The (total lack of) balance of trade of highsec

The fact that you can be much more rich in highsec than in the competitive areas of EVE (low, null, WH) is one of my main messages. It can be proved by the fact that low/null people has highsec alts for ISK making while there isn't a single one who calls himself highsec player yet earns money in competitive areas. My main addition was the magnitude: a single highsec player can literally make 6% of the income of a 10K member nullsec alliance (average guy earns 100%/10K = 0.01%).

I wrote several suggestions how to "fix it", how to decrease highsec income and increase the income in competitive areas and so did others. Some of them were implemented in the past years of EVE development, none of them worked. The reason is that none of them addressed the fundamental economic problem of EVE.

To understand the fundamental economic problem, let's see how much a Raven Navy Issue, a popular highsec ship costs. No, I didn't mean 350M, as you can't create a Raven Navy for 350M, you can buy it from someone who did. Someone must create it to be sold. To create it, you first need a normal Raven battleship, 600K LP and a nexus chip that you can get for 8K LP. All the mentioned LP can be farmed in highsec doing missions. Ravens can be manufactured by players from the following materials (I don't have perfect skills, don't bother, the ratios matter):
- Isogen 130K 16.2M ISK
- Megacyte 2.5K 4.8M ISK
- Mexallon 522K 31.8M ISK
- Nocxium 32.5K 20.1M ISK
- Pyerite 2084K 26.3M ISK
- Tritanium: 8335K 50.0M ISK
- Zydrine: 7.8K 5.1M ISK
Megacyte and Zydrine are mined in competitive zones. You have to pay 9.9M for these. You have to pay 146.4M for the other materials that can be mined in highsec. Only this 10M worth of materials need to come from competitive areas. The rest of the 340M (97%) can be farmed in the safety of highsec. To make it worse, the highsec people don't lose their Raven Navies (unless idiots), so they pay 10M in their whole life to the nullsec people. After they paid this, they will never-ever need them. Ships need fittings, but the entry level fittings and the top-level faction fittings are all farmable in highsec (only an idiot fits deadspace/officer on a subcap), only the (not too expensive) T2 fitting needs nullsec people to farm.

On the other hand the nullsec people often lose ships. They often use Drakes, let's use it for example:
- Isogen 19.2K 2.4M ISK
- Megacyte 0.9K 1.7M ISK
- Mexallon 185.5K 11.2M ISK
- Nocxium 13.6K 8.8M ISK
- Pyerite 673.3K 8.5M ISK
- Tritanium: 2689K 16.2M ISK
- Zydrine: 4.0K 2.6M
4.3M nullsec materials and 47.1M highsec materials. 92% of the Drake comes from highsec!

T1 and faction ammunition comes from highsec too, only T2 ammo is from nullsec. So people living in competitive areas are needing lot of highsec materials and they need it constantly as they lose ships, while highsec people need very little amount of nullsec materials and they need it once in their life. At this point the earning power (ISK/hour) of nullsec vs highsec becomes totally irrelevant. The people living in competitive areas has nothing to offer to the highsec residents. It doesn't matter how much Arkonor you mine or how much Tc your moons yield, you can only sell it to your fellow nullsec residents, the highsec people don't need your stuff. On the other hand you need lot of stuff from highsec and you need it again and again. So the balance of trade between the "country of highsec" and the "country of low-null-wh" is totally off, corrected by gifts given from highsec to the competitive areas. These gifts are either between alts of the same player, or between a buyer and a seller of a PLEX.

Jester just found that mining the various minerals give the same ISK/m³ that generates 19-26M/hour income. Yes, AFK mining veldspar in a 1.0 system gives almost as much as mining arkonor in the worst pirate and ganker-ridden systems. Why? Because highsec people don't need your arkonor and for fellow null people mining arkonor has the same difficulty as mining veldspar so they have no reason paying more for arkonor.

The nerfs of highsec don't change this. If you'd nerf highsec income into oblivion, it would be a depopulated zone, avoided by everyone but newbies. Such gigantic nerfs would force nullsec alts out of higsec (and probably out of the game as one can rat on his main), and it would remove highsec players too as they don't want to PvP. The remaining highsec residents would still have no reason to buy nullsec wares, they would simply be poor.

The fundamental problem can only be solved if highsec people would constantly need anything that low, null and wh offers. Simply moving all minerals except veldspar to low/null wouldn't help as the highsec people would still just buy one ship and use it for the rest of their lives. To make such re-balance useful, the highsec people would need to replace ships. It doesn't necessarily mean losing them, CCP could introduce ship durability that decrease over time and need to be topped up by using maintenance blocks that costs the same kind of materials as building the ship. Same for modules.

Another "item" that could be created in null is ISK itself. The ISK bounties could be removed from mission rats, mission rewards (replaced by LP) and trivialized in highsec complexes, making sanctum ratting and sleeper NPC buy orders be the only reasonable way of creating ISK. Since players need ISK to repair ships and buy skillbooks, this would give something to the nullsec people to trade for highsec materials.

Both of the ideas (and similar ones) would be shocking nerfs to highsec, therefore probably not possible considering the amount of highsec players being pissed by them. So let me offer a non-intrusive way of fixing the export-import imbalance: creating achievements into the game. These - just like their WoW counterparts - should have no gameplay effect, but should be pure vanity. They could offer vanity rewards like minipets in the captain quarters or idiotic costumes or whatever. Completing these achievements would need the player to get things that can only be created in competitive areas. This way newbies would not be affected, while achievement hunters would buy low/null/wh items like crazy. For example consider the achievement "True Sansha" that would need to have a Nightmare battleship fitted with True Sansha large turrets, True Sansha hardeners and True Sansha heat sinks. The achievement would not need one to undock the ship, so the achievement hunters could avoid taking risks, but it would need them to hold on to the ship, losing or selling it would remove the achievement. Or think about the achievement "Sleep tight" that replaces the captain quarters bed with a Sleeper holo-projector if you have the item in your hangar. Creating it would of course need lot of wormhole stuff. And of course the masterpiece: "Full Epic": a T3 fitted with purple items.

Maybe other solutions could work too. But the point is that until highsec barely imports anything from competitive areas while exporting awful lot of stuff, the economy will remain unbalanced and the wealth will be in highsec. The balanced system would mean two economically different, but heavily trading zones: in highsec you can farm cheap items safely, in null you can farm expensive items with risks.

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For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Saturday morning report: 162.9B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 163.7B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 165.8B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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Are the MMOs games?

On Monday there will be a very important EVE economy post, not a philosophical one but one with numbers. Don't miss it!

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My "favorite" comment is the "people have different priorities" aka "it's fun for someone else". It's a conversation stopper, you can't disprove it, can't argue with it, nor can you use it for anything else than ending the discussion. X thinks that collecting Peacebloom or camping a lowsec gate in a destroyer is fun, so it is OK, strike that a valuable game feature.

Again and again I try to knock down this wall of "it's fun for someone" that blocks any discussion about game features. Here I come again. What is common between the following things?

• Eating chocolate
• Watching a movie
• Going to a concert
• Having sex
• Talking with friends
• Dancing
• Visiting an art gallery
• Getting drunk

Each of them is considered fun by many-many people. None of them are considered games. Just because something is fun, it's not a game, nor it has place in games. It indeed has place somewhere in the entertainment industry. They should have their specialized places (on and offline) where one can enjoy them. But just like there is no chocolate in the art gallery, there are forms of fun that don't belong to a game.

What is a game? Wikipedia says "Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both.". It also cites several authors trying to define it:

• fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
• separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
• uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
• non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
• governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
• fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality

Several MMO features break these rules. The "uncertain" part is actually rare in MMOs. In most MMOs I can be absolutely sure that if I spend X time, I'll receive Y "progress" in form of XP, levels, skillpoints, currency, keys or whatever. Many even break the "non-productive" point as gaming allows you to earn real world money. Diablo 3 is all-out on this field, EVE allows you to pay subscription with in-game currency, and almost all MMOs have illegal RMT.

The most useful definition tells what activities are not games:

• Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money. [and not games]
• A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment. [passive entertainments are not games]
• If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games. If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
• If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles)
• Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

So for a fun activity to be game, it must be non-creative, interactive, goal-oriented, having opponent whom you must defeat directly.

World of Warcraft leveling fails on the "interactive" part, as the spells on your castbar are equally good. You can "win" it by literally pressing them randomly, they merely function as "press any key to continue" in a movie. Raiding goes up to competitive puzzle-solving, as you must figure out and perfect "the dance" before other raider group does. However you can't really fight them. WoW PvP fails as lack of active hostile agent: you gain points if you lose, so you are motivated to play with and not against the "enemy" faction. Only competitive arena and rated BG qualifies as games.

EVE, despite being self-defined "sandbox game", is much more of a game. You can clearly compete other alliances for land. However it is done on a collective level. You as a player has little (but clearly non-zero) effect on what is going to happen. PvE is clearly a (very dumb) puzzle and most PvP lacks conflict, the word "gank" comes from the fact that one side did not even wanted anything from the other, and the ganker attacked for no reason. For many people EVE PvP is rather "creative" expression than game. The ganker merely wants to express himself as a "badass pirate" and he succeeds doing so even if the in-game action fails (if the target had warpstabs and gets away, the pirate is still a pirate). My own goal of making changes in nullsec is a form of expression too, an extension of this blog, trying to create proofs for my ideas.

If we look around, there is barely any games in the MMO field. We mostly find simple and complicated puzzles, reaction-time challenges, self-expression and at best some "outperform-competitions". Maybe the reason why they can't live longer than one-time content consumption is that there is no game involved. I feel exactly this in Mists of Pandaria: I see great graphics and an alive, interesting world. But I don't see that I'm playing a game, winning or losing. It's rather like watching a movie. Don't get me wrong, I like MoP, much more than I expected. I'm a very satisfied customer. But in a week or two I'll finish all Pandaria content (including the raids in idiot finder mode) and then I'll have no reason to stay subscribed. In EVE I can keep working on supporting TEST alliance in clearing the sov-nullsec from "pets don't talk back" people. But what could I do in WoW? Collect gear I don't need to see content and what will be outperformed by vendortrash in the next patch? Gather reputation, gold or tradeskill points that I equally don't need to see content? Kill people who respawn instantly? Learn a complicated dance to complete the same raid content at "heroic" difficulty which will be nerfed into triviality in a few months? To make people stay, the setting isn't enough, you must provide them a game in this setting.

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For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Wednesday morning report: 161.7B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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WoWifying EVE highsec would support low/nullsec life

There is a common sentiment among low/null players that CCP is on a quest that will finally change highsec into Space WoW: perfectly safe, therefore allows constant and unstoppable growth of wealth of players. There was a well-thought out series trying to prove that such action would eventually kill EVE Online. Please read the linked post, it's really good. Its short version: the safer highsec is, the more player will move to it to get their ISK. Even if they have low/null alts, they can't really do anything with it as any possible targets moved to highsec too. I fully agree with the situation report: highsec is vastly overpowered and one focusing on personal character progression shall never ever leave it.

Low-null-wh already has riches like high-end minerals, deadspace and officer loot, more LP in FW, T3 materials that they can trade for highsec items or ISK. The crucial problem is that in low-null-wh you have losses, while in high you already have little, therefore the highsec guy buys materials for his Tengu once in his life while the low-null-why guy buys materials for his ship several times. So the demand for low-null-wh items in high is low, while the damand for highsec items in low-null-wh is high which greatly outperform the larger relative supply in highsec due to AFK gathering.

This is the situation already. WoWifying highsec would just make it worse as you couldn't suicide gank on huge mining op or wardec them, right? Yes, but it would make the situation only slightly worse (as highsec is already safe enough). On the other hand the shift from 99% safe to 100% safe would make a huge difference in one item front: top deadspace and officer modules. Currently only idiots fit multi-billion ISK items on anything but a titan. With no highsec ganks, purples would be a major e-peen source in highsec. By changing highsec perfectly safe, the highsec players could start gathering these items for peacocking, just like their WoW counterparts collect "l33t epixx". The prices of these items would skyrocket overnight. The point is that you can't farm them in highsec at all. Every "purple" would mean multi-billion ISK transfer from highsec to low/nullsec.

Currently the earning power is in highsec, PLEX is mostly created by low-null-wh players and traded for the ISK created by highsec ones. Highsec players play for free, subsidized by nullsec ones. With the above change the direction would turn back. The "pro" highsec players would open their wallet and get PLEX to trade for ISK to trade it for that precious purple. The result would be that an officer spawn would set you up with enough ISK to play for free and be in ships for several months. Practically the whole nullsec would play for free, subsidized by busy space-WoWers working for their "full-epic" pirate battleship. The alting direction of the time-rich would switch too. Instead of null players having highsec alts for ISK making, highsec mains peacocking in a purple Tengu would have a nullsec ratting alt busily farming for officer spawns, providing soft target to feed the PvP food chain.

The best part would be for alliances: they could set ratting bounty tax high and people would still happily rat as bounties would be a smaller part of the income compared to selling the loot. Also, currently they live on ingame-altruism: they have nothing to offer to the pilots who donate their time to the alliance efforts for nothing (the player of course can have fun doing it). With the change owning good ratting spots would be a pilot magnet and the alliances could set demands in return of letting pilots rat.

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About the source of "WoWifying":For some bug the instance pulled only the two of us in. We waited some time and then started clearing the trash. Then we pulled the boss. And 2-manned it. Seriously, this is a joke even for WoW. A hunter and a restoshaman shouldn't 2-man a 5-man instance in appropriate gear when they first see it.

For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Wednesday morning report: 161.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6+0.1 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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Why shouldn't "leeches" vote?

For long I've been suggesting that leeches should not be allowed to vote. They should be legally treated equal to children: having personal rights but no political ones. This idea is widely questioned and not just by moralists who come with nonsense like "people are equal just because".

There is a quick and dirty way to "prove" my statement. Many people agree that there are people who are too "dumb" or "immoral" to vote. However any kind of restriction could be abused by the ones in power to lock out their opposition. The "leeches can't vote" is the only non-abusable criteria, as you can only lock someone out by making him not pay tax, weakening the budget of your own government. Assuming that your opposition is not tiny (which case there is no need to lock them out), you decrease the tax income so much that your dictatorship goes bankrupt.

However I want to prove that it's not just a "necessary evil", which can be claimed to defend the "all can vote" system too. To do this I have to prove is that the leech vs "pulling his weight" is a crucial criteria itself and not a derivative or correlated one. I mean I can't say "leeches are dumb", regardless of its truth because then I want to actually remove the "dumb" from the voting and there can be much better ways to find a dumb one than his tax form. Also I have to prove that a taxpaying person permanently losing his income (via old age, disablement or simply long-term unemployment) loses his ability to make an informed political decision.

One votes for his (assumed) interest or according to his beliefs of morality. We can cut the morality voting out of the question as being pro life or pro choice has little correlation and absolutely no causality with taxpaying. A welfare leech can believe in God no less or more than a top earner. So we can safely assume that removing them from the voters will not change the outcome of the hypothetical vote "Is there a God?"

This leaves us with personal (assumed) interest. I'm not claiming that the selfish interest of the "leech" is less valuable than the selfish interest of a model citizen. The personal safety of the non-voting children is more strongly protected by laws, crimes against children are punished more harshly and I'd gladly extend this protection to "leeches". The problem with one who doesn't earn his own food is the lack of connection to the process of creation, therefore the lack of recognized interest protecting it.

Let me explain: my closest personal interest would be cutting taxes. My income would double in absence of taxes. However like every non-retarded people (which includes "leeches" but not investment brokers of 2000-2007) I know that things can't be paid with thin-air money, so I can only cut tax if I cut government spendings. For example I could cut the educational costs. However I was myself educated and without this education I couldn't fulfill my job. Also, I need educated coworkers every time one leaves, so if education would disappear, my workplace would be unable to continue operation and I'd be fired. I could cut the defense budget, but for my workplace to operate it needs stability. No one buys its product during a (civil) war. I could cut the health care system, but then what would happen if I or my coworkers get ill. We can't work, our income source goes away.

Being a productive person, I'm personally connected to practically every single government projects except direct social transfers (welfare, medicare, social security, medicaid and whatever name "money for nothing" has in your country). I couldn't cut any project without cutting myself. This connection is experienced by every single productive person, including the least intelligent ones. Even a barely-literal street-sweep travels on the city bus, protected by the cops, treated by the doctors. These things can and should be explained him on his level.

On the other hand leeches are connected only to social transfers. The collapse of transportation, electricity, education, home defense and all and every other systems would cause him no decrease of income, assuming that the welfare system keeps operating. If the magic unicorns keeps sending him his welfare check, he can't care less if his country is in total disarray. If he votes for less maintenance of the electrical system, he just has to suffer the nuisance of power outages a few times. For a working person it's much more than that, as machines stop and the current batch of products is lost. He directly experience the damage the wrong policy caused and can vote the next election to fix it before it becomes a fatal problem.

Of course a leech can understand intellectually that magic unicorns don't exists and if there is no government, there is no welfare check. However no one can tell how much weight the system can carry before breaking down and he can rightfully assume that it can carry a little bit more. The point is that until the situation comes to Mad Max riding his bike, the leech is rationally better off voting for more social transfers and more weight placed on the working people. The problem is that - as the Greeks will see soon - Mad Max isn't that far.

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Mist of Pandaria is out and I'm playing, lvl 86, but not sure if there is anything to blog about it.
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Tuesday morning report: 160.6B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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The right definition of the leech

My ideas are centered around the productive vs leech frontline. "Makers and takers" is a commonly used term. However, just as the 47% scandal shown, there isn't a proper definition of the leech. If one doesn't pay federal tax but pays payroll tax, is he productive or leech? The 10K DPS guy in a WoW instance below the tank is a leech? If so, why the Rifter pilot is useful in EVE?

There are no good definitions. The "worse or better than average" is intuitive but its total uselessness is revealed in the WoW dungeon vs EVE fleet problem, as the Rifter pilot is way below average and still useful, the below-tank guy in WoW is a pain in the ass. The "does he pays tax" question breaks on government workers (whose whole payment come from tax of others). We need an objective and valid definition of the leech.

At first I clarify the scope of the definition: the group where the questioned person belongs. The leech always leeches on a group, you can't be a leech in an island alone. The same person can be qualified differently in a different group. Let's start with: "Leech is someone whose complete disappearance with all his assets would make the group better off." Let me give some game examples:

• WoW random dungeon: if someone drops group or kicked, a random player takes his place. So anyone who performs worse than the average player could be replaced for better in most cases by random selection. He is a leech.
• Wow pre-formed dungeon group: the alternative of him being there is 4-manning. That case the dungeon becomes slower but neither he rolls on loot. Is he leech or not depends on which case provides higher loot/hour for the others.
• EVE Rifter flyer in fleet: his contribution is very small but he takes away nothing from the other fleet members. He is not a leech.
  

In real life, the question is complicated, even if we quantify the non-work performance of the person (like raising 3 children could be "taxed" if we book portion of the tax paid by the children to their parents). We can also quantify how much value the person received from government services like the protection of the army. While no one likes to be leeched on, there is a strong support of socialism among people who are not leeches. I believe that it is because of using bad definition, therefore labeling useful people leeches, allowing the socialists rightfully fight for them.

Now, the bad definition is what Romney used: if you give less contribution to your country than your share of the budget, you are a leech. People with no federal tax are such. It's intuitive, if there are 10000 people in town and the town budget is $10M than the average member must pay $1000. If you pay less, you received services that you don't contribute to upkeep, if everyone would be like you, the city couldn't operate.

This is wrong. The big problem is that governmental services has fixed and variable costs in different portions. For example welfare is almost 100% variable: if you have twice as many recipients, it costs 2x more. However the defense budget has mostly fixed costs: the army defends the country, having 2x more population doesn't make defending the same land harder or easier for the same army. Most services has both fixed and variable costs, like a road has costs even if no one walks on it, but a busy road needs more maintenance.

The $10M budget of our example city has a $5M fixed cost. You had to pay this money to upkeep the city even if no one lives in it. The loans got to build the roads must be repaid. Some firefighters must be paid to deal with lightning fires and broken trees. The water supply lines need maintenance even if no water is consumed. The roads lights need electricity. The other $5M is variable cost, had the population double, it would double too. As there are 10K population, it's clear that the cost of supporting one more citizen is $500. Now it's still true that the average citizen must pay $1000 for the city to keep operating. If half of the population pays only $700, the other half must pay $1300. It's not fair and it feels right to consider the first half leeches. But if we'd evict them from the city, the budget would be $5M fixed costs + $2.5M variable costs after the remaining 5000 people. They would have to pay $1500, $200 more than before kicking the "leeches".

The correct definition of a leech is "someone who pays less than his share of the variable costs of the government". This is what the pro-capitalism activist get wrong. The low-income blue collar workers typically pay less than their share from the total budget but more than their share from the variable costs. When right-wing politicians try to tax them more, their jobs becomes too expensive and they lose it, causing recession or debt, while making them vote for the left. Had the proper definition be used, these people would be left alone with little or no tax at all and not considered leeches. They could then be won to vote for an anti-leech government that would weed out those who are really leeches for the betterment of all.

This can be further elaborated by separating the variable costs of the budget into targeted and non-targeted groups. Targeted variable costs has a certain recipient: the welfare check of John goes to John, the Medicare of Ann goes to Ann, the scholarship of Jane goes to Jane. Non-targeted variable costs are spent for every people in the zone nearly equally: the more citizens you have, the more police officers you need, but the protection they provide affects everyone. So the absolutely accurate definition of leech is someone whose personal targeted budget costs + non-targeted variable per capita is smaller than his contribution to upkeeping the budget.

Of course it's easy to recognize that the above definition is unfair. Someone must pay the fixed costs of the government too, if everyone pays only his share of the variables (therefore not a leech), the country goes bankrupt. Only the flat tax and equal contribution is fair. Let me give an example that may help you get rid of this kind of thinking: imagine that a group wants to carry cargo from A to B in backpacks. Beside the items people must have water, food and other stuff to support themselves on the road.

• The leeches don't even carry their own stuff and beg for food and water from others
• The weak guys carry little or no cargo, but carry their own weight, asking nothing from the strong guys
• The strong guys carry their own stuff and the cargo

Not accepting this is the reason why pro-business governments tend to collect deficit. The "fair" distribution is not optimal. They would demand the weak guys to carry equal amount of cargo that they can't. When they collapse, they need to be carried or left to die, either way less cargo is carried without them than with them. The optimal distribution is to unfairly demand higher contributions from those who has a lot and demanding unfairly less from those who has little. This is exactly the socialist mantra, and it works. The point where socialists become wrong is that they support the leeches too, demanding the strong guys not only to carry their part of cargo, but to carry their food, water and ultimately their lazy selves (at the expense of carrying cargo).

Finally the best part. If we accept the above definition we can be Keynesian and pro-free-market: the government should increase spending on projects that has high fixed costs and cut spendings that has high variable costs, especially if they have targeted costs. This way both jobs and money can be created from thin air as one can always find another project to work on which will benefit the society. Please note that the WWII forced exactly this in the US economy, by creating a huge fixed-cost project of defeating Hitler, revitalizing the whole economy. The main reason such policies are not implemented is that the high-income voters are personally interested in tax cuts (overall cut of all projects without debt) while low-income voters are personally interested in welfare. The solution is in the hand of the middle class who can carry their own weight and neither needs welfare, nor wish to be a leech, and would have a high cost-benefit ratio from fixed-cost projects.

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Mist of Pandaria is out and I'm playing but not sure if there is anything to blog about it.
The minmatar FW militia cashed out on Sunday and EVE-Kill net is up. Enjoy the unquestionable evidences that one can play EVE Online without a functional brain.
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Tuesday morning report: 160.3B, God Bless the FW exploiters! (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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What's wrong with CSM?

The blogs and forums are all over with the underperformance of the CSM. The “Council of stellar management” is a player-elected group of players in EVE online who have direct connection to the developers of the game. It’s the seventh CSM, elected with more votes than ever, following the sixth which worked with great results. The players who used to praise CSM6 now curse CSM7 for incompetence, laziness, being unable to make decisions, communicating badly.

Of course none of them offer solution, besides the generic "work harder", "talk more to the players" nonsense. Reading lot of real life election news and editorials nowadays, due to the "47% scandal", I think I know what’s wrong with CSM: they try to represent the players. That can’t be done, because "the players" isn’t a group. Highsec miners are equally players as hulkageddoners. "F1-drones" are just as players as "l33t PvP-ers". FW AFK-orbiters are no less of players than highsec missioners. Gatecamping pirates pay the same subscription as haulers.

Such differences in real life are handled via the majority election. If the majority of the Americans believe that obamacare, medicare and high taxes are great, Obama will remain president. If they are minority, Romney will be it. The other group can eat cake, the president will act against their will, harming their interest. The focal point of the 47% scandal is that Romney told the truth that it’s not his job to care about the Obama voters. He wouldn’t be their president, just like Obama wouldn’t be the president for republicans, even if he is smart enough to claim the opposite.

What the CSM tries to achieve is the "great national coalition". Such things do happen in dire times. For example the former opposing parties of Greece united to try to save the country from bankruptcy. The monoclegate of CSM6 was such situation. "Greed is good" threatened all players, regardless of their playstyle. During this time the CSM had to be united and act as one. But that was the exception, not the rule. The normal way is constant arguing. The CSM should not have a common opinion outside of such cases of emergency.

If CCP asks "what about lowsec gateguns" the representative of the pirates should collect data and evidence against it. He should do his best proving that gateguns are harming a valid playstyle. The representative of industrialists and null/WH haulers should do the same for it. He should prove how gatecamps are just fun for a few dozens while ruins the life of thousands. They should not come to an agreement, CCP shall make the decision based on their arguments. The Mittani was considered great in CSM6 because he did his job. He represented his group, the Goons against everyone else. The titan nerf served no other than GSF (and TEST), as it stopped established players to be able to fight outnumbering newbies. The representatives of "elite" nullsec groups should have stop it from happening, that was their job.

Now, when CCP asks "what about lowsec gateguns", the CSM members answer with a guess about the opinion of the majority of the players. However their guess is just as good as yours or mine or any random CCP dev. Giving a random guess doesn’t worth an air ticket to Iceland. On the other hand they know for sure the opinion and arguments of their "party" and it would be valuable information for CCP.

I believe the bad state of CSM is more or less the result of the election and management process of it. CCP could make significant difference.

• At first they should point out that being on CSM isn’t a fun past time. There shouldn’t be drinking and partying in Iceland as it fosters friendship and niceness. Obama and Romney don’t go out for a beer night together. The miners hate Goons, if their representative is nice to the Goon one, he is practically betraying the people who voted him in. On the forums he should be their voice, openly treating Goons the way his voters want to (and of course receive the same treatment in return). He should go to Iceland in a "Fuck Goons!" T-shirt, just like The Mittani said in his CSM7 program "If you think that suicide ganking should be banned, I don’t want your vote. In fact, tell me where you hang out, so I can drop a Brutix on you.". The above can be factilitated by making the CSM meetings as formal and job-like as possible.
• CSM minutes should be more readily available, allowing the players to give faster feedback to their representatives. “call your congressman” is a common civilian movement, same should be with CSM.
• No NDA for CSM! CSM represents the people. Whatever they know should be known to the people. By giving them secrets, CCP makes CSM "inside men", loyal to CCP and not to the players. If something is not ready to be shown to players, CSM shouldn’t see it either.
• CSM should have a manageable size. There is no point for non-travelling members. They should be N equal representatives.
• A more equally representative election system. Had The Mittani wouldn’t lose his seat over being stupid, the Goons would still have one voice for 10K votes. The FW people has the same one voice for 1/4 as many votes. 1/4 of the votes were lost as given to candidates who don’t have seat. The complete STV (not the Trebor Daehdoow version) should be implemented: here if there are N seats, you need 1/N vote for a seat. Let’s say 50K voters, 10 seats, that’s 5000 votes/seat. If a candidate gets 6000, then 1000 votes will be transferred to their secondary candidate. So Goons with 10000 votes would have 2 seats. If everyone over 5000 votes got his seat, the lowest vote candidate is removed and the votes for him are changed to the secondary. So people who voted for him won’t lose their vote but it goes to the candidate who they think second best. On the vote ballot the voter can give 10 names in order, but he don’t have to fill them all out. If he leaves spots open, it’s automatically filled according to the template given by their primary candidate.

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For trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.

Saturday morning report: 156.5B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 155.8B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.8+1.0 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
On Monday there is no report because:

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47%

US president candidate Mitt Romney had a speech on a fund-raiser event which became (in)famous as the "47% speech". Please watch it.

When I saw it, I said that I'd vote for this guy despite his other flaws if I was American. It turned out - just as he used to - he had the numbers wrong and probably didn't know the details what he was talking about. The largest fail is that the 47% who don't pay federal tax still pay various taxes and this percentage jumped up when some republican president cut taxes. Ronald Reagan was proud of increasing this very percentage.

However Romney being prepared and knowledgeable as Sarah Palin does not change the value of the idea he was talking about. Something I was talking about for years. Let me rephrase what he said, you'll see that I did not change the meaning, just clear it up:

• There is a large group of people who are dependent on the government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that the government has responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That's an entitlement, the government should give it to them.
• These are the people who don't pay tax or contribute to upkeeping the country in any other meaningful form. So the message of lowering taxes or spinning up the economy doesn't connect. They will actually take these messages as "more money for the rich".
• We can never convince them to take responsibility and care for their own lives.
• This group will vote for a socialist government, no matter what

Almost the same as he said, except now it makes sense. I'm not sure that Romney would be a good president. However bringing up this idea in public, taking it to the spotlight is important. It alone explains why Greece, Hungary, Spain, Italy and such are in deep trouble. Here this group is way over 50% of the electorate. The prime minister of Hungary told that the IMF (who has terms for a loan) must understand that the topic of pensions (about 20% of the budget) are a matter of democracy, we can't afford the elderly to turn away from democracy (and vote for neo-nazis or communists). In the troubled European countries the only way of deficit decrease that the majority of voters accept is raising taxes and firing government employees (soldiers, firefighters, teachers, people who do useful work). These of course decrease the GDP, decrease tax income, increase the unemployment, therefore the number of welfare leeches.

What to do? Romney stumbled upon the solution: "My job is not to worry about these people." But how can you not worry about voters? Soon we'll see if Romney could afford to ignore them, but he has the theoretical chance to win an election against these people. In Europe (and in 5-10 years in the US), it isn't possible even if every single taxpayer vote as one. The only way to not worry about their opinion is the way we don't worry how kids feel about the election: they shouldn't be able to vote. The non-taxpayers should have equal rights as children. This is what I found after evaluating lot of data, 3 years ago. Of course this is directly incompatible with democracy. Well, this system had two good centuries and nothing lasts forever.


PS: PvP isn't boring at all if you find the fitting way for you. Here is me, answering the call on Jabber calling exactly for the ship I fly, PvP-ing 10 hours straight, clearing a whole system from -A- Citizens all by myself, while being asleep because I'm so good in PvP: (explanation, I picked a -0.8 system, which was busy)

Friday morning report: 155.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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EVE Character report - September

Here is my character report, 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	August SP	Sept. SP	Remap	Last month focus
1	Gevlon Goblin	1	4	7.39	8.29	P7-W7	Caldari Industrial 5
2	Hek trader	1	3	1.15	2.10	C10-M4	Accounting 5
3	Scout/cyno pilot	1	3	2.66	2.67	I10-M4	Not much
4	Amarr trader	2	4	2.76	3.53	M10-I4	Industry
5	Dodixie trader	2	4	2.79	3.43	C8-W6	Wholesale 5
6	Rens trader	2	4	3.29	3.67	C8-W6	Wholesale 5
7	Logi/Triage pilot	3	5	8.40	10.29	P10-W4	Logistics 5
8	Rorqual pilot	4	5	4.68	6.60	I10-M4	Support skills
9	Ragnarok pilot	5	5	4.10	6.11	I10-M4	Support skills
10	Nyx pilot for sale	6	5	3.76	5.73	I10-M4	Support skills
11	Dread pilot	7	5	3.38	5.38	I10-M4	Support skills
12	Girlfriends' character	8	4	9.82	11.76	P10-W4	"Rokh 5"

1. My main, Gevlon Goblin, still in P-W remap, but this month he dominated the account, progressing towards his end ship, the freighter. 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 and industry skills.
2. This pilot practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory and does only trading. Finished Accounting 5, the last important trading skill, the rest can wait.
3. As proud member of TEST, she is my first nullsec pilot. Her job is to scout for the other pilots, do exploration and open cyno if needed.
4. She trades in Amarr and practically does nothing else. Finished trading skills, working on industry. She'll eat the skillpoints on this account.
5. She trades in Dodixie and practically does nothing else. Training is more or less complete.
6. She trades in Rens and practically does nothing else. Training is more or less complete.
7. She trains for logistics and triage carrier. Can fly a Scimitar with Logi 5. Now learns some drones, Guardian, and then train for Nidhoggur. This pilot will participate in fleet actions.
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 support skills. Will remap to Cha/Will to learn Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. Finally remap P-W for my ships: the Rorqual, a freighter and a jump freighter. It is followed by industrial skills, needed to compress ore.
9. This pilot has long way before flying anything but a shuttle. Still months in Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills. His later future is unknown. He was planned to fly my Ragnarok, but I canceled my titan plans for donation plan. He'll probably end up simple offgrid booster, but his hope of the great beast will never die.
10. To experiment with Character Bazaar, I started training a Nyx pilot. We'll see how much profit this sale will provide
11. He also started out as titan pilot. As I'm interested only in structure-involving battles, I'll have a dreadnought pilot too.
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, though starts to show signs of getting a clue about the game. She has two ships now, got a Noctis for looting/salvaging, but everything else is done by her Rokh. That ship improved a lot. She did some Cosmos missions to finally get standings for L4s.

Thursday morning report: 154.0B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6+0.2 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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... and it continues...

Look at this station! And look at the name of the system! It's a historic site, the place of the great supercap roam of -A-. There are these blues in space, I didn't have those. Yes, after long search and figuring donation as a way to contribute nullsec as trader, I am actually there. My cloaky scout joined TEST. I considered it a total waste of ISK to come with logi until I learn the basic know-how. She'll join in a few days.

I won't fly that much in null, as Jita will keep taking most of my EVE time. I'll mostly take part in fleet actions if timers are involved. I'll fly a logi/carrier and turned one of my wannabe titan pilots towards a dreadnought. My real contribution to the TEST efforts will be donating 20B/month. That's about 2.5 titans/year, but of course spent much better.

I'd like to explain why I choose TEST versus the "l33t" alliances. Many believes that HBC and CFC are morons and slackers. They troll local, they follow doctrines (F1 drones lol), they use reimbursed ships. At first it cannot be true for all of them, there must be an FC on the field after all and dictors and logis and scouts and all kind of non-F1 people. The corp chat was surprisingly mature and very helpful. The alliance chat is nearly empty, few, game-related talks, no idiotism. Also if you check out somethingawful.com, little childish trolling is to be found there. Seems their "ASCII penis spamming retards" image comes only from hostile propaganda (and maybe from trolling the hostiles in local).

They are not "elite PvP" indeed. But I'm not at all elitist. I believe that someone who pull his weight, even if he pulls less than me is a useful, worthy person. An organization that respects all form of useful contribution will prevail over an elitist one which despises anyone below and arbitrary threshold. The "F1 spamming" TEST will destroy the "l33t" -A- and I want this to happen. I want to be there when the last structure of Mr Pets don't talk back fall. I will contribute to this happening, hoping that it will open some eyes.

The leeches of null are those who use it but contribute nothing to keep it up. Surprisingly the "carebears" are such. If you rat in null, you use null. If you don't go fleet, or don't provide JF or POS-babysitting services, you don't contribute via time. If you don't donate ISK, you don't contribute via money. You are a leech. This is another reason of carebear hate. My other purpose here is to show that there is a non-military way of contribution: money donation. I want to prove that "being carebear" isn't bad for itself, it's bad for leeching. One can be a welcomed, respected "carebear" if he isn't a leech.

Let me point to two serious differences between WoW and EVE. WoW has fixed group numbers, if you damage less than the tank, you take the position of someone who would provide average DPS (by definition) which is bigger than yours. Your contribution is DPS-averageDPS which is a negative number. In EVE you take no ones place. Secondly and more importantly WoW give out rewards equally to group members. The guy at the bottom of the chart, below the hunterpets gets the same roll chance on loot and the same amount of emblems as the No1 guy. In EVE no one gets anything for being in fleet, the captured space can be later utilized by any member of the winning coalition. So in EVE you take no ones place and leech on no rewards by being in fleet. You can only leech by not showing up and utilizing the space others took without paying for it.

Oh and "we" nullsec people use to post awesome screenshots about our adventures, our little ship among the other 1000 ships. Here is mine (Source):EVE is indeed a sandbox where one must find his own unique way to make his adventure. I think I found mine.


PS: it's good to see that I'm not the only one who thinks highsec is overpowered.

Update: I'm now in the process of setting up the necessary services. It's damn hard, since the wiki is outdated (for example the api key list does not match the api mask given in the link), so practically impossible to do without corp chat help.

Update 2: I almost made my first PvP - against a blue, thanks the suggested, downloadable overview settings. It painted him red because of his low sec status.

Wednesday morning report: 154.0B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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My (non-existent) WoW future

I barely played WoW since I started EVE online. Time fades bad memories and places nostalgic light to the good ones. While I was parsing old posts, the pictures of firstkills felt bittersweet: it were all highlights of my WoW gaming, successes of my adventures. I was expecting to return to Mists of Pandaria.

Preparing to Mists of Pandaria, my girlfirend found a nice questline to free a little creature. The last step leads you to Zul'Gurub "heroic" (this word in WoW means that while you can solo it, it's faster in group). So after long months of inactivity we queued to a dungeon group to kill Bloodlord Mandokir. The "heroes of Azeroth" prevailed over the evil troll:
Needless to say that the #2 paladin was the tank. And no, the mage is not a freshly dinged alt, she has near-top level gear, and even some enchants and gems. Including a strength gem.

I know that the EVE playerbase isn't better. Retard fit killmails are all-over the place, even on titans. CCP had to buff the mining barges because the morons couldn't fit tanking items. But in EVE at least you can kill, scam and exploit them. In WoW you must help them to get rewards.

I don't care how great features, lore, graphics Blizzard created for MoP. There is nothing that can make me to be in the same groups as these disgusting failures. I'll play only with my guild, (The Pug, Agamaggan-EU), if there is no guild group, I won't play. Feel free to join if you want to experience MoP content without having to boost complete morons.

This little "heroic" shown how deep the game I once played with enthusiasm sank. The whole Mists of Pandaria setting is completely aiming for small children and 80 IQ "adults". Woot kung-fu pandas! Also, the game was further simplified to avoid the pictured creatures fail harder. Talent system removed, several spells removed, simplified. You can practically faceroll and do OK-ish performance. The new endgame, the "challenge mode" make character building completely irrelevant as gear will be normalized. Coupled with the simplified spell and talent system, in MoP there will only be dance, it will be like Super Mario.

Blizzard isn't evil or lowly, they merely go where the money is. If the largest reachable paying customer demographics is total morons, then they make game for total morons. If you aren't retarded, you aren't in the target audience. I am not always sure that EVE is different, but at least there is hope for it, since it allows us to be hostile to the morons, we aren't forced to feed them.


PS. Just received this video talking about the same entitled demographics. I can't believe that someone dared to say this in public. I'd totally vote for the guy, despite all his flaws, just for this one speech. (Unfortunately for him, I'm not in his country)


Tuesday morning report: 152.9B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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PLEX guide

If you like to do any form of PvE, industry or trading, you play EVE for free. EVE is different from other "play for free" MMOs as you can fully play it for free. You simply pay your subscription with the in-game item PLEX. You buy PLEX from other players for in-game currency ISK. PLEX is created into the game by other players buying it from the developer for about 17 euros (I don't know current $ price). There are sometimes sales and discounts for bigger packages.

You can use the PLEX by right-clicking it and choosing "Add game time to account". There can be 3 characters on an account and if either one uses the PLEX, the account will live for 30 more days. This allows you to use PLEX without leaving your current position. You just need an alt in trade hub who buys the PLEX.

The first lesson about PLEX is inflation. As CCP does bad job balancing the economy, players are printing ISK. If you have lot of ISK now that you don't plan to use, you can't be really wrong to buy a year worth of PLEX-es for your characters and add them to the account now as the price always rises on the long run. On the bottom of the market window there is a "show data" button that changes the graph into a table that you can copy to EXCEL to create such charts. This one shows the daily average price in Jita. The lines are the weekly and monthly moving centered averages. Normal moving average places data to the end of the period (the January average to Jan 31), centered to the middle (the January average to Jan 16). Centered average follows the data better but missing points at the most recent end of the chart.

The second lesson is volatility. PLEX prices jump up and down pretty fast. They rise slowly when CCP does some change in the game that makes one form of PVE better/easier/more fun. For example the current mining barge changes and the AFK-farming FW zones (which won't be fixed until the end of the year) let industrious players get lot of ISK that they use to support their accounts by buying PLEX-es. The more buyers, the higher the price. Expecting steady rise, speculators can arrive, creating fast jumps, like the one we could see just this week. PLEX prices drop if there is a PLEX sale on the account management or if there is a larger war with large losses is going on. The chart shows the difference of the actual day from the monthly centered average: So if you don't buy the PLEX on the last day before your account expire, you can catch a day when the price is 10-15M below the monthly average. If you literally buy on the last day, you can be unlucky and buy 10-15M higher. Don't buy on the last day, buy when it's cheap.

The third and probably most important lesson about PLEX is that - as usually - the majority is dumb. "Everyone" buys his PLEX in Jita. The chart below shows the relative prices of other hubs vs Jita, the lines are linear fits:Every single hub is below Jita. Even Amarr that is traditionally considered expensive is 1% below, the others are closer to 2%. That's 5-10M to save if you relocate your buying alt.

The last lesson is the most obvious: don't buy any sell orders, set up your own buy order. The chart shows the difference of the daily low sales (luckiest buy order) vs the daily average in the various hubs. You can see that 5-10M can be saved by setting your own buy order. If you set up buy order, don't forget that you have to pay broker fee. That's 1% for a clean char. If you learn broker relations to 3 and do just the faction newbie missions, you can cut the fee to half.


Saturday morning report: 148.7B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 150.1B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 152.1B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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Tragedy of commons (and non-TC alliances)

The tragedy of commons is a well-known economical problem, described by the anecdote: "herders sharing a common parcel of land, on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze. It is in each herder's interest to put the next (and succeeding) cows he acquires onto the land, even if the quality of the common is damaged for all as a result, through overgrazing. The herder receives all of the benefits from an additional cow, while the damage to the common is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational economic decision, the common will be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all."

In more precise terms, when the cost of an action is shared by all while the benefits are private, the rational interest of every individual is to perform the action, even if they know that at the end, the costs will be higher than the benefit, because if they don't do it, they still have to bear the costs of the actions of others. The tragedy of commons can only be prevented by regulation or privatization. In both cases an individual or body assumes control over the resource (or parts of it) and fends off those who would exploit it for their own benefit at a greater cost of all.

How does it manifest in the current EVE wars? The star systems can be utilized for various activities if they are protected from enemies. The costs of having systems is to raise an army capable of protecting it. Even if the individual agrees it and finds protection of the systems a worthy goal, the rational self-interest is to not waste resources defending it but hope that others do. If he chooses to defend, he puts in his resources and everyone receives the benefits. If the fleet wins, all members of the alliance equally win the system. The guy who spent a year of training and billions of ISK to fly a supercap don't get more sovereignity than the guy who disappeared for a week and played an anonymous alt for fun.

For this reason the block where the governing body has more control over the resources (not pilots) will win the war, regardless the amount of total resources or pilots. In simpler words, the wealth of the pilots is irrelevant, the wealth of the alliance matters. Clearly not SoCo or DotBros has such funds but CFC and HB. Everyone mention tech moons as the source of CFC-HB power and they are right, however they don't see how. 1T/month seems huge income, but if we divide it by 20K pilots, we get lousy 50M. The members of SoCo and DotBro could clearly overcome this disadvantage by farming a few hours every month. I'm sure they do farm. However what they farm goes to their individual wallet, while moon money go to the wallet of the leadership, allowing them to use it on the war effort. The leaders are motivated to use money for war, the individuals are not.

The above can not be broken by individualists, even if they all agree that army is needed and defeating the enemy is a worthy goal. Since formal control over players cannot be assumed (as you can't force players to log in a video game if they don't want to), only financial control can happen: an alliance that wishes to defeat another must have higher alliance level income. Ergo, the members doing PvE must be taxed or donations must be collected. From this chest the leadership can buy ships and pay pilots to spend their time on shooting structures, camping gates and so on.

Obviously the above assumes that "defeating the enemy" or "capturing sov" is an individually accepted aim of the members. If it's not, such alliance will be destroyed in a minute as the members quit it instead of paying the tax. The philosophy "I don't care about politics, I just care about myself and I move where I can" is completely legitimate. One can be a freelancer, one can live in highsec, lowsec, NPC-null, unprotected wormholes hoping no one finds. These are valid, philosophical choices.

However what SoCo did is not a choice, it's a mistake. They choose to be a powerblock and they did not fill up a war chest hoping that members will act against their personal interest and defend the alliance on their own costs. They clearly didn't. When the enemy were strong, they did not undock or did not log in, while CFC-HB happily waste fleets in uncertain battles. The pilots did not lose anything on this as they are fully reimbursed.

If you choose to be a powerblock, you must have a budget to fund the common goal: defending your land and capturing more.


Friday morning report: 147.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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Why PvE is boring and "carebear"?

The post of GamerChick42 is probably the best about the problems of PvE in EVE. Funnily she just used it as a metaphor for the same problem in her field: faction warfare button orbiting. Go and read it, it's perfectly written.

OK, I know you were too lazy to read it so I summarize for you: mining is boring because it lack risks. No code changes like stronger belt rats or so can change that. They would be annoying at best, but the miners would adapt by fitting a better tank or simply putting a battleship to the mining fleet. The only way risks (therefore excitement, accomplishment, fun) could be included into mining by making players come after the miners. However players will not go after miners because they don't want the rocks. Only bored gankers go after miners, and the best way to handle a bored kid is to bore him harder: dock when he arrives local so he finds nothing. The same is true for all kind of EVE PvE activity. No one tries to stop you from doing it. Not even the players who actually gank you try to stop you. They can't care less what you do, they just go after the officer items on your mission battleship, the kill report or simply griefing.

Because of lack of risk and competition, PvE is both boring and "carebear": an activity you could suggest to an 8 years old kid. You can write a protocol for every scripted PvE activity and the internet people do write such protocols, so playing PvE will always be "read up the proper site and follow the protocol". Boring, dumb, uninteresting after the "woot spaceships" novelty fades.

You can't write protocol for PvP. You can't know how many, how good and how armed enemies will come. Even the most experienced FCs lose battles. Excitement, fun can only come from PvP after the novelty of the graphics and lore fades. To make a game permanently fun, it must be PvP. In WoW the players did it by the bosskill race. While the boss is scripted, the time to complete it depends on other people. Everyone will kill the boss but if you don't hurry, you'll do it as World #50000. Of course it always need new bosses, without constant content addition, WoW would die in half year.

EVE is fundamentally a PvP game, so it shouldn't be so hard to modify PvE to be PvP: the devs must make other players want your resources. Currently no one wants your rocks or rats or missions. There is practically infinite amount of them. Currently EVE PvE is simple grind that converts time into ISK. If you have time, you will have ISK. Funnily the above setup not only makes PvE boring but also makes PvP rare and sporadic. You have no other reason to PvP than being bored. Someone attacking a miner or missioner is most likely a griefer: he would get more "character progression" by mining next to him instead, killing him has no reward.

EVE lacks proper conflict drivers. Not I say that, devs and CSM do. "Seleene responded by saying that these days the major players in each alliance all hang out in the same jabber channels and conversations after fights are more akin to chat after a friendly match (even though titans and super caps were destroyed) rather than ‘hatred’ – everyone is so filthy rich that losses really don’t matter. The ‘romance’ of old times, where hate and animosity where driving factors are largely gone. The sense of loss has turned from ‘damn, now I have to go and mine to afford all this stuff again’ to ‘man, now I have to go to the market and spend money.’" "Major players" considering matches friendly is indeed lack of conflict. However his reasoning is conflicting itself "losses don't matter" and "I have to go mine" (something I don't like), are mutually exclusive. Let's see some more quotes: "Two step clarified this by saying that there would be conflict drivers if it meant something to lose, in order to get mad at someone they have to do something to hurt you.", " It could be said that people are perhaps ‘too’ comfortable at present and even though resources (such a moon materials) are tempting, they are not tempting enough to ignite a war." It seems they agree that losing items (fundamentally ISK) is conflict driver, but they don't see the conflict emerging. "Seleene added to this that personal animosity is the best conflict driver in EVE, not resources or space.", which is merely a rephrasing that CCP sucks in igniting conflict so hard that the word "mate" outperforms them.

Theoretically you have losses if you lose PvP: you lose your ship and probably implants. They cost ISK. You should be mad instead of giving "good fight lol". Let's see how the PvE problem creates the lack of PvP conflict:

1. Only bored people PvP, they do it for fun. (experimental axiom, everyone sees that)
2. If they lose, they lose ISK (fact)
3. To regain ISK they (or some pet of theirs) must do PvE (fact)
4. To do PvE they only need time (fact)
5. Time they have in large supply, since they did PvP against boredom at the first place

The fixing can only come at point 4: time must not guarantee you ISK. How can it be implemented? Let's start with mining. Currently if you want to mine, all you need is a mining barge and time. Theoretically you need rocks too, but you also need air to breath while playing EVE, but you don't mention it because air is there. To fix this, rocks must be rare. I mean so rare that there aren't any floating peacefully. They should be so rare that if a belt respawns or a gravimetric signature appears, in 2 minutes someone should warp to it and start mining. The average player must spend 50-80% of his "mining time" not by mining but by hunting belts. The chance that you dedicate an hour mining, yet you fail to find a single rock and mine nothing should be significant.

In highsec it would only be a campfest with occasional ganking. In low, null and WH the key is that the spawn is random and cannot be triggered or directed any way. Sovereignity upgrades that allowed more or bigger rocks to spawn must be removed or changed into some utility like "rock detection array" that give bookmarks to members to newly spawned belts and a bonus to the scanners for finding gravs. The only way to increase the chance of rock spawning in your territory (sov or simply "your turf") should be increasing your territory. The more systems you have, the more systems you can mine. Unless a mining covops Tengu gets there first.

Rat complexes should be the same. They should spawn so rarely that every beacon is camped and you have good chance to kill no rats at all. The only way to increase rat access should be increasing your controlled territory or driving away competing ratters.

There should be only one incursion spawning every week and if it's done, it's done.

Mission agents should have a limited amount of missions, new ones respawning over time. If an agent is out of missions, he can give out no more until next respawn. While camping rats and ores is OK since it involves being on grid and prone to be ganked, camping agents on stations would be a terrible mechanic. So I'd suggest bribing them. You can bid with ISK at the agent and the highest bidder gets the next mission.

Of course newbies should be protected from this, so lvl1 agents should have infinite amount of missions, 1/10 complexes should respawn fast. Giving infinite veldspar would be bad idea as tritanium is used even in Titans, so it would be better to just place more lvl1 mining agents to help newbie miners.

It's quite clear how the above changes would turn PvE into PvP: the best way to get rocks is killing the other miner. But how would it revitalize PvP and change it from a consensual timesink into a dark and unforgiving battle? The reason why no one cares about battle losses is the guarantee that he can re-grind it any time, anywhere. The competition for PvE sites would mean that you might have to wait, or you might have to move.

Now if a nullsec alliance would lose all its ships and a thief would take all its wallet and its members had no money either, they could still surely raise a fleet for the next timer, assuming the members are motivated to do some grind for the alliance. With the new scheme a defeat can be decisive. The enemy could effectively deny you PvE at the limited sites by roams and black ops drops, making you unable to make ISK in null. Combined by the overcamped highsec where farming a battleship would take 30+ hours (which is OK for highsec players as they don't lose it, so have to farm it once) losing your fleet or your wallet being robbed can mean that you are done: you lost your space, can't PvE in null, have to farm 100+ hours on your highsec alts to have the half dozen ships needed to return. That would eradicate "good fight" from local.

Of course I'm not naive and don't assume that CCP devs don't know that. They designed the game as it is on purpose. The No1 rule of MMOs is that players don't tolerate losses and quit if they have some. The only difference between WoW and EVE is the "respawn time". In WoW you can run back to your corpse in a minute, in EVE "respawning" your lost ship can take 1-2 hours of grind.

However EVE isn't beyond hope with the current settings either. The above statement is true with the cheap crap most PvP-ers fly. You can "respawn" a Drake in an hour. "Respawning" a Rokh takes 4-5 hours. A Navy Apocalyps cost 10 hours of grind, a lost dread or carrier can take away 30 hours. So having a fleet that can only be countered by expensive ships, you can actually win a war in the sense that the enemy is unable to "respawn" in time.


Thursday morning report: 147.4B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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PVE games, PvP games, griefers and highsec kills

There are lot of PvP games out there. Games where you advance by defeating enemy players. Chess is a pure PvP-game. There is no PvE content in chess, all you can do is fighting other players. You can elevate on the ladder only by defeating other players and if you are defeated, you lose rating. Chess is a non-consensual PvP game, the only way to avoid PvP is not playing.

You can play chess against a computer. Does it violate the above statement? Does playing against a computer make you play "PvE chess"? No. Not because some computer AIs are so good that they can defeat master players. Not because some day a true AI will be created who will have true intelligence and self-awareness and playing chess against it wouldn't be different than playing against an equally rated player. Not even because if you play on a computer, you might be unable to tell if your opponent is the computer, or another player over the internet.

The reason why playing chess against a computer is still PvP is that the computer opponent uses the same tools as you. The computer has the same pieces, can make the same move. The computer AI obeys the same rules as a player, therefore it is a player. Maybe a bad player who can be easily defeated, but no different than an equally bad human player. There are such bots for HL Counterstrike, League of Legends, Starcraft and they don't decrease the PvP nature of these games. Since the bots usually suck, defeating them is considered newbie activity, something that help you learn the basics. One that only plays against a bot therefore considered a "noob", a bad player who can only defeat the weak bots.

PvE games can be defined as games where the computer opponent obeys different rules as the player. For example the quilboars of WoW or the Guristas of EVE just spawn from nothing, use different skills and their strength is different from the strength of a player in equal sized character. For example the lvl 10 quilboar warrior has much smaller armor and DPS than a lvl 10 player, while a raidboss has much-much more HP than the players and meant to be defeated 1 v 25. Defeating such "mobs" is either considered "grinding" or "completing content", but not actual combat. You can only compete against an opponent. The quilboars are not opponents for any player, while a chess AI is an opponent. It beats some players and loses to some, but it plays the same game as you.

In PvP games the competition is direct. You win chess by defeating opponents. There is competition in PvE games too. 100m running is a PvE sport. You are in your lane, running against the time of other players. You have to reach the goal zone before they do, and they can do nothing to stop you except by "completing the content" faster. Such competition can be seen in WoW World first fights.

Now to the interesting topic: griefers. Ever heard of chess-griefers? I didn't. Does it mean that chess players are all gentlemen? Maybe, so let's look at a much less gentlemanly game: boxing. Any stories of box-griefers? No, the ear-bite doesn't count, as the biter was banned from the game.

In PvP games, the goal is to defeat the other player, to destroy his ingame assets: remove his chess pieces, kill his avatar in CS, knock his body out in the boxing ring. The game is already all-out PvP, you can't be more destructive to the opponent than you already are without breaking the game rules. You are here to defeat him, take away his rating, break his dreams of winning. No trash talk or random idiocy can beat that. Besides exploits, the game rules of a video game cannot be broken as they are enforced by the code, so there cannot be griefing in PvP video games without bugs. (I ignore teamkillers as they are a by-product of automatic matching, you don't have them in handpicked teams).

"Griefing" can only happen in PvE games. It can only be defined in PvE. Griefing is an act that delays another player from reaching his goal while it delays me equally, which is stupid as the third player will get ahead of both of us. If arthasdklol parks his mammoth mount on the top of the postbox, other players can't use the box. He can't use it either and he can't do anything since he is sitting on the box. His action is totally pointless in-game, and has only one goal: inconveniencing other players. It doesn't make arthasdklol win, actually it makes him lose (as he is locked out from every game activity while sitting on the box, while his opponents are only locked out of the box).

There are lot of usage of the term "griefer" in EVE, proving that most people experience it as a PvE game. They believe that they can "win" it by reaching some goal (ISK, ship type, standing) before the others and blowing their ship up randomly serves no competitive purpose for the attacker, he is just after tears. Maybe the developers didn't mean this. Maybe they wanted players to PvP. But they failed to implement any reward system that makes most of the players fight (for any other reason than "harvesting tears"). There is Sov map. There are resources in nullsec. They clearly meant players to fight for it. (more about it in a later post). They probably ignored the fact that most MMO players just want to improve their character and they won't risk it unless they are forced. PvP games force them: you fight an opponent in chess or don't play chess. In EVE, you can stay forever in highsec, or dock up when neutral arrives in null while "improving your character". Many don't even see why should they fight. To grief a stranger?

Not having clear definitions lead people consider completely valid PvP "griefing" and demand developers to stop it. Like this snowflake thread where some genius demands more developer help against destroying freighters overfilled with valuable loot. Since the loot is valuable, taking it increases ones power. The attackers will be more rich after the attack (assuming average drop-loss rate) than before. This is the definition of competitive PvP: your loss is my gain. It is not griefing (your loss is my loss too, but I don't care lol). Players can always win competitive PvP by playing better. For example by not filling 20B cargo to a freighter. Next time use an Orca for the small and valuable cargo, or carry it in 1B batches in a freighter.

Wednesday morning report: 144.4B, Damn the FW exploits and CCP being so slow with the fix. (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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So it begins

Upvote is the director corp of TEST alliance. After a pleasant discussion with one of the TEST diplomats, they created a "donation" line in the balance sheet, and just as I said last week, sent them the first 20B. Unless something bad happens, I'll keep sending 20B on every month 10.th.

So the bad news is that I won't have a titan. The good news is that maybe something great starts in the history of EVE, maybe industrious pilots follow this example and start donating their unused money to their alliance instead of spending it on ships they can't really fly. With just a few dozen pilots that 6% income I provide alone can easily jump above the Tech moons. Let's leave flying titans to those who actually do it right. No need for more daves dream.

I was also invited to join TEST which I'll happily do as soon as I'll have my logi pilot ready to fly. I have some things to finish in highsec, and then my "combat" pilots will be off to actually fly in nullsec. I already see that the most busy will be my Rorqual.

Since this is EVE, things can always turn out bad. But this plan definitely worth losing 20B that I'm not even using anyway.


Friday morning report: 144.0B, (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

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MMO "individualism": lack of quadratics

I'm not playing World of Warcraft at the moment, but it will change with Mists of Pandaria coming out. I'm not planning to start any project or doing any form of endgame, just a journey in the game content. Blizzard is famous for creating good content and for screwing up gameplay terribly. WoW isn't a game anymore, it's an interactive movie.

Growing individualism in MMOs became a theme in blogs, including Tobolds and stubborns. They claim that WoW is an individualist game, where one with individualist mindset will win over those who are collectivist. They emphasize the solo leveling as an unquestionable proof of fostering individual play. Tobold said "WoW's problem is that playing alone offers the fastest progression". It is factually not true. There are four kind of WoW quests:

• Kill 10 wolves: you get kills for the wolves the other guy kill, so if you are N in the group, you have to kill 10/N wolves
• Kill big bad wolf: all of you have to do HP/N damage into the big bad wolf to die and you all get the kill.
• Take item from wolves lair: the item is protected by n wolves. In a party of N you have to kill n/N wolves
• Gather 10 wolf pelts: here you have to kill 10 wolves in group and in solo too. The only problem in group if the zone has less than 10*N wolves because you have to wait for respawn. However Blizzard adjusted respawn times according to players present, so wolves will spawn.

I played WoW leveling only in group, together with my girlfriend. It's even faster than the mentioned 1/2, as we designed our leveling builds that one of us could tank or heal, so we could pull all the wolves and AoE them down. All the mechanics to do that (AoE damage >> single target, holy trinity) were done by Blizzard. WoW leveling is designed to be easy in group. The individualistic design of EVE is stunning by comparison: two players on the same mission can't do it together, the agent gives different locations. Travel time takes much of the EVE mission time, so you are better off doing your missions separately.

I would guess WoW XP gathering is about 70% better in a team of two. Before Tobold would say "no", I'd ask him to do the same test and ask her wife just one hour to speed-level together. He'll see the XP just rolling in.

Why do people still level solo? One would naturally blame the morons and slackers who make grouping ineffective: they do low effort (they kill 2 wolves while you kill 8), they go AFK, forcing you to wait for them or drop group and they are extremely annoying with their jokes and lolspeak. However it's a wrong answer. You'd just have to find people of your own skill and the average players would level together happily.

The power increase from getting a groupmate is quadratic. Simple explanation: the team lives until the enemy eats their HP, time_to_live = HP*n/enemy_DPS where n is member count. They do DPS*n*time_to_live damage, so their overall damage is DPS*HP/enemy_DPS*n². This equation is written deeply into our psyche, as it was a very strong evolutionary bonus to be able to recognize when to fight and when to run. So anything less than quadratic increase feels lacking.

The quadratic increase is there in PvP. The EVE alliances that focus on numbers steamroll "elite PvP" groups, despite their gaming skill and the value of their ship is low even by their own confessions. It could be there in PvE too, but it's not. Its lack is felt strongly, causing aversion from group play. I mean if you are in a team of two, you subconsciously expect 4x more XP and you get 1.7x more. Then you - also sub-consciously - assume that the other player is leeching on you.

To see the reason, let's return to the equation: total_damage = DPS*n*time_to_live. How much is time_to_live in WoW or EVE PvE? No, it's not HP*n/enemy_DPS. It's infinite. You just can't die. Both in WoW and EVE you can't die if you do level-appropriate quests unless you do something atrociously stupid.

OK, MMOs have to be accessible to different level of players, and a quest that is just OK for one is faceroll to another and impossible to the third. However there could be a solution: the rewards of enemies (XP, items) should be proportional to their strength. The main problem with WoW leveling is not at all rewarding questing into red. If I kill a monster much above my level, I get barely more XP than I'd get from one in the green, deep below me. Since there is no reward in killing hard enemies, there is no reason to try doing hard content, so the game will be facerolling to everyone regardless player skill. The only difference between a topguild member and Arthasdklol that the first facerolls yellow monsters while the second does deep green. I've done some missions for standing in EVE and found the same: there is no reason for a Badger II to fill up its hold with the mission cargo of a lvl 4 distribution, it's better to put the cargo of 4 lvl3s in it.

The solution to design games to be "collectivist" is to provide greater rewards for doing harder content. I mean much greater reward, in the sense that if that two destroyers can do just one lvl 3 together, they should get more rewards than farming lvl 1s all day or in WoW killing a monster 7 levels above you should grant you as much XP as killing 1000 7 levels below you.


No business reports because I'm AFK until Monday evening, can't process comments either.

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The Apocalypses of hope

The HoneyBadger Coalition can't stop to amuse me. Not only because they managed to capture the most sov and by disconnecting from CFC, turning into an allied but individual coalition. I already praised their kitchen sink fleets, where members bring their own-funded ships to battle.

I already liked that they fielded Rokhs instead of the Drakes which have the badge of "New Eden welfare office against starvation". However now they managed to truly surprise me: they fielded Navy Apocalypse battleships. These things cost around 500M just for the hull. Now that's a huge jump from Drakes. And they work! I always told that ISK matter in fights and the "moar ppl" strategy only bring you to such point, but I did not expect it to be implemented so fast, and especially not by HBC, considering the stressed financial situation of TEST (PL probably fares better or at least has larger reserves).

Now I have a problem: where is the point when the best is good enough to take the good with the bad? I mean after long (and often hilarious) search I found how industrialists could be included into nullsec alliances: by getting their own donation board, a place for both personal pride and a tool to silence a "lol ima pvper ur a carebear" idiot by pointing out that his contribution, measured in ISK damage to the enemy is 5-10% of the contribution of a "carebear". The previous ideas (which were necessary steps to reach this conclusion), received extreme amount of laughter and mocking, but this one received only support and approval, so it has good chance to work.

However it won't be implemented now by any existing powerblock. Big things turn slow, especially if the changes affect the culture. They change only when forced. So I simply wanted to wait until they'll be in a dire financial situation enough to make changes. My plan was to amass enough money to single-handedly solve the bankruptcy of an alliance asking the implementation of the donation board in return. Two things are going bad for TEST, one is Tech nerf, the other is FW. FW offers much better ISK than highsec, offering even more moneymaking options to people than nullsec ratting that the alliance can tax. Also the FW LP print make faction items cheap, so more people can replace their T2 modules to faction, decreasing Tech prices even more.

But now I'm not so sure about this plan. HBC already did lot of good things and with the Navy Apocalypse fleet they clearly became much better for my taste than any other existing block. They shine out of the PvP herd mentality: "lol, we don't care about land, we had more kills." Instead they say "we don't give a damn on losses, we win land", just what I want to hear. There are three outcomes to consider:

• I wait until they are financially bled out. When facing losing sov because they (or someone else) can't replace fleets, they accept that industry is a necessary and valuable thing and implement some form of industry-respecting system. Maybe my donation board, maybe something else, but the point is that they will welcome players who contribute via ISK and not PvP time and consider them equally valuable. Anyway, my long term ideas would be fulfilled and "I made history".
• I wait and when they run out of cash, instead accepting industry, they return to cheap ships or lose some regions or simply failcascade and replaced by the PvP herd. Either way all the things I like about them (Slowcats, Navapocs, Supercap drops, kitchen sink, kicking the worst scammer of EVE) are lost. I can spend years in highsec, waiting for the next opportunity.
• I suck it up, accept the good with the bad and start sending them donation, asking no changes in return. I have 70B unused cash now, so I can safely donate 20B/month to them. This allows the reimbursement of 40 Navapocs/month and above all, finally stabilize the terrible budget of TEST. No history is made, but I helped improving the overall quality of nullsec.

Please note that it wouldn't be "buying myself in", the donation would not demand any changes of recruitment policy, so I still wouldn't fit in. If I wanted to get in on their terms, I could for free, all I need is an anonymous alt. I want to join as an industrialist who sometimes fly (only when structures are involved) and not as a PvP pilot who carebears on some hidden highsec alt, so they wouldn't take me. The question is, shall I support an alliance where I don't fit in, one that consider the people like me "lol carebears", with 20B/month just because they are better than the rest?

I'll have to think a lot about that and would welcome ideas, especially from those who see a HBC entity from inside. Feel free to contact me about this topic in game convo or mail (Gevlon Goblin). Please don't use the goblinworks channel for that, it's offtopic for a trading channel.

I neither want to give up on the idea to get industry recognized in null, nor I want to see the only coalition that fields non-freak fleets to lose or simply stop doing the things I like. Going for both goals can end up achieving neither. Accepting either is giving up on (or at least postponing) the other. Now I feel that EVE is real.


Friday morning report: 159.9B, (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 2.6 received as gift)

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