alliances to tax similar and in addition to corporations?

I think the CSM is pretty unanimously in favor of it.

Torijace: Whats the most expensive thing a CSM member has sacrificed to BOB (for those wormholing CSMs)

Answered, although I wasn't going to take joke questions

Kirren D'marr: How will the CSM address or follow up on player complaints about the gate-jump animation? CCP said it was a problem, but some of them also said to HTFU, and our last communication after a good feedback thread was on June 26th, five months ago. Please help.

I will talk to the CCPers whose area this is, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[warp-to-sun]

How It's Made: The CSM And The SMA Fix

The recently-announced SMA fix was heavily driven by the CSM, so I wrote a thing about how, precisely, the CSM gets things done. This is what people have been asking for: the no-NDA, no-bullshit look at what we do all day. I can finally post this, because it ended up in public. Of course, there are other things we do which don't-- rest assured the process is quite similar.

Future CSM candidates, take note: this may be of interest to you.

[warp-to-sun]

The SOUND Contract, or, The Time I Hired Mercs

So, almost two months ago, my alliance started a sovwar. It was brief but bloody; essentially a knifefight between two drunks who really really didn't like each other. We had a lot of friends in our little war. As soon as the TMC piece went up, everyone wanted to know if we needed help. They wanted in on the action: CVA was forming and forming hard, and who doesn't like dunking a few fleets? We were gonna do it the e-bushido way, but the fighting got a little dirtier so we said screw it, everyone's welcome. At the same time, we reached out to and hired Noir to bring in some solid additional TZ coverage and extra numbers. It's them that I wanted to write about, because while we talk about mercs a lot on Declarations of War, it's not likely that any given group is going to know what working with them is like. 

Of those who showed to the SOUND fight, different groups were there for different reasons. A few liked fights, liked independents, and liked our side a little better than CVA. DNS had an old grudge against CVA for a time they got fucked over oh-so-long-ago, and they were interested in being a little more deeply involved. Noir? Noir was there to get paid. I knew we'd need something more; having a reliable group to do stuff would be good. Beyond that? I had no idea what I was doing.

I can now say that it was a good call. I was impressed with Noir's professionalism in several areas. Their pilots were around, active, and willing to help out with whatever we were doing, even when it was the less-exciting scutwork. I didn't hear a word of bitching about how terrible anything was, even when stuff got fucked up. I had a deeper bench of pilots who I could count on to show up when they said they would and do what they said they would, and that made me a great deal more secure. Lastly, they made an effort to integrate with our at times unusual culture, something I didn't expect but which made the experience even more comfortable. It was, in essence, like buying the blues we often wished we had.

My one lasting piece of advice to Noir would be to make a brochure for new employers, "Noir Mercenary Group And You". While I feel like we found a rhythm at the end of the contract, at the beginning, I wasn't sure what I was doing. The Chill Coalition (as XavierVE named them) was the largest group of people I'd ever worked with before, and I was way out of my depth and being asked questions I couldn't answer. I had no idea what was reasonable to expect from Noir pilots. My guys were willing to put everything on the line, and I was able to accurately judge the level of risks I and they were willing to take. I wasn't sure about Noir-- I think we turned down a guy with a triage nid at one point because we weren't sure if he was serious or if we could protect it. Would that have made our repping lives easier? Fuck yes. Dear god, it'd have been amazing. But I didn't want to risk Noir assets. Were they offering to be polite, or were they offering because they thought it was safe? Who's in charge of making sure they don't unnecessarily welp? I also wasn't sure what level of fleet integration was a good idea. What did Noir need to know to work with us? How far could we trust them in terms of pilot integration? That one got worked out by trial and error-- the fleets started working ever closer together, eventually combining and leaving near everyone impressed with how it went down.

A few events drove the integration. We had multiple comms failures, and the Noir comms provided a stopgap solution while we kicked the old TS server and eventually built a new one. A few SOUND pilots found themselves stepping up in EUTZ, including the bravest of our newbies, Evio Leep. He found himself online in a CVA attack with a few other NSIDE pilots and came into alliance IRC asking for help and a blops bridge. I pointed him to the coordination channel, and he was relaying the questions he was being asked. I told him to let them know about the whole situation, including his inexperience-- they wouldn't bite. Between him and Noir, we got a gang formed up, a bridge, and some good bombing runs off on that morning's RF fleet. Another big thing was our blops ops. As morale was flagging, we decided to pick it up with some good old fashioned ratter-dunking. Everyone on the SOUND side was giddy as we finally got to see what all the fuss was about with blopsing Provi. The Noir pilots formed the core of the blops run. They showed those of us new to blopsing how to go about it, and the experience has inspired several pilots in SOUND to head towards cyno 5 and a HK lifestyle. Our killboard reflects their efforts. Lastly, there was the CSAA kill. Easily the high point of the contract, it started with an idea ('go on the offensive'). That settled, we still had to pick the targets. What to go for? We didn't have any intel on lowsec moons, and SBUing might cause political problems to develop. Two points of interest stood out: an R64 moon that was the bone of some contention and a CSAA that had been a thorn in my particular side for months. We got together and we hatched a plan: DNS and our dreads would provide the muscle after a support fleet of us + NMG got done taking out the cynojammer in the system. On the night of the op, we formed up as one fleet and headed out, sneaking around highsec to come in through Providence USTZ's backdoor (R3). The thing went into RF unopposed, as did the R64. A day later we were back in AUTZ to headshot the CSAA, and it fell with no resistance (the builders claimed it was empty). Glorious victory. That night, the cease fire took effect and we started to evac. Contract over, I got to record the most exciting podcast evar and finally get some goddamned sleep.

[warp-to-sun]

Summer Summit Schedule

CSM 8 August Summit

Wednesday

9:00 - Introductions and Development Theory

10:00 - Review of Stakeholder Process

11:00 - Security Session

LUNCH

12:30 - Review

1:00 - Eve Economy

2:00 - PLEX Market

3:00 - Future Plans

4:00 - State of Balance

5:00 - Art

Thursday:

9:00 - Team 5-0

10:00 - Project 1

11:00 - Project 2

LUNCH

12:30 - Review

1:00 - Team Superfriends

2:00 - Team Game of Drones

3:00 -Team Kuromako

4:00 - Team True Grit

5:00 - DUST 514 Link

Friday

9:00 - Sales and Marketing

10:00 - Reasonable Things Review

11:00 - PvE

LUNCH

12:30 - Review

1:00 - Project 3

2:00 - UI

3:00 - Language Support and the CSM

4:00 - FLEX

5:00 - FLEX

Ha*ha* watch me post faster than Dolan (and then get fucked by tumblr formatting).

There it is, there's what I'll be talking about. The stuff I am most looking forward to is probably the intro, stakeholder review, security session, future plans, some of the "project N" stuff (yes, the CSM already knows what it is, no, you can't), and (oddly enough) the sales and marketing session. Everything else I'm sure will also be interesting, especially in person, but those are my favorites.

(wait upon reformatting I found the UI and PvE sessions, which should be cool too.)

[warp-to-sun]

Why Stop?

That whole Providence War thing ended last night in a cease fire. If you haven't heard about it (what rock do you live under?) I recommend catching up at the following links: [SOUND declaration], [CVA declaration], [BR thread], [mid-war update], [cease-fire].

On reddit and in conversations, a lot of people have asked: why stop? You were doing so well! They seem disappointed that we left, that we gave over the space, and that the party is over.

Yes, we were doing well. We killed a baby super (although TSOEC is claiming it's empty, prompting the best comment I've seen to date: "right, all CSAAs are empty and titans and supers just come from storks, got it."). We held out for ten days and could have continued holding ten more, or even longer. We had started hitting assets. Provibloc USTZ formups were anemic and often outmatched.

So why stop? Well, a few reasons. 

Number one is, we made our point. We held out. We made the eviction painful, too painful, and then at the end we just moonwalked out. If we'd approached CVA on day five with the station in final armor begging for a deal, they would have kicked us to the curb. The fact that we got a deal at all is really surprising, and the deal is incredibly forgiving for CVA: not KOS status (after the initial WE WILL BURN THEM KOS 4 LYFE), a statement acknowledging our major concerns, a sov handover to our sister alliance.

Number two is, we are fucking tired. I haven't slept properly in two weeks. I haven't done shit-all on the CSM in the past two weeks. CS changes happened and I don't think I looked at that thread until it went public other than to go "oh mumble sleip changing a little is it still op yes a little ok w/e" (in fairness, other capable people were on it). On Dotlan, our alliance hovers around 300 members. That's maybe 100 real people who are ever active (hooray alts + inactives!); most of them were not active all at the same point. Most of us are not cap-capable. 

Every single night for the duration of the Provi conflict has been the same: log on, DPS NEEDED FIGHT TIME, then after 2 hours of fighting and cat and mouse, swap to reps and rep. A lot. All the time. Our entire USTZ was staying up until 1 AM or later to rep structures, because that was when we were timed for, that was what we had to do. We had a lot of friends helping us, and I appreciate you all, but they were there primarily for the fights. Fewer people helped us rep or did rep-watching. 

That's okay, that's not bad-- lord knows fights are the backbone of PvPer experience and fites we were providing. That said, when people ask "why not hold out longer?" I can only assume that they haven't spent hours repping shit in logistics ships every night. Yes, the answer to this problem is triage carriers, and when we had those and the security to deploy them, it helped. But we still don't have that many.

Not only do we not have that many carriers, we don't have that much redundancy in key positions. Our FCs, logistics people, diplos, pos gunners, and other various coordinators have done absolutely heroic work-- usually the work of more than one person (I was a diplo, FC, and logistics worker). That's ridiculous hard.

We couldn't get out of repping with TZ stuff, either. Our experience was a stalemate, like that gif of DUCK SEASON / RABBIT SEASON except it's EUTZ / USTZ and REINFORCE / REPAIR. While we had initial success with bringing in outside help, outside help wanted content, and CVA could be patient. This is not, again, to knock our allies: you all are SERIOUS BROS and the outcome of all this has been to leave behind random coalition blues in favor of having actual friends.

We're not burnt out right now. Our morale was high-- still is. I could just see the light at the end of the tunnel and it was an oncoming train: the time when nobody logs on, no allies come, and we get kicked in quietness and disgrace. You know, what was supposed to happen. The ihub wasn't supposed to die, but die it did (props to Provibloc for that one; as I understand it it was a seriously badass fight on their end. I was at work). It was supposed to be the CSAA that was the glowing end of the conflict, a dead ship and a poke in the eye to leave on. The cease-fire was negotiated before the CSAA died, actually, but leaving it up wasn't in the terms. There was no negotiation or demands on what not to hit; everyone fought with full force right up until the end.

So I still feel pretty good, albeit even more tired (whose idea was a red-eye flight after a sovwar?!?). We held out. We left on our own terms. We made our point, and now we'll go to do something different and better with our newly strengthened alliance.

[warp-to-sun]

CCP Selects CSM 8 Summer Summit Delegates | TheMittani.com

Here's a bit more about who's going to Iceland and the process around it. I'm on the list for summer, which is exciting. 

This, btw, is one of those articles that benefitted greatly from the existence of proofers and editors-- I wrote my initial draft on an airplane, read it and went "LGTM". I submitted it when I got to where I'm staying, at which point it got promptly bounced back out with a request to add more good parts.

[warp-to-sun]

Fix for OS X Duality Issues

SO, OS X got a new launcher. It fucked up Duality. You can't connect using the old terminal command, but I figured one out that works, with the help of the eve wiki and a well timed process sample.

To run duality on OS X, you'll need to do something like this on your command line:

Boson:~ ellen$ /Applications/EVE\ Online\ TQ.app/Contents/Resources/EVE\ Online.app/Contents/MacOS/cider --cmdline=" /server:87.237.38.60"

Where the "EVE\ Online\ TQ.app" will be the name of whatever your EVE Online install is called. The important part is running cider, which you can find using the instructions here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Mac_bug_reporting#Launch_Terminal

Yes, that is the bug reporting thing, so your terminal will fill up with a bunch of logging that you don't care about. Don't worry, just leave that terminal window open. You can add something to write it to a file if you want, but probably easier just to let it flow. And now, 30 minutes late, I am off to ATXI practice.

[warp-to-sun]

Writing for The Man

Since early June I've been writing for themittani.com. They're hiring again (continuously), so I figured I'd write up my experience and share it for the curious.

So far, it's been interesting, good fun, and a way to make a bit of space-cash (payments are done in ISK). When I first started, I was handed an account for jabber and the website as well as a document full of policies, advice, and ways to get fired. Those last pretty much boil down to one thing: if you want to stay a writer, you have to write. Not hard, right? Apparently people fail at this.

Once hired and on jabber, I started picking up assignments in addition to the piece I'd written to get hired. Those mostly consisted of "such and such happened, and it was News, can someone please write it up" from one of the editors. These are most of the things I grab, although I can also pick my own stuff up and write that. All articles written pass through at least one other person for proofreading, error-checking, and general improvement. This has in at least one case saved my bacon in terms of comprehensibility. 

The standards for article publication are fairly simple. To be published, an article must be reasonably well-thought-out, interesting to the site's readership, and well-written. The founding goal of TMC was good journalism, and it shows in the process for putting content out. As long as an article meets the above standards in the eyes of the editorial staff, it will be published. Said editorial staff actively seek out different perspectives-- I've seen several calls for a TEST perspective on the Fountain war and Fountain events, for example. 

From the inside, the meme that the site is pure goon propoganda seems ridiculous. Yes, goon propoganda is posted-- it's clearly labeled as an "alliance update" and even comes with a handy disclaimer for those bad at reading between the lines. Other alliance updates are similarly posted as we reach into an era where people stick their "internal" stuff up ahead of the inevitable leak. 

Overall, I'm happy I've signed on. Not everything I write is or will be posted there-- some of my blog content is more rambling or exploratory than a thing I want to put on a Serious News Website, and I recognize the limits to which the average person wants to hear CSM wonkery. Other things, such as news reporting, don't really fit with my blog's style and don't get linked from here. After all, if you wanted to read them, you would be over at the news site they're posted on. I feel like this describes the relationship between TMC and eve blogs in general, with both providing different features that occasionally overlap.