EVE is more casual-friendly than WoW

I wrote a series of posts (1, 2, 3) about null being unprofitable and fundamentally an altruistic endeavour. However I did not go far enough. I went to the official forum recruitment thread to advertise the supercap-billion project of mine and found more than 100 threads less than 2 days old. Most of them are "we take any warm body" kind of recruitments. If sov-null is such a great place where everyone wants to get in but only the best is accepted, why is every living body who bother to go there are greeted with free skillbooks, ships and "friendly helpful atmosphere"?

The PR slogan is "EVE wasn't designed to look like a dark and unforgiving place, EVE was designed to be a dark and unforgiving place". This is an outright lie. You might call me inexperienced in null, but I know highsec and more or less won the highsec-EVE by gathering enough money to keep my 2 highsec accounts run free over a decade. Highsec is a nice, beautifully lighted (screenshots all over the internet), friendly and safe place where you can do various things at will. OK, if you do something obnoxiously stupid like autopiloting a Kestrel with PLEX-es or peacocking in a 30B ISK - 20K EHP Tengu around, you'll be robbed, but keeping the basic rules of sense will guarantee a totally loss-less life. Zero losses means whatever you make is pure profit. If you are a skilled trader like me, that can go to 50B/month. If you are a very casual mission runner like my girlfriend, you'll get 200M/month but as long as you keep logging in, your wealth keep growing. It's easier than World of Warcraft, as you don't even have to re-grind your gear after every expansion. Also your wealth doesn't diminish in the sense of "everyone else have it" because others get it blown up. So in highsec you just gather wealth and play as you wish until you get bored. There are no losses, no bills to pay, not even the inflation-threadmill like in other MMOs.

How could EVE upkeep the PR of being dark and dangerous while actually being more casual friendly than WoW? At first by the cries of idiots who did autopilot a Kestrel or lost a 30B Tengu. This group is tiny, exactly one Kestrel was destroyed with PLEXEs in the history of EVE and kill reports of 20B+ overpimped subcaps show up 2-5 times a year. But since the RMT value of that Tengu is over $1000, that warrants serious forum crying from the victim and spectators.

Secondly by focusing on sov-null, which is just as misleading as World of Warcraft marketed with Tol Barad and battleground videos. Sure, you can go there and blow up enemies but neither you have to nor most players ever do (numbers thrown around between 66 and 80%). Even those who don't belong to the highsec population can be in low/NPC null, not participating in large fleet warfare. "EVE is a cold unforgiving place" is just as true as "The Planet Earth is a dark and unforgiving place where people starve to death and kill each other over mad reasons." It is technically true as Somalia and Afghanistan are indeed such places and indeed part of the planet. However it's irrelevant if you live in the "highsec" of the civilized countries.

Now the question is why should anyone go sov-null/WH? To PvP? If that's your thing, RvB is waiting for you. If you want to "grief" people, take the fight to ones don't want it to, just press that "enlist me" button on the militia screen and off you go blowing up LP-farmers. If you want even more "elite" PvP, pirate corps of lowsec are waiting for you.

What can null/WH provide that highsec can't? Please don't say "high-end ore" as I can buy them in Jita. There are enough people mining them. Easier way to get riches? Maybe, but at the cost of losing it all due to corp theft, war or a well-placed hotdrop on your jump freighter. More PvP? You can PvP all day in RvB, FW or random lowsec systems.

Supercapital ships maybe? Sure, but why are they so interesting? The original design was interesting: titans could doomsday whole supbcap fleets, supercarriers could kill titans, dreads could kill both but were vulnerable to subcaps. But after devs got fed up with the forum cries of "OMG my 1 day old Rifter pilot was killed by someone who plays for years and put in thousands of hours, its unfair" and nerfed Titans, they disappeared and with them their natural enemies, the supercarriers and dreads. They all devalued into jump bridges and structure grinders. But if you have some strange perversion involving huge spaceships, the best course is trading in highsec, going to Chribba, buying one, cynoing it to some random lowsec system, sometimes log in with a scout alt and if you see no one in local, log in the titan and watch it.

Hanging out with "friends"? Why, you can't do the same doing highsec missions or mining? Or even better, by logging off a video game and meeting real people?

My purpose of going to nullsec is a weird out-of-game one: I want to prove the superiority of a-social thinking. However as long as highsec is perfectly safe (unless you really-really fail) and profitable, I see trouble figuring out why would a player without serious out-of-game motivation leave highsec (lowsec for PvP-ers). Please note that any kind of nerf to highsec income is irrelevant as it just slows down the progress but don't stop it being endlessly positive and safe.

Am I missing something? Is there something special in sov-null and WH that makes it a good choice? Does it provide something to a player that high/low can't? If you live there, please enlighten me! Why are you there? If you are a blogger, I'd be grateful (and throw links) if you'd explain it.

I have a nasty conspiracy theory here: null was never meant to be an endgame. Players were never meant to go there en masse. It's just a PR tool to make the awesome promotional videos and hype. The playground was always the purposefully overpowered, safe and very easy highsec. It is a genius design as it allows incompetent and asshole players to endlessly, safely and alone progress while keep on believing that they are doing so in a very competitive and dangerous environment. This way the player keep on playing rewarded by the false positive feeling that he belongs to the elite of the MMO gamers while actually he is so dumb that a mediocre WoW guild would kick him or such a terrible person that no one would play with him.

What about Hulkageddon and Burn Jita? I think these were unintended by devs, created by two "evil geniuses" beating the system. But they won't happen again. Mining barges are redesigned to be ungankable, and after looking to the TEST and Goon accounting, I'm sure that Tech nerf they will make them completely unable to do such actions ever again. They'll be happy if they can pay their sov bills. CCP couldn't stop Burn Jita and Hulkageddon without losing face but they are doing good job preventing either from repeating. By the way, is it a coincidence that the masterminds of both gank events were suspended from the game?


Wednesday morning report: 124.0B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.9 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.1 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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July business report

Flat-out on purpose. That could be the slogan for this month. In June I celebrated exponential growth. But in my "Blogging my profit away" post I wrote that now I'm more interested in limiting time than in increasing profit. I liquidated 1/3 of my existing list, closed off my PI planets and stopped seeking new markets so aggressively. I simply doubt that there is any point pursuing more wealth after 100B. It's the price of a titan, the largest ship of the game. I could of course get several just because they look nice but there is no point. My focus is now sov-null.

Of course it does not mean abandonment of business, just cutting back hours. I have to accept that after 100B I am time-limited and business becomes a farming activity. A 5-800M/hour farming, but still. As you can see the average income of the last month was 1.68B/day, 50B/month. The bumps are made by someone reaching T5 in FW. I know it's not much of a post. But such is the cash-cow life. It can only change if competitors force me out of my current market, and I indeed see some competition since my last "blogging my profit away" post.

PS: I finally went to null to see it with my own eyes. The system was EC-P8R and the picture shows the Torrinos gate: Next time I'll go NPC null where I can actually dock. I created an unusual fit for my Buzzard (anyone surprised?), both rigs provide +20% MWD cycle time, so that one cycle of MWD catapult me much closer to the bubble edge.


Tuesday morning report: 123.3B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.9 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.1 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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PvE-ers and traders must contribute like PvP-ers!

On Friday I wrote that in order to keep your space you must make enough effort (time spent PvPing, building defensive installations, grinding for PvP ships, supercap fleet). "Enough" is defined by your neighbors. If they make more effort, your space will be overrun. Their decision to spend so much is not necessarily ISK-rational. They might want space because it's the way of "winning the game" or they simply consider some of the related activities "fun". This can push the defense cost of sov above the time many people can spend on the game, forcing them to convert PLEX to cut PvE time or leave sov-null completely.

The most common sight in the marketplace is the manufacturer who sells below material cost. When asked why, his answer is "I farmed the mats myself, so they are free". Something similar can be seen in nullsec sov: the PvP-ers fight for the space "for fun", so they don't book their hours. However failing too book doesn't mean zero cost. We know very well that the tritanium worth the same just because someone had fun mining it.

Playing 1.5 hours/day isn't extensive at all. It's about 2-3 fleet ops and a roam a week. It's still 45 hours a month. Calculating with highsec PvE 30M/hour, it is 1.35B ISK. Just because he had fun and did it as a volunteer it worth the same. The PvP-er donates about 1-1.5B ISK/month to his alliance in time spent fighting. What does a PvE player donate to his alliance? Normally, nothing! Just because you manufacture, mine or rat up things that you sell to PvP-ers, you provided nothing for the alliance. You made the life of the members easier, true, but it is their personal profit and contributed zero to home defense.

If you don't want to contribute to fighting for sov, you have no place in sov-null. The alliances who kick out carebears are completely right. They are using space they don't contribute defending. However it's largely sub-optimal solution. Look at this TEST balance sheet: Sov fees + fuel costs + offices = 131B. Income: 191B. That means they have 60B left for paying their members to do something boring or reimbursing fleet. Hell, I could pay that alone! Now let's see how much they can spend on one ship if they want an 1000-men fleet? 60M. This is not a tight budget. This is poverty. My L3-running girlfriend has bigger ship reimbursement fund for herself than TEST for one pilot. Goons fare better, they have about 300B for reimbursements. Amazing, they can replace a whole Maelstrom fleet! We are talking about OTEC member "OMG they're so rich" alliances. Now imagine a random alliance without moongoo.

If an PvP-er donates 1B/month to his alliance, a 10K alliance should have 10T/month! Yet TEST live on 0.2T, Goons on 0.75T, because PvP time can't be converted to ships. The reason why alliances are so desperately poor is exactly the "I farmed for free" attitude. In the light of the opportunity cost the PvP-ers pay, the solution is obvious: get PvE players who provide the same value, but not in PvP time but ISK! PvE players are just as valuable at PvP players, but we were not utilized at all. No one asked us to provide money because it seemed unfair, while it's absolutely not! A PvP-er provides around 1B/month in time, PvE-ers should provide 1B/month in ISK. That's equal and fair! Since we like PvE, manufacturing, mining, trading, we could contribute while having fun, just like PvP-ers.

The alliance that recognizes the value of ISK and accepts members to pay their dues not just with PvP hours but by donating ISK will see an insane power multiplier. Imagine just 1000 PvE players who donate just 1B/month. That's 1T/month. Enough to keep an 1000-men tracking-dread + Maelstrom + spider carrier fleet. Better than Drakes, right?

For those willing to pay 1B/month to be part of reshaping nullsec, the corp "Goblinworks" is created. Since we don't have sov yet, please join only with an alt to the corp. It's currently just a list of players to offer in the negotiations, to show the alliance how many people are willing to contribute via ISK. At the end of the negotiations they will probably ask for API keys of your nullsec accounts, so trolls who join to skew the numbers will be filtered out. Obviously no payments asked until we get in an alliance.

No more plan Bs! I clearly see my null-sec path: forming the corp that will be the industrial backbone of a nullsec alliance. It won't be a fast thing since average guy has the attitude of "lol we r l33t we need no spacejews". I don't know who will recognize the truth first. Goons/TEST who are not poisoned by l33t culture and threatened by upcoming Tech changes? Or one of the former l33ts who were beaten back to highsec (NPC-null) by Goons? The time of traders and pro-PvE-ers is coming. As soon as an alliance recognizes the real value of ISK, it will be unstoppable. So if you are fed up with flying cheap crap in sov fleets because your alliance is dirt-poor, send the link of this post to your leaders.

The things we want from the alliance for the 1B/month:

• We are full members, not renters. The alliance must make it clear to PvP-ers that we equally contribute by keeping them in ships.
• We must be given opportunity to fly with the fleet when we want to. Most of the PvE players are not pure PvE players, they want to PvP sometimes. Just like the PvP players rat sometimes. Of course this case the members must do as the FC says, be on comms and fly something the doctrine accepts. Troublemakers can be banned from the fleet by the FC.
• However we are free to not join fleets when we don't want to. By the 1B payment, we did our part. Obviously most of us will not miss an important battle. After all who wouldn't like to be there in the 1K+ battles?
• The alliance must be sov holder (or very serious sov-returner) with independent diplomacy (not a pet). A renter or pet doesn't has independent defense that one could contribute to, the money would be wasted.
• Being equal members mean equal right to own, build and fly supercapitals.

Who should join?

• Those industrialists who want to take part in reshaping the galaxy, win the game.
• Those who want to fly a supercap (that needs sov and an alliance where we are proven members)
• Those who are fed up with "lol ima l33t ur a carebear" crap and want to see the "l33t" massacred
• Those who play enough to use it as a profitable investment: if highsec PvE is 30M/hour, nullsec is 70M/hour and you play more than 25 hours/month, you'll be more rich in null than in high. Though you are probably better off in WH.
• Those who want to casually PvP in null and can easily convert 2 PLEX-es for the privilege to PvP when they want and only then.

The time is now! PvE players, traders, null is waiting. Join Goblinworks! Use the recruitment tool search mask as displayed here:By the way if we could channel the intelligent and hard working PvE players to null, that would hit highsec M&S harder than any deccer corp could.


PS: I made a post about this on the EVE recruitment forums, friendly bumps are welcomed (the author can't bump more than once and there is an insane amount of posts created every day). Saturday morning report: 119.2B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Sunday morning report: 120.4B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8+0.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Monday morning report: 121.6B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.9 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0+0.1 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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Why sov PvP is a moneysink? (and how to fix it)

Yesterday I assumed that the PLEX-generator demographics are the sov-null players. The proof was mostly "no other demographics has a reason to". Today I'll prove why sov-null players have a reason to convert PLEX to ISK.

In lowsec and NPC-null (and somewhat WH), you are free to decide how much you wish to PvP and PvE. Of course enemies can show up, but if you can use intel channels, local and d-scan, you can evade unwanted PvP. Therefore you can decide how much wealth you want to burn a month in PvP and how much you want to generate via PvE. You can PLEX the difference. The point is that you are in total control of your cash flow.

In low/NPC null if you PvP less, you have less kills, but no other consequences. If you don't PvP enough in sov-null you lose your space and with it, your assets. For this reason a sov-PvP group must put in "enough" effort to PvP just to hold its space. "Enough" is not a developer-defined PvE limit. If your enemies PvP harder, you also must. So the limit is pushed high by competition. Also, battles have ship losses, so you must also provide "enough" ISK. Please note that for providing these, you get nothing besides keeping your sov, so they are fixed costs of being a sov-holder.

This group-cost can be transformed to individual level two ways: One is demanding everyone to provide X kills/month. Without such measurement, the alliance will be filled with freeloading M&S who provide nothing but target to the enemies. The alternative is having a strong out-of game culture that internally motivates the players to not leech but work for the alliance. The latter model (Goons and TEST mostly) has clearly proven superior, despite that in real life the countries that respect "selfish" reasons (individual rights) are better off than countries with strong culture. Why? Because only two kind of players can be in a "must kill X/months or GTFO" alliance:

1. Those who have enough time to gather all the needed kills and have time to PvE to cover their costs (account upkeep, new ships, consumables)
2. Those who have enough time to gather all the needed kills and have money to PLEX-convert their costs

If we assume 70M/hour nullsec PvE income, converting a PLEX saves them 7 hours of PvE play, making it possible to spend all their playtime with PvP. This is why no nullsec-industry changes made any difference. If CCP would double the PvE income of null, the typical sov player would not be more rich, but get the same money in half time and PvP more, forcing everyone else to keep up.

So serious part of the sov-null players must convert PLEX-es despite sov-PvE is profitable, because they have no more time left after fulfilling their PvP obligations. This result remained hidden because those who make the decisions, those who write the posts, those who lead the alliances and those who have spare time to come here to argue with me are all having lot of time. So for them (us) meeting the quota and having time for PvE isn't a problem, so they find making money in null trivial. Therefore they keep telling that "making money in null is trivial" despite large majority of players can't even play enough to fullfill the quota, not to think of PvE. In simpler words: if you are reading this, you spend much-much more time on a video game than the average guy and your ideas coming from personal experience are "let them eat cake" to the general public. You can further prove this point by spending even more time writing a comment explaining that you are not a no-lifer. I'm not being judgmental, I also belong to this group (one blog post = 2-3 hours). The only alternative is that you are in a strong-culture alliance because then you can do mostly whatever you want because the leaders know that you'll be there when the Horn of Goondor calls.

The demographics that live in sov-null by converting PLEX is limited. To be there you must still be able to play X hours/month doing PvP. If you can do only 3/4X, you can't get in, no matter how many PLEX-es you convert. Also, you must have income that allows you to spend multiple PLEX-costs IRL. The demographics that has both time and money is pretty small. The above system locks out the money-rich group (those who could PvP 1/2X and convert much more PLEX-es), the "carebears" who could generate much more ISK/hour by playing but don't like PvP and those PvP-ers who don't want to spend time doing PvE at all but can't afford to convert PLEX-es. By limiting the available demographics so badly, the competitive PvP alliances shrink so much that anyone who is capable to motivate their members to not slack will steamroll them. Again: Goons/TEST with their culture.

An alliance that accepts effort from members both in kills and ISK payment would increase the available demographics greatly without giving up an inch on the "do X effort or GTFO" idea. What does it mean? That a game-focused group (with no external culture) can be competitive on the sov map, the Goons and TEST are not theoretically undefeatable (like I thought a week ago). It also solved the "OMGF Tech is overpowered" problem. Public TEST and Goon documents saying that TEST have 250B/month, Goons have 760B/month income. So by having only 250 "carebears" who pay only 4B/month you can outdo both of them with all their tech moons. 250 is a rather small corp. Of course, nothing prevents an "X kills or GTFO" alliance to be allied the Goons, Fatal Ascension is one.

The above doesn't affect my "nullsec altruism" statement as "being competitive on the sov-map" is not an individual goal, it is merely an in-game goal. It also doesn't affect the statement that most alliances are hopeless as without culture or a "must do X to stay" limit it will be filled up with leeching M&S.

You might say that alliances tried something like that by the space rentals. However that model had two problems: the rent costs were laughably small, I mean 2-3B/system/month instead of 2-3B/person/month. Also, you could be full PvP-er member or full PvE renter but not a mixture (1000 kills + 1B payment). Finally the renter was a renter and not an accepted member, he did not matter and could not claim that "we are capturing X".

This result opens my negotiation potential largely. I mean before this result I could only think of Goons/TEST since only they have a strong culture (mostly the culture of griefing that I fully approve, but they have every reason to doubt me). But now we (traders and pro PvE-players) can get into an in-game-only alliance too. Of course it's possible that they are dumb enough to not understand it and stay on their "X kills or GTFO, ISK don't matter" nonsense. It's not a problem, these alliances are being exterminated by Goons/TEST as we speak (or only live as Goon/TEST pets). Unfortunately the two (culture and competitive) can't be mixed. I mean it would be idiotic to do effort for a membership what other people get for free. However it's completely normal to pay in an alliance where everyone else does so, just not by paying ISK buy booking hostile kills.

My starter idea would be that someone who PvPs nothing shall pay 1B/month (downscaled for new players, will be elevated back, also extra fees for supercap building), depending on how much kills the alliance used to demand. The point is that if you spend similar time PvE-ing for the alliance wallet as the other members PvP-ing for the alliance safety. Many traders like me would sign up. As 100+ were interested in the rather naive supercap corp idea, an alliance that accept it would get about 2-400B/month income when it's in full blow. If your alliance would be interested in such competitive-PvE-membership program, send me an EVE-mail and we'll discuss the details. Also, please comment the names of alliances that have "X kills or GTFO" requirements so I can find them and propose to accept ISK too, not just kills.

So yet again, my null plans need to be re-made, but clearly not without results. I finally understand the economics that drive null, and with the "do X effort in kills and ISK or GTFO" model it can be conquered. On Monday there will be a summary + detailed plan post.


Quick logi question: I've read the battle report of D-3GIQ where the attackers focused on the ships that had different tank than the others (Chimeras among Archons). Since I'm about to choose a carrier to learn first, I thought of a Nidhoggur as my first carrier (triage fit). It has bonus to both armor and shield boost range and for amount, so can adapt to any fleet and help out even a mixed fleet with 2 shield and 2 armor transporter. Do you know something that makes this an absolutely bad idea? If not, I'll go with it.

Friday morning report: 118.2B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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Follow the PLEX-money!

Whenever I wrote that PLEX is practically pay-to-cheat that bad players pay for remaining in ships, I got insane amount of disagreement. PLEX is an accepted form of playing and the common belief is that converting PLEX has zero effect on ones success rate.

Let's accept this view and see where it takes us. If not "losers" convert PLEX and not "winners" finance their account(s) from PLEX, who the hell does it? According to the canon "those who have more money than time". If I'd be naive I'd say if you hate the game so much that you'd rather pay than playing, just uninstall it. However I am neither, nor I'm trolling by pretending it. Those who pay consider PvE a "grind" and PvP "fun". We can agree that PvE is an ISK generator either directly as bounties and mission rewards or by creating ore and loot that others buy for ISK. PvP is an ISK sink as the total loot of the winner is about 20-50% of the loss of the loser, so the average PvP-er loses value.

I sometimes watch my girlfriend play. Her only ship is a terribly fit Rokh battleship. 3 rails, 3 blasters (I hear your cries), 1 salvager, 1 tractor beam. Luckily her tank is OK, 180K overheated EHP. She is doing L2 and L3 securities, mostly with drone DPS on the frig/destroyer rats (as drones are cute pets), L1, L2 mining missions and distribution missions, all with the Rokh. The point is that despite the obviously bad play and her extremely casual play-schedule (about 2-3 hours/week), she makes 2-300M/month. Her wealth just grows. If she'd play a bit more (but not any better), she could play for free. Now, even I don't assume that majority of the EVE players are worse than that. Anecdotic evidence aside, 30M/hour income is generally accepted for a "highsec bear". Assuming he does no PvP and PvE activity is "playing" for him, he generates wealth on the side of playing, so we can accept that the average "highsec bear" plays for free (at least partially), funding his activity from PLEX.

If we assume that there are no black holes (like CCP secretly destroying PLEX or selling ISK via bots), every PLEX someone sells is one that someone buys. So if we accepted that the average "highsec bear" is buying PLEX on the marketplace to play for free, we must also accept that someone, who is not a "highsec bear" must sell this PLEX on the marketplace.

Who is he? We don't know but there isn't much people left who are not "highsec bears". Namely: lowsec pirates, FW people, null and WH people. Currently FW sees little-to-none PvP and they spend their time orbiting buttons and converting LP. Living in WH is also generally accepted to be printing ISK (it doesn't make it true, but now we go with the crowd and see where we end up). This leaves nobody else but the remaining PvP people of low and null, proving my earlier point of low/null being an ISK-sink.

Of course I'm not saying that every single low/null players are poor. Not even that every single alliance is. Also not claiming that every single highsec player is swimming in ISK. But the average low/null player is keeping over the water by PLEX-to-ISK, while the average highsec player is constantly giving away ISK by playing for free.

Let me go further. PLEX is a reality and always will be, there is no MMO without RMT (legal or illegal) and botting. So if you want to somehow make nullsec life profitable, you must point to another group as PLEX producers. I mean someone must be poor and convert PLEX in order to let others (who do it better or differently) play for free. Imagine that nullsec people as a group are self-sufficient and profitable, importing PLEX-es to play for free. Who will produce the 100K PLEX/month (50T ISK/month)?

We can return to my original idea: PLEX is paid by idiot losers scattered in every aspect of the game equally, but according to the old comments, you don't want that! We must find an in-game demographics like "highsec bears" then. Do your really think that many people would pay significant amount of real money for the "privilege" to be a "highsec bear"?! I don't doubt that there are dumb ones who replace their 10th Hulk this month but are they a majority?

Low/NPC-null people maybe? If highsec PvE is profitable, lowsec PvE must be more profitable, as there are better rocks, rats, planets and missions. While lowsec costs are higher than highsec (mostly PvP losses) but they can just PvP less and PvE more.

No one else left. Someone must convert PLEX to ISK en masse and no other group has reason to do so. The average sov-null person (and WH person to a lesser extent) spends more money than he earns and fills it with PLEX. Of course I'm not saying that each of them, and tomorrow identify exactly who, along the theoretical idea why they must spend.

This result is extremely interesting and - yet again - turns upside down my plans. I mean I know that you are probably fed up with my crazy ideas, but this is how I learn: put in something "optimal" from the limited knowledge I have, make people argue (is it trolling?) and feed me with the information I need to see it's stupid. Then with the new information I can figure out something less stupid and it goes on until the point when the idea actually works. Come back and prove me wrong once again and you'll be richly rewarded by the result when everything is cleared up.

PS: K162space found some public TEST and Goon documents which shows that the "huge" income these alliances make are merely 5x and 15x bigger than my individual income. We are talking about 10K member alliances here.


Thursday morning report: 117.3B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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Plan B: the massacre of highsec-M&S

While the negotiations with nullsec alliances go on, I must prepare if they'd fail. Thanks to my vast wealth and my 4K+ daily visit blog, I'm not in the sad position where I must accept unacceptable terms.

My goals in EVE are clear: hitting the M&S. My nullsec plans focus mostly on those who leech on sov-holding alliances by either carebearing for their own good but not contributing in defending the field and those who leech on the fame of their alliance without adding anything to it besides demands for others to stay docked. They are the most visible and loud, but they aren't the only M&S in EVE. Without an existing nullsec alliance I can't hunt them, as the 100+ people who sent me mails with the will of joining are mostly new players who don't yet have money and especially skillpoints to fly capitals/supercapitals which is a necessity in the sov game.

So both as an intermediate stage and as a great activity itself, the backup plan focuses on highsec M&S. They are not equal with carebears. Carebears (PvE-players) are playing the game in an avatar-selfish way which is completely OK. They have only what they've earned. The only thing they do wrong is undocking instead of trading in Jita but that's not a philosophical problem. As I pointed out, playing in a group is an ineffective way of making ISK or even individual fame. If you are a highsec PvE player, you should be in an NPC corp, or in a small corp with only your alts or real friends/family members. Joining with random people to make ISK is doing it wrong.

The highsec PvE corporations "do it wrong" because they are a collection of leeching M&S and socials who are helping these "new players". This is totally pointless and creates just another hive of idiocy and entitlement. We are here to end these. The plan is a highsec wardeccing corp that keeps as many highsec PvE corps decced for months as possible. Instead of gifting away titans, I'll spend my money to pay wardec bills. A wardec cost is about 500M/month on a 3-500-member PvE corp. So I can keep quite a few such corps decced forever just from my own income.

We will focus on the large PvE corps and keep them decced until they shrink down. We will hunt the members and every time tell them to quit that M&S-hive and play in NPC corp or a small corp with real friends. Alternatively they could join EVE-UNI or RvB where they could actually learn to play. If we force the supporting socials out, the rest of the M&S starve to death. If we force the M&S into NPC corp, he'll starve to death anyway as he can't support himself. The best thing in this is not needing any high organization, planning or alarm clocks. The average member just comes online, asks where other 2-3 are, join them and kill reds.

Important: in a highsec deccing corp you should not do any PvE activity. Have a separate ISKmaking character (hauler, trader, miner, missioner). You can (maybe should) have out of corp scout and maybe an also out of corp fleet booster. Remember that in highsec, a PvP corp must be pure-wolf. Even with very casual trading you can easily replace lost PvP ships and pay for PLEX to upkeep 2-3 accounts. I suggest to do so as sooner or later a move to nullsec will be in order (I assume the significant highsec PvE corporations can be fully exterminated in a year). For nullsec you'll need a capital ship pilot so I suggest to have a dedicated account with a pilot having +5 implants and sitting in a station, training for (super)capitals. You can have your PvE and PvP pilot on the same account, but it will slow them both, especially if your PvE activity is mining/missioning. Also it's good to have an NPC scout who can be logged in the same time. Anyway, if you plan to fly supercaps any time soon, being able to upkeep 3 accounts is an absolute minimum. If you are not especially excited about highsec M&S ganks, consider it a training period for our nullsec plans.

We'll seek cooperation with highsec PvP corps, but we are not like them. We don't care about losses, we don't care about ISK ratio, we measure our success in the number of M&S hives shrinking into non-existence. Our cooperation with highsec PvP would be limited to form an alliance where everyone is on his merry way, we just pay the deccing costs on the alliance level. I mean there is no point for our corp and corp X to dec corp Y independently, when our alliance can dec for all of us together.

What will happen if another PvP corp decs us for killmails? We'll form blobs and ruin their kill:death ratio. The only danger to us is an altruistic "protector" PvP corporation that wants to defend the "innocents". However as long as we can keep flying, we are winning even if they have much more kills, as the M&S and the supporting socials still don't dare to undock so their terrible corp will slowly but surely die.

Why would it work when similar plan of the Goons failed? At first because we'd live in high while most Goons could not bother to come here and also because we don't have in-corp freighters to retaliate on. Also, they were picking on corps of intelligent people like Jade Constantine while we'll be preying on M&S hives. It won't be hard to find them, their cans litter the newbie systems, luring the unsuspecting new players into their stinking "help each other" leech-fest.

Please comment on the possible problems, pros and cons of this plan. I'll make the corp if the immediate nullsec plans fail and I will participate with a scimitar (the fleets will be shield for higher speed) and two out-of-corp fleet/wing boosters/commanders for camps and larger engagements (a Tengu and a Loki).


Wednesday morning report: 116.6B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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Nullsec-altruism and a free titan

Imagine that you are an avatar in Diablo 3. You enter New Tristram after defeating some risen dead. The town is clearly in danger. The undead are attacking the gate, infected soon-to-be undead are locked in the cellar, more undead at the fields behind the other gate, smoke rises from the village over the river. The town itself is in dire condition, it's small, its inhabitants are either fighting or hiding. There aren't many options for you: you fight the risen dead and whatever dark power is behind them, or you just wait like the cowardly mayor until they break in and kill everyone. Fighting here is for rational interest: survival.

Now imagine that you are an avatar in World of Warcraft. You hear people speaking about war with Deathwing and you see his marks on the Stormwind gate. But since that attack, Stormwind has been kept safe. Out of the gate there are the gentle forest of Elwyn with playful rabbits and lowbie wolves. If you look around you see people minding their peaceful business or do some goofiness like playing with their pet or holding some midsummer festival. Sure, somewhere far there is a war, you met those who've been there. But it's far, far away from the safety of Stormwind. You also know history: C'thun, Kil'Jaden, the Lich king and all their underlinks have tried to conquer the world but they were all defeated without you. You can be sure that Deathwing and whoever comes after him will be defeated too without you. Sure, you can join the fight either because it's the right thing to do, or because you want personal glory, prove everyone that you aren't just one guy in the crowd, but a Kingslayer! Fighting here is a vanity goal, either social or competitive.

Time to place yourself in the position of an EVE avatar. You look around in highsec and see a perfectly maintained society. People are minding their business. There is no real conflict. Sure some hotheads fight each other in the FW warzones and there are criminals popping ships now and then but is it any different from a real life city? Unlike WoW, there is not even a distant war between "us" and "them". Why should you care about Delve any more than you care about the outcome of the fight between two African warlords? Not like it would have any effect on your life. If you want to be rich, you can have it all in the safety of highsec. If you want the fame of a great fighter, you can move lowsec or NPC-null and be an infamous pirate or a famous vigilante.

But does it make any sense to go sov-null and fight for it? It doesn't provide much of a fame as you'll act as a member of a large fleet, following orders, even if you are on a somewhat independent spot like scout or interdictor. You'll be deploying when told, extracting when told, shoot what's told, die when primaried. There are no financial interests either: sure, you can rat/plex in your space, but you can do the same in NPC null and the increased safety of sov (you can dock, they can't, your buddies are nearby) doesn't worth the increased hassle. This comes from the design feature "you are never safe" which prevents sov from being actually safe.

Only one individual goal left: leeching on their real or imagined wealth and fame. M&S flocks there for free ships and for having a "cool" corp/alliance logo. Most alliances are a mixture of mistaken individualists (who believe sov-null is the best place to be rich and famous) and a big bunch of leeching M&S. They are the standard "we are here to provide our members a good place to live, be active, help the team blah, blah, blah". These alliances fail not because of thieves and scammers, the same problem was pretty well handled in real life and the same methods (vouching, personal connections, long initiation period) would work in EVE. The problem comes from the above design point that makes sov-holding a pointless effort in terms of ISK as it cannot provide increased safety. The best way to serve their members would be disbanding and telling them to play in the NPC corp or in small corps with their close friends.

Since we covered the individualist reasons and clearly null can't be pure M&S (as they need someone to leech on), we can only turn to altruistic reasons. Of course this is defined from the point of view of the avatar. Throwing Rifters and get podded again and again is completely stupid from a pilot, while can be a great fun for a player.

Before joining sov-null (or WH) one must find an out of game reason to do so. One who joins for in-game or "avatar-selfish" reasons (fame, glory, wealth) will either recognize that he should be in high/low/NPC-null or end up as a leeching M&S. This statement isn't new, "EVE can only be won by uninstalling" is recited countless times.

I have no friends in any alliance. I can only join if I'd find one which have the same out-of-game goals as I do. Well, official goals are rare. The Not Red Don't Shoot region have a clear one, maintaining safety. That's not my bread and butter as granted safety is exploited by M&S, those who enjoy it but contribute nothing to upkeep it. However some alliances have a culture and every culture has a natural goal included: to spread it. Cultures are strong and reliable: if The Mittani would come up with the idea to turn GSF into a friendly, helpful, nice mining alliance, he would lose his seat in an hour. His actions are limited to what the alliance culture allows. The cultural goals are not necessarily known consciously by the members. The average guy just experience it as "I'm doing as it should" or "I do it as it's fun". If you understand a culture, you can predict their moves better than they do. This is how you shall pick an alliance. One that has the same goals as you, openly declared or defined by culture.

My goals are clear: hit the M&S where I can. Make the socials see that helping M&S is bad idea. Let's see if I can find an alliance culture that directs M&S bashing activity. If yes, I shall join. If not, I shall start my own. As I recognized that this goal is altruistic, everything I spend for ships is already sacrificed to the goal. Because of this, there is no additional utility flying them myself.

My original idea was to dual-box fleet booster titans, however titans are expensive enough to deserve an active pilot. So I will fly one titan, the subcap-fleet boosting, sometimes counterdrop-baiting Ragnarok. My Avatar pilot will be turned into the sitter of my reserve Ragnarok. The Avatar has a great boost effect (+37.5% cap recharge) but needs no gang link modules to provide it, so can be piloted normally. If the pilot is boosting a wing/squad anyway, using a mindlink is great to provide additional boost. So let me introduce the boost-Avatar lottery: after 6 month of my joining (that time is needed to evaluate if the goals of the alliance are really the ones I believe as cultures can only be fully understood from the inside), I will get an Avatar. Either buy it or get it built. This Avatar will be lotteried. Any alliance member is eligible to win it who has the following skills:

• Amarr titan 5
• Jump drive calibration 4
• Cybernetics 5
• X warfare specialist 5, X is picked by the supercap FC

He must also be ready to be in a booster position in the fleet and plug in X warfare mindlink at the request of the FC. The alliance leadership can remove anyone from the eligible list who they consider untrustable/unworthy to receive a titan and can set additional rules (more skills, time spent in the alliance, not being in newly joined corp). Based on my wealth (which mostly depends on how often do I have to replace my Ragnarok) there will be more Avatar-lotteries later.

This is the last post in the series of "Gevlon looks for a nullsec alliance". I now apply to alliances I consider fitting to my goals. If you think yours also belong to the "grief/clear up the M&S" goal, feel free to comment where can I read up on you. On Friday I wish to announce the result (in-progress negotiations can cause delay). If I fail to find any or fail to gain acceptance to the ones I find, I start my own group.


Tuesday morning report: 116.6B (2.5B spent on main accounts, 1.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9+1.5 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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The lossmail-M&S

The pathologic fear from loss reports couldn't stop puzzling me. I'm fully aware that kill and loss reports are like scoreboards in PvP and competitive people measure their skill according to them. It's fine. I wrote that I understand that people can't be rationals before they experienced their personal skill affecting their surroundings. A mindless robot can't turn a thinker overnight, he first have to learn to act independently. All actions need a measurement system that shows ones progress compared to the other people. Scoreboards in PvP games are fine and a good PvP-er has every reason to take pride from his good kill:death ratio. He can also expect that other PvP-ers value him after his results and he gain acceptance to more elite PvP-gangs.

However the above applies to ones own kill and death reports. The "lossmail-paranoia" has the strange characteristics: it focuses on the losses of other people. If one is competitive, he cares about his own scores. Actually if people around him are worse, he just feels better. Remember that the focus of the competitive people is local: the guy compares his car to his neighbors and not to the guy 3 cities away. I've seen this in WoW many times in form of "damage meter competitions" where one was proud of being high in his raid, even if his performance to global standards was poor. If he was way above the others, he started considering leaving his "scrub" guild and moving to a "more elite" one.

However in EVE this works backwards: many people want their group to have no loss reports, even to the sick point of self-destructing completely functional ships or losing a pilot with all his ships by kicking him rather than maybe losing one ship due to him undocking when neutrals are in local. This isn't competitive (or even sane) behavior at all.

To make it more weird, they often live in nullsec sov-holding alliances where personal kill and death reports are more or less meaningless. I mean in a small-gang engagement your personal skills make serious difference. In large fleet if you are targeted by 100 Maelstroms, you'll die in any subcap and your damage on any target is in the 1-2% range due to shooting the same targets as everyone else. The large-fleet engagement can only be evaluated at fleet level and not personal level. A alliance won, B lost. The number of kills and deaths say nearly nothing (besides atrocious fails) about the skill of an individual pilot.

Competitive people care about their own performance. Socials care about doing the "right" thing. Rationals care about the big picture. The ones crying about the loss reports of others are M&S. They do it because morons and slackers want to harvest "cool" status from the kill:death ratio of others. They don't think they should do anything to "be cool" and expect to get it by sitting under a corp/alliance logo, letting other people make this logo respected by having a good kill:death ratio. The loss of some other guy make them upset because other M&S will troll them because of it. Badmouthing is practically the only activity the M&S happily take part of. When other people kill some enemy, he goes to a chat and announce that "we pwn lol".

The easiest way to find useless idiots in your corp is asking "What would you feel and do if a corpmate would lose an expensive ship?". If the answer is...

• "Troll the n00b!", "Post his loss on the corp forum for a good laugh!" you have a competitive PvP-er.
• "I would be sad and try to comfort him and help replace his losses", you have a social, who slaves to fill the corp wallet and presses F1 when told
• "I would link him some pages about proper fitting" or "Educate him", you have a rational who tries to solve the problem, make the group stronger
• "I wud be upset cuz he make us look loosers": Kick the M&S back to highsec before he does more damage!

This leads us to the next point: "corp morale". Lot of people are scared of loss reports because they would decrease the "corp morale" and people would stop logging in. From the above we can see who would disappear: the M&S. You should lose them as they are useless. They might help you when you don't need help as you are winning on your own, but when things get rough, they will disappear! With proper marketing you can fool them for some time believing that things are fine and shiny, but sooner or later some troll will inform them that they are not. The idea that you can keep them motivated during some seriously hard period (or the idea that you won't have seriously hard periods) is ridiculous. An alliance filled with them can look bigger than it is, but think about -A-. A month ago everyone called them the cornerstone of a powerblock, equal to CFC-HB. They had the numbers. But at the moment some guys started kicking the wall because of boredom, to the surprise of all, the "fort" crumbled and the truth revealed: -A- doesn't have power to even put up some semi-decent resemblance of a fight. And in EVE kicking the wall for fun is a common activity. You can't reasonably hope that your fleet will never be tested in fire and the M&S-inflated numbers keep the enemies away. It's much better to have a smaller but useful fleet which allows you to find reasonable political measures: alliances, treaties, orderly evacuations. The sad fact is that the numbers fooled -A- leadership too, so they boldly entered the Nulli-TEST "goodfights" instead of telling Nulli to simply wait them out.

There is a direct damage caused by the "lossmail-M&S". They make uninformed, new, but not idiot players stay uninformed. The "don't lose ships" protocols (docking when neut comes, flying only crap, flying only in blop) make the player unable to learn anything or even recognize that he must learn. One must experiment and practice to be better. The pilot who lost 10 ships and learned from them will be much more valuable in a war than the one who docked every time he saw a neut.


Please don't mix "morale" with "motivation" which comes from one having a goal, a reason to fight. Sometimes one has to be reminded why he is there. Sometimes the goal is lost, rightfully making one unwilling to fight. However these are conscious thoughts. One then says "I no longer want to fight as the war is lost, let's evac and start over in FW", or even "I don't see this group winning. It's better to disband and the good ones move to a new home". However M&S says or does nothing like that. He just says "itz no fun" and doesn't log. The translation to human language is "its no longer providing me the positive feeling of being superior just because I sit below that logo".

One more thing: no wonder that the alliance that gained the most Sov in the recent war is the one that is happily fielding retreivers, laser rokhs and such things and openly states that "we don't care!". Having low M&S ratio does wonders.


Saturday morning report: 111.8B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Sunday morning report: 112.1B (2+0.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3+0.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0+0.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Monday morning report: 115.4B God bless the FW-bears! (2+0.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3+0.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0+0.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Liquidation report: I got rid of serious part of my item list, decreasing my trading hours below 2/day. This means both that I got above 800M/hour and that I now have 40B cash, tomorrow you'll see it will be put to good use.

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EVE Character report (with titans)

Quick note: yesterday I met the worst scammer ever, and made an extra post about it which just hit 10K visitors!

My first character report was a month ago, from now on I will post such report every month, around the 20. day. I hope my plans help you make yours. And that your comments help me refine mine. If not, move along, nothing to see here. I try to use a simple format that can be copy-pasted and updated. First an overview table, then detailed description of characters. Unused characters are ignored.

Char#	Personal data	Account#	Implants	June SP	July SP	Remap	Last month focus
1	Gevlon Goblin	1	4	6.4	6.82	P7-W7	Accounting 5 (+cry on remap)
2	Hek trader	1	3	1.0	1.04	C4-W10	No training, busy trading
3	Scout/cyno pilot	1	3 +booster	-	1.38	P10-W4, later I10-M4	Caldari frig 5, later support
4	Amarr trader	2	4	2.2	2.33	C5-W4-M5	Accounting 5
5	Dodixie trader	2	4	1.6	2.37	C8-W6	Accounting 5
6	Rens trader	2	4	1.6	2.37	C8-W6	Accounting 5
7	Logi/Triage pilot	3	5	4.5	6.42	I10-M4	Support skills
8	Rorqual pilot	4	5	0.8	2.69	I10-M4	Support skills
9	Ragnarok pilot	5	5	0.3	2.15	I10-M4	Cybernetics 5, support skills
10	Nyx pilot for sale	6	5	-	1.78	I10-M4	Cybernetics 5, support skills
11	Avatar pilot	7	5+booster	-	1.29	I10-M4	Cybernetics 5, support skills
12	Girlfriends' character	8	4	6.1	7.90	P10-W4	Gallente BS, gunnery

Total SP of my characters (not counting Nyx for sale and girlfirend of course) in June: 18.4. In July: 28.9. I gained 10.5M SP in a month. So the statement that "latecomer can never catch up" is not true. No one can learn rank 6 skills, more skillpoints mean ability to fulfill more roles, to fly more ships. That can also be achieved by different accounts. Accounts can be paid with PLEX you get for playing well. So no, a good playing new player can easily outperform a mediocre veteran.

1. My main, Gevlon Goblin. My training was erratic at start, since I assumed I'll make money with Industry skills. Then I made a remap to perception-willpower too early. Lesson to learn: don't remap your first char in the first three months. No matter how much you read, no matter how smart you are, this game is too complex to make a plan with that knowledge. I'm currently locked in my P-W remap and have to deal with it. Like learning Accounting 5 in that remap. I'll learn the skills for the ships I'll use in rest of my (foreseeable) life: a Basilisk with logi 4, a Charon, a blockade runner, an Orca which I'm already flying and a stealth bomber to fly lowsec. My future is clear: Jita will be my home and Science and Trade Institution my corp till the end of days. I'll make ISK for nullsec ventures. After I finished the ships, I'll remap for more trade skills.
2. This pilot practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory and does only trading. Future plans: finishing trade skills (Accounting 5 is missing among many other 5s). Then learning research skills to work with the agents to trigger storylines and some passive income from datacores.
3. She is my first nullsec pilot, her job is to scout for the rest pilots, do exploration and open cyno if needed.
4. She trades in Amarr and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.
5. She trades in Dodixie and practically does nothing else. Learns more trade skills.
6. She trades in Rens and ran my planets. I switched them off, because I am cutting back my moneymaking. She'll learn to fly an Orca, as a fallback if my haulers would go on vacation.
7. This pilot will be the first to move null/WH. Soon flying a logi (type depending on alliance fleet), then train for an archon triage carrier. Will perfect these skills, won't learn any more new ships
8. While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, learning of Int/Mem, then my ships: the Rorqual the freighter and the jump freighter. After these comes Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. It is followed by industrial skills, needed to compress ore. After this I learn all relevant skills to 5.
9. This pilot has long way before flying anything but a shuttle. 101 days of Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills, then I learn skirmish warfare support and fleet command. Then Perc/Will almost forever for Minmatar Titan 5. Unfortunately I'll have to have guns which is even more skills.
10. To experiment with Character Bazaar, I started training a Nyx pilot. We'll see how much profit this sale will provide
11. My second titan pilot. Originally planned as Avatar, but since I know more about how fleet boosting goes, he'll either be sold or turned into Dreadnaught pilot. (OK dreads have guns). Capital fleets are usually armor-tanked, right?
12. On the top of my own accounts, I give a PLEX a month to my girlfriend, as it would be stupid to pay for it with real money. She is still extremely casual. She minds her training queue and sometimes run some random mission but that's it. I hope she'll like the game more when she sees nullsec on my monitor. She is great player when involved in a game, so if she'll get the taste, she'll be a great addition to the same alliance I'll go.

I want to talk about a central part of my nullsec plans, the titans. I posted several titan plans, mostly replied with various disagreement, yet until I asked for explicit theorycraft I got some useful answers. Let me share it. Providing a boost to a fleet is a huge positive, you won't find a fleet without a booster. Who shall give it? Gang assist modules have 5000 CPU requirement, making them unfittable to ships except for ones designed for them. The commonly used are command ships and T3 cruisers. These ships get a faction boost for one group of gang links. For example the Vulture provides 15% bonus to siege warfare links with perfect skills. A Tengu with the proper subsystem provides 25% bonus. A titan can't give that.

There are 4 groups of combat links, each contain 4 boosts, 3 provided by the modules, 1 provided by an implant called "mindlink":

• Siege warfare
  • Active shielding: -10% (12.5% for T3) shield booster and transporter cycle time
  • Shield efficiency: -10% (12.5%) shield booster and transporter capacitor need
  • Shield harmonizing: increased shield resistance. EFT says 28.1% (35.2%) resistance to a ship having 0 on its own
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and 15% Shield HP
• Armored warfare
  • Rapid repair: -10% (12.5% for T3) shield booster and transporter cycle time
  • Damage control: -10% (12.5%) local and remote armor repair capacitor need
  • Passive defense: increased armor resistance, lazy to EFT it
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and 15% Armor HP
• Information warfare
  • Electronic superiority: +10% (12.5%) ECM and target painter strength, +6% (7.5%) Remote sensor dampening and tracking disruption strength
  • Recon operation: +10% (12.5%) EWAR range
  • Sensor integrity: +15% (18.75%) sensor strenght
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and +15% targeting range
• Skirmish warfare
  • Evasive maneuvers: -10% (-12.5%) signature radius
  • Interdiction Maneuvers: +15% (18.75%) web and point range
  • Rapid deployment: +10% (15.5%) AB and MWD speed bonus
  • Mindlink: +50% bonus on the above gang links and -15% agility (practically align time)

Titans have unique bonuses, but no T3 bonuses:

• Erebus: +37.5% armor HP
• Leviathan: +37.5% shield HP
• Ragnarok: -37.5% signature radius
• Avatar: +37.5% capacitor recharge

For a supercapital fleet the best would be having +37.5% HP for the primary tank (shield in a shield fleet), +37.5 capacitor recharge, 3 links for their primary tank, resist link for the secondary tank (armor for a shield-tanked fleet), rapid deployment link, 3 mindlinks: 1 for increasing the 3 tank links, 1 for secondary tank HP (with resist from link and damage control that's another 0.5-1M EHP/ship) and +15% targetting range or +15% agility. These can be provided by an Erebus/Leviathan, an Avatar and a T3 booster ship in booster positions. The titans need no links, they can fully provide their unique boosts without them and can use the mindlink implant, all 5 links can be on the T3. This is why my link-titans were laughed at.

Now meet my Ragnarok:Wait! Didn't I just say that links on titans are bad? Indeed they are, but this titan doesn't belong to the supercap fleet. I mean it warps with them, stays with them, on the comms with them, following orders of the supercap FC. However it's in the supporting subcap fleet, in fleet booster position. Alternatively it arrives alone with the subcaps, this case several ships of the fleet have cyno fitted for obvious reasons. This is the shield fleet boost version, if the fleet is armor, it has 3 armor links, 1 shield and Armored warfare mindlink.

9 subcaps definitely don't deserve a T3 squad booster (a 10th combat ship is better), so they can only have fleet and wing booster. This titan is providing them the -37.5% signature radius, the primary tank and the passive on the secondary tank. The wing boosting T3 is providing the Skirmish and EWAR links. A Scimitar has 65m signature. With a Skirmish mindlink Loki as wing booster, this decreases to 42m. Enters my Ragnarok as fleet booster and it goes down to 26m! Who wants his logis be harder to hit than Rifters (35m unbuffed)? Who wants his drakes be as hard to hit as a destroyer? Any interceptor wanna try out how it feels to be smaller than a pod? You may say that the stacking of Ragnarok bonus and Skirmish link bonus are not intended, but it makes no sense as the Ragnarok bonus is useless to supercaps and alone barely better than the Loki bonus. No, no! It's the well deserved reward of those who are bold enough to drop a titan in a subcap battle.

The "Gevlon seeks nullsec place" saga is about to end. By next week Friday, I'll be in a nullsec corp, one way or another. You won't be disappointed by my plans. You guessed, it won't be "join noname_pet#24 in its epic quest to get sov for carebearing".


Thursday morning report: 110.2B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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The worst scammer ever

This isn't the post for today, you find it here.

At first I didn't know who is the bigger idiot. Him for trying to scam me or me for baiting him for 1:30. He is probably the worst scammer of the planet. He approached me as TEST diplomat to recruit me. He did not even bothered to ask any questions to look any way legit, he told I'll be invited to TEST market section and given some part of the alliance wallet to use it in Jita. (like that would make any sense). After that introduction, he started talking about titan construction details. For loooong time. Then finally got to the point, I must pay 90B deposit to join as a safety to prevent me cancelling other jobs on POS-es. It also made no sense. If I trash a POS for giggles, I won't mind. If I don't it's waste. He couldn't answer just rephrased the same nonsense. I lost my patience and ended the conversation:
I thought I just wasted my time. This was too bad for even a joke post. I mean chatting 1:30 with a random TEST member isn't interesting post. But instead of just letting go, he lost his nerves and logged his official diplomat main. 90B can make someone greedy:
Now this is something! The diplomat of TEST, is trying to scam me! I double-checked, he is the same guy who is listed as French diplomat on the ingame TEST data. Right next to the "anyone asking money for joining is a scammer" warning. Update: He is fired!

When did he screw it up?
Maybe when he approached me instead of waiting till I go to TEST? (he could send anonymous messages that TEST would be receptive)
Maybe when he did not even try to maintain the look of an interview?
Maybe when he did clearly the opposite that the easily available TEST material said?
They all matter. But probably the point was when he openly bragged about his plan on reddit from a topic that gave my blog 3K visitors:

Anyway, heed my advice: if you try to scam someone, don't announce it in a public forum.
And try to make sense.

Update: This post became one of my most visited. I sent the guy a mail celebrating his accomplishment:

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Help Jack find a nullsec alliance!

This post was inspired by the silence over my last post about searching an alliance. Every time I wrote something on the topic, I got 20-50 publishable comments and countless (100+) trolls. Yesterday I'm not sure I moderated a single troll (offtopic an blue pill spam is different) yet you can see zero comment on the most critical point: the declaration of goals of alliances. Or rather, their lack of it.

Forget about me today! Let's talk about Jack. Jack has no blog, doesn't want to change anything in the real World observing MMOs. He doesn't even want to change anything in EVE, he doesn't aspire to be the new Mittani or Helicity or even the "hero of the 15 minutes of eve24". He just wants to have fun with a game. He saw the videos and had a "whoa" moment over EVE. Yes, spaceships, blasters, that's more fun than swords and orcs.

Jack started EVE and did like everyone coming without an external community: career agent missions, random training in the first months, L1, L2, L3, L4, peeking into lowsec, getting some kills and more losses, having fun with spaceships on his own. But now he start to get bored and misses what he saw on the videos: the large fleet battles. For this reason, he is now looking for an alliance. He doesn't have problem with doctrines or being Drake#231, doesn't want to be a pain-in-the-ass, ready to do what the FC says. He is online often, has reasonable knowledge about fitting and ready to read anything the leadership mandates him.

He opens up the alliance list and gets overwhelmed. So many of them! And they are so similar! I mean, after checking out a dozen pages he finds the same panels "we want to provide fun, social environment and spaceship pew-pew for our members, we demand activity, loyalty, basic game knowledge and no-drama".

It seems Jack would fit to any nullsec corp except for those who demand external group membership. All of them offers him flying in null with other pilots and none of them offers him anything more or special. How shall he decide who to join? X and Y are maybe at war. Shall he choose between them by flipping a coin? Please help Jack! Tell him why the alliance you are in is the right choice for him. Tell him why are you special, why are you a better group than your enemies.

Please spare him from the "cus we'll win" because you can't see the future. You might win, you might not. If I wrote a month ago that Nulli would be an FW corp doing the same as Fweddit, -A- ran away without a fight and TEST would be twice the size of GSF, I'd get more laughter than my 6-link titans. You can't guarantee victory.

Nor can you say "we are more fun to talk to", because that's a lie. You don't have more sense of humor or have better stories (or any other RL qualities) than the rest of the players. The only exception if your alliance recruits directly on RL group memberships, like GSF can honestly claim that Jack easily find partners to grief randoms or a corp that demands you to submit your PHD documentation can claim that he'll find more intelligent discussions. Feel free to inform Jack (and me, and the readers) if your alliance has such screening method.

Please also spare him from the "it's a game lol" comments. He knows that. He doesn't expect answers like "Our group collects money for curing cancer", though clearly welcomes and considers them. He actually expects game-goals like "we want to win the next Alliance tournament" or "we want to destroy Goons" or "we want to be the largest alliance" or "we want to have the most systems" or even "we want to have the highest number/ISK of kills in 2013". If your alliance has such game goals, please share, Jack is eager to contribute to some competitive goal. He is a good player.

So, dear readers, help Jack find a Nullsec alliance, recruit him to your own alliance! If you don't want Jack in, please write why. Remember, poor Jack has nothing to do with me. That guy is poor and does missions for ISK.


Back to me: I'm sure you are bored with my soap-opera "Gevlon seeking place in null". Please understand that I don't want to jump in the first opportunity, I want to join a place where I can stay for long and it can only happen if I understand what can I expect from them and what will they expect from me.

Thursday morning report: 108.5B I Liquidated about 1/3 of my item list because I want to spend much less time with trading. Also, I want to limit my assets in trading materials to 70-90B, keeping the rest in cash for nullsec purposes. (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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Supercap corp update

At first, the amount of people shown their interest in my supercap corp idea is astonishing and above all of my expectations. About half of them are new to EVE. Not so surprisingly 90%+ of those who wrote powerblock preference wrote CFC-HB. The "e-honor", "killboard is important" and "20M+" is strong with most alliances outside of them. About 80% of them suggested (or already in) one specific alliance. This may have something to do with the fact that the No1 traffic source of my blog (after google.com and direct traffic) is reddit.com (the second is blessingofkings.blogspot.com, the third is somethingawful.com).

Before I actually start the negotiations I'd like to clarify what we can offer and what we need. "Clarify" doesn't mean "I break it down to you" but "we discuss until I'm capable to understand the needs of a nullsec alliance". I have blurry visions that are limited by my limited knowledge of null.

First, what can we offer that makes us valuable assets:

ISK. A lot. While most of our members will be EVE-newbies, being on this blog assumes that they like the money-making aspect. While EVE-players tend to look down on other MMOs (just because other EVE players who are not them made awesome things), the economy of MMOs isn't different at all. Selling EMP S isn't different from selling Saronite Arrowhead.

I'd like to mention a common nonsense argument flooding my comment moderation section "your income is nothing compared to an alliance budget". This is stupid beyond measure. The income of an alliance is moon mining material income + income from members. So multiply the money you donated to your alliance with the number of alliance members. I'd guess for 99% of these commenters the result would be zero + moongoo. While moon income is significant, especially for Goons, it's not a game-breaking thing. Even if the Goons make 2T/month from Tech, counting with 10K members, that's only 200M/member/month. Sure, it's not nothing, but a bit off from my 50B/member/month. In other words: the alliance cannot provide significant funds to an average member. Sure they can replace a lost drakefleet and pay their sov bills, but they can't give out free supercaps to every Tom, Dick and Harriett. Otherwise they would. Of course we hear of market wizzards in alliances, but they fill their own wallet, not of the alliance. Please note that in the FW-exploit issue, 5 players were negwalleted and not their alliance.

Another, more very recent info about alliance wealth: Nulli Secunda moves to faction warfare to get T5 to be able to get lot of Armageddon Navy ships which will be their new doctrine. If I'm correct, you have to provide a normal Armageddon to buy a Navy for LP. A normal Armageddon is 85M, a Navy is 300M. So by capturing the whole FW zone, they save 215M/ship. So the average nulli pilot works about a month to get his ships with replacements. Want to know how many Navy upgrades (Navy-normal) could I get? 100 from my wallet right now, another 400 after liquidating my stocks. So either Nulli orbits over empty FW-plexes for hours because it's fun or the average (not GSF) alliance isn't at all rich compared to a good trader.


The real selling point however the source of this ISK: mostly highsec trading. This activity doesn't compete with existing moneymaking schemes of the alliance. We becoming rich doesn't mean making other alliance members poor like they were if we'd just mine the whole region dry. Rather we pay them ISK to mine the region dry for our supers.


The second thing we can offer is genuine newbies. I can't emphasize its importance. Poaching players from other alliances has a serious problem: they left because they were unhappy where they are. However the rats and rocks are the same in every region, and the drakefleets are surprisingly similar too. Those who had problems probably hold the problems in themselves and won't be happy in their new place either. The guy with the 3 pages long corp history is a common sight among wannabe recruits. Of course there are people who leave because of valid reasons and will be satisfied in their new place, but most of the corp-hoppers keep hopping. A genuine newbie who joins the game has much larger chance to make home in the place that nurtures him.


Now the things we need. I'd like to emphasize "need". They aren't fluffs we want but things that we can't operate without. It's not sure that it's the job of the alliance to provide them, feel free to tell that X need to be found by ourselves.

An integrative alliance (or corp). We'll be total newbies to null and many of us to the game. Left on our own devices we won't be achieving anything besides making ISK in highsec. An alliance where corps are more or less independent and just flock together for sov war fleets would be a terrible place for us. We need a place where the interaction between members is strong, there are active forums and chat where questions can be answered. I'm not sure that it's the best idea to have a corp of my own, maybe joining an existing industrial corp of the alliance would be better idea. If we have our own corp, the alliance must be the kind where players of different corps mesh and do things together. Currently we can't do anything alone besides hoarding highsec ISK.

The sector we need the most tutoring is fleet PvP. The alliance we join must have joint fleets which are large enough to survive the unavoidable messups of newbies. We can of course make up for our fails with ISK to replace whatever we lose (and whatever others lose because of our fails). The joint fleets are also necessary to keep those pilots who won't make it to the supercap. I'm not naive with the success rate of "great" plans. Out of 10 newbies who go for a titan, 1 will get it, 2 will settle at a supercarrier and 7 will quit before 5B. If we are alone, these 7 players will be lost. If we are in an integrated fleet, these pilots can stay in other corps and the alliance gained 7 new Drake pilots.

I'd like to emphasize that I see the corp only as a tool and consider the alliance (powerblock) to be the group level. Corps won't make difference on the large-scale, alliances will. I'd also point out that managing a corp is just a necessary administration to me and not at all something I desire. If the alliance have a trusted wannabe leader, I gladly let him be the CEO and I do what I'm good at: making ISK and teaching it.


Availability of intelligent theorycrafters: we'll have lot of questions. But we are not apes who settle with answers like "we do it this way", "everyone does it like that" or the generic "lol, fail". Few things wastes my time more than the "experience" trolls, the ones who don't give any useful info just parrot what they heard during the time they spent in null. They are often right, but only because someone who actually has brain told them the right answer and they have no clue how and why. I want understanding of things since only that can seed new ideas.

To see what I mean, let me present a real problem. No matter how much time I spend with EFT, titans seems to be best use with gang links (not all of them, just 1 for fleet booster and 1-1 for each capital/supercapital wing). For the example I grabbed a random ship with 13225 shield HP. I set as fleet booster a Tengu with siege warfare gang links and mindlink implant. The shield HP jumped to 15209 (15% increase). Then I set a Leviathan titan with siege warfare gang links and mindlink implant as fleet booster, receiving 18184HP (37.5% increase). The difference between the Tengu booster and the Leviathan booster is 20%. Assuming a supercap fleet has 100x the EHP and 100x the DPS of one normal titan, adding this titan increases both by 1%. Adding my fleet booster titan increases them by 0.3% (doom) and 20%. Could anyone rationally explain why 1+1 is better than 0.3+20?
Note: Leviathan is an example, Erebus does the same for armor, Avatar for cap recharge, Ragnarok for signature radius decrease.

The point isn't that I'm right. I can be wrong. But do you know why? Or do you just parrot what you've heard from some guy?


The will to field supercaps: there is nothing more demoralizing than flying the most powerful ship and not seeing battles. Supercaps are tools and not valued prizes. If you afraid of a supercap lossmail, I'm not interested in you. I don't mind losing a titan. I happily use my titan as bait. Hell, my Ragnarok design is made precisely to fleet boost a subcap fleet, (-50% signature resolution at your service). I'm happy to field it for the purpose of making the enemy doing stupid things in their "OMG supercap killmail! Go for it lololol" lust. If you mind losing my titan more than I do, then something is seriously wrong with you. If I had to point out one reason why SoCo was roflstomped without any resistance is their care for killboards. Don't be like that!

Of course we won't do stupid things like going on a supercap roam. We only field them when the alliance FC want them to be fielded. We understand that sometimes escalation is not a good idea (for example out of the alliance prime time when most of the supercap pilots are unavailable). We understand that it's often structure shooting/repping is the supercap job and we will do it happily as this is what makes the change on the sov map. We understand that there are times when the enemy has to be baited out, let them go bold and stupid. We understand lot of things. But not fielding supercaps ever is not something we understand. If you just want to gather supers because they are cute, we aren't for you, and I can guarantee that the disgruntled pilots will disappear, either jumping to other alliance or simply stopping playing.


Understanding the necessity of trading profit: We will most probably haul things from highsec to the alliance null. We can haul things for other people. We will definitely manufacture things so we can do it for others too. But expecting to do it without "profit" is nonsense. Every action has risks and opportunity costs. If you demand to give something for free, people will not give it at all. What is better? Having ammo for sale at +20% Jita price or having no ammo for sale? Please note that most alliance members do exactly nothing on the trading front, otherwise there wouldn't be profit at the first place. Why should we do something that others don't? We will probably build a "trade hub" just for our own needs. This hub will be at the benefit for everyone in the alliance. But to make it work and serve everyone, you must be able to explain the murmuring economically challenged ones that they are free to learn to drive jump freighters, use their own 8B to buy one, risk it with cargo at every jump and then they can undercut us, otherwise STFU.


A clear declaration of goals. "What we fighting for" is what keeps intelligent people loyal. We share a common goal and leaving the team would mean leaving the goal. The alliance must have some declaration of ideas, what they believe in, what they fight for. A generic "for fun lol" or "for the team" doesn't fly, simply because these are available everywhere. Let me put a good example: "We trash the game of everyone else" is a declaration of the Goons. Clear, definitely separates those who believe it's a good goal from those who don't. The alliance must have something like that to survive in the long term. No point joining a band of bored guys who are fighting because ... they don't have anything better to do on Saturday evening. I also ask commenters to link such declarations or summarize it for their own alliance even if they don't want me anywhere near themselves. Just the list of ideas people fight for is interesting on its own for the readers and myself.


Wednesday morning report: 108.7B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift). 

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Blogging my 100B away

Just as a month ago, I post in detail what I'm trading with. This post has a special actuality here as I announced my plan to start a corporation where nullsec powerblock members can learn how to make supercap money individually (not from alliance budget) while traders learn how to fly in Sov wars. I always told that I'm making nothing exceptional, nothing that anyone couldn't follow, assuming effort and functional synapses.

Before more words, let's look at the item list:
As you can see, these are shiny 100-150M implants. They are mission rewards and LP rewards, created by carebears and FW-bears (Minmatar are happily plexing and missioning, not bothered by Amarr, who do the same in the Caldari zone). They aren't the greatest economists of New Eden, so they sell to any buy order, regardless of sell order prices, regional averages and other boring stuff.

The buyers are mostly highsec mission-runners who get it because such implants are extremely important for properly operating their ships which is necessary for their playstyle just as you can see on the screenshot:
As with all luxury products the buyers aren't looking for alternatives, and don't start shopping around. The purpose isn't usage, but the idea that he can afford it. It would be significantly diminished by doing the mundane tasks of a few jumps to Jita to save 30-50M, not to mention to set up their own buy order. I set buy orders, create sell orders, drive away 0.01-ers by heavy undercutting, haul the things with fully collateraled contracts between hubs. I pay 2% of the collateral as cargo reward, but the cargo arrives in 2 hours. You could haul them in an interceptor, but due to the (in)fame I gained with this blog, for me undocking my trader main or even the hub alts would be instant cargo loss. My "fans" shoot even on my empty shuttle or Orca.

Jita is the best place to buy implants, Hek has the lowest volume but the highest profit. I don't know what could I add besides the trivial: as long as people refuse to research at least that tiny field where they operate we'll never have to bother how to replace a lost titan.

Surprisingly, neither the Goon FW exploit, nor the Minmatar T5 had any lasting effect on profit. When the prices go down, I lose about a billion which I make back when they return. Of course I don't speculate with implants (or anything), what I buy, I instantly sell. About 20M profit on each re-sold in the same station, 40-50 if hauled. Feel free to trade these items, but remember, they are just a small part of the large market of EVE, and there is profit in each of the items, you just have to find how to trade it.


Tuesday morning report: 107.8B!!! Something set the farmers to overdrive in Rens and Hek tonight. They filled most of my buy orders, for 30-50% below Jita price. (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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The trader fleet

I already wrote a post seeking how a trader/industrialist can meaningfully participate in a nullsec alliance. The first problem to solve is opportunity cost: the time spent in the battle cost more in profit than the ship you fly. The second is the "fighter" culture. If you do what you are best in and support your alliance with enough ISK to keep a dozen others in ships, you are still below the last Rifter "hero", since you are a "slave". Your ideas will have no weight in decision making.

My first idea is simply bringing stronger, more expensive ships than the crowd to offset both. However CCP did good work making subcap PvP casual-friendly, a good ship can be fit from 100M, after that the power increase versus ISK spent is hardly diminished. 2 100M subcaps will win over a 5B one. Increasing ship power is still better than nothing. However there are ships that exist naturally to convert ISK into power: the supercaps. These aren't just "pimped ships". Their DPS, tank and immunity to EWAR makes them extremely strong. On the top of unmatched DPS and tank, the supercarriers have remote ECM burst, disabling whole fleets while titans have unique, unmatched fleet bonuses and the ability to bridge in whole fleets.

My aim isn't just to be in null as Scmi#53. It is to participate in shaping it. I'm not alone, many traders/industrialists sit on huge amount of money and maybe with boredom. So here is my idea: a trader/industrialist corp where everyone will fly a supercap.

The technical part is easy, in less than half year of playing, starting as a clueless newbie, knowing nobody, acting all alone, I made enough ISK to buy a titan. However supercaps need sov to build and can only be done in a powerblock. Trying to build a supercap in some lolalliance that is left alive only to provide roaming fun to their neighbors is a bad idea.

The creation part is easy too: I announce the formation of the corp in the blog and maybe on EVE-O, collect traders/industrialist for the cause. They can join even if they see low chance of success. After all a clean account is pocket change to us and worst case we can sell the pilots as supercap sitters on the bazaar.

The logistics part isn't hard either: we'd need sov somewhere in the hinterlands, way behind the front line. This doesn't mean we have to own the sov, we just have to be able to place building facilities. We'd cynojam everything in 5 jumps and place enough carriers and dreads to every system that all our members can fly capitals if some enemy roam shows up. Then we happily start building our little supercaps and some time later the powerblock has as many new supercaps as many members we have (with replacement ships of course).

The hard part is politics. Imagine that I have the corp with 50-100 people who has the wallet (or the proper attitude that will get them in no time) for supercaps. Now we must negotiate our way in a powerblock. Strangely we don't take much risk by joining. The worst thing that can happen to us is they were just after lols and blow up the crafting facilities. So what? Everyone lost a few dozen B but we have the knowledge and enough assets in NPC to instantly start over in the enemy powerblock, who could now be 100% sure that we won't double-cross them. The accepting powerblock will risk that we won't be loyal to them and when they plan a supercap battle, we won't show up or even shoot them in the back for money. Also, independence means power. Since we don't live on alliance moongoo, but build everything from our own money, we have the ability to disagree. Even if it doesn't mean disloyalty or betrayal, a loose cannon can be annoying too. Imagine that we'd start trashing good fights by hotdropping into the enemy blop a dozen of supers (we won't, as "pwning" is not our source of fun, but why would you believe it, you don't know us).

I announced my plan to fly a titan almost 3 months ago. Since then I'm thinking how could I be trusted by a powerblock. The answer is simple: I cannot be. I'm financially independent, I'm not bound by feelings of loyalty, I'm not bound by out-of-game reasons (like being on SA, Reddit, being a Russian, knowing anyone IRL). I'd be a loose cannon at best, traitor at worst.

While you can't trust any individual, you can pretty much trust in systems and groups. While Joe the cop can be corrupt, and many are, "the Police" does its work OK. While Jack the firefighter can be a coward, and some are, "the firefighters" do well. While individual politicians are usually bastards, the government operates, due to checks and balances.

While I can never be trusted by any powerblock, a properly designed trader/industrialist supercap corp can be. While individual pilots can and probably will betray the powerblock accepting us, "the corp" won't. The method would be simple: the accepting powerblock would send their own wannabe-supercap pilots to us. They can trust these long-term members (as far as you can trust anyone). Some of them will come openly, some of them will be covert. I cannot stop or even identify the alt of some leader (he can trust himself) who arrives with "hi, I've been reading your blog and want to try out EVE". These members will be the link between "us" (traders/industrialist, coming from highsec or out-of-game) and the powerblock. When they have their own supercap, they can stay and keep "spying" or return to their home, replaced by a new supercap-wannabe. The point is what we give them cannot be taken away from them: knowledge. Even if everything would go wrong, the alliance would now have lot of pilots capable of making supercap money on their own.

What stops the enemy from planting similar spies? Nothing. However they can only report what he sees and that's the number of supers in the corp. He can't count the other supers of the powerblock. Also, there are well known doctrines to handle spies: only leaders know the jump position, fleet members not until arrived. I will blog about trading tips, how we make ISK, how does supercap construction happens, and so on, but I doubt if "the enemy" doesn't know already that zydrine sells higher than tritanium. Also, a spy with a supercap is someone who has something to lose. He isn't a throwaway pilot anymore so he can easily choose that his loyalty lies with his supercap and not with his former alliance.

I hope you see now why I waited joining null. No amount of Scimitar flying would help me knowing null powerblock politics or figure out the issue with trust. What I needed is the price of a titan in my wallet to prove without doubt that my methods are working, so the above idea isn't a daydream. I'd like to stress the size and importance of this income. In the last 30 days I made 50B. I'm sure that after having the proper capital, one can make 30B/month safely. It means that by just having 40 members, we can outdo all the Technetium moons of the Galaxy. With 100 members we could have larger income than any existing alliance.

If you want to participate in corp aimed to be a vital force of conquering the galaxy, riding the biggest ships of EVE, without channel spam, sexism and trolling, send me (Gevlon Goblin) an in-game mail. Please write if you would only join to CFC-HB or only to SoCo. If you don't play but want to join now, start a 14 days trial and send the mail from that account. Familiarize yourself with the UI and also start learning skills, make your first steps. Do not comment "I will join" on the blog, I don't believe you. Make at least the little effort of getting a trial account. You can discuss details of the plans here and the goblinworks channel. You can find me on the People and places feature, type in name, search, rightclick, send mail: I will collect people and start negotiating with the diplomats of alliances that are cornerstones of powerblocks. Pets and renters do not have the power to make such decisions.

If you'd laugh "newbies trying to fly supers, trying to negotiate powerblocks?", remember how the Goonswarm started. When they were in a bunch of Rifters, they were laughed at. I don't hear the laughter from Delve now. They had nothing but the will to destroy the status quo. We have the will to be dirty rich and know (in-game) economics.

I'd like to emphasize that the No1 criteria of choosing a side is the number of wannabe supercap pilots coming from them openly (pilots identified "ours" by their leadership count here). The more they are, the stronger the bond between us and them will be, the more reasons for both sides to trust each other and also more people who can teach us the ways of the alliance. Before the supers are ready we'll join to subcap blops to learn fleet know-how together. So if you are in a powerblock, want a supercap for yourself, want to learn how to make enough ISK to build your own supercap, send me a letter with "CFC-HB only" or "SoCo only" and convince your alliance mates to do the same. Post the link on alliance boards, agitate! Introduce me to your alliance diplomat! Since I offer you no money but the knowledge to earn your own, there are no limits. Everyone who is ready to learn trading and industry will fly his self-made supercap. If you hesitate, if you are not sure if it works, you are right. No guarantees. But if we fail spectacularly, you just wasted some B and learned how to make lot more. But what if we succeed? Wouldn't that be the true butterfly effect?


Finally, I must tell how this fits into my philosophy post: There won't just be awful lot of supercaps. There will be pilots who are capable to replace their ships, making them ready to deploy them even if there is a high chance of ship loss. The powerblock with such pilots will conquer the galaxy, forming the One Empire.

It must be formed. Only after the nullsec is safely owned can we do our sacred duty: go to high, find the morons and slackers and gank them all! No more structure shooting, no more blobs, just roams doing the right thing: delivering punishment for stupidity and laziness. Hulkageddon, Burn Jita and the rest had little effect because the thousands participating were nothing compared the hundred thousands of M&S and the socials supporting them. The united power of null will be needed to make difference. Maybe even that will be insufficient. Idiocy is a formidable enemy. Uniting null isn't "game over", it's the beginning of the good fight: the crusade against idiocy! Where "the power of reason doesn’t actually lift the population out of the muck, because they’re too busy AFK mining or undocking Kestrels full of PLEXes", the legion of gankers shall make difference. I think the best would be for the One Empire to wardec every single corp outside of itself except EVE-Uni and RvB (as they are the places where the idiots could learn something useful and become not idiots). Morons and slackers, by fire you will be purged! Please note that this is why the powerblock leadership can be sure that I won't usurp them with a couple hundred of supercaps behind my back. My motivation is to fight morons and slackers, I did that years before I played EVE, so you can be sure that I won't risk it for personal power.

Note to worried PvP-ers: the "good fights" will not disappear because of the One Empire, as it is unable (and probably unwilling) to police NPC null and lowsec. Pirates can forever exist there, roam null seeking for busy "nullbears". One can always fight worthy opponents either as one of the pirates or as their hunter.

Note to really idiot trolls (I'm bored of deleting them in dozens): I'm organizing a supercap building and not a supercap flying corp. The flying part will be organized by the existing supercap fleets of the powerblock. I'm not trying to FC a supercap battle.


Saturday morning report: 98.5B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Sunday morning report: 101.7B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Monday morning report: 103.9B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).

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