Corporations/guilds only have their restrictions to offer

Each MMOs have player groups. Guilds, clans, corporations. Why to join them? The answer seems obvious: because these groups control resources: a successful WoW raiding guild can get you heroic epic items, a sov-holder EVE alliance can provide you access to jump bridges, stations, reimbursements and blob kill reports. They all give a collection of players who will help you in various things.

However this is a dumb answer. The corporations and guilds have no resources. Every item, station and piece of currency is claimed by the members. Unless you join to be a leech/thief at the first place, you will work for your own stuff. I mean as all resources are created by members and distributed to members, the average member gets exactly as much as he gives, by definition of the term "average". It is true that often the form of contribution is different from the form of reward. For example the typical EVE Nullsec alliance pilot contributes his time flying in a fleet that capture moons and rented space and he receives ship reimbursements. But such specialization is done without formal grouping in highsec by trading: you run missions that give ISK and LP and can trade the LP shop items for minerals that others mined.

If not resources, then maybe it's "friends". The groups facilitate positive interaction between a subset of players. However such groups could be created by game mechanics too and such attempts are not successful. The NPC corp in EVE has no corp life and the "Looking for Dungeon/Raid" feature is considered a horrible social experience suffered only for the extra rewards. Considering that these features connect you to a sample of the playerbase, collecting another sample of the same playerbase should provide exactly the same result: annoyance.

"But my corp/guild isn't just random players" - you might say and you are right. Not everyone can get into your group. Since your group is a subset of the playerbase, the only thing the group can do is set restrictions. For example a HC raider WoW guild only recruit people who can keep 95%+ raid attendance, have X ilvl and Y bosses killed. In EVE Pandemic Legion only takes you if you have a carrier and decent killboard history. These are all restrictions, locking out large segment of the playerbase.

The restrictions the group looks negative to the player at first glance: "I can do X, Y and Z in the NPC crop, if I join this group, I will be banned from doing Y and Z". Why does anyone submit to such restrictions? Because he gets something important: groupmembers who are similarly restricted. Joe might want to do X, V and W. Since you don't like V and find W especially disgusting, you can't play with Joe in an unstructured environment. But you can both join a group which bans Y, Z, V and W, letting you do only X which you both like. The only thing that the gaming groups have to to offer is a set of restrictions that ban other players from activities that would harm/annoy you.

This came up when comments questioned what my corp has to offer besides restrictive rules? The answer is - just like for every other EVE corp is: nothing. Restrictive rules are all I have to offer. Let me explain these rules from a "what do I get" perspective:

• Provide 5B worth of solo highsec ganks every month. This rule guarantees that every other member is a seasoned ganker. If you see an Orca that needs 8 Catalysts to gank, you can form a fleet of 8 without having to worry that someone sits in a T1 cata, cannot overheat, has his safety green or fails in some other way. You, just need to do your job, they will do theirs.
• Zero nullsec, lowsec or WH kills. Killboard is a simple way of measuring activity and performance. But it has the technical problem of giving every killer the full value of the kill. If you had a noobship in Asakai, you could get nearly a trillion ISK kills by your civilian guns. This rule guarantee that the killboard data of the other members are not inflated by such killmail whoring.
• The corp chat is for sharing kills, asking questions, discussing strategies, trading equipment and forming fleets against whales. Not for jokes, stories, "funny" picture links or other random crap. This guarantees that the corp chat will never turn into something you'd like to turn off, it won't be spammed by irrelevant nonsense and it's not ignored by everyone but trolls. If you ask a question, you get an answer and not trolling and lols.
• Teach! This is why we are here. Your bio should contain teaching (see example below), you should link the kill on local channel to alert others, and to send them to your bio. It guarantees that others are doing the job too, so the goal of changing EVE is reachable, it's not just you against the legion of morons and slackers.
• Be self sufficient, don't beg for ships or modules! This guarantees that no one leeches on you.

Many people think that such restrictions make the game not fun. Which is the point! These people don't belong to the corp and the only way to keep them out is making the game not fun for them if they still join. I want to find people whose fun is not limited by these rules - on the contrary, their fun would be damaged by the activities I've banned: non-performance, kill-whoring, idle chat, porn links, griefing people and begging.

While I claim that every single game group works this way, I do not claim that they use formalized rules. They often run by "we are a friendly group, join and let's have fun". Here the limits are set by actions of the leadership, what they do, what they tolerate and what they don't. This is what's dubbed as "the personality of the leader matters". I could run the same corp without written rules, simply by constantly bitching on kill-whores, yelling on porn-spammers celebrating performers and trolling beggars. I simply prefer a formalized ruleset instead of "unwritten rules".

The main positive of written rules is less noise. No one will join here who doesn't belong. The main negative is harder start. By having a generic "join and have fun", you can collect filler people to make the corp lively and active, make the impression that it's not a "start from zero". I terminated my business, focused all my efforts here, I'm here for the long run, I am fine if the corp will be very small for months.

I seriously hope that people will find this kind of play desirable. I find it desirable, I don't find my play limited by the rules above. Unless I'm one-of-a-kind, the corp won't be empty. It is very likely that 99% of the players would find this corp not fun. But considering that there are about 200K players in EVE, I still have 2K prospective members. To get them in, all I need is to stick to these rules and prove that I mean them.


PS: for the first time I started scanning. Mining barges. I just love my new scout Tengu. I also tested that you can't be ganked in a mining mission as the ganker arrives at the mission entrance even if the scout is standing next to you. A ganky catalyst can't just travel 10+ km because the police drones attack it if it's below -5 security status.

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Business Thursday: Character sell

I've sold my first supercapital pilot, she can fly a Nyx. Since she was sold while I was in TEST internally, I don't link the actual sell page, but here is the relevant skill list (pre-requisites omitted):

Projected Electronic Counter Measures 3
4x Armor Compensation 4
Fighters 5
Remote Armor Repair Systems 5
Capital Repair Systems 3
Fighter Bombers 5
Capital Ships 4
Cloaking 3
Mechanics 5
Repair Systems 5
Hull Upgrades 5
Science 5
Biology 4
Engineering 5
Energy Systems Operation 5
Energy Management 4
Energy Pulse Weapons 4
Shield Emission Systems 5
Energy Emission Systems 5
Cynosural Field Theory 2
Jump Fuel Conservation 4
Jump Drive Calibration 5
Thermodynamics 4
Cybernetics 5
Capital Remote Armor Repair Systems 4
Gallente Carrier 4 (halfway to 5)
Capital Shield Emission Systems 4
Capital Energy Emission Systems 4
Evasive Maneuvering 4
Advanced Drone Interfacing 4

She was 13 months old, and 26M SP. She was sold for 15B ISK. The costs were 13+2 PLEX (about 8.25B), a set of +5 learning implants (social was 4, together 0.5B) and skillbooks for 1B. All together about 10B costs. So I made 5B by locking down some of my capital for a year and logging in for a few minutes.

While it's clearly a very slow form of making ISK, it's also a very low effort way of making billions. So I continue to sell pilots.

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I used to send a mail to every gank target soon after the gank. I choose a more diplomatic method since I usually got tears as reply instead of acceptance. Now I send the mail before I log out, to all pilots involved at once. It both give them time to chill out and also show them that they didn't die alone. Maybe seeing the other bad ship owners will convince them that's it's a serious EVE betterment project and not someone collecting tears:
And people indeed learn, no matter how much naysayers claim otherwise:
The guide page got a Noctis fit, after I found a Noctis in a belt.

PS: the moron of the day is MevNav Hawkens:

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T(h)ank for your pod!

Corp update: the GoblinGanks channel became pretty lively, many people started their gankers, soon they'll get to the point where they can apply to the corp. Come and join, let's hit the morons and slackers who refuse to read up and fight the social thinking that you need "friends" to achieve things.

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"It's already replaced", "it earned its price long ago", "idc it was just a ret lol" are common responses to ship losses. However people seem to ignore an important function of a ship: to protect their pod. While you can usually get your pod out in highsec and lowsec, it needs you to be prepared and at the keyboard.

Instead of speculating, let's see some data. I processed all my solo kills from the first to the most recent. I killed 285 ships with pods, 137 ships without pods and 5 lone pods that were just floating there without ships. These were all empty and ignored in this calculation. What is common in these ships? That they were all destroyed by a single Catalyst ganker. Let's see their average costs:

• Pods: 106.4M
• Podded ships: 78.7
• Not podded ships: 98.1

The pods cost 35% more than the ships! It seems the owners forgot that ships needed to be tanked not just for themselves, but for their pods too. The reason why non-podded ships were more expensive in general is that T2 Exhumers have more natural tank than cheaper barges, so they have better chance to die just before Concord arrives, leaving no time for podding.

But there are more interesting results here: I split the podded ships into two groups, below and above 100M value. The average value of the "cheap" ships was 47.5M, their pods worth 83.3M. The average value of the "expensive" ships was 275.9M, while their pods worth 252.6M. So the cheap barges (Covetors and Retrievers, I didn't kill Procurers) held twice their cost in pods, making their actual kill value 130M. Not bad for killing an untanked T1 barge with a 10M Catalyst.

What do I want to say besides "gankers, don't ignore T1 barges"? That the idea of using an untanked Retrievers and just replacing them only works if you keep your pod empty. If the miners would do that, gankers would sooner or later stop killing Rets, as their value doesn't really worth the gank. I leave 1-2 months old newbies alone regardless of tank because their pods usually don't worth my time. But putting an expensive clone into a T1 barge is just dumb and it seems that many people are dumb.

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Catalyst ganking guide

The solo ganker

People usually gank in fleets. The New Order runs 5-10 men fleets, Goons on their highsec visits run 50+ fleets. These fleets are highly successful, but very inefficient. The larger the fleet, the more waiting for everyone to get ready. I've seen the 50-men Goon fleets undocking twice an hour. Even if they hit a 800M Orca and it's 800M pod, that's mere 3.2B ISK damage caused every hour. A solo ganker can act on his own, waiting for nobody. I could safely keep 3.5 ganks/hour. Even if most targets are just 40M Retrievers with 60M average pods, the same 50 people can gank 17.5B/hour. That's almost the cost of a supercarrier.

The fleet makes large noise. You need to be seriously dumb to stay in the way of the Goons. Therefore the fleet often can't find worthy targets and hit lesser ones that they overkill. A solo ganker is largely ignored and can relocate easily, he can always find targets.

The solo ganger is not bound to appointments. You have half an hour in launch time? You can carry our two ganks solo, which is impossible in fleet, unless you are extremely lucky: one is just up where you are.

Solo gankers can always form a fleet because each of them are ready to lead it. Those who fly in fleets are bound to a Fleet Commander. The fall of TEST alliance shown that numbers mean nothing without experts and leaders. The solo ganker is an expert, and the leader of himself. Stepping up from solo ganker to the commander of a Freighter-ganking fleet is just counting down on fleet chat and using "warp fleet to" instead of "warp to". Everything else is the same. On the top of that, you can have a very small fleet on your own: dual gank!Here you can see what damage and two catalysts can do:

Finally the solo ganker has a philosophical value: his success is his and cannot be attributed to "having friends". Socials believe that the power is in "friends" and objects don't matter. Killing him solo (without friends) is the ultimate proof that it's bullshit, he needs to get knowledge about fittings and ships (objects) instead of trying to get people to protect him.

So my corp will be the place for solo gankers and this guide teach you to solo gank miners with Catalysts. Ganking with Catas is DPS gank, therefore you need time to carry out your act. It practically locks you out of 0.8+ systems (these are the playground of alpha-ganking Tornadoes).

Ganking Catalyst and pilot

A Catalyst pilot needs about 2 months of training for the skills to fly a 700+ DPS Catalyst. These are the needed Intellect primary skills:

• Hull upgrades 4 (Armor)
• Mechanics 4 (Armor)
• Propulsion jamming 2 (Electronic Systems)
• Capacitor management 3 (Engineering)
• Capacitor systems operation 3 (Engineering)
• CPU management 5 (Engineering)
• Powergrid management 5 (Engineering)
• Thermodynamics 4 (Engineering)
• Acceleration control 3 (Navigation)
• Afterburner 3 (Navigation)
• Evasive maneuvering 4 (Navigation)
• Navigation 4 (Navigation)
• Warp drive operation 3 (Navigation)
• Cybernetics 3 (Neural Enhancement)
• Hybrid weapon rigging 4 (Rigging)
• Jury rigging 3 (Rigging)
• Science 4 (Science)
• Shield management 2 (Shields)
• Magnetometric sensor compensation 3 (Targeting)
• Long range targeting 3 (Targeting)
• Signature analysis 4 (Targeting)
• Target management 3 (Targeting)

Perception primary skills:

• Advanced weapon upgrades 4 (Engineering)
• Weapon upgrades 5 (Engineering)
• Controlled bursts 3 (Gunnery)
• Gunnery 5 (Gunnery)
• Motion prediction 4 (Gunnery)
• Rapid firing 5 (Gunnery)
• Sharpshooter 4 (Gunnery)
• Small blaster specialization 4 (Gunnery)
• Small hybrid turret 5 (Gunnery)
• Surgical strike 5 (Gunnery)
• Trajectory analysis 4 (Gunnery)
• Spaceship command 4 (Spaceship command)
• Gallente frigate 3 (Spaceship command)
• Gallente destroyer 4 (Spaceship command)

While there are more Intellect-skills, they aren't trained high, so if you use a new pilot, I'd suggest to remap to Int/mem, start with Cybernetics, plug in +3 learning implants and learn all skills, then remap Perc/Will and start learning those skills. If you want to gank faster, map to Int 5, Perc 9 at start and learn skills as you need them. You can go gank after 3 or 4 days having 300-350 DPS. If you use Cerebral Accelerator booster, you can learn fast and gank early with its +20% damage.

The ganky ship is the Catalyst. There are 4 relevant fittings:
[Catalyst, Biggun]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Prototype Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution Script

Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S

Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]
This is the largest DPS Catalyst, 673 overheated DPS with the skills above. Costs 9-10M ISK. You can't fit it without implants, see them below. It can pod untanked Retrievers, Hulks and Covetors, kill but not pod untanked Mackinaws or badly tanked Hulks, Rets, Covs in 0.6. In 0.5 it can pod badly tanked Hulks, Rets, Covs, untanked Macks, kill badly tanked Macks. Everything without DCII is "badly tanked", these barges and exhumers doesn't have enough shield HP to save them, even with resistors. If you can fit T2 guns but don't have the CPU to fit it, do not mix with metas. Mix with Light Electron Blaster IIs, just don't forget to manually load ammo into the Electron(s) in the station fitting screen.

[Catalyst, Anode]
Gauss Field Balancer
Gauss Field Balancer
Gauss Field Balancer

Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Prototype Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution Script

Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]
This is the same ship, except using Meta3 guns. Meta4 costs more than T2, don't use it. 537 overheated DPS. Costs about 3M. It can pod untanked Retrievers, Hulks and Covetors, kill but not pod untanked Mackinaws or badly tanked Hulks, Rets, Covs in 0.5. Should not gank in 0.6.

The third fit is the same as the first except it replaces scram with a meta afterburner. It is to catch orbiting ships.

The fourth fit replaces a magstab with a DCII module. It doubles the EHP of the Catalyst, it's used when there are dumb "white knights" are in the belt who never heard of ECM.

In the first times you'll lose pods due to silly mistakes. After you stopped making them, you can upgrade your pod, but don't go crazy, you'll still lose it now and then. You should use Genolution set fitting implants, WU-1003 fitting implant, SH-603 (maybe 605) and RF-903 gunnery implants. These allow the first ship to be fit and increase its DPS to 730.

Scouting

Since faction police chases your ganker after your security status dropped below -5, you can't just peek around with it hoping to find something. Your ganker must land on top of the target. To do it, you need a scout pilot on a different account, so you can be online at the same time and in fleet.

There are two scouting methods for two ships. Both have pros and cons. The first is using a procurer mining barge:
[Procurer, Scout]
Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

10MN Afterburner II
Ship Scanner II
Passive Targeter II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Ice Harvester II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Hobgoblin II x2
Hornet EC-300 x3
This ship simply approaches the miner and starts mining 4-500 m from it. The ganker can warp to it and that's it. Pros:

• Doesn't need skilled pilot.
• Procurer is cheap, if your pod is cheap too, you don't have to care for it.
• Easy to manage.
• Your dead catalyst and the corpse can be instantly looted.
• Can mine some side income while scouting
• Spreads the example of using Procurers

It has one problem, but it's a big one, "white knights" who want to protect the miners from "evil", will figure out who is your scout alt and the Procurer will give out exactly where you'll gank. Their response can range from convoing the target to placing instalocking ships or ECM on the belt.

The other scouting method uses a cloaky T3. Fit it with MWD, Ship scanner, Passive targeter and tank. Have passive tank too, you might get decloaked while alt-tabbed and can't turn on active tank. With this ship you don't go near the miner. You warp in the belt, scan the target and if found good, you place yourself "behind it" 10-30km. I mean, your ganker will arrive from a station, gate or celestial. Place yourself in a way that the target is between you and the celestial. Cloak up. This way the "white knights" can't find you. They might arrive in the belt, find it empty and leave. You can check them via Dscan. The ganker will warp 10-30 km from you, directly on top of the target. Pros:

• Safe from "white knights": what they can't see they can't gank.
• Faster due to its MWD. If the procurer arrives 30km from the target, that's 2 minutes of slowboating.
• Can fit probe scanner and scanning subsystem to find targets another way.
• Can fit salvager to get intact armor plates from exhumers.

The problems are its pricetag and the learning time to sit in it. Also, you need some practice with that "get behind it". You will also fail ganks because of warp to zero.

Your scout should also be an Orca pilot who can carry ships and fittings after your ganker.

The actual scouting needs you to find the miner first. He is in an ore/ice anomaly or a belt. You can find him with Dscan or ship probe scan. For Dscan scouting, you need an overview that shows belts, mining barges and Exhumers. You can see targets within 14.4 AU. Decrease ranges and when the belt disappears together with a barge, he is in that belt. You can also decrease the angle of the scan and look at a specific belt or anomaly to see who is inside. I don't cover probe scan, the internet is all over it since Odessey.

However I do outline a combined method for very fast target finding. Using Dscan you can easily determine which belt cluster the target is. However one planet can have several belts or several planets can be in close proximity. Set your Dscan distance to 300 million km. That's about 2 AU. Verify that the target is within this distance. Launch probes in pinpoint formation, centered on your ship, 2 AU scan range. You shall get perfect location in one scan, you can warp to it instantly.

One scanning tip: if you are in an ice belt system with no ice belt, you can scan down AFK barges who were at the old ice field and were left there floating.

After you arrived on grid with the possible target, look around. Are there ECM ships, logies or instalocking Tornadoes on grid? If not, get within 50km and activate passive targeter before anything is locked. It starts to flash. Then lock the target and you see the passive targeter icon on it. After you have a lock with the passive targeter, he can't see you locking him while you scan him. Activate ship scanner and you see a list of modules. Many scans needed to see all modules. The point is to determine the tank of the target. After you gathered the module list, put it into EFT and determine if you can kill it. Create a damage profile for Antimatter/Void ammo and calculate its EHP against it. Divide it with your DPS and you see how many second you need to kill it. You have 25 in 0.5, 20 in 0.6 and 16 in 0.7. If you want to kill the pod, you need 3 more seconds. If you determined that the target is worthy of gank, approach with Procurer or get behind it with T3

After the gank, loot your catalyst wreck, scoop the corpse of the target and salvage the wreck of the target and your catalyst wreck.

The gank

1. Your scout provides the warpin and gives the name in fleet chat.
2. You add him as terrible contact, so he is red on the overview.
3. Check your fittings and undock.
4. If there are ships on the undock, warp to an insta-undock bookmark
5. Group guns, load ammo, load script, start the sensor booster, pre-overheat guns.
6. Warp to the position provided by your scout.
7. Start locking the target
8. If the target is out of 2200 m, approach, using the "keep at range 1000m" button. Concord timer starts when you start shooting, but faction police timer will start when you land. Don't approach too much. If it's out of 4km, and you have no AB, just warp out.
9. When within 2200m, open fire and activate the warp scrambler
10. Switch to a pod overview that has only pods and celestials on it.
11. When the target pops, start locking the pod and pre-activate guns.
12. When your ship is destroyed, instantly warp to a celestial and not to a gate or station. You can't jump with weapons timer.
13. Warp to the instant-dock bookmark of the station, set the station to destination and activate autopilot. It will instantly dock after you arrive to your bookmark.

Important notes:

• Set your safety red
• Do not gank with ECM ships or Tornadoes on the belt
• Have insta undock and dock bookmarks for every system you gank in. Make your own, don't ask from others unless you want to land on smarbombing battleships or instalocking Tornadoes.
• Have your fittings saved so you can instantly fit.
• Have 120 ammo in your saved fittings, that is enough for a 0.5 gank.
• Have a stockpile of ships and fittings with you. Your other account pilot should be flying an Orca and carry it for you.
• Watch your capacitor while ganking. If it instantly changes with "capsule ejected" red text, you are dead and should warp out instantly.
• You can take gates between your base and the target, but you are easy mark for anyone sitting on the gate. Move your stuff with and Orca, travel in the pod.
• Set your "auto-target back" to 0 ships. You don't want to shoot belt rats.
• Do not Alt-tab away while you are flying in a pod with GCC. Be ready to instantly change course if something went wrong.
• The Notifications and Logs window gives detailed combat log. If you see "grazes" and "glances off", you were either too far, or moved too fast transversally
• Check your warning icons on the top. If you see limited engagement, check who shot you. It can be the drones of the target, but if other players were on it, you have "white knights"! Watch out for them, be ready to move away, switch to stealthy scout or fit DCII to your Catalyst.
• Before ganking in a system, prepare Concord: shoot a customs office in a noobship or gank a smaller target, like a Retriever in 0.5 (you have 5 seconds less without Concord). After you have GCC, you can jump around in nearby systems, dock, get your noobship and undock. Since you have GCC, Concord will spawn and shoot you. You can't warp or dock in the noobship, but you can in the pod.
• If you are catched by a "white knight" on a gate, on a station undock (mistake, use instawarp) or on your instawarp location, do not try to fight him, you just split your attention and lose your pod. Select a celestial and prepare to save your pod.

I'm a newbie, how to start? Put your scout in a Procurer in an empty belt and initiate Duel with him. Do everything as outlined above and "gank" one or two cycles on your scout. Then warp out with your ship and dock. You can practice infinitely as you have no GCC, you are not yet a criminal and you lose nothing. You need the practice. The difference between a successful gank and losing your pod is 1-2 seconds waiting or warping to the wrong spot. While the task isn't complicated, you need to execute it perfectly which needs muscle memory. You will fail several times, so did I and everyone else.

Until you get to T2 Catalyst, you are practically locked to 0.5, hunting Retrievers for 6 weeks. Check the maps at the bottom of this post, there are lot of 0.5 hunting grounds, especially in Genesis, Kador and Lonetrek. And it's not at all dull and uneventful: these Retrievers sometimes hold 1B+ pods. The ave average pod value is 83M. Add the 47M barge value and the average newbie kill is 130M for a 5M meta-fit Catalyst. Of course there is the easy way that Miniluv walks: you can gank Orcas on day 1 in a fleet of 50, but then you'll never be able to do anything on your own and you'll be spending your time waiting for the other guys to get ready.

Looting

The destroyed criminal Catalyst is free for all loot, so your scout can safely take its contents. He should as it recovers half the fitting, practically halving the cost of the gank. Salvaging is free too, you should salvage especially the T2 Exhumers.

Looting the ganked miner is optional. The average loot of a T2 mining ship is 5-6M, so covers your losses. Some ships have much better loot. Please note that as you can gank 3-3.5/hour, the loot income is somewhere around 15-20M/hour which isn't great. It should only be taken constantly if you are only ganking and this is your only income source. It will not pay for your PLEX, you have to subscribe the game if you only gank, but don't need to convert PLEX-es for ISK after the initial two for the Orca. It's somewhat ironic that the ganked miners can pay for your Catalyst.

Occasional looting can be done by the scout: bookmark the wreck, dock up, get in your looting cruiser which has strong shield tank and warp stabilizers in lows (Moa is great), warp back to the wreck, set your safety yellow, loot and dock up. Set your safety back to green. After that you need to wait out the 15 minutes timer. The reloging is a waste of time and should only be done if the target dropped some deadspace or faction module, named mining upgrade or other 20M+ loot.

To loot regularly, you need a looter pilot, who should not be on the same account as your scout. She can share the account with the ganker, third account is better. She can fly a looting cruiser. Warp to the scout, loot and warp out.

If the target had lot of ore or had ore containers, you can loot that too by jettisoning your own can and moving the ore into your can. The act is stealing but after that the loot will be yours, so your scout can loot it with his Orca without becoming a thief.

Printable maps

These are created from Dotlan, usually cover a region, but not exactly. Their limits are the natural ganking borders: lowsec and 0.8+ systems. They omit the systems we don't care for and let you just look at your desk and know where to continue. They all belong to continuous highsec, you can travel between them safely in an Orca. The first one is an overview showing the regions and how can you travel in highsec:

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We Gank Because We Care

My corp is now recruiting! Join the good fight against ignorance and its self-enlarging exploitation!

Tomorrow comes a post about know-how, Catalyst fitting and training plan.

What about our chances? Will people learn or they just ignore us as "Goon alts"? I wrote the teaching page that was linked in my Bio. It was linked nowhere else before, you could only find it in-game after my ganks as a gank target or as a reader of local channel. Still it got 200+ hits. Gank targets and those who are in local while a gank happened do want to learn!

Of course not all of them, there are sad setback when they refuse to take responsibility for their fate:

Please read the corp announcement before applying, I had to disable recruitments in the weekend because many people wanted to join without having a clue what the corp is. Don't do that!

How big impact can one man do? How many miners can be reached? You know what "August" means? This Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and only Sunday was full day, the others were just normal evenings.

My favorite gank wasn't one of the 1B+ pods, that's pure lottery. My favorite is this Retriever. While it had no proper rigs or Adaptive Invulnerability, it had a Damage Control II, which made it impossible to kill the pod in 0.6. Killing a Ret alone is not profitable. Why did I still proceed? Because saving your pod doesn't help if you are so AFK that it will be floating there 15 mins later.


PS: my asset liquidation goes slower than expected, but still:

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You can't really grief in EVE

Many people did not understand my point with ridiculing the Goon Ice Interdiction. They linked the Miniluv killboard as a proof that they do gank a lot. I do not question that. What I disproved is their ability to grief.

In PvP games destroying the game items (pixels) of opposing players is normal gameplay. It's just normal to shoot members of the opposing team in an FPS game, this is how you win the match. No one gets mad at you. The term "griefing" refers to pointlessly harming random players, just to make them sad while receiving no in-game rewards. The Goons claim to be such griefers who "drink pubbie tears". Let's look at their killboard since the start of the interdiction!

Day	Mackinaw, Hulk, Covetor	Retriever	Skiff, Procurer	Orca, Freighter
Sunday	53	21	2	10
Monday	21	15	0	5
Tuesday	17	17	0	5
Wednesday	16	20	0	0
Thursday	10	21	0	5

From the mining ships, only two died from the kind I suggested, and their fits were horrible: the Skiff had no afterburner, the Procurer had no Damage Control. Retrievers probably earned their pricetag before dying, as that's what retrievers do, though it was probably a bad idea to use them during a campaign. The largest losses came from ships I explicitly called "not belong to highsec". Pods? Since highsec has no bubbles, no pods shall die. If you can't warp it out, you were AFK. Don't be AFK with a valuable clone!

Let's check the whales, Orcas and freighters:

1. (Sunday)No DCII, cargo rigs.
2. No DCII, cargo rigs.
3. 5B Freighter, unrelated to highsec ice.
4. No DCII, cargo rigs.
5. No DCII, cargo rigs.
6. 1.5B Charon in belt.
7. 1.5B Charon in belt.
8. No DCII, cargo rigs.
9. No DCII, cargo rigs.
10. No DCII, drone rigs.
11. (Monday)1.4B Charon in belt.
12. 1.5B Charon in belt.
13. No DCII, cargo rigs.
14. No DCII, cargo rigs.
15. 9B Jump Freighter, unrelated to highsec ice.
16. (Tuesday)No DCII, cargo rigs.
17. No DCII, cargo rigs.
18. 1.5B Charon in belt.
19. No DCII, cargo rigs.
20. No DCII, cargo rigs.
21. (Thursday)No DCII, cargo rigs.
22. No DCII, cargo rigs.
23. No DCII, cargo rigs.
24. No DCII, cargo rigs.
25. No DCII, cargo rigs.

Besides unrelated kills that greatly boost the Miniluv kill ISK, the interesting thing is not a single big ship died which wasn't completely stupid. Flying an Orca without Damage Control II or putting a freighter, especially the weakest tanked Charon to the belt are both idiotic moves. The interdiction killed only idiotic ships and it doesn't matter how many of them died. They shouldn't have been there at the first place!

EVE is a spaceship PvP game. Shooting spaceships for their loot or killboard value is not griefing, it's playing EVE. Griefing would be shooting ships at loss just because you can. This is what griefers claim to do: "we just want lulz and tears, we don't give a damn" they say, but the above data shows it's a big fat lie. The truth is "we look for easy pickings to pad our killboard". There is no shame in that, killboard numbers are a valid form of "winning EVE". However there is no griefing involved. The killers did the smart thing and got rewarded.

The point is that the myth being at the mercy of unstoppable griefers is a lie. If you are in a properly chosen and properly fit ship, you won't die to Goons or any other "griefer". My earlier post proves that they can't really kill you at loss even if they really-really want. I'm probably the most controversial guy in EVE. Every post of mine in EN24 gets hundreds of haters. Yet I wasn't "griefed" once in one and a half year of playing EVE, despite I was literally asking for it and went directly to the biggest "griefing" campaigns.

What you need to understand in EVE is that your fate is completely in your hands and not in the hands of even the "mighty" Goons. By choosing the proper ship and clone, learning basic moves and fitting your ship right, you cannot be harmed.

OK, that's probably obvious to those who are informed. But what about the rest? People come to EVE and get "griefed out". Why? Because they are bad in the game and no one teaches them. On the contrary, everyone lie to them, claiming that they can't do anything against a "powerful griefer" or that they need "powerful friends to protect them". No wonder they leave the game, who would want to play when he is just a toy of older players? Of course they could figure out that it's a lie, but most people are socials who believe what other people say and also naturally believe that people and not things matter. Their social attitude makes it hard for them to seek solutions in ships and fittings instead of in "friends".

The power of griefers comes from the ignorance of socials. It's time to break this. It's time to make EVE a nice and newbie-friendly place without griefing. To do so, I terminated my business, liquidated every assets (not complete yet). I planned to earn money forever to support a nullsec alliance and fly titans but those aren't important compared to what I found here. My wealth is enough to play this way for decades without making a single ISK. So hereby I announce my crusade against "griefing" and the lie "you need friends to succeed" and call you to join!

On Monday I will post the details of corp. Today I just outline our way: we will gank. We gank miners, missioners, haulers, autopilot-travellers. We pod whoever we can. But instead of harvesting their tears or giving them self-enlarging lies ("i haz skillz", "i haz freinds"), we teach them. Our bio, our corp details, our mails and our chat will all teach them to seek power in nothing but knowledge: how to choose their ships and how to fit them. We will be the living vaccine against griefing. Next time Goons come to "grief" they shall find no Mackinaws and Hulks, just competent players. How is our "good gank" better than the "bad grief gang"? The griefer says "you died because you suck and I own" while our slogan will be "Your ship sucked, not you!".

Get into Catalysts people, the most noble cause of cleansing EVE from dumbness, ignorance and social thinking awaits! The corp details and recruitment rules come at Monday, but I already found out the name:

PS: this is the DPS of a proper ganky Catalyst, not 300 like that T1 crap Miniluv flies:

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Business Thursday: Blitzing mining missions

I wrote about mission mining, probably the most profitable way of highsec mining: no travel, no refining, no gankers, no rock switching. Now I finished polishing this method, reaching 25-30M/hour/pilot while being practically AFK in a cheap ship.

Mission blitzing means cherry-picking the best missions from the agent and finishing them fast. This is what we do here: accept only two kind of mining missions, the gas mining and the ice mining. This was made profitable by the ice harvester speed doubling. Both missions pay very good ISK and LP for relatively little time. But the point is that there is no redock and retarget like with the ores. Please note that I now checked for the perfect setup, this isn't newbie income, I had an Orca with T2 cycle time, T2 beam range and T2 shield harmonizing links and mining mindlink. Let's see the two missions:

The ice mission throws you out from 10-15km of a single ice asteroid containing 20 units of ice. Just start the harvesters (beam range increase link needed), launch the drones and orbit the ice 10km. Not much closer or you bump into debris. The ship to be used:

[Retriever, Ice Mission]
Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Ice Harvester Upgrade II

Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I

Ice Harvester II
Ice Harvester II

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I

Hobgoblin II x5

With IH-1003 implant you can cycle the beams under 1 min, mining all ice out in 10 minutes. The reward is about 1.5M ISK and 3.5-4.5K LP. The LP/ISK conversion of industrial NPC corps are around 1000, so you get 5-6M ISK for this nil work. The rats are disposed fast so they can't put a serious dent into your shield. I strongly discourage you from using Mackinaws, someone might bother to scan you down. I also discourage using 3x Ice Harvester Upgrade II, the CPU requirements will remove all tank, making you an easy mark for a single Catalyst. While you are in a mission deadspace area, you shouldn't ask for being ganked.

The gas mission is done by a Venture. You arrive 25km from the 450 units of gas, get there fast with AB, orbit at 500M with AB on and that's it. You need the harvester range upgrade link on the Orca as the high speed makes the Venture actually orbit at 1000-2000M. Use this fit:

[Venture, Gas Mission]
Damage Control II

Medium Shield Extender II
1MN Afterburner II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Gas Cloud Harvester II
Gas Cloud Harvester II
[empty high slot]

Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I

Hobgoblin II x2

How to tank the incoming rat or ganker damage?

With perfect skills and GH-803 implants you can mine it out in 19 minutes. The reward is 2-2.5M ISK and 5.5-6K LP.

After running more than 60 such missions my corp standing is still positive, so there is no need for extreme amount of storyline missioning. Still having a covops hauler to do the storyline distribution missions is handy. As you run missions in 0.5 systems for maximum LP, you'll be often sent to lowsec with the storylines. If the mining missions sends you out of the system, just decline.

Obviously, running a single miner pilot with an Orca is dumb. The point is to have a multi-pilot farm with one Orca. As there is no more interaction with the pilots than dock, get mission, undock, activate modules, send out drones. You can run it with large pilot numbers without multiboxing software. Since the perfect miner pilot is complete in 3 months, the accounts can be used to train your main pilots. Since they do nothing that is secret or even interesting, you can give out their full API without hesitation. If you have more miner pilots than main accounts, just train supercapital pilot alts for sale on the accounts.

Usual security measures apply: do not mine while having an expensive clone (+4 primary learning, +3 secondary, IH-1003, GH-803), do not use Mackinaw, tank your Orca to the teeth and keep it next to a station, don't fleet up with strangers, every pilot should be in his solo corp, Orca in the NPC corp.

You can use this method while running mining missions in lowsec/nullsec. Your income can be even higher if you use a Rorqual for boosting. Warning: soon you can't boost from under a POS shield, so you'll need to place your Orca/Rorqual next to a deathstar POS. In null that probably means Orca as Rorquals can be drive-by Doomsdayed.

One more tip: do not mission in Caldari space, Guristas rats ECM you.

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Sexist, racist and otherwise "mean" jokes are not funny

From time to time someone speaks up against racist or sexist jokes or "ironic sexism/racism". Blogposts, forum posts, videos, speeches are made, then nothing happens, the "jokes" stay. Why?

Because joking with sexism/racism allows one to tell things he wants to be told without any consequences: he is "just joking", so no one can call him a primitive sexist/racist. Since the words themselves cannot be banned due to free speech, there seems to be no way to stop insulting behavior as long as it's packed into a joke.

I think I found a solution to this problem: jokes have one purpose, to provide fun. Not to express an opinion, not to start a discussion, not to present ideas. Jokes are only to make the audience laugh. A not funny joke is a bad joke and someone telling bad jokes is an annoying person who takes away the fun from a group. Everyone has an annoying relative who starts telling boring or dumb stories whenever he drinks too much, therefore he isn't invited to most gatherings. You don't want to be that guy, do you? Now, "fun" has no objective definition, there is no "fun-meter". A joke is good if the audience finds it funny. If significant part of the audience is bored, annoyed or upset, the joke was bad.

The beauty of this logic is that those who hate sexist/racist jokes don't have to get involved into complicated philosophical discussions about irony and free speech. All they have to say is "sorry dude, this joke was awful, could you stop telling such crap?" No need to explain why. You are entitled to not have fun on the joke. If he insist on keep telling them, you can call him a killjoy, an annoying asshole who ruins the fun for you and he can't really tell anything against it. I mean if the audience finds his joke bad, than the joke was bad, period. You can even retaliate by starting to tell random boring stuff like reading up a cookbook and when he tells it's boring you can reply "it's fun for me hahaha".

This logic is also protected from the "free speech" argument. You do not question his right to tell such things. You just call them not funny. Free speech is there to protect opinions, but he does not claim to have a racist/sexist opinion, he is just "having fun". When he asks "why can't I say these" you can tell "you can, but it's not funny and we were trying to have fun here": make him be the killjoy!

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The fall of Miniluv

Miniluv is the "premier highsec ganking organization" of CFC, the force behind their terror campaigns. Their first famous action was to perma-wardec those who criticize Goons to force them into silence. You probably heard how it went: Jade Constantine wardecced them back, called in mercenaries and Goons had to beg to CCP to save them from being massacred.

Then they continued with Burn Jita campaigns which they called successful in the sense of collecting tears. But something was odd already: despite I jumped in an out of Jita, they refused to gank me. Maybe just bad luck. So came Caldari Ice interdiction and I went mining ice, after posting various bad things about Goons, the CFC and the interdiction itself. To make things less boring, I taunted the Goons and Nemo Omnes in /local. Nemo is the worst miner bumper of New Eden, he tried to bump me for an hour without hitting once. Other "pubbies" joined in trashing the mighty GSF:
Someone found a great picture that could serve as an official poster for the Miniluv:
The scourge of highsec pubbies did not take the insults lightly:Where is the loss report you might ask? Nowhere, probably not unrelated from the fact that ganky Catalyst optimal range is not 4000 m. But they did not give up and attacked again!
The kill right notifications give the times and numbers:
After these shamefully bad "ganks" on Sunday, I couldn't make them come out again, despite I was mining ice all day. On Monday, I alarm clocked for USTZ and did not take chances:
Despite there were 70 CFC in local, the Orca wasn't attacked. Finally I went personal: Insulting the Miniluv leader himself worked and they took bloody revenge. Almost.

What can I say? If the leader of Miniluv flies a T1 cata, you need no more proof that the Goons are broke. But the really important thing is that Miniluv and by extension Goons are no longer a threat in highsec. They can't gank you even if you literally chase them down and mine front of their nose. I'll run a more objective report when I collected a bit more data, but the result is clear: sell your White Glaze and Nitrogen Isotope stockpiles now, the prices will only go down. This interdiction is a joke.


PS: Having serious ganking experience, I'm surprised by the incompetence of Miniluv compared even to the pretty casual New Order. Highsec ganking is a valuable activity and I'm a bit sad that only Goons have a ganker arm. Since it seems no nullsec power is interested in either the Donation Board or the Fleetbear concept, my future is in ganking. The Goons would obviously not take me as I'm a "carebear pubbie", so it seems I'll have to build my own ganker corp. "Building a corp" doesn't sound well. Anyway the more detailed analysis of the interdiction, ganking in general and my own ganking plans will come Friday.

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Watch out with API keys!

Why do I get so many blog hits from a Reddit page? Because it has this very interesting leak: This screenshot was taken by someone with higher access rights from the TEST API system, which pulls submitted API keys from the CCP server. It stores the last info it could pull down before I quit TEST. I posted summary of my accounts several times and this leak contains the 3 accounts that had TEST API keys submitted:

• Gevlon Goblin is my highsec main, I never kept that secret. He only undocks for baiting gankers. He was training Ice Harvesting at the time of the API pull, because I'm going to mine White Glaze in the upcoming weeks. You'll hear about my mining stories tomorrow.
• Helga Kolan is my Hek trader and I'm pretty sad that her name got out. There is a lvl2 research agent in Hek who gives courier missions that can be completed in a shuttle for corp standings. One mission a day, I've been doing them every time I log in. I guess I won't get to 9.8 Boundless Creation standings, because my fans will surely pop that little shuttle.
• Cindy Sasen is my well-known scout/cyno pilot who started my nullsec career as an AFK cloaker in -A- space
• Avat Goblin is my dreadnought pilot, who was in TEST (somehow the API updated after I quit).
• Botmuncher Goblin was started when I was ganking in highsec, to have a secondary ganker so I don't have to wait out GCC. His training has stopped. Now I have a new plan for him so activated dual character training. Hopefully you'll hear from his exploits.
• Titania Goblin is my logi pilot who was flying with TEST the most and now gets her carriers.
• Okami Kusoni is just sitting in a trade hub to PLEX this nullsec account.
• Botslayer Goblin is the famous ganker who killed 52B worth of miners in a month.

Well, nothing really interesting is here, why the post? The interesting thing is the lack of leak. Except for Helga's name, you couldn't learn anything from this screenshot you did not know already, because I wasn't stupid with APIs. TEST demands a very limited API key: Account Status, Character Info, Skill Queue, Skill in Training, Character Sheet, Character Info, Standings, Kill Log. These are info that you'd share with anyone. Which is the most important rule in API key management: Only give out API key about info that you wouldn't mind sharing with anyone. Consider your API-key covered info public information. Be careful, a full API key gives out practically everything about your account, including mails, locations, assets, wallet journal, everything. If there is a piece of information you wouldn't share with anyone, don't share it with anyone! If the guy asking for your API says "Only I will see it and very trustable guys" and you believe him, well, I know of a very reliable ISK doubling service in Jita you might be interested in.

Of course it doesn't mean you shouldn't give your API key, even your full API key to anyone. Since you need two accounts to play EVE unless you are very casual, have a separate moneymaking account(s) and make sure that your personal pilots are there. Have a different public nullsec/PvP account(s). Your nullsec pilots cannot have secrets anyway, I can tell without keys that your combat pilot flies alliance doctrine ships, trains for them, have doctrine ships and jump clones in staging and deployment systems outlined in your SotA. The only interesting thing they can get from even a full API key is the name of the moneymaking pilot who sent ISK or assets to the combat pilot. The solution is having a zero-skill alt in the private account(s), only this pilot should receive or send anything to your nullsec pilot(s), so the only thing they learn is the name of a zero-skill pilot. If they ask for API key of that pilot, give them a finger. Never, ever give out the API key of your personal account(s) to anyone! Being kicked from your alliance is much better than losing all your assets.

If they know the locations and assets of your moneymaking pilots, they can gank it. If they can, they will. Just think of the PL supercapital pilots who were ganked by their own FC. I'm not saying you shouldn't trust your alliance mates, just that you shouldn't trust them with everything you have. You nullsec assets should be enough for them. Combat ships are considered lost on fitting anyway. But if you keep your moneymaking assets safe, you can always rebuild after a loss.

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The donation board is recognition

Donations in MMOs aren't new and clearly not I invented them. When I started playing WoW, there were already punks begging for "1G plox" in general channel (local in EVE). Despite its ruthless nature, EVE had its donations pretty often, just think of the Angel project.

What I invented is the very thing why commenters hate me so much. Just check any of my post republished on EN24. Hundreds of comments throwing insults and hate without any kind of argument. Why? I mean if my post was just bad, it would be ignored. There are many bad bloggers out there and they are all famous for ... nothing. They don't get visitors, because no one likes to read crap. They don't get links as they aren't interesting. They mumble alone and slowly give up and stop. If I was one of them, I wouldn't attract hate, I'd attract nobody.

The reason of the hate can be summarized in a comment given by someone posting under the tag "mynnna" (I can't verify his identity, but the comment is interesting on its own): "Except for the parts where, you know, reality. The parts where they [the renters] don't expect recognition or to be lauded for and fawned over for their contributions, and the part where we wouldn't anyway."

Recognition. This is the key. I'm not the first "carebear" blogging or posting on forums. But I'm the first who expect recognition for being a carebear instead of humbly asking permission to live. I'm the first who challenge the status quo where a frigroaming idiot belongs to a higher class than any carebear. Before me, no one questioned that carebears are at the bottom of the food chain, they only exist as content for the people who "get EVE". I was the first who pointed out that the oh-so-mighty nullsec alliances are dirt poor, their income/capita would make a newbie miner laugh, and they are flying the cheapest crap in the game because they can't afford better. While all carebears reject PvP, I was the first who did not do so with fear or moralization (they are mean, I'm not mean!) but with laughter: look at the poor losers brawling in crap ships!

I'm far from being the first carebear going nullsec. Actually all nullsec players who don't buy PLEX from CCP for their ISK are carebears, since ISK must be farmed. However I was the first who boldly kept carebearing on his main, instead of yelling "I'm a PvP-er, let's kill mining publords for fun" while running 4 Retrievers on the other screen. I'm the first carebear who did not live in self-hate and secrecy, but stood out and said: "I'm a carebear and not ashamed of it. You should be ashamed for that bombless bomber or T1 cruiser you fly."

TEST alliance, probably out of desperation did as I asked: gave recognition to carebears. For two weeks we could be the saviors of TEST. We had our killboard-like toplist, we could be proud of what we did. And we repaid this recognition with money eclipsing regions of moons or renters. For that I'm grateful for TEST. Why did the donations stop? Because TEST leadership proved itself unworthy of managing our money (like with having directors steal, awox and quit).

Sooner or later a nullsec group will overcome the self-enlarging lie "we are awesome just because we do PvP, even if our PvP is just being smartbombed by R&K" and give the "carebears" recognition, welcome them into their alliance for being carebears. This alliance will be able to throw away dread fleets like Talwars. That day the Goons will either adapt and do the same, removing the last bit of "being a Goon" or will be swept away. One by one their pets will switch sides and finally everything they built will be destroyed and they'll only be mentioned as BoB now: as a bad joke from the past. Oh wait. They are already a bad joke.

PS: I think I solved the awox problem too (a carebear/fleetbear corp must have wide recruitment, so easy entrance for awoxers). The corp is not in the alliance, but set light blue (enough for fleet access) and awoxers (who can't be kicked since don't log out) will be set individually -10 by the alliance so they show up as reds. They also lose their docking rights in alliance space (and the corp has no stations). The renters set the corp itself to red and bears are told not to go to renter space or the designated "ratting space for members". Ratters can also set the corp red to avoid awoxing, if they are careless and don't switch it back when they leave the ratting space, they pay reimbursement. This way the members of the bearcorp can't awox anyone else than other bears but since we make our ISK in highsec alts, it's not a problem.

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Attention, pets!

Two things happened recently that shown the sorry state of pets: Razor lost a capital fleet and Tribal Band lost its regions. Both happened because of them being pets of GSF and TEST respectively. They both built up something (capital fleet and Sov infrastructure) which they couldn't hope to defend, but they assumed that their masters will protect it for them. When the masters were unable or unwilling to do so, they lost their investments without hope.

Had they been neutrals, they would have been more cautious. Medium sized alliances don't move 60 capitals casually, nor they build stations, knowing that they can be evicted any time. Had they been merged with their masters, they could influence the decision or at least know it and didn't act on assumptions.

What is important to learn from these losses is that being a pet is not the choice of the master (it's obviously not the choice of the pet). I mean that no matter how much GSF and TEST tried to be fair and respectful, they couldn't turn their pets into equal allies. Similarly, no matter how big fan I am of animal rights and how much I love dogs, I can't turn my pet dog an equal human family member. Being a pet or not depends only on an objective question: "are you significantly weaker than your blue?".

Why do I write this, and why under this title? Because I have good news for pets. Formerly there were only two ways of stopping being pets: merging, therefore formalizing the situation and gaining equal line member rights, obviously at the cost of most pet leaders losing their status and get themselves demoted into line members. The other way is unbluing which will make you independent actor by definition (and likely eaten instantly by enemies who were held back by blues).

However as I was thinking about my fleetbear corp, I realized how can one become an equal ally from pet status. Pets are "separate but equal", actually separate but weaker. Razor and Tribe had everything that GSF and TEST had but were weaker in every aspect: less small gang and fleet members, less income, less supers, less FCs, less everything. The solution is selecting one aspect of the game and focus all efforts on this aspect, becoming stronger in this one aspect than the master. Imagine that Razor would have 2/3 of the dreadnoughts of CFC. While still would be unable to stand alone, GSF leadership would have to consult with them before all decisions due to their inability to do fleet action without Razor. Similarly, if the Razor would be in trouble alone, GSF would be forced to save it, as its failcascade would be a devastating loss to the CFC capital fleet. The master-pet relation is "I need you and you don't need me, but has some use of me". Being stronger in one aspect would turn it into an "I need you and you need me" equal relationship.

So the solution to pethood is picking one field and be the best in it. If you happen to pick stratop fleet participation or financial backbone, I gladly help you to rise up from pet state. Yes, this offer stands for Goon pets too, I'm just as a pragmatist as The Mittani, who (just as I predicted) started a carebearing program. I don't like Goons more than the Goons like renters, but we have something in common: we like losing even less.

PS: Xander Phoena made an interview with me.

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Caldari ice mining recap

I wrote how I think that Caldari Ice interdiction is a bad idea, but to get better results, I went to ice mining myself in an unboosted procurer using T1 harvester: Otela: 78, Piekura: 23, Gekutami: 57, Vattuolen: 72, Hentogaira: 60, Hurtoken: 36, Wuos: 84, Osmon: 187. Almost 600 units of ice collected, worth of 173M ISK, about 15M/hour, mostly AFK. The first and most important thing I noticed is how easy it is to find ice. One of the Odessey changes is that ice belts are fairly small, disappear if mined out and reappear after 4 hours. Only 80% of New Eden's ice demands of that time can be supplied from highsec if they are fully mined. But they are not. Wherever I went I found ice belts in 5-10 minutes, which could be followed by hours of ice mining. Despite there was no interdiction yet and the prices already spiked, ice mining was very far from the theoretical maximum. To make it worse, the ice belts of Athulaima and Mitsolen were closed due to an incursion, and the rest still could not be depleted by miners.

This can be interpreted two opposing ways: one is that ice isn't an issue, therefore messing with it cannot be an issue either. The other is that ice mining is still a fairly casual activity that is ran by bad players who are easy to massacre and probably run away instead of adapting. To see that, I put a ship scanner to my procurer and checked what miners fly. On the surface, it seems the Goons have lost before they even started:
It's obvious that no ganker fleet has a chance against these miners. To understand why procurers and skiffs are untouchables, you have to understand how Concord operates. You surely know that if someone ganks, they appear and kill the ganker. But "when" makes the difference between success and failure. Below you can see how many seconds needed for Concord to arrive in different systems and states. There is no ice belt over 0.7 security.

System security	Away	Unspawned	In belt
0.5	25	20	6
0.6	20	16	6
0.7	15	11	6

Every ganker has his own Concord squad assigned. "In belt" means that there is a Concord squad in the belt. That squad will fire so fast that the Catalyst can fire only 3 cycles, causing around 3000 damage. "Unspawned" means that you are the first ganker since downtime, the squad is appearing from the nothing. "Away" means that there is a Concord squad somewhere else.

To maximize gank effect, the gankers usually spawn Concord using noobships, then go gank. In a 0.5 system, a max-skilled ganker in a T2 fit Catalyst can put out 15K damage, enough to kill an untanked Mackinaw alone, or kill a Hulk, covetor or untanked Retriever with enough time left to lock and kill the pod. After the gank is complete, the ganker gets into a noobship and undocks to pull Concord away from the belt. This is very easy alone. It is equally easy in a squad acting as one.

However the "acting as one" was a problem even in the pretty experienced New Order squads, now imagine the mess that Goons will make. If members of a squad get lost during or after the gank, by warping to wrong places, by not having insta-dock bookmark and get sniped on the station, by going AFK after docking or by any of the hundreds of ways to mess something up, the result will be an imperfect pull: some Concord squads left in the belt. Now the next wave of gankers will fly into a trap: some of them will be killed almost instantly. Since the belt Concord picks the first aggressors, the fastest and most skilled players get removed, leaving the clumsiest to try to destroy a 100K EHP target. And this just snowballs, as every failure creates more misplaced Concord squads, demanding the next wave be even larger, creating even more misplaced Concord squads. Since a Procurer or Skiff takes a squad of 7 perfectly skilled and fitted Catalyst doing everything right, you see the trouble ahead with line Goons flying T1 catas.

But the Goons aren't lost, thanks to the stupidity of their targets:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a Skiff. This abomination can be destroyed by 4 OK Catalysts and costs 200M. Below you'll see that about half of the modules on this thing are wrong. Before I explain why, let's get back to the Procurer mining barge:

[Procurer, Interdict this]
Damage Control II
Ice Harvester Upgrade II

Medium Shield Extender II
Thermic Dissipation Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Ice Harvester II

Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Hornet EC-300 x4
Hobgoblin II x1

90K EHP against catalysts, 105 if you overheat, 130 if you also have links. Costs 30M, less than the catalysts needed to kill it. It takes about 10 average gankers to take it out, each having to waste about 4M in ship and 20 minutes GCC + formup while the "victim" will be back in the belt in 3-5 minutes. Procurer ganking is self-griefing.

Now if you fit a Skiff the same way, you get 15% more EHP for 660% higher cost. Whoever has 10 catalysts to kill a Procurer will have 12 to kill a Skiff. But the abomination above wasn't even that, it missed the DCII, had EM field, passive termic and so on. How should you fit a Skiff?

[Skiff, anti-gank]
Ice Harvester Upgrade II
Damage Control II

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Limited Kinetic Deflection Field I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II

Ice Harvester II

Medium Ice Harvester Accelerator I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

Vespa EC-600 x4
Hobgoblin II x1

While it has 10% less HP than the max-tanked, it is much safer due to its 650m/s orbit speed. The Catalysts will land way beyond optimal range and have no chance to catch up. A Skiff doesn't tank cheap and effective gankers, but outruns them, while tanked enough to make long-range fit ganks uneconomical. Needless to stay, most Skiffs I've met did not know this and were stationary. Skiffs have significantly better mining yield than Procurers, despite EFT says otherwise. They have 25% larger ore hold and their speed removes lot of lost minutes slowboating.

A badly fit stationary Skiff is still much better than these symptoms of terminal case brain cell degradation:
Not only these Mackinaws can be taken out by 3 Catas, but they are also loot pinatas.

How do you fit a Mack in highsec? The same way as you fit Hulks and Covetors. You don't! These ships have no place in highsec and when you see one, you see a dumb miner. Hulks and Covs can't AFK for longer period of time, which is the point in highsec. If you are mining actively, you should do it where the ore is much better: nullsec and WH. Mackinaws cost 8x more than Retrievers for +10% ore yield and 2x larger tank. They also belong to Nullsec where you warp out when neut comes anyway. The only reasonable choice in highsec besides Procurer/Skiff is the Retriever which "replacement tanks". It's cheap enough that you don't care losing it (only fly it with an empty pod). For this reason, this is equally dumb:
Those rigs increase the price of the Ret by 25% while providing miniscule EHP increase. The only tank a Retriever can have is DCII which changes the number of Catalysts needed to gank from one to two.

Last thing: dumb Orcas. If you are in an ice belt, this is the only good fit:

[Orca, Belt]
Damage Control II
Reinforced Bulkheads II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Mining Foreman Link - Laser Optimization II
Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II
Third link or tractor beam

Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I

Vespa EC-600 x5

295K EHP omni, 315 if overheating. That's almost twice the EHP of a freighter and it can be insured to limit the loss to 400M. So can you tell what's the worst thing on this screenshot?
It's the Basilisk orbiting the Orca, costing 200M, can't be insured and paper-thin. Also can barely outrep 2 Catalysts.

So I'm not sure. The amount of ships needed to gank will definitely force Goons to fight against large amount of opportunistic PvP-ers. They will have lot of dumb miner kills, but they can't disrupt the ice supply. If you are a professional miner, I'd suggest having bunch of procurers and mining Caldari ice until the price returns.

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Thousands of fleetbears, please ignore

TEST was missing military directors from the start of the war. TEST had so few FCs that its fleets were usually lead by NC. and Nulli FCs (and yesterday Esildra left too). Thieves were taking SBUs, hangars, everything. The wallet was so empty that they were begging for donations. The remaining leadership was feuding. Everything was perfect for a failcascade.

Instead of apathy or line members jumping ship, TEST broke all records in EVE with the fleet at 6VDT. A fleet matching the size of the largest coalition in the game. A fleet that could have won if it had some remotely competent leaders. I mean the kind that asks "do we have POS-es?". How could this happen? How could a complete disaster make history?

"Being a PvP-er" is considered a necessity in nullsec. But fleet action isn't similar to PvP at all. I'd say it's more similar to incursions. Just because the primaried red cross is a player, it doesn't make it PvP. Just think! No one accepted my highsec ganks as PvP despite the killed miners were indeed players. PvP is considered something where player skill matters and the better one wins. In fleet action, your skills don't matter much. You anchor up, click on broadcast and press F1. You don't have to make decisions, you have to follow the optimized protocol. Fleet fights are rather "carebearing" than "PvP". Probably that's why I enjoyed them so much.

6VDT says that I wasn't the only one. The war was already lost, there was no point defending 6VDT. People still swarmed there because it was fun for them. Similarly the various structure shooting fleets on both sides had volunteer players in them. It seems that there is a large segment of players who find fleet action fun, despite the PvP-er canon says it's horrible. Let's not argue with them! If they all say it, they must be right, structure shoots and 1000 v 1000 battles are boring for PvP-ers. But it seems there is a strange form of carebears who like large fleets, winning objectives, placing flags on the big map.

6VDT and 1-SMEB say that TEST has a lot of this strange form of carebears. In the two weeks I was in TEST I collected almost 2000 upvotes for ideas that would support fleet actions at the expense of PvP. Why did these fleet-bears go to TEST? For the same reason I could only go to TEST: this was practically the only place where PvP experience and participation was not needed. You could get into TEST without killboard history and no one expected you to learn PvP, if you had bunch of loss reports and no small-gang kills, no one cared. TEST was the last safe heaven for these fleet-bears.

There are bunch of PvP alliances out there who want to hold Sov. They could use these fleet-bears very much. However the fleet-bears can't get in because of the PvP requirements. So I cooked up an idea how could a Sov-holder PvP alliance gain thousands of fleet-bears without actually having a single one:

• Create a corp "X fleetbears" where X is the name of your alliance. Make the corp leader the alliance leader's alt, link the corp on the alliance page.
• Set the fleetbear corp to blue enough to have fleet access, but do not take it to your alliance. Give fleet comm and a limited forum access to fleetbears.
• Assign enough space to the fleetbears to live in. Remember, they are closer to carebears than to PvP-ers, they need ratting-mining space.
• Make it clear that they should live in these systems. While they can travel in alliance or rented systems, they shouldn't PvE or loiter there.
• Tell your renters and own ratters to set the fleetbears to -10. Therefore they show up as reds/neuts on local, so they can't awox your members and renters. That makes HR very easy. You still need some basic HR, but not the usual nightmare as you only have to keep out the obvious troublemakers.
• There is no need for corp life in the fleetbear corp, carebears don't need roams, events or much socializing. They are here to enjoy the aspects of the game they like: PvE and fleet action. They can cooperate via the corp chat and a dedicated part of the alliance forum.
• As there is no corp life, no corp sov and the fleet reimbursements are on the alliance, there is no need for corp income. The ratting taxes go to the alliance chest.
• Make it clear that the fleetbear corp is not "waffles", you can't get into the alliance by joining it. It is a pure business cooperation: the alliance gives ratting space and organized fleets, the bear flies in the fleets and fights for the alliance.
• Some alliance managers need to have alts as directors in the fleetbear corp to kick awoxers, spammers and toxic people. Make sure that all necessary leadership positions are filled from the alliance and not from the fleetbears themselves. If they would be good leaders, they wouldn't be fleetbears in the first place.
• Since the fleetbears are outside the alliance, their losses do not affect your killboard. They will have ratting losses which they can easily replace.
• Create a fleet performance measurement tool. Kick inactives and those who don't participate in enough fleets. I mean if someone is in a fleetbear corp he should be participating in fleets!

If you do these, you get thousands of fleetbears at the cost of some of your systems being unavailable for renting. There aren't other costs: no need to mix with them (no social costs), no need to pay them (PvE pays for it), no need to motivate them (they like flying in fleets) and they can't awox or cause any other trouble outside of themselves. I'm sure it's a good deal.

Why would fleetbears flock to this corp? Because it would be the only place for them. Now fleetbears have to choose between being a solo carebear with no fleets, or having to suffer PvP to get into a sov-holder alliance. There they also have to constantly deal with childish jokes, boring memes and general locker room atmosphere. This corp would be a place where they don't have to socialize with random people and don't have to PvP, just do what they want: join well-lead fleets that go for objectives and do PvE in their space. Since there is no other fleetbear corp, yours could pick thousands of them. Remember 6VDT numbers and remember that's just a segment of fleetbears, there must be thousand others suffering in PvP corps or alone in highsec. Liberate them and they will blot out the Sun for you!

If you want me help building such fleetbear corp, I gladly do, and considering my popularity among TEST fleetbears, my blog-popularity among highsec carebears (many are actually fleetbears just couldn't find a place where he can fleet up), combined with the fact that TEST leadership just abandoned Sov, betraying everyone who flied in fleets, I could poach the initial set of fleetbears quickly. Hit me up if you want such fleetbear armada. (No, I can't start it myself, since I can't offer them fleets due to lack of objectives.) Chances are that your leaders don't read this, so if you are a line member and would like to have a huge support fleet, send this post to your leadership. Don't let your enemy have the fleetbears!

You might ask how is the fleetbear corp is not a pet? Simple: while the bears have no control over the big picture, neither they have responsibilities and risks. A pet must operate a complete alliance with HR, FCs, leadership, sov management, finances, everything, without actually controlling it. Also, a pet makes huge investment in stations, POS-es and CSAAs which is completely at the mercy of the master. The fleetbears don't have to care for anything besides their job and don't risk anything but a few fleet and ratting ships.

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The end of TEST alliance

You might heard about the new deployment of TEST alliance. Let me share with you what I wrote on TEST forums:

The new command structure is pretty good, but it makes no difference when it's empty. The only leadership change announced was the removal of Victor Villiance. No new leader was introduced, the people in the well-structured inner and outer leadership, stratop and skirmish commanders are still unknown or missing.

8 corps will be removed, the basis of their removal was not outlined. Were they removed for non-participation? Or for not authing up? Different language? Or simply not having enough "goodposters" who post "yeah it was awesome" every time a 1/4 sized Pizza fleet defeated us?

The abandonment of Delve is understandable. We aren't in the position to fight the unstoppable battle machine of the Pizza-Riot-Init coalition. I mean even PL would stand down against these powerhouses.

OK, we saw the good news, what's the bad?

Soliara and its surroundings are probably the worst place in EVE. I doubt if our enemies could pick a worse detention camp. Let's start with PvE:
These are the closest agents. They all belong to highsec corporations with 700-1000 LP/ISK conversion. There are no FW agents available, because there is no FW in this zone. What about PvP?
In the central system of the constellation, Soliara, 9 ships were destroyed in the July 7-July 30 period. That's 2-3/week. I'm sure this is the best place for our people to learn fleets, to new FCs to emerge. In a month or two our people and their commanders will be ready for the invasion of Deklein after overcoming the elite forces that Soliara can throw at us: Buzzards, empty pods, noobships, and a lone empty T1 hauler. By the way NOL is 2 titan midpoint away, so drops on the ones who take our Delve sov and moons will be impossible. Unless we want to "rebuild" into a lowsec miner alliance, I don't see how the "Testagon" will work out for us.

Honestly I have trouble deciding if this deployment is the most incompetent action in the EVE history, or a purposeful destruction of the largest and weeks ago the most powerful alliance.

What is fundamentally wrong with the plan of BoodaBooda? There is no plan at all! The SotA states the place where TEST shall rebuild but says absolutely nothing of how to rebuild nor what to rebuild into. Compare it with Nulli's plan after they lost Delve: "we lost all our assets in the war, everyone go farm ISK in FW and we come back". They stated what they miss (ISK), the job they need to do (farming) and the goal (to come back full of ships). Do you see anything like that in this SotA? The problem with the worst constellation of the worst region isn't that it's the worst constellation of the worst region, but the fact that no one said a word what the hell TEST supposed to do there!!!

It seems the cultural war within TEST was decisively won by those who don't want to make any effort or gain any level of competency. After all, living in a space which is wanted by absolutely nobody, which is avoided even by lowsec roleplayers is probably the best place for someone who doesn't want to do anything just "have fun": spam porn and memes, duel in frigates and generally be completely useless.

Tomorrow comes a post how can other alliances benefit from this horrible situation, gaining strength and salvage what deserves to be salvaged.

PS: Before you'd think that the idiocy of TEST leadership can't be outdone, check this moron out. Especially his small lasers. This is another strong contender. And another one. And the wardecced (or suspect) 28B freighter.

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