What Are Wardecs? What Should They Be?

Sugar has a couple of posts up thinking about wardecs (one, two).  In the minutes of the summer summit we see that CCP has discussed the issue with CSM, which is good, because wardecs currently are a bad game design.  I have my own ideas about what should be done, which I will probably record here.  (My longest explanation so far is in Sugar's comments.)  I have also been reading others' ideas and trying to synthesize the broad themes around wardecs.  Thus, this post.

Just so it is clear, I live in wspace, not highsec.  I have one character in my corp who could be affected by wardec: my Jita alt and freighter pilot.  If I got decced, I could simply not use him for a week, or I might drop corp with practically no loss of functionality.  So the wardec system has essentially no effect on me in my current game.  I feel I can be impartial.  I would love it if wardecs became a fun and interesting play mode.  (I feel the same way about null, actually.  Die blue donut.)


Wardec as Corruption and Crime

It seems the most common current explanation for wardecs is that they are a bribe to Concord to "look the other way" for a week.  Then you get to be a criminal without repercussion and kneecap weak players.  In this view Concord is inherently and totally corrupt.

This explanation works in the sense that it accounts for many of the features of wardec: you pay a fee (real wars don't have fees), it's good for a limited time, and it feels criminal because it is typically deployed to beat up weak corps.  On the losing end, wardecs suck, and that is how being a victim of corruption feels.

It makes very little sense in terms of the in-game reality (the "lore").  Has there ever been a government that has allowed open warfare in its domain?  (No.)  Have there been cops that one could bribe to allow mayhem in public?  (No.)  Will any public sit still while, lore-wise, thousands of people are being killed due to corruption?

Also, being the subject of a corrupt government is inherently unfair and generally unfun.  Fun game play is at some level fair, and current wardecs are deeply unfair in practice.  This is why people dock up or don't play for a week.  Thus, wardec as corruption does not seem to suggest any reform that would make a fun game play for most players.  A game mechanic is probably not going to be fun when it is based on corruption.

Wardec as Sport

Another view of wardecs is that they are a Concord-sanctioned form of sport for capsuleers.  Capsuleers pay a fee and then get to play war for a week.

This explanation has the virtue of aligning with the IRL reason for the feature.  That is, it really is sport for us players, designed by CCP, supposed to be fun.  In practice, it is not fun for the vast majority of the players.  This makes it a bad design, but the intent is obvious.

Lorewise, the criticisms of wardecs -- that they are unfun for either side most of the time -- apply even more here than for bribes.  Why does Concord push this awful "sport"?  Can't they think of anything that is more fun than being docked for a week?  And why do they call it a "war" if it is a game?

On the other hand, the sport metaphor does offer a way forward.  Sports by their nature are not fun unless they are fair.  My little league baseball team does not play the Orioles, and that is good because such a contest would be totally imbalanced to the point of absurdity.  Sports are highly segmented by ability, typically via both age and sex, in the attempt to level the playing field.  Also, sports are voluntary; they are opt-in affairs on both sides.

The suggestion of the sports metaphor is thus to make "leagues" of some kind, or more generally to require only "fair" wars, and/or to allow only consensual wars.  I disapprove of this -- EVE should be about real conflict, not staged -- but it is a redesign idea that makes sense in its way.  (Indeed, the game Clash of Clans, which several in my corp are playing, seems to have taken this metaphor for its warfare.)

One suggestion in this line that I do strongly support is Gevlon's idea to have "safe" corps.  These would be player-run corps that have the safety of an NPC corp.  They are taxed a little less than NPC corps, can't anchor POSes, and are immune to wardec.  It seems like this should be a relatively easy change to program.  It would, at a stroke, remove a lot of the whining about the current wardec system, because many (perhaps most) highsec corps are basically social clubs.  So there's big bang for the CCP programmer-buck.

Here's a further idea along the line of wardecs as sport.  I might suggest that all corps be assigned a power rating, as in chess.  (Here's wiki on the Elo rating system.)  Any war declared against a corp of sufficiently lower power rating could be declined by the would-be victim without penalty.  (Wars between relatively closely rated corps could not be declined.)  Either side could "resign" and halt the war (at the expense of losing) at any time.  The resolution of a war would have to be automatically generated, and a winner/loser/draw assignment made, and the power rating adjusted accordingly.  New corps should not be allowed to wardec until their average member time in corp was, say, two months.


Wardec as War

One other view of wardec is that they are (or should be), as the label says, wars.  That is, they are the ultima ratio regum, the "continuation of policy with other means".   This idea of wardec seems to be what most people want them to be, me included.  So it has that going for it.

On the other hand, wardecs as they currently exist are very little like war.  Corps are not sovereign in highsec; Concord is, and there is very little reason to suggest they have any interest in allowing wars to be fought there.  Also, Concord's in-game power (to stop gankers) is so far beyond that of capsuleers as to make any pretensions to kingship by the latter a joke.

Furthermore, wardec "wars" don't have many features of normal wars.  Normal wars do not require paying off a higher authority.  There is no higher authority.  Wars are never known to be finite in length.  They don't always involve a warning period.  And while they can end by negotiation, they often end by the unconditional surrender of a side when it is utterly destroyed.   And they are always about something: there is some question at issue or possession being contended for.

Wardecs as war is the explanation that least fits the reality of the existing game.  Nevertheless, this would be the explanation that I most favor CCP developing on.

Wardecs should be war, which is to say they should settle something.  There should be something at stake in every wardec, for both aggressor and aggressee.  And a war should, if won, have some meaningful outcome.  Wars should be unbounded in length, because we want the test of strength to actually happen and some resolution to occur.  And a successful war should make some change in the state of the game.

Rules for Individual Mercenaries

Sugar has a post up where she throws out the idea of allowing characters as individuals to join into the wars of other corps without leaving their own corp.  Cool story, sis.  I think this is an interesting idea.  I think it would make for an interesting dynamic in wars.

Dire Necessity raises the objection in Sugar's comments that implementing it would be hard.  Well, it would take some time, but I don't think it is that hard.   To that end, I thought I would try to write down a list of rules that fully specify all the situations one could want covered.  Here goes.

First, here are the goals that the specific rules should allow and enforce:

1. You can join wars of alien corps without leaving your home corp.
2. You can't join wars of more than one non-home corp at a time.
3. You can't be at war except via a corp.
4. There should be no long-term affiliation with non-home corps.
5. You can never be at war with your home corp/alliance.
6. Corps can control whether their members can do this.
7. War targets (at least; possibly other outsiders) can find out about this.

Here are the specific new rules.  [Commentary in square braces.]

1. There are now two ways in which characters are involved in a war: inherited (via his membership in his home corp), and personal (via affiliation with an outside corp).  A character in a war via an outside corp is called an adjunct of that corp.  A character may be the adjunct of no more than one corp at a time.  The corp which a character is an adjunct of is called his affiliate corp.
2. Characters in NPC corps are not allowed to affiliate.  [Too powerful, since there can be no corp-level retaliation.]
3. Create a new corp role, "mercenary", that allows a character to affiliate.  If you don't have the role, you cannot become an adjunct.  [This allows corps to control what their members do with regard to the very important business of getting in wars with outsiders.]
4. To become an adjunct of a corp, there's an application process.  UI-wise, it should work much like the current corp application.  You apply, the corp OKs it, you accept.  There is a 24 hour wait, then you're an adjunct.  
5. Assuming he has the "mercenary" role allowing it, a character may apply as adjunct to any number of corps.
6. Only corps with an active war are allowed to OK applications.
7. A character may not accept a corp invite to be adjunct unless the corp has an active war.
8. A character may not accept a corp invite to be adjunct unless he is currently in zero wars (either personal or inherited).  [Corps should not have to tweak merc status to keep their members fighting in their own wars.]
9. A character cannot accept any adjunct application that would add him to any war against his home corp/alliance.  [You can never be at war with your home corp/alliance for any reason.]
10. An adjunct who loses the "mercenary" role does not lose affiliate status.  However, he can no longer accept any invite to be an affiliate.
11. An adjunct who joins a new corp drops any affiliation.  He may, of course, re-apply.
12. As is currently the case, each individual is allowed in any number of inherited wars.  Similarly, as an adjunct you can also be in any number of personal wars via your affiliated corp.
13. A UI should exist to show all adjuncts of a corporation, and this info should also be available via API.  [Other corps need to be able to find this out.]
14. When you are an adjunct to a corporation, you are automatically part of all wars of that corp.  If a war ends for any reason, all personal wars related to that war also end.  [There is no such thing as a truly individual war.]
15. If you are the adjunct to a corp and it (or its alliance) declares war on your home corp/alliance, or vice versa, when the war goes live you are immediately removed from adjunct status.
16. If you are the adjunct to a corp it is at peace (in no wars), your adjunct status immediately ends.
17. The rules for intra-corp attacks should be changed so that attacking corpmates is not allowed by Concord.  "Positive" actions (repping, cap transfer, remote seboing, etc.) made to corpmates are still allowed.  [Given that duels now exist, there is little need for this mechanic any more, and it is far more often (ab)used by awoxers than used for non-tear-extractive ends.  If you really want to spar with corpmates en masse, do it on Sisi.]
18. An adjunct counts as a member of his affiliated corp for purposes of Concord.  He can attack that corp's enemies without penalty.  That corp's enemies can attack him without penalty.  He can rep affiliated corpmates without penalty.

Go ahead and criticize.  I'll amend to close loopholes if necessary.

Boot Camp

This is a call for CCP to set up a system of boot camps for new EVE players.  A boot camp is a special corporation, which a newbie can join for a limited time, run by selected players.  There are three goals for the boot camp experience.  First, to provide each newb a specific experienced player or two for information, guidance and support .  Second, to teach each newb hands on how to do particular in-game professions.  Third, to establish a social environment so that newbies can meet each other and make friends.

I. Models

I think my biggest inspiration is OUCH, the Open University of Celestial Hardship.  They run a nullsec survival and PVP boot camp.  (Here's the recent dev blog community spotlight featuring OUCH.)  I am not thinking of anything that complicated, though. 

Another inspiration is EVE University.  They are a great resource, but I think that going into lowsec to live is intimidating to many newbs.  How do you make money there?  EVE U. seems like a very big step.  I think many people don't want or need that much guidance.  They just need a little bit, and they need personal attention.

I should also give a mention to the Goon training materials, and the attitudes which they seem to point to within Goonswarm.  Goons seem to be very focused on bringing in newbees, helping them, and getting them going. 

II. Why Boot Camps?

New player retention and the new player experience are big problems for EVE.  EVE is a cold, dark universe.  It's a place of griefing, of tear-extraction, awoxing, scamming, reverse-awoxing and the gank.  This is as it should be.  Keep EVE dangerous.  But still, there's a general feeling, which I share, that many newbies are lost and need more guidance and structure before being thrown in the shark tank.

I don't think we'd need boot camps if everyone was a Goon.  But most players aren't.  It is true that many corps have good recruitment and training.  But this is generally of use only to real life friends that bring in someone, because otherwise how does a new player even know about these groups?  And how does a smaller corp know that a player is not an awoxer?  They don't, and so it is generally only larger corps that recruit widely.

On the one hand, we want players to join corps because we want them to have friends in the game, because people with friends keep playing.  On the other hand, joining any corp is potentially dangerous.  This is not really a problem for a vet, who knows the score.  He should know how to check up on a corp.  He won't contract all his assets to some Goon recruiter to jump out to null.  If he does fall for a recruitment scam, he deserves to lose what he loses.  But it does run against the expectations of a newbie, and the potential loss there is much more.

Similarly, the war dec mechanic is awful.  The best response is to drop corp, so you can keep playing.  So much for your social environment.  The experienced player knows he can chat on coms or on a chat channel other than corp.  He won't lose his social environment.  Indeed, the experienced corp owner knows how to duck wardec.  The newbie?  That's unlikely.  He'll stay in corp, and keep playing, and become a cheap target.  

People always propose developing the newbie mission system more, but the problem here is that it is very hard to know what each individual needs and what he has missed.  And it is also hard to teach some of the more subtle things.  Certainly I don't see in-game tutorials ever explaining wardecs, or ISK doubling scams.

III. How Boot Camps Should Work

The boot camp is a special corporation.  Boot camps should have a distinguishable name and ticker reserved for them that normal player corps cannot take, and emulation of these names should be frowned upon.  Boot camps should be wardec-proof.  Other than that they can be normal corporations.

The CEO of a boot camp is its lieutenant; he should have one assistant, his sergeant.  Collectively these two people are the officers; they are the teachers.  The newbies are recruits; they are the students.

Officers should be required to agree to and follow a code of conduct, including the following items:

• they will always attempt to advance the best interests of their recruits
• they will advise their recruits to the best of their knowledge
• they may not recommend or discourage any specific corps as later homes; they can give general advice on how to choose a corp, but no specific advice
• after a recruit moves on, all knowledge they have about that recruit will not used in any manner, either to favor or hurt that recruit, without written (email) permission from that recruit

After boot camps get going, each officer applicant should be required to take a boot camp as a newbie, just to see how it goes and what works.

Boot camp officers should given access to newbie chat.  They should also have a special recruitment channel for boot camps.  Access to this channel should be restricted to boot camp officers, and new accounts for a limited time.  Perhaps it would be the first six months of an account.

Each boot camp should have clear skill requirements to enter.  These should not be very high, of course, but they must be there so that standard fits can be proffered, and a newbie can partake of all of the training and do hands-on.  Boot camps should require an API for the purpose of verifying skills and for advising newbies in general.

Boot camps should run for a limited time per training squad.  I'd suggest a period of no more than one month.  The point is emphatically not a long-term home.  It is acclimatization, advice and training.  At the end of each month, the boot camp should kick all recruits and start over.  Hopefully, a boot camp would have enough applicants lined up to immediately cycle after discharging the last squad.  However, this may take time.  This may allow some recruits to spend extra time in the camp.

Boot camps should take in recruits in squads, so that they join and leave synchronously.  This makes running and scheduling them easier, and also puts the recruits on an equal footing socially.  Squads should be relatively small.  I would suggest no more than 20 recruits per squad.  Maybe more could be handled, but that's where I would start.  Once the camp has its 20, it should start its training cycle.

Each boot camp should be run for a specific time zone, i.e., "evenings from 8:00 - 11:00 in Eastern Time".  This would be advertized as such, of course. Both officers would be required to commit to the same time zone.  Both officers would be required to leading a training session one night per week, at least three hours per night.  This would give the corp eight training sessions over the course of a month.  These sessions should be used for getting people on coms, then lectures and group activities.  Officers should also be logged on, though not necessarily leading anything, for at minimum 3 nights per week in addition to the one they are on duty.  This gives them time for one-on-one chat with individual recruits, or generally to help fine tune recruits as they independently do whatever they do.

I expect some variety of boot camps, but not that much.  I imagine boot camps focused on mining, exploring, missioning, etc. -- the basic highsec income staples.  In the last week, they could have a few classes on lowsec survival and attempt to make some money out there.  

One kind of boot camp that I think would be particularly fun and interesting would be one focused on PVP.  The recruits could be fleeted and taken into lowsec to be slaughtered.  They'd learn that losing ships and even being podded is not the end of the world.  They'd get adrenalin and feel the fun.  In the last weeks, two cooperating boot camps could wardec each other and have fun learning how to fight in highsec.

IV.  What CCP Would Have to Do

Boot camps can be implemented largely within the existing game.  There are a few places where CCP support would be very helpful or necessary.  I'll try to identify those.

The biggest thing CCP needs to do is to create a division of ISD for the boot camp officers.  Every officer should be screened, interviewed, and doxed similar to how ISD does things currently.  Boot camp is part of CCP's public face and must be above reproach.  There must be internal processes to remove bad and/or incompetent officers.  This would require at least one CCP employee to run.

Each boot camp officer should get an ISD account to be used only for doing boot camp stuff.  This account would be free.  Otherwise there should be no remuneration for officers -- it is a calling, not a business.  (It is interesting to think about how it might become a business.  But start small.)  Officer accounts should be allowed to give ISK and items to their (current) recruits only.  However, they may not accept gifts of money or goods from anyone except CCP.  Any ISK they have would be because they generated them in-game, incidental to their work.  If a boot camp is deemed to need special equipment (i.e., lots of frigates for a PVP boot camp), then CCP can supply those or ISK to buy them.

It would be very convenient if CCP were to implement boot camps specially, as a corporation subclass that cannot be formed by unprivileged players, and which cannot be wardecced, and in which awoxing is Concorded.  However, these effects can be simulated via special rules when using normal corps.  That is, just as there is a game rule that suicide gankers in highsec must die, there could be a rule that boot camps are not wardeccable, and a clear warning that awoxing in a boot camp is a bannable offense.  Corps impinging on the namespace would be renamed.

As previously mentioned it would be helpful if boot camps had easily distinguished names and tickers reserved for them that normal player corps cannot take.  I.e., CCP might reserve all strings "Boot Camp X" in the corp namespace for boot camps.  And they might reserve "BT_XXX" in the corp namespace.  And while I am thinking about it, they should also have a unique corporate symbol.

Finally, it would be important to refer newbies to boot camps as a part of their normal Aura training.  Explain what they are (that is, a limited-time but safe environment to learn), and that they can be found on the corp recruitment interface as follows, blah blah.  And open up the boot camp recruitment channel.

Don't Panic, Manufacturers

CCP has apparently decided to focus the summer release on industry.  Certainly this is an area of the game that needs work, so that is good.  I do think it's brave in the sense that few players do industry, and so they probably won't get the income bounce they normally get for new releases.  No one is going to resubscribe to look at a pretty UI that they don't use.  I expect there to be at least a few new gee-whiz features unrelated to industry to try to draw resubscribers back.

In any case, I have seen quite a lot of complaining about it from industrialists, even to the point of threatening to unsubscribe.  I find this ludicrous, at this point anyway.  And here is why.  The basis of much of the complaining is that people want to do their industry in highsec, and they believe they are being "forced" out to null.  But so far as we know, this is not true.  What is true is that industry "slots" are going away; instead there will be surcharges at busy stations.  The surcharges are from 0-14%: "Expect costs ranging from 0% to 14% of the base item being produced for the most extreme case."  (emphasis theirs).

People seem to be looking at the high end 14%, the "most extreme case", thinking that's general, and panicking.  But this is crazy.  We know from the quote above that 0% will be a thing.  What we don't know yet is where the #jobs N where will draw the line between 0% and 1%.  And then also (though less interesting), other lines from 1 to 2%, and on up.  But in any case, I think it is pretty safe to assume that N is going to be, at least, a small integer.  (If it's not, then I must revise this opinion.  Expect me to revisit the subject when it is announced.)

The current behavior is 50 slots and then a queue; it seems reasonable to me to scale the 0 to 14% over that range, so that there are perhaps 5 jobs per 1% of surcharge.  So I am going to make a wild guess that the crowdedness cost will be 0% for zero to four jobs, 1% for five to nine, etc., capped at 14.  Where exactly these percentages are does not matter that much; what matters is only just that there are, say, four jobs per station at 0%, nine jobs per station at 1%, and then (less so) for more crowdedness.  I take it as given that more than a few percent of surcharge is not sustainable for most industry, whereas zero percent definitely is, and 1% is probably.  2% maybe.

You didn't choose me.

So the question here is: are there currently enough empty slots in highsec such that after the summer release, we can still do all the industry there, and competitively?  And I think the answer is pretty clearly "yes".  There are completely unused stations, right now, even in the Forge.  I went and looked: the nearest one to Jita -- with zero jobs -- is in Obe.  Obe is eight jumps from Jita.  OK, that's lowsec.  So, how about the nearest highsec station in the Forge, with zero jobs installed  It's in Uchosi, 10 jumps out.  There are many stations with only one to four jobs.

I feel confident that The Forge does the most industry in New Eden, due to the presence of Jita.  Remember the dev blog posting Insights into 2013 Production and Destruction.  See the picture, and notice all the tiny circles that are blue and green.  There are more of them than there are large or even medium blue and green circles.

Production.  

There are currently a lot of empty slots out there; probably more empty ones than filled.  Enough for everyone, especially after a substantial amount of the competition moves to POSes or to null.

So, don't panic manufacturers.  There will be plenty of room for profit.  What we are seeing here is not the evil Nullsec Cartel taking your profit for themselves.  We are seeing a leveling of the playing field, so that manufacturing can be done in nullsec and reasonably compete with highsec.  You are losing your massive cost advantage, but you are not being made uncompetitive.

That said, there will be some manufacturers that will be better off moving to null, and some better off staying in highsec.  This will be a function of transportation cost.  Mynnna, though not doing much in his recent blog post to quench the alarm of his critics (here's my comment), did have some useful numbers there on the transportation costs faced by nullsec: "30k isotopes per round trip".  Isotopes cost between 700 and 1000 ISK right now, depending on type.  And CCP is going to increase fuel requirement for jumping by 50%.  So, using a lower end isotope price, we predict transport costs of about 30m ISK for a round trip for a jump freighter.  That is a few percent for anything but a very low value load.  (To be fair, we must factor in other costs: the capital cost of a jump freighter is one.  The effective cost of losses to gank is another.  Opportunity cost is also worth mentioning.  These are impossible to know.)  In any case, the point is that transport costs are significantly higher to and from nullsec than in highsec.  Also, there is a balance factor preventing too much industry from moving to null: fuel costs will rise with demand.  In highsec, you can autopilot a billion ISK in substantial safety with no fuel cost at all.

So, what we can see is that to the extent nullsec does have a cost advantage in manufacturing proper, industry should be done there first for the things with high value:volume, then decreasingly for things with lower value:volume.  The very largest yet low value things, for example T1 ship hulls, will be manufactured in highsec because of the transportation cost advantage.  Small, high value stuff, for example most T2 ship parts, will probably move to null.  Medium sized stuff will be where the breakeven point is, and might be done in both regions.

A Ghost Site in Jita

After yesterday's failure, we try again to find a way out of our new home to bring stuff in.  And this time we succeed.  Our fleet of Orcas (four of them) zips through five wspace systems unmolested.  The wormholes were destabilized by this.  It takes us a few hours to get the tower up, and there is still work to do.  But it's there, including hangar and corporate storage space.  So we can dump our Orcas contents into them.  I fly out an empty Orca with my Jita alt, and head to Jita.  One of the wormholes in the path has gone end of life. 

I realize that there is still a battleship we want to buy, and with our entrance system just four jumps from Jita, now's the time.  So, I get into one of the rookie ships we brought in to fly out in, and exit.  While I fly to Jita I am buying parts with my alt.  I arrive, trade the parts, and put together the battleship as fast as I can.  That wormhole is not getting any younger. 

I exit Jita, and warp to Sobaseki.  As I am crossing the system, I notice that there is a Guristas ghost site. 

A ghost site in Jita!  

Immediately my curiousity is piqued.  God knows how many pilots are out in space.  I can imagine 30 of them them piling in.  Or 100.  Maybe even some ganking.  I want to see it.  So I cancel the planned jump, and when I finally gliiiiide out of warp, I immediately warp to the ghost site.  Well anyway, I immediately start warping.  Battleships are not exactly immediate in terms of moving anywhere.

As I warp across the system again, I am hoping desperately that the ghost site will hold up against the Jita hordes for me to get there.  And I land on grid and...

There is nobody there.  Not a single pilot other than me.

And me with no codebreaker.  Hmm.  I point out the existence of the ghost site in local, just for fun.  Will there be a 70 pilot gold rush?  Then I fly straight up (to get out of range of the explosions when they happen), and just sit and watch.  Will any one, any one at all, get into the site before BOOM?

A minute passes.  And... red crosses.  Guristas are on the site, and trying to shoot me.  I micro jump away, and keep watching. 

Jita sheeple heed Angry Concord Guy

Boom.  Site's gone, and that's all folks.

As I warp off, I see that there was one pilot who made it.  In a destroyer, which I don't think is very wise.  And not in time, either, but nice try anyway.  Try to be faster than my battleship.

I get back in wspace without a hitch

A Ghost Site Disappoints

Two nights ago, I went ghostbusting in Stain.  Skunked.  Last night, I did it again in lowsec, out to the EVE gate.  Very few people around, but no ghosts.  Skunked again.

Tonight I fly again.  (I need to think of a name for my exploration Tengu.  Nosey, perhaps.)  Tonight our static C3 has a lowsec, and it comes down in Harner, which is in a corner of Solitude.  I scan down the local system.  Nobody is here but me.  There's a data site, which I run, to modest gain.  And there are two lowsec gas sites.  One has a low-value gas.  But the other... Celadon Cytoserocin.  Currently second most valuable gas in the game.  I think about it a while, then log out to bring in my farming alt.  (He has better gas skills than Von does.)

I mine on and off for a while, twice interrupted by people entering the system.  I mine the gas orbiting at 1000, so it is easy to move off and cloak.  Jayne shows up later and brings down two characters; we suck it dry quickly.  Now back into wspace, dump gas, and change characters.

Back to my original plan.  Ghostbusting.  Where?  Well, let's see if highsec Solitude is well populated.  I would not mind finding a site there first to run, so I could get the feel of it.  But that's unlikely unless it is pretty abandoned, and I just don't know how populous the place is.  So I set course for Gererique.  All of the systems I go through have people in them, lowsec and highsec.  So, I guess this is not the place to bust.  OK, plan adaptation: I am heading for nullsec.  Fortunately, Solitude borders nullsec.  So I can get into Syndicate in just a few jumps.  OK, off I go.

I am a little bit scared of a camp at the border, but I have been this way before and there was none.  (There was a camp going the other direction coming from contiguous empire, but I am not going there.)  And today there is none.  Also no ghost site, but now I am into null and there is nobody here.  So things are looking good.  I am planning to hit the local cluster here, since I don't have a lot of time.

Angry Concord Guy never sleeps.

When I enter Iggy (as I think of I-YGGI), there is a ghost site!  It shows up on my scanner as a normal combat anom, named "Improved Serpentis Covert Research...".  But there's also another player.  Hmm.  I order a warp to the site anyway, and cloak immediately.

Before I leave grid, I see the other player on grid.  He's leaving.  Nice!  It's all mine!  Except... it isn't.  I get a popup for the ghost site when I warped to it, but when I land, there is no ghost site.  And it has disappeared from my list of anoms.  Hmm.  My guess is, the guy I saw leaving just ran the site and left.  It despawned between when I warped and landed. 

A minimalist site -- very un-CCP-like

That's a disappointment.  Nothing to do but keep looking.  I set course north.  Two hops later, in A-ZLHX, I get lucky again!  Another ghost site.  And also another player.  I warp to the site, cloaked.  Here is what it looks like: there are four cans in a square, with about 20km between cans.  You warp into the center of it, I think.  (I warped to 10, being cautious, and ended up near the lower-left can.)  Above each can is a flavor object (bunker, small tower).

I sit for a second gathering my thoughts.  I do not really want to run the site with anyone in local.   On the other hand, if she is in local in a frigate maybe I can kill her when she comes to the site.  So I look at dscan for her: no ship appears.  I check out the system: it's all in range.  This makes me suspect she is cloaked.  But then I notice there is a station.  OK, she's probably there.  No way for me to check, though.  And it's been long enough that I doubt she is going to come in a frig.

Well, Nosey is designed to run away pretty well.  And I can't just sit here.  So, I mentally formulate and rehearse my escape plan, and then uncloak and start scanning cans.  I will want to get the can with the best stuff first, since it may be all I have time for.  First can: some minerals and some junk.  Second can: junk.  Third can: junk.  Fourth can: minerals and junk.

BOOM

Hmm.  Should I hack for basically nothing?  I would if alone, but it's not a good risk:reward proposition.  So I don't.  Still, I am curious to see what will happen.  So I back off from all four cans, and wait.

It all goes down as I have read on the forums. After about a minute and a half, Serpentis pirates appears.  I am cloaked so they are no problem.  Shortly, they blow up all the cans, and then they warp off in all directions.  (I don't think I have ever seen NPCs do this; it's kind of cool.)

I have a look at the rest of the small area I am in.  No more ghost sites.  And that is about it for my play time tonight.  Then I decide to log off here, so I can try again tomorrow. 

How to Make ISK from Highsec POCOs

Gevlon has a business idea for making money using highsec POCOs after Rubicon drops.  Since I did a lot of thinking about it to criticize him, I figured I would amalgamate my comments into a post.  For background, go read (or review) my Highsec POCO Predictions for Rubicon.  I'll wait.

Gevlon's Idea Will Fail

OK.  Gevlon's idea is to form an alliance specifically to raise wardec costs.

The alliance is just a price cartel agreement. Anyone can join... By joining you have to set the tax rate the same as everyone. ... You can't wardec a player owned corp if it's in an alliance, just the alliance itself. Such act has high cost if the alliance is huge, protecting the alliance from wardecs for their customs offices. 

But not for mutual defense:

What about PvP-ers, who wardec the alliance not because they want POCOs, but to get fights? Well, they won't get any. The in-alliance corps never fight.  ... So for their max-cost wardec they get nothing but the opportunity to shoot customs offices. How can you defend your customs offices? If anyone wardecs the alliance, it makes the war available for mercenaries, so you can just join with your shooter corp and defend your POCO.

This, as I told him, is a bad idea.  You must defend your POCOs or there is very little reason for the alliance.  This is because of the relatively high value of POCOs relative to the cost of wardec.  I pointed this out two weeks ago in my Predictions:

I have seen people say the wardec cost would have a big effect, and initially I agreed with them.  It seems plausible that a 10x cost difference for war would matter a lot.  But after thinking about it, I feel it will affect only small corporations.  

Consider a medium sized corp with 25 pilots.   In a battleship, each pilot can do about 1000 DPS.  POCOs have 10m shields and reinforce at 25% shields.  Thus this corp can hammer one into reinforced in just five minutes.  Killing a POCO after reinforcement is easier.  They have 250k armor and 200k structure.  So it would be very fast.  In a week of war, and unopposed, a corp could reinforce or destroy 20 POCOs a day.  Since POCOs cost about 100m ISK, the cost of the wardec is a small percentage of the capital at stake.  The cost of the fleet is much more than the POCOs it destroys.

And note that Gevlon's alliance actually make things easier for an aggressor.  It's a one-stop shop for targets.  Say that Gevlon has gotten 50 corps to join, each with 20 POCOs.  Now you go to all of them and demand they hand over their POCOs to you for half their value, or war.  Each one individually cannot afford to hire Noir.  Collectively they could, but they have no organization.  Perhaps they all stand firm and hope that the aggressor attacks someone else.  So he wardecs anyway, and attacks all of them.  After they each lose a POCO or two, they'll sell the others.

How to Do It Right

Gevlon's idea of an alliance is a good one.  But it cannot be passive as he wants.  A passive alliance is easy to beat.

The alliance should offer substantial services to its members.  It should have its own fighting fleet (more on that in a bit), and make a standing offer to members to buy their POCOs at 80% of par.  It also insures their POCOs at 50% of par: if a member loses a POCO, you pay out half the value.  This gives the incentive to the alliance to defend, and some insurance to the members that you will, while not giving too much of a free ride.

Of course, getting a decent fleet able to fight and win will take a substantial amount of time.  There is no such time before November 19.  Yet the first-mover advantage will be huge.  How do you deal with that?  You retain the mercs necessary to defend all the members' POCOs. Find the best mercs you can -- Noir? multiple groups? -- and get a long term contract with them, six months at least, saying (1) that they won't wardec your alliance for any client, and (2) that they will be available to fight for you on call (other obligations permitting). Perhaps this is a billion per month. Who knows: ask them. It might be quite reasonable.

How do you pay for hired guns?  You charge a fee per POCO, perhaps 10 million ISK per month. (This is about 10% of its build cost; I should think that is cheap for decent protection.)  Charge more for rarer planet types (i.e. storm), or those in better locations (i.e. near Jita).  (What exactly to charge is a hard problem, but that's why you need a leader with spreadsheet chops.  I am sure Gevlon can figure out a good price structure.)  If 10m a month sustainable?  I think so; recall the analysis Mabrick did.  A single user of a POCO can generate that much in taxes.  If the POCO has more than a handful of users, the owner still makes good money.

With my guess of the merc's retainer fee of 1b per month, once you get 100 POCOs, you make money. If you cannot get 100 POCOs, you lose money. If the mercs you hire cannot beat some larger group and it kills your POCOs, you lose a lot of money. If you welp fleets, you lose a lot of money.  It will take a very deep pocket investor.  It will have substantial risk.

Note that hiring mercs as the primary defenders is only really applicable during the bootstrapping phase of the existence of the alliance cartel.  As soon as possible, you will want to start insourcing your protection, with mercs hired only in exceptional hard situations.  Find a good fleet commander, and hire him to organize a navy for you.  Men will flock to fight under a good FC.  Remember the lesson of nullsec: players in a game don't care about money so much as they care about "content".  If you offer them fun they'll pay you for it.  Fighting in massive battleship fleets should be fun.  I would join.

Why do you need your own fleet?  In part the reason is that relying on mercenaries is bad idea -- they may be working for the other side; they may turn on you; or they may just not be available due to other obligations.  But it is also because insourcing should be cheaper.  Noir has elite pilots that can fight anywhere in all types of situations; you need only be concerned with ships and tactics that are allowed in highsec.  Also, Noir's pilots have no reason to care about the POCO business.  And you should be under almost constant wardec as the biggest, fattest target around, and you will need a very substantial fleet to defend yourself.  (My guess is hundreds of pilots.)  If it takes raising POCO fees to support your fleet, so be it.  Any owner who does not like the fees is perfectly free to leave the alliance and defend his assets on his own.

A fleet can also aggress.  Most of the time it will probably be busily defending, but what if you get a slack week?  The alliance should be the aggressor, demanding that lesser corps join or lose their POCOs.  Forming a monopoly where there is no natural monopoly is not like normal market competition: it takes force.

I Fall for a Scam

The background here: my Jita alt, who mines ice, has been slowly adding industrial skills.  Of recent, my corp has started mining in wspace.  It's not great pay, but it's something to do when we have our system zipped up and don't want to open it.  This is actually fairly common due to the way that 16 hour wormholes work. 

Anyway, because we are mining, I want my Jita alt to be able to perfect refine all ores except for Mercocite (which does not happen in wspace).  And if he trains up the skills needed for ore refining, he can also refine ice with a few hours more training.  Since I mine ice, that would be a useful skill.  So I'll train that too.  But to refine ice in his current station won't work, because he lacks standings with the station owner, Expert Housing Foundry.  And there are no better owners with stations in Otela.  Since I am not leaving Otela, I have decided to grind up my standings with Expert Housing.  Since my Jita alt has no combat skills other than drones, I am going to do courier missions to grind the standings.

And so the story begins.  I have three courier missions headed out into the Forge.  I am my Viator, since none of the loads are very large.  As I enter Olo, there is an industrial wreck just off the gate.  Being curious (and having nothing of value on my blockade runner other than my mission items), I go over to look.  Hmm.  There are some nice blueprints here.  I set my safety to yellow.  Steal now?  No, there are a few people around, one in particular in a Buzzard that does not seem to be leaving.  I expect he is trying to get kills.  So I am not going to steal.  I right-click on a blueprint to show its market value.  Whoa.  The Cyclone one is 500m ISK!

thieves need warp core stabilization

OK, I head into the station where one of my missions sends me anyway.  I drop everything I am carrying, and I refit the Viator with two warp corp stabilizers I always carry for just such situations.  Then I warp out again.  I don't expect anything to be there.  Just like $20 bills on sidewalks.

Stuff is still there (seems fishier and fishier).  Why has this frig not stolen it?  Oh well, you only live once forever.  I slide past the wreck, then just as I am getting to 2500 again, I align to the station I came from. So I am moving back past the wreck the other way.  Quickly, I am aligned.

Now I steal the blueprints, and start warp.  The Buzzard locks me almost instantly, and attempts to warp scramble, but my stabilizers work and zoom! -- I am away.  I dock at the station and get ready to sit for 15 minutes.

the getaway

Only while sitting do I notice the scam.  These are not BPOs.  They are one-run BPCs.  Oops.  A lot of risk for nothing.  Dodged a bullet there.

About Astecus

Astecus is a friend of mine.  Well, more of an acquaintaince; you know how it is.  A disembodied guy in a videogame.  May or may not know who I am.  Still, he seems like a nice guy to the extent one can know someone via chat, reading his writings, and observing his actions.

I first met him earlier this year, before I moved into wspace full time.  Back then I used to "do my rounds", as I thought of it, in a Tengu in the Poinen area.  I was doing the exploring of that time (pre Odyssey), which meant that I was mainly looking for combat sites, but would also do radars if I found them.   Wormholes I would look in hoping for targets, then maybe come back in a stealth bomber.  The one kind of signature I had no use for was ore sites (which were sigs back then).  Here was this miner-guy who might want them.  So I just started giving him my bookmarks if I found anything.  Why not?  It cost me only a few seconds given that I was searching down Otela twice a night anyway.

Not too long after that, I joined the Otela Mining Fleet, when I wanted to do something  productive with my Jita alt.  Mining ice seemed perfect: very passive, so that I could spend most of my time on my main monitor with VK doing stuff in wspace.  And yes, in case you are wondering, the Fleet really is up 23/7.  Astecus logs in every morning (his afternoon), after downtime and sets it all up.  He is also on line a surprising amount of the time, white-knighting in a Griffin at the Otela ice.

So I've made a lot of ISK indirectly via Astecus.  He's a good guy in game full of black hats (me included when I can), building a community of peaceful miners.

All of which is to say: I am not objective.  But that stated, Astecus is exactly the sort of player that CCP wants.  He is a "content creator".  I was surprised a few weeks back to see a capital in Otela.  And I was surprised again when Daedalus gave a carrier to Astecus.  But I immediately thought it was a good decision.  Who better?

So I was really pained to hear what happened to Astecus over the past few days.  You can read about it at TheMittani.  In short: either because Astecus starting asking questions about the rules around highsec capitals, or maybe because someone complained, some overzealous GM brought the hammer down on Astecus.  He was accused of breaking the rules (which, if he did at all, was in the most innocent and innocuous possible way), and summarily convicted by the GM.  His carrier would be sent to lowsec and he would be temporarily banned from the game.  Astecus appealed and was told sorry; sentence to be carried out in a few hours.   All of this except the ban I heard from Astecus on Sunday evening while ice mining.

Since Astecus has no use for a lowsec capital and its ISK value was not important to him, he stole something and went suspect, allowing a random set of people in Otela to kill his carrier.  Then he started serving his two week ban.

The whole thing was enraging to me.  Not just the injustice, but the loss of an amazing relic by fiat.  It's like the Taliban dynamiting the Buddhas of Bamiyan.  (OK, I know.  That's hyperbole.)  EVE is an amazing place, and part of that is the fact that it is old.  It is old enough to have a history, not just a made-up lore history, but a history of ancient gameplay that is no longer possible or no longer viable.  This includes quirks like a vanishing handful of highsec capitals.  Guardian Vexors.  Hulkageddon.  Where there are relics, CCP should be supporting them and trying to preserve them or the memory of them, not trying to blow them up on the slightest pretext.

The good news is, CCP has rethought their awful decision.  They have apparently recreated the carrier for Astecus and presumably annulled his ban.  They will be clarifying the rules for highsec capitals.

Good for you, CCP.   I am still vexed by the lack of proportion and wisdom shown by the initial GM.  But the system as a whole has worked.

One by One

My market alt is buying drones in Jita.  It's an odd reason -- a contract that wants them.  Got to be a scam, except I don't see it.  Anyway, we'll see.  Point is, I have orders out for a bunch of hob IIs and Hammerhead IIs.  Since I am buying off of buy orders, worst case is I waste time making very little money when the contract fails and I resell.

I am buying now and again, blinky blinky.  Then all of a sudden I am making buys right and left.  But... not really.  I am buying one at a time, all from the same character.  Huh?

After I screenshotted this... peculiar... activity, I got info on her.  New character.  OK, just to be sure, convo'ed her.

me > Been buying some drones.
Scoutesse > hey
me > You do know that you can sell multiple items of a particular kind, right?
Scoutesse > yeah I didnt stack XD my bad
me > So, stack them and then sell?
Scoutesse > yep yep
Scoutesse > thx
me > OK, just chekcing.  Carry on.
Scoutesse > o7

Nothing to see here, move along.

Seen in Solitude

My PI alt is training a month of dual training, so I can mine in wspace.  So he is getting new skillpoints, and just overflowed his current clone. We ran sites tonight, so we closed off the outside universe.  But then just as we got done, and many ISKies richer, the discovery scanner alerted us to a new signature in to our home system.  It turned out to be a wormhole from C2.  A C2->C4 means a C2 system with dual statics: C4 and highsec.  We went in to hunt but nothing came of that.  Not sure why the locals opened up, if it was them.  (I saw them at a tower, sitting and then logging out.  So I think it was.)

Anyway, I took advantage of the highsec connection to go out with my alt to get a better clone.  He had to hop one system to get to a station with medical facilities.  This is what greeted him:

Rogue drones love this place

Yeah, that's a lot of anoms.  Solitude is a highsec island; evidently not too much interest in running little anoms there.

Highsec POCO Predictions for Rubicon

A dev blog is out on the plans CCP has for highsec POCOs in Rubicon (coming, Nov. 19!).  Here is the summary in bullet points:

• Highsec POCOs will be attackable only while at war (that is, via wardec).
• Highsec POCOs will not be transferable while at war, or with war pending, to cut off the obvious shell-game counter to wardec.
• Highsec POCOs will still have 10% taxes to NPCs.  However the rate can be halved by the player by training the new Customs Code Expertise skill, 1% per level.  Also the assumed base value of PI commodities will be dropped somewhat, resulting in further reductions in effective taxes.
• POCO owners can set their taxes freely, in addition to the NPC tax.

I have been thinking about how this will play out.  Consider the wardec requirement.  Presumably anyone can take out Interbus COs, so there will be an initial gold rush.  But once a POCO is in player hands, it will be permanently.  And to even have a shot at it, you'll have to pay Concord for a war.

What's the cost for wardecs?  From CCP's wiki, Wars:

It costs 50 million isk, plus an additional cost for each member in the target corporation/alliance above 51. It will now start to increase with the 51st member and reach the ceiling of 500 million ISK at 2000 members.

I have seen people say the wardec cost would have a big effect, and initially I agreed with them.  It seems plausible that a 10x cost difference for war would matter a lot.  But after thinking about it, I feel it will affect only small corporations.

Consider a medium sized corp with 25 pilots.   In a battleship, each pilot can do about 1000 DPS.  POCOs have 10m shields and reinforce at 25% shields.  Thus this corp can hammer one into reinforced in just five minutes.  Killing a POCO after reinforcement is easier.  They have 250k armor and 200k structure.  So it would be very fast.  In a week of war, and unopposed, a corp could reinforce or destroy 20 POCOs a day.  Since POCOs cost about 100m ISK, the cost of the wardec is a small percentage of the capital at stake.  The cost of the fleet is much more than the POCOs it destroys.

I still expect large alliances to dominate POCO ownership.  But that is not because of wardec costs, rather because of the blobbing advantage in fleet combat, and the advantage that will accrue to any entity which can field fleets in all time zones.

It's worth discussing the time zone issue more explicitly.  POCOs reinforcement timer works differently than those at POSes.  At a POS, the reinforcement exit time is determined by time when attackers push the shields below 25%, and the amount of "reinforced mode fuel" (strontium clathrates) in the tower.  So a tower's exit time will be fairly unpredictable, but an attacker can always hope for the exit to happen at a time which is advantageous.  With POCOs, the owner specifies an exit time-window, a zone of a two hours.   Reinforcement mode lasts for a day at least, then enough time to get into the zone.  The timing of the attack has nothing to do with the exit time beyond fixing the day of the year.  Thus, a POCO's owner can set his times so that his POCOs always come out of reinforced at his best time.

One can imagine a seesaw battle between two large entities, both of which can prevail militarily at separate times during the day.  During the Australian evening, an Aussie alliance bashes all the POCOs it can get at, and defends its own towers coming out of reinforcement.  A European alliance does the same thing in its own evening.  Only on weekends can progress be made, which would be easily undone the next week.  The endgame here is all POCOs are killed and not replaced.  "They make a desert, they call it peace."

The situation would appear to be very unstable militarily.  This is especially true given that many highsec wardeccers would love to be able to wardec people and force a fight.  They would not necessarily care about actually killing your POCO, just getting you out to fight for it.  If you show up and fight, even though you lose, maybe they don't kill your POCO.  But if you don't show, they certainly do.

One other very important aspect of the economics of POCO is their return on investment.  Mabrick has a post with some relevance here: he estimates based on one player's reported PI that at 10% taxation, a POCO that is being used will earn about 19m ISK per user per month.  Unfortunately there is no hard data on how much PI actually goes on in highsec.  I would guess that most P4s are made there, though, because of their prices and the relative advantage highsec has for making P4s.  Potentially there is a lot of ISK to be made.  But it may be happening only in a very few places; hundreds of pilots make P4s in Sobaseki, one jump from Jita.  A POCO there would be golden if managed well.

But what is well?  If many Interbus COs persist, with their effective 8.5% taxes (half of 17%), then to compete players will not be able to set their POCO taxes above about 4%.  As such, their earnings per user are less than half of Mabrick's estimate.

My guess is that most POCOs in most highsec systems will not be worth much, because of the low tax rate they can command, and because very few pilots do PI there.  As such, POCOs are marginal investments.  They are risky, because always subject to wardec and cannot be taken down to escape loss like POSes can.  And they don't really pay well.  Individual corps will put them up to exploit places they are living better.  Then they will be wardecced by a larger corp and lose them, and learn not to do that.

If any group is to own any large numbers of POCOs in highsec, it will have to fight for them a lot.  Guerrilla action will make it very hard to hold onto large numbers of POCOs.  The only way I can see a single or handful of groups dominating highsec is an alliance of the vast majority of the wardeccers in highsec.  And that seems unlikely, to put it mildly.  Outsiders like the Goons simply will not be able to do it, because they will have to occupy highsec nearly continually to secure their assets, and even with a fleet in being, they are vulnerable to wardecs from guerrillas.

I do have an idea for how to make money off of highsec POCOs, but it's rather speculative, and this has gone on long enough.

A Vision Chimerical

Tonight I am ice mining in Otela.  Mostly reading a book; don't tell James 315.  But I am around to run back to the station every so often.  The ice is getting low, so I start to pay a bit more attention.  I see a big ship in the middle of the ice.  It's not an Orca.  What is it?  I look at the ship list.  Oh, it's a Chimera.  And it's in my fleet.

... what??

Yup.  Never seen a capital in highsec before, other than the one at that silly Live Event that CCP ran.  So naturally I took a picture.

The Chimera had a guy with him firing fireworks.  I remarked on the capital in fleet chat.  Eventually he started shooting me.  Pretty.

Efficient Ice Mining in Highsec

I mention from time to time my Jita alt.  He does most of the buying and selling for my corporation, and also flies supplies to us in a freighter.  I keep him in the Forge most of the time, so that he can tweak prices.  When he is not busy buying, selling, or hauling, and I am not needing the combat pilot on his account, I often ice-mine with him.  Ice mining is decent income when the ice is around.  With full Orca boost, you can earn perhaps 20m per hour.  Since you can do this semi-AFK, I often ice-mine while my main is busy in wspace or out exploring.

There's been a bit of discussion recently about how highsec players ought to mine ice for best income.  Gevlon Goblin has taken it upon himself to gank highsec miners until they use Procurers or Skiffs.  He does not seem to realize that these ships are the best miners only when nobody is ganking, and even then, not always.  Partly in reaction to this, Lucas Kell proposes his alternative approach: yield tanking:

...the basis behind Yield Tanking is simple.  If you can make more isk in any given period while losing a Covetor, than you can mining in a Procurer, it's better to go with a yield fit Covetor.  With the stats above, in 10.8 hours, the Covetor makes the same as the procure PLUS it's own cost.  This means if you get ganked every 10.8 hours of mining, you are as efficient mining in a Covetor.

I criticized "Yield" tanking there, so you can go there to see that.  I disagree with both these approaches for ice miners, at least for the average ice miner.  Both Gevlon and Lucas are correct in a narrow way, but not more generally.

Gevlon's mistake is the more obvious: a tank is only useful if there is ganking going on.  If not, you are flying the wrong ship.  Gevlon feels that you should always always always be prepared for a worst case: there is always a ganker potentially about to kill you.  But this is obviously counterfactual, and especially so in ice anomalies.  For in an ice anomaly, there are typically many miners.  If you are the only miner on your grid, and you know there are gankers about, then OK.  Better get a Procurer.  But otherwise, you can probably improve your yield.

Lucas's idea is valid for a reasonable mining method: group mining with an Orca.  But it does not really apply to the average guy, just running a single miner or two.  This guy might get an Orca boost from a friendly local, but he must provide his own transport.  For him, ore hold size is a big deal, because he loses two minutes per load dumping it off.

Also, there is the matter of implants.  If you have dedicated miner pilots, then you don't care about implants other than mining-related ones.  You lose 3% yield (which I don't think Lucas is taking into account) by using an empty clone.  But many characters are not dedicated miners: they are training something else, and have the implants for it.  So for them, getting podded is a serious problem.

My mining philosophy might be called the "Low Hanging Fruit" strategy, as in: don't be the low hanging fruit. Gankers, like anyone else, want things to be as easy and foolproof as possible. So they'll go for the weakest tank and easiest target.  Here are some of the ways in which you can avoid being the low-hanging fruit.

First, get a better tank than others in your anom.  Always be aware of the other miners mining with you, and make sure your barge is not the most easily ganked one. So long as someone else is, you are probably safe.  If nobody else is, it's time for a tankier miner.  I keep a Procurer in the same station as my Retriever; during the Ice Interdiction I flew it routinely.  But it mostly gathers dust.

You may be tempted to fit a ship scanner and scan other ships in your anom, but don't do this.  This makes you look very suspiciously like a gank spotter.  I just assume that if there are several retrievers or Macks in my anom, at least one of them has little or no tank.  And I do have a tank (see below) -- always at least a damage control and cheap shield rigs.  Don't be the low-hanging fruit: pay attention to the other miners in your anom, and if you are the flimsiest, get a harder ship.

Second, try to get a tank such that you require one more Catalyst to kill than an untanked ship of your type.  Gevlon made a table that shows this pretty well:

Untanked, a Retriever tanks just 9700 EHP against hybrid ammo.  A max skill T2 Catalyst can do that much damage in 13 seconds -- plenty of time.  Even a low-skill T1 pilot can kill it solo.  If you put on a damage control, and a few cheap shield hardening rigs for thermal and kinetic, you increase the tank to 16600 EHP.  This requires 22 seconds of max skilled T2 Cat fire.  This is just possible for a T2 Cat in 0.5 security -- but I mine in Otela, 0.6 sec.  So it would require two Cats working together to gank me.  But if they have two Cats, they can gank not just me, but a weakly tanked Mack.  What will they choose, the 40m ship or the 177m ship?  Don't be the low-hanging fruit: fit enough tank to require an extra quantum of gank.

Third, orbit something while you mine, at a range of at least 2500 and preferably 5000.  I orbit the ice itself -- it's conveniently there -- but you might also put out a jetcan for the purpose.  Orbiting the ice has the disadvantage that when that particular iceberg is gone, you go flying off into space.  So you need to pay some attention.

Why does orbiting help deter gank?  Because it makes things harder for the ganker.  The range on weapons gankers use is very low.  Light neutron blaster IIs, which are what T2 Cats use, have an optimal range of 2.5km and falloff 2.3km.  So if their warpin point is even a little bit off from you (and there is always 2500m of randomness in every warp), they may start out of optimal range.  They can easily make mistakes.  As a result, gankers prefer stationary targets.  Well, at least as I write this, most miners are stationary.  Don't be the low-hanging fruit: move while you mine.

Faction Surveillance

Normal operations today.  Reconnoitering the latest C3a to come my way.  Some Tengus at a tower, so maybe that would be interesting.  Meanwhile, I resolve the static and pop out into highsec to bookmark the highsec side.  And I see this:

Faction surveillance watching me cloak

 OK, I have never seen that before.  Faction surveillance ships sitting near a wormhole.

Waiting for a Wormhole to Expire

It is a slow evening.  We have logged on to find our static wormhole strangely present, and in its end of life state.  (EOL as we call it in bookmarks.)  We thought we opened it yesterday -- obviously, not.  Someone seems to have opened it this morning.  There are no other wormholes.  But we have things to do in system.

There are two new gas sites.  So a couple of us slurp out all the good gas.  Now we've got enough people here, so we run anoms.  We finish the two sleepers left over in the one site we were experimenting on earlier this week.  And there is a new Frontier Barracks, so we do it too.

By now the sleepers should have spawned in those gas sites we sucked earlier... so I take my PVE Tengu straight there from the Barracks.  First site, killed, and I let our Noctis know.  Then on to second.  Killed.  Back to base and back into my exploration Buzzard.

Check the static... still there, EOL.  Go away stupid wormhole!

Well, OK. Er... what to do?  Time to do my PI!  In fact I need to do the "long" version, hauling goo out to many of the planets while moving other goo around between them, and bringing back intermediate and finished goo.  So I get to that.  Four characters.  Sit watching on the hole with one at a time, while doing PI on the other account.  Log off, log on.  Shuffle.  Log off, log on.  (CCP please make this nicer.)  An hour later, finally done with that.

Meanwhile most of the corp has logged off.  They've done their PI too, and gone to bed. 

Check the static... still there, EOL.  Well, this is getting vexing.  It's been two hours, I should have at least a 50/50 shot that the stupid thing goes away.

One more thing I can do is suck the small amount of near worthless gas from one of the gas sites.  This will make it despawn, keeping my pretty system nice and tidy.  So, I get in Ventures and go do that. This takes about 20 minutes.  OK, site is gone, hurrah.

Check the static... still there.  Sigh.

Nothing to do.  So, I sit watching the hole on my main, and log in my Jita alt.  He spends most of his time in Otela, where there is ice.  Maybe there is some here.  I pop out: yes indeed.  Well, this might even be interesting, because the CFC's Caldari Ice Interdiction is on.  I warp over to the ice in my Procurer.  Procurers have a huge tank even if fit poorly, and mine is fit well.  So I am not very worried about being ganked.

Tracking the elusive prey

I show up, get my stuff running, and start mining a nearby ice-asteroid.  Just as I am looking around, a gank wave shows up, and they gank a miner -- not sure what type, but I am guessing Mackinaw -- that is about 7 km from me.  This is pretty close, so I move straight at it.  Two of the gankers open up on me, as I notice later, because I get kill rights.  At the time I don't notice; they don't perceptively lower my shields.  Concord goes to work, and the gankers are all killed in a nice fireworks display.  I fill my cargo hold with loot from the gankers; together it's worth about 2m ISK.  I wish I had salvage drones.

I mine.  I watch the our static wormhole.  It stays.

12 minutes pass and my ore hold is full.  I warp to station, drop ice, and return.  The Goons have pulled Concord, so it is very likely they're coming back.  There is one Mack in the ice, two retrievers, and several Procurers including me.  The Mack is in my fleet; I warn him that he's probably next.  He dismisses my warning saying he's got a 32000 EHP tank.  Sure enough, he is next; boom. 

I mine a few more cycles.  The goons have not pulled Concord; there are 6 squads in the belt.  So I am feeling quite safe.  I almost pull out my Retriever, but decide it is probably not wise.  It's not like I have anything else to do: the static is stubbornly there.  So running back and forth to a station to dump ice is no big deal.  I start reading EVE blogs to pass the time.

One more gank arrives, killing the last Retriever in the belt.  OK, I had not expected that.  Very wasteful -- six of them will have only gotten off a few seconds of fire.

It's after midnight.  I have stayed on longer than I would otherwise because I want to see the Goons in action.  But now the belt is down just three of us, and all in Procurers.  It's not much of a target.  I check the timestamp on the bookmark for the static.  01:08.  And now is 4:31. Time to give up.  Good night, accursed wormhole.

No Concord in Deadspace

It is my opinion that there is too much ISK in highsec relative to its risk.  So, among my other preoccupations in EVE is thinking about ways to nerf highsec.  However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this.  

Fundamentally the problem is that ISK:risk is too high in highsec.  The ratio can be decreased in two ways: lowering ISK, or increasing risk.  One of these is right for EVE: increasing risk.  And there is only one right way to increase risk: increasing the possibility and practicability of PVP.  Why is PVP necessary?  Because it any canned pattern will be learned and optimized against.  For example, making "harder" rats does nothing for risk; it just raises the bar of entry.  This is why I criticized James 315, who notoriously proposed to "nerf highsec PVE into oblivion".  His proposal was basically to reduce ISK while keeping risk constant.  Doing this would certainly adjust the ratio but it would reduce highsec to a desert.  Highsec is and should be a perfectly viable and fun game area in and of itself.

So how do we increase risk in highsec?  Well, see the title.  Much highsec ISK generation takes place in deadspace.  Thus, one way to increase risk on much of highsec's PVE is to remove Concord protection from deadspace.  

Attacking anyone in deadspace would still incur the normal security hit and Criminal flag, and killrights if he was successful.  Concording would still occur if the criminal leaves the deadspace pocket; therefore he is stuck there for 15 minutes while the Criminal timer runs.  The criminal would be freely attackable by anyone who comes in, including the original victim coming back in his PVP ship.  

Lorewise, it makes plenty of sense.  Players can't warp in to deadspace.  Therefore, neither should Concord.  (I remember being afraid of deadspace as a newb for a closely related reason: I did not realize I could warp out.  It seemed logical that if you can't warp in you can't warp out either.)  It would also help to explain why all those agents want capsuleer help doing missions.  After all, if you really had anything like Concord or even the faction police around, why not just send them?  My answer is: because they can't get in there.

In terms of game effect, obviously this would supercharge what mission ninjas are already doing.  They'd not need to bait anyone, just charge in with guns blazing.  The effect on mission runners is more interesting.  They'd be strongly encouraged to take many precautions against gank:

• fitting a more PVP style tank
• finding cheap but effective fits to mission in, as versus faction-fit piñatas.
• having PVP friends on call
• sitting a picket alt on the warp gate
• watching dscan like a hawk
• fighting aligned
• finding quiet systems to mission in
• keeping tabs on local and particular players in local

If these seem familiar, it's because these are the same precautions that one takes when running missions in lowsec or null.  So, one positive effect here is that in learning to how to mission in highsec, one learns skills that transfer neatly to lowsec and null.  Thus we lower the barrier for successful players to migrate outward.

The Ice Price Rise di'n't Materialize

Before Odyssey happened, I projected a significant price rise in ice and ice products.  This was based on CCP's description of how ice would change: according to their plans, they were going to put only enough ice in the new ice anoms so that if each anom was depleted 5 times per day, highsec could generate 80% of the amount of ice it generated pre-Odyssey.  My assumption is that they did as they said.  We can certainly see the ice anoms and we know that the respawn time is 4 hours.

A quick look at ice product values at the eve-markets.net site shows the trend over the last 180 days.  Here are the graphs for two ice products that I care most about, Helium and Nitrogen isotopes:

thanks to www.eve-markets.net

The price certainly did rise.  The dev blog describing the changes happened April 26.  The price spikes right then and stays high, however there has been a slight tailing off since then.  One very interesting aspect of these graphs is that the buy price has not changed much.  The sell price has almost doubled

What is interesting about this from my perspective is that I have put in several hours of ice mining recently.

One time I logged my ice miner and looked in Otela, then Osmon, and finally Wuos, and there was no ice in any of them.  But within an hour there was, and he mined straight for another few hours.  Three other times I have logged in and there was ice in the system he was in.  This is a small sample, but it suggests that ice anoms are not being mined out quickly.

The other evidence I have on that score is the number of ice miners in the anomalies, and how long they have lasted.  All four times I have mined, the number of ice miners was initially low.  Then it increased, but only once was there more than 10 miners at a time in any anomaly.   And in all of the cases except that one, I logged off the game (usually after about 2 hours of mining) before the ice anom was depleted.

At 190000 ISK per block of White Glaze, and mining about 1 block per minute, the income is pretty good considering how much work it is.  You can still do it on a second monitor while doing something interesting on the main monitor.  On the other hand, the income from ice is still not as high as I predicted would be necessary to draw in nullsec production.

There is one interesting aspect of ice product sales that is interesting to ponder.  Here's the 180 day graph for Caldari Fuel Blocks:

The price has moved in sync with Nitrogen, which is what we expect.  But note the volume.  It declines a bit around the timeframe of the announcement, but has rebounded.  Volume is now almost exactly what it was in the steady, normal market operation in the first half of the graph.  (This pattern is also there in the two isotopes graphs above.)  I suppose that part of that may be due to people re-subbing for Odyssey, who had unfueled towers that they then fueled.  But part of it is just inexplicable to me.  When price rises, as it did, quantity will decline (if other things are equal).  In any case, there is no evidence as yet that people have been pulling down marginally profitable towers.

So, the small evidence I have shows that current ice production simply is not that great.  Ice is not being massively mined in highsec, and the price is not yet high enough to incent substantial production in nullsec.  (Lowsec is too dangerous.)  But volume is not decreasing.  My guess is that a massive amount of ice products have been stockpiled since the exhumer buff of Inferno.  This stockpile is gradually being spent down.  Ice will go higher.  I expect much higher.

Housekeeping in Off Hours

Had a full day of EVE yesterday.  Got on a lot earlier than normal because the Boy was busy playing outside with the neighbor kids.  So I was on by myself, typical.

Lots to do: scanned down my C4 (4 anoms, 1 ore anom (bleck), four sigs (all old and previously bookmarked in corp)).  And then the neighboring C3.  The C3 has a lowsec static.  One tower with nobody home.  A lot of anoms, 20 or so, and nine sigs, mostly gas.  Last two sigs I look at are the static and also a second wormhole connecting up from another lowsec system.  In my experience, kspace people almost never come into wspace from lowsec or null: if they are there to begin with, they are not hunting wormholes.  So it looked good for later exploitation once my corpies got online.  But that was going to be a few hours.

I trigger all the gas sigs to get their sleepers coming.  Then I do real life for a while.  Coming back a bit later, I take a PVE Tengu into C3 and kill all the little sleepers in the basic gas sites.  Then I come back and salvage in a salvage Venture.  My thinking here is to set up gassing, later, if no corpmates show up tonight.  And also make a little money.  As it happened, not a single nanoribbon in salvage, so basically not worth it.

Dotlan map showing jumps in 24 hours.  Gankers like traffic.

With nothing much to do but time to play, I did some housekeeping chores.  Since I wanted some stuff from the world, and one of the lowsec exits was relatively close to Jita (12 jumps, or 9 on a more direct route through lowsec), I grabbed all the small valuable stuff we had in our loot container in my Buzzard and went for it.  1.2 billion on a tissue paper ship: exciting.  There was a huge camp at Tara, but I was going the other way so nyah.  (Went back the longer way.)  There was one thrilling moment when I drive up to the Jita gate in Niyabainen and got rejected.  Big traffic jam there.  Instead of sitting there trying to get in, with who knows what oggers cargo scanning me, I detoured to New Caldari to try again.  Still rejected, and another big jam; I flew off to Aokannitoh to one of the stations that buys blue loot, and sold it.  This lightened my load by some 600m ISK, and also allowed me to route around to Ichuki, one of the less-used Jita entrances.  I got rejected there too, a few times, but made it in pretty fast.  Whew.  

Once in Jita I traded all my stuff to my trade alt, getting back various stuff in return to go back to wspace.  In particular, wanted a pair of +3 implants for my PI alt because I have been waiting to get dual training going.  (Was on a trip recently and was not sure I would be able to play at all, so I had delayed turning on dual training for both my accounts.)  Also wanted a set of implants for myself: a cheap optimization for heavy missile damage as is appropriate for someone who expends most of his firepower in a PVE Tengu.  Grabbed this stuff and headed back.  This went without incident, so I logged off to log my PI alt.  Fussed with EVEMon to get a skill plan ready.  Got the new implants in and dual training started.

Then relogged my main and sat around at my POS, while I started selling things and buying things with my trade alt in Jita.  Gotta decide for each type of object whether to sell to a buy order or do a sell order.  Then there was a whole list of new stuff to buy for the wspace POS: new ships (the new Navy Scorpions with the newly buffed cruise missiles are great value for the money); the fitting for the scorps; more heavy missiles; some new Iteron Vs.  All in all a billion in new hulls and a half billion in new fittings and missiles.

About this time it is getting close to time for me to fire up the grill out in real life, and start cooking dinner.  Just as I am getting ready to leave the computer, I notice something odd: there's a new sig in my system.  I hit the dscan and, uh oh.  Sleeper wrecks.  Wait, am I in my own system?  Yeah... scroll down... Tengus.  Lots of 'em.  And two Drakes, too.  Well.  Seems we have visitors...