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:
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).
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:
- 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)
- Those who have enough time to gather all the needed kills and have money to PLEX-convert their costs
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).
0 comments:
Post a Comment