Slow Times in Wspace High

These are slow times in wormhole space for this hunter.  I have been beating the bushes like crazy, but no birds have appeared. 

The new thing is that wspace is now hyper-connected.  Previous to Hyperion, a lot of our chains would look like this: C4a->C4b->C3a->ns.  Maybe a few side systems, but usually not enough to go on forever.  Then termination in known space.

With Hyperion, There are more connections everywhere, and every C4 system now gets two at least.  I routinely get more systems than I am willing to scan to.  My trees look like this:

Screenie from Tripwire

That is after only a partial night of (fruitless) searching.  I went down my K162s and into my H900, but I did not search it nor did I yet enter my X877.  In all those systems I saw probes once, and one Venture out in space that left and did not return before I could kill it.  (I might have spooked it somehow; don't know.)

Mathematically, when you increase the average connectivity of a graph from ~1 connection per node towards two, the size of connected chunks increases exponentially.  This is what has happened in wspace.  I expect that if all connections were instantiated, almost all of wspace would be in one large connected chunk.. There would still islands here and there, and of course a lot of the time connectivity is lowered because nobody is activating wormholes.  Still, from the POV of a hunter, the connectivity means you rarely have to leave wspace to find a new chain. 

The bad news?  First, I can't find anyone.  Anecdotal, but suggestive.  I see probes now and again, but I feel like the activity level of people running sites is down.  Usually I find a couple site runners per week. 

Another bit of suggestive anecdotal data is the rate at which new sites spawn.  Presumably, the set of sites in wspace is fixed and they are just kicked around from system to system when they either despace after being triggered, or despawn from being run.  I am very sensitive to the spawn rates of new anoms in my system.  Since Hyperion, the rate is about half what it used to be.  Formerly we'd get about 1 new combat anom or sig per day.  Now it is one per two days. 

I looked at prices of various wspace products, but there's no obvious trend I see.  I think it is too soon.  But I expect to see them rising.

Smugglers and Null

One of things I hate about sov null is that from my point of view, it's a waste land.  It's true that nobody is in local in most of the systems.  But that's not that different from many parts of lowsec and even some highsec.  Unlike those other areas, though, I cannot dock at any of the outposts/stations.  Since I cannot dock anywhere, I cannot partake of many sorts of gameplay that stations facilitate.  I cannot use the markets.  Nor can I use contracts, stash things, etc.

I can't be a smuggler, sneaking into stations when nobody is around to sell my wares.

(Actually, it is unclear to me whether or not I can actually dock at any given player-owned thing.  I assume I can't, but I don't know.  I have no way that I know of to find out other than trying.  This seems hazardous.)

I propose to loosen the perfect control currently exerted by the nullsec empires over their stations.  Lore-wise, each station is being run by a local governor.  If that governor thinks he can get away with it, he may let neutrals docks even though they are otherwise disallowed.  

Each station should have a right-click menu item "Talk to Governor".  This would be available when on grid with the station.  Or perhaps anywhere in the system.  Selecting it raises a chat screen somewhat like an agent.  I.e., a picture of the governor, a readout of your personal standings with him or her, as well as the owning corp and alliance.  Also, there should be a clear indication of whether you can dock.  For example, "you are welcome to dock at LPQZ-15".

There should be three docking-permission states.

• "You are welcome to dock at..." This message means you can dock because your corp and/or alliance is permitted.
• "Right now, you can dock at..."  Displayed when you can dock, but might not be able to later. 
• "You cannot dock at..." -- Displayed when you cannot dock.

A governor will allow otherwise disallowed pilots to dock in some circumstances.  Just as for empire factions, player corporations and alliances should have standings computed for them.  When you kill a person from a corp/alliance, you lose standings with it.

Like agents, the governors should have missions.  All kinds of missions should be offered.  Completing a mission would increase standings with that governor.  Also you gain standings with his current faction, and lose standings with all other corps/alliances which have that faction set to enemy.  No LP would be awarded (player corps don't have LP).  Unlike other agents, a governor's missions should be a random mix of all missions, levels 1 through 5.  Furthermore, unlike other agents a governor's missions are very finite.  Each governor will have either zero or one mission current at one time.  If he has a mission, it will be offered to everyone who has the standings to request it.  (The mission system would have to be tweaked to allow this.)  The first capsuleer to complete the mission can turn it in for standings.  Other capsuleers who accepted that mission fail, although this should not count against their standings since it is not a private mission.

Governors should have a cooldown between missions of some random amount of time between two and six hours.  This puts a sharp limit on farming the missions for standings, while spreading out who can get them into all timezones.

Standings are used to determine whether pilots can dock who are not explicitly allowed to dock.  (Of course the corp/alliance owning the station can always determine who is on their white list.)  Generally, the following factors increase the chance that a capsuleer can dock at a station:

• standings with governor
• standings with corp owner of station
• standings with alliance owner of station
• few or no non-idle pilots in that system who are in the alliance owning the station
• few or no non-idle pilots in that system who are in the corp owning the station

A specific formula might be as follows.  You can dock if:
 1 < standings(gov) + .5*standings(corp) + .1*standings(alliance) - #pilots(corp) - .5*#pilots(alliance)

So, in an empty system, you'd just need standings of around 1.0 with a governor, unless you'd been actively shooting his corp/alliance, in which case you'd need more.  Of course, even getting to 1.0 would require running missions in null.

Once you have standings, you could smuggle in goods for sale at the local outpost.  Store stuff there.  Get your ships out from an enemy held station, even.

EVE and RMT

There's a new blog banter out, #58 - Money:

The SOMERBlink fiasco from last summer and then again this summer... resulting in the service's ultimate shutdown has opened the floor to the discussion or monetization of services once again. 

Do you think CCP was right in its reaction? Was SOMERBlink justified in trying to monetize its service via plex sales kickbacks? Was it true RMT or grey area RMT? 

More generally, where is the line to be drawn when a service attempts to monetize in order to offset costs and/or make a profit? Is asking for donations in Real Life cash too far (I realize CCP considers it unacceptable right now)? Selling non-EVE trademarked goods acceptable? Asking for money to pay for efforts in setting up EVE meetups? Should these all be scrutinized? 

And should you want to dig deeper, should players be allowed to reverse redeem plex for cash? Does this already not exist in programs like Plex for fanfest packages or video cards? Is it right?

About Somer

First off, I am not that interested in Somer.  What they did was RMT, but the RMT per se was not the heart of what they did wrong.  RMT is fine if done with CCP's blessing.  (I.e., PLEX, fanfest packages, video cards, etc.)  Somer did not have CCP's full and knowledgeable permission to do RMT.  They tricked CCP into a sort-of permission to do it, and that is a very different thing.  It's one thing to trick someone with inferior or equal power; you can sometimes get away with it.  It's another thing to trick the hand that feeds you.  It was a stupid ploy.  Then they compounded their error by breaking EULA in several ways.  CCP did the right thing.  Nobody wants a subordinate that tries to scam and refuses to accept the rules.

Why or Why Not RMT?

Now let's talk in more generality.  Why is RMT banned, anyway?  Presumably, because its downsides outweigh its upsides.  But what are the upsides?  You don't hear people talk about that very much.  Let's look at both sides.

Why RMT?

There's a very interesting scifi element in Neal Stephenson's recent scifi novel Reamde (sic).  In the book's near-future world there is a MMO called "T'rain", which features full RMT, by design.  Indeed, the RMT is said to be among the reasons why the game is such a fictional success.  Legions of third-world gold farmers make a living by playing T'rain.  They are the low-level farmers (literally) in the game; it's their real-life full time job.  Rich Westerners play the game as a game, paying subscriptions, and are in effect the aristocrats of the game.  Each one has a horde of farmers working beneath him.

T'rain aristocrats are paying for three things that are affected by RMT: a living world, dominance, and status.  Let's look at each of these, and see how it is related to RMT.

First, T'rain is a living fantasy world that is full of actual people, not just simulated people.  (It also has a lot of computer-controlled baddies for PVE purposes.)  All the scutwork -- mining, farming, woodcutting, etc. -- is being done by characters in the game.  Everything is simulated down to the geology of the virtual world.  So, the world feels real.  Think about the difference in feel between an ice anomaly, and a level four mission.  In both, the grid is full of ships.

Second, just as in EVE, the T'rain aristocrats are the guys who get to run around and have adventures, many of which include fighting each other.  When you fight, someone wins, and gets the thrill of dominating another real human being.  Compare PVP in EVE to PVE.  The same thing applies: killing people is thrilling.  Losing is crushing, but for most people it does not depress you as much as a win elates you.  So, you ride the rollercoaster.  And note that in T'rain, there are "peasants" -- the gold farmers -- who presumably players can kill if they want a cheap win.

Similarly, presumably in T'rain if you want to hurt someone you can go and kill his peasants, Game of Thrones style.  Think of the difference in EVE between ganking and PVE.  In both you are shooting ships which in effect cannot win.  But ganking is typically fun; real tears are generated.  Compare the staid predictability of PVE.  Dominating a computer-played static fleet -- a fleet which is designed to allow you to beat it -- ceases to be fun after a while.

Third, the T'rain aristocrats get the thrill of being actually high-status in the game.  Human beings crave status perhaps as much anything else; they'll sacrifice a lot for it: money, sex, their very lives, even the lives of their children.  It's a very powerful motivator.  In most games the player is high status in the game's asserted fiction; for example, he's a "Jedi knight" and everyone knows that "Jedi knights" are high status supermen.  But the player in most games does not in fact have actual status in the sense of having actual human subordinates.  At best he has NPC subordinates; and after a point they do not tweak our status circuits.  By contrast, in T'rain, you could pay for actual status -- that is, having human subordinates -- and get it.

So, in summary, T'rain hits on a lot of the same buttons that EVE does.  But it does some things arguably better: a better simulated world, and higher status for its paying players.  Of course, we should keep in mind that T'rain is fictional.  I think the elements above would be successful in a real-world game.  Some of them are in EVE!  But it's trivial to assert in a story that your game is a worldwide smash hit because of X.  It's another thing to write an actual popular game, and yet another that a real game is popular because of X.

So, there are reasons why CCP should forget about monopolizing RMT and let people do it.

So why not allow RMT?

Why Not RMT?

Of course, CCP does allow very generous RMT: that's what PLEX is.  (Ref: my old post on EVE's Amazing AIs.)  But PLEX is uni-directional: money goes in; it never comes out.  What about opening up the other direction?  Of course, CCP should profit from it.  They might set up a online currency exchange: a modest "tax" on exchanges of say 10% seems like it should extract a lot of profit from the practice while still being low enough that black-market RMT is minimized.

One huge reason why full RMT might be a bad idea is real world laws.  If you hold someone's money for them, you are a bank, at least arguably.  And therefore arguably banking regulations should be applied to you.  I have certainly seen this mentioned in the RMT context.  I don't know how applicable it really is.  But if it is, I can certainly see that allowing any RMT might be prohibitive costly.  But let's ignore this reason for now and concentrate only on reasons related to game design.

One reason why people think that RMT is bad is that it makes it hard to earn ISK.  I discuss this with Gevlon in the comments of this post.  I make the point that ISK incomes would not collapse totally; they'd just drift down towards the global minimum wage.  (Really the minimum wage that obtains in places which have good internet access and sufficient population.  Today that is probably China.)  At the time, I computed 14m ISK/hour as that level; that was with PLEX around 500m.  The rate today would be somewhat higher, more like 20m ISK/hour.  This may not seem great to a wspace or null person.  But there are many people today earning less than that in highsec.  Highsec's safety counts for a lot, for many players.  So, there is definitely a viable game left even after all higher-profit work is professionalized.

Now, it should be apparent that in opening a competition between people all over the world to "play" EVE as a job, you open up competition and will drive wages down, at least somewhat.  A Chinese peasant may compare a job mining veldspar in EVE to, perhaps, working as a street-sweeper, and decide that he can survive on less than minimum wage.  The work is much more pleasant.  So wages would probably be a bit lower.  Still, the estimate is fine on that end.

Another thing that would happen with full RMT is that PLEX would go up quite a bit.  Consider a Chinese peasant playing EVE to make money.  He finds that they can rat in nullsec for 60m ISK/hour.  So he and a friend get an account and rat with it all day in shifts, perhaps 20 hours per day, six days per week.  Over a month, that's 33.6b ISK.  From that, they need to buy one PLEX to run the account; PLEX cashed out beyond that earn them minimum wage.  But their mininum wage is on the order of $112/month; if they can cash out a PLEX for $15 legally, then they'd need 15 of them to pay just over minimum.  16 total.  So we see a valuation of 2.1b ISK/PLEX.  (Perhaps not coincidentally, PLEX are just about 2b ISK on the Chinese server, although they pay about half as much for PLEX.)

So what's the problem here?  The problem is that everyone becomes risk averse.  That is because everyone has the possibility to extract real cash from the game.

Now, there's no problem in farmers becoming, or rather being, risk averse.  The Code to the contrary, pure farming is a viable play style.  And farmers already are famously risk averse.  They'd be perhaps bit more so with the ability to cash out, but really not that much.

It's the rest of the players that would have their incentives changed much for the worse.  Currently, it is relatively easy to earn more than PLEX.  So people pile up ISK with nothing to do with it.  For those whom ISK is not an end, but a means to more pixel violence, lots of ISK will eventually mean they fly more, or they end up up-shipping, flying more expensive ships.  They are more capable and also more fun to blow up.  Thus, everyone benefits.  And people stay in the game, because the spaceship violence is compelling.

Consider an EVE in which losing a "$1000" Titan really is losing $1000... and suddenly, you won't see many Titan pilots.

By making the accumulation of ISK easy, and having nothing to spend it on but spaceship violence, CCP induces lots of spaceship violence in their game of spaceship violence.  And that's a good thing, because lacking spaceship violence nobody would play EVE.

But What About PLEX-for-Vidcards?

So, the point of disallowing cash-out-RMT is to make sure EVE stays fun, which is what happens when there's nothing better to do with ISK.  But what about all those methods of trading PLEX for real stuff mentioned in the banter?  Video cards and fanfest packages, etc.?

Well, those do give players an outlet for ISK, and so they should have the effect of reducing the amount of pixel violence going on.  But on the other hand, at least arguably by handing out things related to EVE, you cement fan loyalty directly, and keep them playing because they like the game more.  So, I think it's a wash on the "fun" factor.  And also, it's a clear win to the extent that many of the people using these offers are not PVPers.  They're not going to do anything with the ISK in any case.

There is also the point about professionalization.  By allowing cashout in any form, CCP reduces the amount players can earn in game, because people will do extra farming to earn ISK for cashout.  But so long as CCP keeps the amount of cashout relatively small and unpredictable, this is not a real problem.  "Relatively small" here is relative to the global minimum wage.  Allowing cashout of a PLEX per month is insufficient for anyone to live on.  Unpredictable just means that you cannot come to rely on that income.  Also, cash per se should not available; rather, goods or services, ideally services that are not salable.  This makes it more difficult to live on cashout opportunities.

Fitting is Good Complexity

There's a new blog banter out.  I don't make a point to engage with those things unless they set me off.  But in this case, it did.  So let's talk about who's responsible for badly fit ships.

Drackarn pointed this killmail to me recently and proposed the following for a blog banter:

Obviously that is a not just a bad fit, its horrific. But the guy might not know any better. ... How do we educate players on fitting? This guy has been playing four months and can fly a BC, but has no idea how to fit one. What could be done to help bro's like this?

Furthermore, what (if any) responsibility do veterans players have in finding these players and instructing them on the finer arts of ship fitting? If it exists, does it extend beyond them into teaching PvP skills, ISK making skills, market skills, social skills, life skills...

Questions like this bring out the contrarian in me.  "We"?  Who's "we"?  "Responsible"?  You're telling me that via paying for spaceship pew I have assumed duties to some random idiot on the internet?

I can answer all these questions pretty succinctly.  "We" don't educate players on fitting.  It is too complex for any canned lecture.  We can offer our help if they want it.  But they have to initiate; nobody knows what other people don't know.  And there is simply no way to reach many people.  It's a game, after all, not work.  On the other hand, many learn it by themselves.  Nobody ever taught me to fit, and I doubt anyone taught you.  Of course, that particular sample is biased due to a strong survivor effect.

As for responsibility, it is not the responsibility of anyone to fit your ship but you.  Corporations?  I certainly will help my own guys, but that's a very limited responsibility.  And they know to ask.  Not everyone has a corp to rely on.  That Navy Drake pilot was in an NPC corp; no CEO.

Everyone should learn to fit.  Yes, newbs are ignorant.  So what?  Googling up decent information and resources related to fitting is not that hard:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=eve+fitting

The internet is right there, at our fingertips.  Newbs are playing an online game; you can't tell me they cannot google.  It's true that google won't always turn up an excellent fit.  But it will find something, and even the poorer fittings at battleclinic are not failfits.

Fitting is complex.  Yes, there are aspects of fitting that are "bad" complexity.  I.e., all those low meta modules.  They could collapse that variety down into perhaps three modules per type with no complaint from me.  But for the most part, fitting is a fun part of the game.  I spend hours in EFT just messing around.  I don't fly most of the fits I make.  My ship storage is quite finite and subject to loss.  But it is still useful to know what sort of fitting is likely if I run up against a ship.  Given that fitting is an important and fun part of the game, it's not broken.  The fact that people fail at it is unfortunate for them, but ultimately part of the price we all pay to have a game worth playing.

Now that I have gotten my knee-jerk negativity out, I guess I do have some positive suggestions.  Drat.  Let's go there.

I do think CCP could help, in several ways.  First, let me plug boot camps again.  The problem most newbs have is not that they don't have questions, or that they think they know it all.  It's that they don't have anyone to ask.  They need some specific, particular person who they know they can ask about all kinds of stuff, fitting included.  One of the key ideas of boot camp is to specify that person.  (Two, in my formulation.)

Another way CCP could help is by referring players to a decent tutorial on fitting that ought to be part of the EVE wiki.  (Speaking of googling for you, I just googled "eve wiki fitting" -- the official wiki has a pretty good, if long, page on Fitting Ships.  It does not link to fitting tools.  Eve U has several pages on fitting.  Fitting 101, which does link tools.  Also Fitting Guidelines.  It has links to more pages, too.)  The EVE wiki page is too long and advanced for a newb to be expected to read, and also it lacks pointers to tools.  But it's the right idea.  What do I mean by CCP "referring" players?  I mean a hyperlink from within EVE -- from within a newbie mission, and from within the "Bad Fit" popup as discussed below.

One more idea.  CCP could programmatically detecting bad fits (perhaps on undock) and warn the player.  Drackarn's banter suggests this with a bit of humor.

Now, programs are inherently dumb.  You will never write a program capable of detecting all bad fits, or probably even most bad fits.  Nor can we detect many subtle problems with a fit.  Although such abilities would be nice, they are not what is needed here.  All you need is the ability to warn players off obviously bad fits, laughably bad fits, like that Navy Drake linked above.  Here are some easy to detect fitting problems that the client could warn people about:

• this ship has civilian fittings [exception for newb missions and rookie ships]
• this ship has empty highslots and extra hardpoints
• this ship has empty low slots / empty rigs
• this ship has a weapons bonus but has fit unbonused weapons
• this ship has two+ types of weapons
• this ship is dual tanked
• this ship has an empty, nonzero drone bay
• this ship has mismatched weapons and weapons bonusing items.
• this ship uses three+ fitting modules
• this ship is too expensive for what it is
• this ship has inertial stabilizers (joke! sort of!)

(I'm sure more could be added.)  Warnings could be a popup box like Drackarn suggests, with a hyperlink to a tutorial on fitting, an itemized list of problems, a checkbox to "don't show me any more fitting warnings for any ship" and another checkbox "don't show me any more fitting warnings for this ship".  Extra bonus for an official Picard facepalm picture.  

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.

Anomymity in Space

Here is an amusing new fitting I dreamed up.

It's a high-slot item, the Signature Disruptor.  It is passive and only one is allowed per ship.  It has low fitting requirements so that any ship can mount one.  When you have one fitted and it is enabled, you are anonymized while out in space.  In a station, there is no effect.

When you undock with a Signature Disruptor fitted, there is a special long undock sequence.  First, if in highsec a warning requiring affirmation will be prominently displayed that anonymity is frowned on and you will be chased by the police.  Next your character is removed from the station and local, as if you had logged out.  Then there is a special long undock delay for up to two minutes, where you do not display at all in local, the station, etc.  Finally you are placed in space at the undock and back into local, as per below.

When you are anonymized:

• your name appears in local (in kspace) as "Unknown". 
• your pilot info shows a special "Unknown" pilot.
• you display no corporation/alliance tag.
• your portrait is replaced with a generic anonymous one.
• your ship name appears on others' dscans as "Anonymized".  The actual ship name is not forgotten and will be shown in stations and if the Signature Disruptor is ever taken off or disabled.
• your security status is -10 -- you are flashy red.  Faction police will hunt you.
• you do not gain bounties, security status, standings, etc. for killing NPCs.
• you do not lose security status for PVP.
• you cannot initiate PVP in highsec (including against war targets) without Concordokken.
• locator agents cannot find you in space (they still can if you are in a station).

Be the villain.

Quick Hits

There's been a couple of really interesting posts I have run across recently, that I wanted to keep track of and think about.  Since I am writing them down anyway, you get them too.

On TMC, a really interesting article by FearlessLittleToaster on the woes of nullsec fleet fights.  The thesis is this: because of logistics, there's been an escalation race where logistics can out-rep an entire fleet.  Higher alpha is required to get any kills.  Higher alpha fleets are deployed.  Higher alpha causes the other side to escalate in ship class.  Then the process repeats.  We're getting toward the end of that, though, as there are no larger ship classes to go to.  Anyway, interesting stuff.  The author promises another article with his ideas on what to do to fix the problem.  (I will update for that.)

Since I already have proposed a partial solution, I might as well plug it.  Create an attrition mechanic that does not rely on the players, but rather, crowdedness itself.  I am guessing that FearlessLittleToaster will come up with something related to nerfing remote reps.

At The Wild Rose of Molden Heath, a fascinating recap by Kaeda Maxwell of the use of battlecruisers in EVE.  Since I know very little of EVE history, and very little about what people do in null and lowsec, this is all new to me and quite interesting.

While I am on the topic of EVE history (I just created a tag for it), I should definitely link to Sugar's series The History of Expansions.  Every one of these is worth reading for the EVE aficionado.

One other interesting thing.  It seems that CCP is planning to nerf the use of scanning boost parts, by making them active modules.  That is, they will turn on and therefore you cannot use them when cloaked.  A boon for offgrid boosters, a nerf to a lot of super-scanning ships.

Keep EVE Dangerous

Erotica 1 has apparently been banned after a witchhunt largely stirred up by Jester.  I have not said much about this, but I find myself still thinking about it.  And so, instead of another episode of me stupidly dying or me killing someone stupid, you get this stupid stuff.  Blame Jester.  Man, I hate politics.  Politics is the mind-killer.  Consider yourself warned. 

Erotica 1

First, if you're not up to speed on what happened, there is (or was) a player in EVE called Erotica 1, touted by some as EVE's foremost ISK doubler.  The player is male; the character is female.  Since I want to discuss the player and his actions, I henceforth refer to him as "him", and I use moniker E1 to indicate that it is the player's actions that matter here, not the in-game actions of Erotica 1.  In addition to the "normal" business of the vanilla ISK-doubling scam, E1 ran a special "bonus round" event for selected suckers.  Supposedly this was every 100th ISK-doubling player or round.

The scam is described in this article, which you should read if you want a balanced look at it.  It appears to be authored by one of E1's helpers, so grain of salt.  Nonetheless, it describes the reason for the "torture", as Jester would have it, of the sucker:

Is it a Scam? ... Yes. Absolutely. But you CAN win! ... As scams go in EVE, the ability to disassociate your activity from a scam, the better it’s going to work. In ISK doubling you see this with people getting small amounts of ISK doubled, but lose larger amounts.

Winners are guaranteed in nearly all EVE scams, because winners bring in contestants.

Now, many would still be wondering what is the goal of everything AFTER the asset transaction. Is it pure sadism? Is it just sick individuals getting their jollies off on others misfortune?

While sometimes entertaining for multiple parties involved, that is not the goal. To maintain the illusion of legitimacy, there has to be a reason for someone to lose. So long as there can be made the case that the contestant simply lost by not following the rules, it becomes easy to keep a scam going.

Jester

(Emphasis mine.)  This seems reasonable to me, at least given the context of scamming.  So, what of "torture"?  Well, Jester (of the blog linked on the right) recently got up on a very high horse and denounced E1.  You can read his cri de cœur at his blog.

I do not use the word torture lightly. Look at any list of psychological torture methods you like. ... I remind you again that this is happening in the game that you play.

EVE is real. And I assure you, what is being done to this man is also real. If you -- for even a single moment! -- would think to defend what is happening here or if you think it is "funny", I invite you to share this recording with your mother or your aunt or your grandmother or your sister. Tell them that this is something that happens in the video game that you play. ... Play her the recording. Let her judge this recording from outside the bubble that you're living in.

His goal was to get E1 banned from the game.  The thing went a bit viral.  It appears his side prevailed. CCP never discusses bans, but E1 is apparently banned.

So.  That's the background.  Now, what's my take on it?  I am quite sure you want to know.

First, let me say that I do not scam, will never scam, and I do not want to closely associate with scammers.  It's not my cup of tea.  I find trust much more rewarding (and indeed, even E1 has his trusted agents).  If I found out E1 was in my corp, I'd kick him.  Jester and the pharisees are right that what E1 recorded is a nasty bit of work.  At least, if what I have read about it is accurate.

Let me also say that I neither listened to the bonus round recording nor did I play it for the nearest woman.  I value my time, and I don't need to do that to grasp what's in it.  Basic human psychology is enough to imagine both the agents and the sucker.  The only reason for listening is to inflame one's heart with indignation, the better to hunt witches with.

Yes, as I have suggested, this is a classic witch hunt, or more specifically: moral panic.  As such, I rejected it and revile it.  And when I see people I respect, such as Jester, engaging in that trope it makes me sad.  What a bunch of monkeys men are!   And look what it drives them to.  Not only do we get "for the children", we get the abuse of language ("torture" my ass), the moral preening, the holier-than-thou attitude, the "shocked, shocked" surprise at the existence of a contrary opinion.  We get the strawmanning, and the lying imputation of the most awful motives to opponents.  And we get the attempt to control the discourse, where what Jester cares about is "the main issue", and what anyone else cares about is a cowardly attempt at distraction.  This is all classic dirty politics.  I hate it all.  Mindkiller.

But what of Jester's challenge? "The main issue is this: do you want this vile excuse for a human being and people like him playing our game and being part of our community?" The answer is yes.  Yes, I want that vile excuse for a human being playing my game.  In-con-ceivable!

So, Von, you want psychopaths in your EVE?  Yes.  Yes I do.  Let me explain that.

EVE is real to us, because there is permanent gain and permanent loss which we care about.  (Cf.: The Fundaments of EVE's Design.)  Play well, and you get to have fun.  Play badly, and it's less fun, even a grind.  This is the genius of the game design.  This is why I like the game, and after all this time I am still logging in.

Put another way, I like EVE because it is dangerous.  Of course I try to minimize danger to myself.  I zip up my system to run sites.  I use warp core stabilizers.  I don't autopilot much.  And, not being two-sigmas of stupid and/or greedy, I do not engage with scammers.  But while I do minimize my risk, I don't want risk to be absent from the game.  Quite the opposite!  I want the game to be dangerous.  Part of that is keeping the game wide open, and that includes to scams.

I want EVE to be a game that attracts the best gaming minds, and for those minds to engage with each other, and with me, in a battle of wits for resources.  Sometimes that battle is purely in-game.  I twitch-click-click-type-type; your Epithal blows up.  But EVE is a multiplayer game that rewards coordination.  Battle can and must go outside of the game, too.  For just as I can meet you and have a beer and laugh about the things we've done, I can plot with you to attack our enemies and take their stuff.  And so, too, can I get you on coms and try to convince you to help me.  Or try to convince you to give me all your stuff, and agree that I should not return it.  All of that should be allowed.

When I think of Jita, I want to think of Mos Eisley.  Not some kind of Coruscant.  The former was alive and fascinating and dangerous; the latter was dead and boring and safe.  It is said of Austin, Texas: Keep Austin Weird.  Well, I say of EVE: Keep EVE Dangerous.  The witchhunt against E1 is a small step in the wrong direction.

But... "for the children!"  Yes, what of newbies?  Someone has undoubtedly been scammed and given up, finding the game unfun and too hard.  Well, that's too bad for him.  One can hope that he will HTFU and try again.  Let me note that most newbies are, actually, adults.  (I note that E1's sucker in the recording is an adult, and he has not quit, even though he must have lost everything.)  But it is to be hoped that the newbie sucker will learn a very valuable lesson about his own greed and gullibility, and at a remarkably low real-world cost; and that is regardless of whether he stays or goes.  EVE: educating suckers since 2004.  Keep EVE Dangerous.

But Jester demands to know: what would women think?  Unless they play EVE, I don't care.  (Tell me what Sugar thinks; I respect her opinion.)  EVE is full of nasty stuff as viewed from the perspective of muggles, from "I'm killing this guy because killing is fun", to "jewing", to "rape cages", to "dickstars", to pornography.  "Gay" is routinely used to insult.  Guys talk about fucking and screwing each other, meaning hurting each other.  They talk about going "balls deep".  I accept this stuff and HTFU for the exactly the reason I already stated: I want the game to be hard, and this is the way that young men express themselves when they are not being censored.  I play with a seven year old lurking around me on the weekends, so I know something about censoring.  Just as I don't hunt when he watches, I don't show my wife some random porno some idiot in local linked.  And I do not play them E1's recordings.  Does it matter that muggles think EVE is an awful and dangerous place?  Yes!  That's the goal.  EVE is gaming in hard mode.  Keep EVE Dangerous.

There's two more loosely related things I want to mention.  First, some have made the argument that there is a slippery slope here.  Ban E1, they say, and next thing you know, James 315 is out.  A year later, EVE is squeaky clean and not fun.  Certainly those would be bad outcomes; but I do not think this slope is at all slippery.  It's barely even a slope.  Jester and would-be busybodies have only so much energy, while moving CCP is hard because ceteris paribus, they like paying customers.  And we all have only so much attention.  So, in the long run, do I care that E1 is out?  No.  Bad riddance to bad rubbish.

Second, there's a very modern idea out there, that (a) we can define all righteous behavior in pre-written rules, and (b) doing (a) is both necessary for justice and sufficient to achieve it.  This is bollocks.  Not only is the rule of law overrated, it's literally impossible.  We cannot do (a) and (b) is consequently moot.  Rule is always of men, never paper, at least until we invent strong AI.  As such, you'd better try to place yourself under the rule of good men; and so far as I can tell, CCP are good enough.  I fully support their right to ban anyone from EVE at any time for any reason; it is this that is both necessary and sufficient for a good environment to prevail.  I feel they have given into the mob on this occasion, but I don't blame that on them, but the mob.

The Fundaments of EVE's Design

I was thinking about doing a post about RMT in EVE.  But I realized that to really analyze it requires an understanding of the game's design.  You have to understand why the game is so compelling to discuss how to improve it -- or not.

Why is EVE so compelling?  On the surface, one can point to things like internet spaceships -- duh! -- and the glorious vistas one can see. (Check out Into the Ether, link found on the right, to see some nice pictures.  Reading that blog helps me to recall some of the wonder I had when I was newer, and that I still have from time to time when I step back from the spreadsheet and actually look at things.)

But the visuals are not the heart of the game.  We all know this because we spend most of our play time zoomed out, barely seeing anything more than some boxes and crosses in the midst of the spreadsheets.  And ditto for the spaceships.  No doubt their appearance adds a lot to the game, but many other games have had pretty spaceships.

One thing EVE gets right is production.  I love making things in every game I have ever played.  Many games have little you can make; others a fair amount.  But inevitably, crafting becomes dull because it is either a grinding activity, or because it is pointless, or because there is no market and your needs are very finite.  Making your first +4 sword is a rush.  But after you have one +4 sword, or maybe two, you don't need any more.  And then there's really no point in making more.

EVE takes crafting to a higher level.  How does it do it?  The immediate reason is the market.  You may not need another +4 sword, but someone else does, and you can sell it to him.  So you might make swords even if you don't need them.  But why would he need a sword?  We have generalized the question from one player to all players collectively, but not answered it.  We must look deeper.

The reason there is any substantial trading in EVE's markets is that in EVE there is consumption.  People require constant supplies of ships, fittings, implants, POS parts, etc.  Some fraction of this demand is coming from new players entering the game, but only a modest amount.  The real reason is that the existing stock of all goods is being constantly reduced.  EVE is full of destruction.

Ships and their fittings are blown up all the time in EVE, and the only way in which new ones appear is that someone, somewhere in the game, builds them.  (Well, almost only.  A tiny fraction of goods are created via gifts and missions, but nowhere near enough to supply the game.)  Similarly implants are lost in pods, POSes themselves are blown up, etc.  In highsec only, it is possible to have a "buy once, use forever" ship.  But nowhere else in the game, and even in highsec it is possible (if unlikely) to be ganked even when the gank is uneconomical.

One aspect of destruction that is obvious to EVE players, but should be mentioned here in case others are reading, is permanent loss.  In EVE, when something is blown up, it is gone.  It never respawns.  You will not be given more.  And the server is never reset.  The only way to replace a  lost object is to build another new one, or to buy it on the market from someone else who built it.

So, EVE "works" for the producer because of its destruction.  Loss means consumption, which requires production.

Of course, not all players are interested in crafting.  Some love it.  Some hate it.  To most it is a modestly interesting grind.  What do most players play EVE for?  PVP.  Let's now consider that.

Certainly EVE's PVP is compelling, but why?  When we experience it, we know why: because it gives us the rush of adrenaline.  We are "amped up"; we have to pee, we feel cold, our hands shake.  In victory, our brains flood with serotonin and we feel awesome.  In defeat, we log out and try to forget it, feeling crushed.  But why do we feel these things?  Why do we care?

The proximate reason we care is that we just stuffed a real live person out there (or were stuffed by).  An actual victim is required.  I have lost a handful ships to EVE's PVE.  It is embarrassing, and even gets a little adrenaline going the first few times, but it fades rapidly.  You know that it did not mean much.  You will use a better fit tomorrow, with better skills, and never lose a ship that way again.  And nobody is crowing over the loss.

We care about victory and defeat only when they are against real people.  But why?  Here the trail ends.  We care because we evolved to care.  We are evolved apes, and beating a rival in physical combat meant good things to our ancestors' genes, whereas being beaten was potentially deadly.  EVE allows us, risk-free, to stimulate the ancient reward and punishment circuits in our brains.

But the gaining of dominance or or being forced into submission is not all of the story.  I have played many games online, involving killing an enemy's units, or being killed.  And though it is certainly fun killing the enemy's units, and vexing to lose mine, few games have had the sheer intensity of the gain or loss that I find in EVE.  Why is that?

I submit that we care because we value our ships and pods.   We value them in our real life, not just operationally within the game context.  And we value them because they were expensive; because they actually cost us something real and substantial.  We got them by farming/grinding in the game, or via real money (injected as PLEX).  A loss is more than just a repositioning; it means dollars or hours of your life, and those are precious.  No game that respawns your character without serious loss, or which gives you stuff just for starting a scenario, can approach the emotional impact that EVE has.

It is that value that connects the PVP game in EVE to the production game.  The value created is the value destroyed.  Just as the concept of good necessarily requires evil, the elation of victory requires the relative boredom of farming.

Permanent gain and permanent loss, tied together.  Yin and yang.  This is what makes EVE great.  Every ship you lose means time grinding.  And that gives it real value to you.  Conversely, without ships constantly dying there is no point in making ships, meaning no point in the economy, no point in crafting.

There are a lot of other good aspects of EVE's design.  (The skill system, for example, is a clever design.)  But the creation of elating victory is the most fundamental.  And also, it seems to me, the most obvious.  And yet, I know of no other game that combines EVE's three key elements:

• permanant gain and loss
• player run market
• PVP

PLEX are not part of this design per se; EVE existed and was addicting people long before PLEX were introduced.  But PLEX interact strongly with the system in interesting ways.  That (and RMT) is the subject for another post.

EVE's Amazing AIs

Over the past decade, CCP has very quietly developed and deployed a powerful AI that simulates an EVE player.  This "playerlike AI", as it is called, was initially developed from earlier code which was designed to pilot NPC ships to give the EVE universe a more lived-in feel.  (Internally, it is still codenamed "Player-Like AI eXtensions".)  It was first deployed about 7 years ago in small numbers.  As it became successful, deployments increased.  New technology allowed CCP to increase deployments radically around the time of Quantum Rise, in November 2008.  Starting around that time, hundreds of these AIs were deployed per month for years.  CCP is not forthcoming with data, but it is estimated that currently perhaps 30% of the "players" playing at any given time are AIs.  This percentage may go as high as 50%.

The goal of the playerlike AI is simple: to fill up the EVE universe with highly realistic "players", so that the real, paying customers will feel like there are people out there they are interacting with.  CCP knows that shooting Guristas does not give people the rush of adrenaline from PVP, nor does prevailing in PVE feed the human need to dominate.  However, fighting the playerlike AI does activate these and other human emotions.  This is why CCP has not bothered to invest more than a pittance into increasing the realism and difficulty of the game's PVE.

The playerlike AI is very powerful.  It acts much like a person would, so much so that you cannot tell it apart from a human.  It is programmed to seek profits intelligently via various in-game activities, and to PVP (although often not well).  Sometimes it "cries" in local when it loses a ship.  It passes the Turing Test, at least when the test is limited to doing stuff via the EVE client in EVE.  Certainly it still does some pretty stupid things, but then so do humans, so this is no way to distinguish it.  In fact CCP sees its still considerable stupidity as a feature, so long as it is plausibly human-type stupidity.  An AI that never chose ridiculous fittings would eventually be detected.

AIs are programmed not to all be on at once, but rather to pad the existing player population proportionately.  They use offline time to compute their longer term plans, compute fittings, etc.

There is only one downside to the playerlike AI: computing human-equivalent output is hard.  Each AI requires a modern CPU dedicated to the task.  No basic PC will do: most of the heavy computation requires a modern graphics card as a coprocessor, for vectorized simulation of neural networks.  This is not cheap.  CCP estimated about a year ago that to run each instance of their AI requires about $500 in hardware costs upfront.  There are also ongoing costs to keep the hardware running.  Electricity costs are estimated at about 25 cents per day per machine.  And there are fairly high maintenance costs: a veritable army of techs are required to keep all those machines running.  Again, the actual amount CCP is paying is not known.

Fortunately, CCP has found a way to pass on the all of costs of the playerlike AI to random gamers on the internet.

Playerlike AI Extension

You see, what I've been talking about is the design of the PLEX system.  Everyone who plays this game paying with PLEX (as I do), is from CCP's perspective a superbly designed AI that they don't have to pay for.  We are part of the environment of EVE, making it the fun place it is for the paying customers.  We mine, do PI, run missions, manufacture, etc.  We do all of the game's scutwork to earn the ISK we need for PLEX.  This frees up the paying customers to not do that stuff, while still maintaining a true market price for everything, and keeping space full of targets.

Sovereignty and Ownership in EVE

In comments, Penny mentions her attitude about owning systems in wspace:

As I got in to a discussion before, it's not that we think we own the system, but more that trying to share a system with neutrals in a class of space where NBSI is pretty standard is awkward, to say the least.

(We discussed this some at tigerears back before I moved into my current system.  Here is the post.)  It is certainly true that sharing with strict NBSI is hard.  But just setting each other blue is not difficult.  But that's not what interested me here: it was the reminder of our earlier disagreement.

Me, I think I own my system.  I own it in the one sense that matters: force.  I have a big advantage in force projection in my system, because I already have ships there.  Further, I am probably willing to spend more to safeguard my system than anyone else is to take it.  I have a multi billion ISK investment, and nobody else does. Part of the way I achieve superior force is about obscurity: there are plenty of people that could take my system, but they'd have to find it first, and that's not easy.  And even if they did, they would not gain anything because they don't want to live deep in wspace.  Part of it is the difficulty in getting in forces: a C4 system will allow in only about 20 battleships (100m kg each) or 120 battlecruisers (14m kg per).

Another aspect of ownership in lower wspace is capitals.  In C1 through C4, no wormhole can pass even a single capital ship.  The only way to get a capital ship in these systems is to build it there.  If you live in a system and have built a capital or two, you have a massive advantage over anyone attempting to displace you.  With a dreadnaught you can reinforce their tower in an hour using one pilot.  They can reinforce yours only after hours of boring structure-shooting with 20 pilots.  With a carrier you repair your tower and/or POS parts in an hour.  The enemy would have to sit out in repping cruisers for hours.  Force economy means more effective force.

Penny is right, though, inasmuch as she construes "owning" to mean something more than occupation.  There is no registry of wormhole ownership.  (It is interesting to think about trying to implement one.)  If you leave a wspace system, de facto you no longer own it.

Personally, I find the way nullsec "sovereignty" works completely upside down and wrong.  In EVE, "sovereignty" is an actual attribute that is held in their database, known universally for every system.  To get it, you have to put up special structures.  Once these are online, you get "sovereignty", and its benefits, even if you never lift a finger to fight in that system.  Note that I am scare-quoting "sovereignty" here exactly to highlight the artificial nature of what you are getting.  Real sovereignty is the power of ultimate decision.  Real sovereignty is a function of power, which flows from the barrel of a gun.  In EVE sovereignty is a system attribute that allows you certain privileges, particularly lower fuel costs and to be allowed to anchor certain improvements.

In the real world, sovereignty is superior force.  It is not mediated by any structures.  When the US Army occupies a country, it does not immediately put up special statues to claim the area, nor are there special statues that it has to tear down.  Well, unless you want to analogize armies themselves to special statues, in which case the analogy kind of goes through.  But of course we already have armies in EVE -- fleets.

Wspace shows the way sovereignty ought to work.  You are sovereign if you have superior force.

Against Z-axis Arrows in Scanning

Odyssey has come and been patched N times now.  CCP has certainly made exploring easier.  They made many changes to the UI that make it easier to control.  For example, it used to be that without keyboard modifiers, operating on a probe only affected that one probe.  You had to hold down shift or alt to control all probes collectively.  The situations where you might have wanted to move individual probes were rare, and almost negligible excepting getting your probe pattern established initially.  Whereas you want to move probes as a group almost always.  So, this change is very welcome.

Similarly, being able to pattern probes with one click is a great improvement to the UI.  Unfortunately, the two patterns we are given are not ideal; I'd prefer a more regular 8 probe pattern, and a flat pattern for hunting people.  Ideally there should be user-determined patterns so we can each have what we want.  However, at least it is clear that CCP is aware that what we have now in this respect is not ideal.  They are working on it.

There was one change that I was expected, but which did not occur.  And I don't know if they even know.  (How can they not know?  And yet: there it is.)  That change is removing the ability to drag on the probe-movement arrow which is pointing primarily in the Z axis.

The Z axis is computer-programmer lingo for the depth "into" the screen (which, being 2D, you cannot actually show).  Put another way, the Z axis is near to parallel with the direction of view.  The "Z-axis arrow" is the one that points almost straight "up" out of the plane of your computer screen.  Here's a picture:

Z-axis arrow, seen edge-on in the center.  Image stolen from Penny.

Z-axis arrows are hard to see, because they are thin and you are looking edge-on.  But they are hittable, and dragging on them moves the probe-group in the Z (depth) dimension.  Although this is logically consistent with how the arrows behave otherwise, it is also bad.  Allowing this drag is just terrible user-interface design; nobody could possibly be using it intentionally because you simply cannot tell where a probe is depth-wise.  When you do drag a Z-axis arrow, it is always a mistake.  And the effect is not even neutral, which might be more tolerable.  Rather it retards what you are attempting to do.  If you had your probes close to centered where you wanted, now you don't.  They are some random distance up or down in Z.  You will have to do at least one more 90 degree rotate and adjust, and probably two, since you failed to do the one you were expecting initially.  You may also have to re-zoom the view if you happened to get really unfortunate and send the probe position a zillion AU, which is quite possible.

Adjusting probes by dragging on the square itself is superior to using the arrows; the arrows have their limited uses, but the "power prober" almost always searches faster by adjusting two dimensions at once.  And yet, dead center in a UI element (the cube) that does one thing (planar adjustment) is a teensy tiny, almost invisible UI element (the edge-on Z arrow) that does something completely different -- and completely unwanted.  But it is easy enough to hit accidentally that I still do it almost every time I scan down a system.

Is this broken?  No.  But is it annoying?  Hell yes!  It really does make we wonder if nobody at CCP who works on this code actually does exploration.  I imagine them doing a very limited amount of exploration, where they only use the arrows to adjust things.

There are two fixes I think I'd be happy with.

One way to go would be to leave the UI drawn as it is, but make the arrows insensitive when they are sufficiently parallel to the Z axis.  Ideally I'd like to be able to grab the cube instead (this is always what I am trying to do).  But if it were simply a no-op, I could probably live with it.

The better way to deal with it is to not display the arrow when it is pointing mostly in Z.  This is the better UI.  To show a control element at all is to suggest it is there for a good reason and that it can be profitably interacted with.  In this case, there is no good interaction with the arrow once it gets to an angle of perhaps 45 degrees or less with Z.  So, stop drawing it then.  (Indeed, if the "don't draw" angle were as large as 60 degrees I think that would be even better.)