Meritocracy vs elitism

Many alliances are clearly elitist. They claim that they only take the best, that "pets don't talk back", that they are "pure PvP" and so on. Many commenters are surprised that I did not join such place, but to TEST who are "noobs". I've always preached against morons and slackers, I should be with the best, not with "n00bs".

To their surprise the TEST lead HBC (and the similarly "n00b" Goons) are winning against the "elite". This is indeed where meritocracy and elitism separate. Meritocracy is valuing the results. If you do better, you deserve rewards, if you fail, you deserve no help. Winning is winning. If TEST is doing better than -A- then TEST is better than -A-.

"But TEST blobs" say the elitists, claiming that an -A- pilot is better than a TEST pilot and would win 1v1 but TEST just has more. This is a non-answer. Nothing stops -A- to recruit more pilots. Even if they are the best of the best, the top 2%, then by accepting the top 5% they could get enough pilots and still remain the elite. Why don't they do that?

Because elitism isn't what its name says. Elitism is not collecting the best performing people. Elitism is collecting a bunch of guys who has some "proof" to be the best without actually performing. For example 60M skillpoints that anyone can have if he AFKs enough. Or "great killboard" that is also grindable: you keep running from opponents who shoot back and keep hunting miners/ratters. Alternatively people who did perform once. I did get 50B in a month. However it doesn't mean that I can repeat it in a changing business environment, as my income fell to 36B/month due to FW. But even more importantly I couldn't get a single ISK without making effort. Having me sitting in a station blabbing about the good old times when I made 50B would create much less income to your alliance than having an active veldspar miner. Times change, what was once great can be lame today. Measurement systems can be inaccurate or trickable (like killboards).

Meritocracy is seeking optimal ways. Elitism is believing that you have the optimal way just because you are great. You are not great, even if you do great things. My income is repeatable by anyone who follows my blog, it's the way that is great, not the guy walking it. Elitism, even if starts from meritocracy, even if it was created by the best performers once upon a time, will unavoidably leads to a bunch of non-performing jerks preaching how awesome they are. When their awesomeness is put to the test, their 2 years obsolete RRBS fleet is obliterated by a drunken-roaming, newbie-friendly fun-alliance.

Since both elitists and performers claim to value performance, it's not trivial how can you tell one from other. Some signs to separate the two:

• Hard to get in, easy to stay in: typical elitist sign. In a meritocracy everyone must perform, not just newcomers. If you fall behind, you are fired. In an elitist bunch, once you are in, you are in forever and can only be kicked if you make some scandal.
• Open recruitment: a meritocracy is always open to new performers. There is a high bar, but if you pass it, you are in. Elitists can be "full", meaning they don't want more internal competition that might make the old members look bad.
• Objective recruitment: the things you have to do to earn your place in a meritocracy are measured and objective. If you need referals or your performance is judged by people and not numbers, it's an elitist bunch.
  
• "You don't understand...": objective performance is objective. Faster, larger, cheaper, stronger, whatever. You don't have to be good to see that it's good. I suck in basketball and still can see which team is better: the one that wins. If you need to have "taste" or have to know "internal stuff" to "understand" what is great and what is bad, it's an elitist crap.
• "Experience", seniority: since the performance itself is measurable, it should be measured itself. Any reference to the performer is actually an ad hominem attack. Also, experience and seniority is unmeasurable, so perfect hiding place for elitists.

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PS: yes, it's an augmented repost of an old post. The changes deserve it, I believe it's an important topic.

Also, I mentioned NC. in the post as example of elitism. They recently joined a coalition that has non-elitist goals. I wish them luck, but it's a long way from "mate" to "Respect the Alliances in the Coalition". I hope they make it. But I wouldn't bet money on it.

Saturday morning report: 166.6B (8.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 5.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4+20 sent as gift) Sunday morning report: 168.0B (8.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 5.3+0.1 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4+20 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 169.0B (8.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 5.3+0.1 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4+20 sent as gift)

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Jump freighter costs

Two days ago I have sinned. When Parasoja announced his capital ship lottery, I asked for a Nidhoggur. Nidhoggurs are sold around 1.2B. I obviously should have asked for a Moros, and sell that thing for 2.8B on the same station, buy a Nid and get 1.6B bonus. The niceness of Parasoja made me forget what the only true spiritual leader taught us. Being nice and friendly is contagious, we must not let our guard down!

As a penitence for my sin, I promised to deliver a directly ISK making post this week. It's not easy to make up one out of the blue, so I scoured various places to find material. I bumped into it when reviewed my skill plans. One of my pilots will drive a jump freighter. Jump freighters - like all jumping ships - use isotopes as fuel. Their usage is Base*(1-JF/10)*(1-JFC/10), where JF is jump freighter skill, JFC is jump fuel conservation. I have not learned any racial spaceship skills yet as I'm in a Charisma remap for PI, trade and mining boost for the Rorqual.

The ships have various cargohold size, various isotope need and they all use different isotopes. To see the relative jump costs, we must first see the relative prices of isotopes:The chart was made extracting the average Jita prices of the last year of the 4 isotopes. Then every day they were averaged and the point was calculated relative to this average. I prefer this calculation as it excludes inflation unlike simply year-average prices. The two peaks of Oxygen was caused by Goon Gallente Ice grief campaigns. Since they happened more than once, it would be incorrect to exclude them from the data, they likely will happen again.

Averaging the points over the year provided the relative prices of isotopes. By calculating the isotope need of the ships per m³ cargo, we get their relative fuel efficiencies. Multiplied by relative fuel prices, we get their relative ISK efficiencies: There are serious differences between ship costs. The cheapest costs 69% of the most expensive, the Gallente Anshar. You can see that the Amarr and the Minmatar jump freighters are the cheapest ones. So if you plan to have a JF and did not decide yet, choose these ones. However you can cut your costs to 2/3 by learning Racial Freighter, Jump Freighters, Jump Fuel Conservation skills to 5 from 4 skills, so if you already have a JF, you are better off perfecting its skills than switching. Of course you can perfect the skills and switch to get a very cheap JF.

I made one more calculation on the data: every day I picked the cheapest fuel. It shows how much the costs would be if one had all 4 JFs in the hangar and picks the one that operates on the lowest cost that day. The relative cost would be 0.832, which is barely cheaper than the Amarr 0.850. So if you go for minimum costs, there is no point having various JFs, the savings are much smaller than any profit you could earn with the price of the other JF.

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Friday morning report: 185.6B (6.6+2.0 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3+2.0 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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How internet and shitposting killed democracy

Democracy has been the system of the richest and most powerful countries in the last century. Survival of the fittest says it's the best (among the currently available).

The economic crisis, the relative power decline versus the non-democratic China is a new thing. So is the slow but steady changing of Eastern Europe and Russia into much more centralized systems. There were economic problems before, but they hit everyone and hit non-democratic countries harder (when US citizens lost their jobs in the thirties depression, people starved to death in Ukraine by millions). Democracies were overthrew by military Juntas against the people but now people happily vote for leaders taking away more and more rights.

The solution seems obvious: take away the votes of the idiots/lazy, but it does not answer the question how did it happen. I mean the overall education level increased over the decades, the people who voted for Abraham Lincoln were surely less informed, less educated, less enlightened than those who vote various populists now. If simple dumbness would be the problem, democracy would only get better every year. Also, my idea, the welfare leeches aren't the clue for this problem: the amount of inactives did not increase that much over the decades.

I've been reading articles in newspapers, blogs, have my own blog myself. Recently I got involved to unmoderated forums. The solution was right there: shitposting. No, I'm not kidding, I really thinks that shitposting and its media, the internet broke democracy and will force its replacement.

What is shitposting? It has nothing to do with being wrong, despite shitposters call their opponents shitposters. Shitposting is simply adding an argument that has some basic logic fallacy, or adding no argument at all, but some totally random opinion or insult. Let me give some examples. They all argue for evolution against intelligent design, so I believe them to be right but they are still worthless crap:

• Every scientists believe in evolution. [citation to some metastudy? Also, who counts as "scientists"]
• Even the pope accepted evolution. [since when did the pope became authority on the topic]
• There is no God, therefore there can't be intelligent design. [there is no disproof of God, also no God needed for intelligent design, space aliens could also design Earth ecosystem]
• Only Tea Party idiots believe it. [worthless ad hominem]
• No scientific book teaches otherwise. [just like no books taught F = m*a before Newton wrote one]

There are countless more incoherent, logically unconnected and random crap, that people capable of telling. It seems we got back to dumbness, but it's not the case. The problem is that before the internet, shitposting was more or less impossible. To reach more than a few targets, you had to be a professional journalist or book writer. Posting in these had high costs that someone had to pay. This placed a competition to writers which lead to intra-group debates. They all agreed in the point and argued over implementation or teaching methods. The shitposter was called on his action by people who believed what he believed. The wide audience only got the refined arguments. It did not mean censorship. You could write various opinions as long as they weren't trivially bad. The uneducated population had to choose between refined and properly simplified points. They could also use heuristics like "which speaker was better", based on the fact that if one speaker gave a good argument, it forced the other to think a lot or be unable to answer at all, proving that the argument was right. The "what most people believed" also worked as it was referring to "what most people who were educated and spent lot of time arguing on the topic".

The internet removed the financial barrier from posting. Everyone who has time can reach lot of people with his opinion, even if that's utterly worthless crap. Anyone can reach the wide audience with good-sounding but utterly wrong arguments. The number of arguments only tell what other uneducated people think. Ad hominem attacks became standard, in the current election people spent more time scrutinizing what Bain Capital did or if Obama is a muslim or not than their actual programs.

People did not get dumber, they can now choose from a palette holding utterly dumb options. So they do. Let's give the obvious example, the economic crisis. Before the age of shitposting there were two group of economic ideas. The "left wing" believed that high governmental redistribution leads to growth. The "right wing" believed in free market and individual responsibility. If someone would come up with the idea that "hey guys, how about throwing money made from thin air to the people, so everyone would be rich", he would have been laughed and ignored by both sides. He couldn't get his ideas posted in the books and papers of either side, nor he had the money to fund his own. In the age of internet, this nonsense became mainstream. The politician who did not offer better education/health care/welfare/jobs/defense without tax raise had no chance to win. Cheap loans that were defaulted in the minute of giving out became standard. The voices of those who told it's nonsense either from left or right was lost in the noise of millions of dumb people who couldn't add two numbers.

It will just get worse. Every day new and new people get hooked on the internet, believing that talking without having a clue or avoiding any kind of logic is the norm. The time when people honestly believe that everyone could live in wealth without anyone working is near. You can't undo internet. You can't revoke the ability of people to write to their Facebook page that Obama is a muslim nigger or Romney is evil because his kiss with his wife shows no emotion. Dumbness must be filtered elsewhere, and I have no better idea than the urns. Democracy - the system when everyone can vote - has came to the end.

Note to dumb people: I do not mean that internet is bad. Internet is good. Democracy was always bad but worked with the limitations of the information monopoly of the intelligent people. This monopoly locked out dumb and uninformed people from the decision making process, they simply followed their local (relatively) intelligent opinion leaders. This monopoly wasn't good because it locked out lot of people from information, especially those who were born into poverty.

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Thursday morning report: 184.8B (6.6+2.0 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3+2.0 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Highsec hauling after Orca fix

Orca was probably always just a mining support vessel. However the cargo scanner was coded in a way to scan cargo (go figure) and not corporate hangars. This made corporate hangars unscannable. Also, probably the loot calculation code only considered cargohold. So there was no loot either from these hangars. The above made the Orca ungankable in highsec. It was way too big for anyone to gank it for fun, and there was no profit on it. This is going to be fixed.

Now what? Of course if you just haul something small that no one cares about, you can just use a nano-fitted frigate. No one will bother to catch you. But what if you haul 5-10B regularly? I mean what if you can't expect to just vanish in the crowd because you have a hauling service that others (including pirates) can employ, watch when their cargo arrives and figure out your name. You can of course switch alts and hide, but security through obscurity is probably not good enough.

Your low/nullsec hauling experience doesn't work in highsec. You can't neut-scout gatecamps because there is no need to scout Niarja or Uedama to know it's camped. If you only haul when they are not, you must be online 23/7 to find a window. No, you need to get into these system despite you know they are camped and that the guys are possibly after you personally. Same for gate-crash, the No1 tip to anyone to survive a gatecamp. If you gatecrash when you jump into a highsec gatecamp, you just jump-in and gatecrash all day which is probably funny, but barely productive.

Cloaky hauler (or frigate) isn't the answer because the traffic is so large that you'll be often decloaked. Also, good campers will have over-sensor booster ships to tackle you in 1 sec. Cloak is still useful as it increases the cost of the gank, but it's not a lifesaver.

With large cargo I cannot help. You just have to split it up between multiple Orcas (transport orcas has 1.5x more EHP than freighters, if you used to haul it in Orca, keep doing it). But BPOs, implants, skillbooks can be hauled safely. Below I post the solution, the ultimate shiny-hauler of post-Orca world in various versions from lazy to efforted: To catch this ship, one has to decloak and point in less than 4 seconds. After that they have to break 790K!!! tank. Alternatively they try to neut it out (suicide Bhaalgorns ye!) but since it replaces enough capacitor every second to switch on all hardeners, they have to use several neuting ships making sure that they neut every single second. The first 12 seconds after starting aggressing cannot be neuted out even with perfect job as the hardeners surely finish their cycle. The pilot overheat meds if he sees a gatecamp and activates them if they decloak him. Let me repeat the EHP: 790K. Almost 4x more than of a freighter and they can't just bump it away from the gate while the Taloses get to optimal range. They also need to paint it to increase signature. They must start scrambling instantly as this ship warps out in 4 seconds. Scram is a crime, the CONCORD countdown is ticking. Granted, it needs some skilled pilot, especially note that he is using fleet bonuses that need him to be his own fleet booster (no links or link skills). Add double-wrapping and they must jump their fleet blindly, maybe only to get some deadspace hardeners and an exotic dancer.

The harder version?
More Tengus! Identical transport Tengus, each carrying a double-wrapped can and this time equipped with large energy transfers. 1 has cargo, others have 1 trit. No possible way to figure out which is which. You must damage 790K to figure out? Tengu lottery. Bonus: only one has to be fleet booster, the others can be piloted by random missioning Tengu pilots you can buy by the dozen on the Bazaar.

Can they be killed? Sure. But they are hard enough to kill, and with double-wrapping having enough risk of being empty that uninstalling the game seems a better idea than collecting the fleet, risking that a few guys mess it up and there is no kill or that ship is empty.

Wednesday morning report: 183.8B (6.6+2.0 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3+2.0 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Stop the newbie from dying, not the killer from killing!

An MMO must have new players to continue its existence. EVE Online is no exception. However EVE isn't considered a newbie-friendly game. It's rather the game where the average MMO player tries out and then uninstall raging or crying in a week. CCP must stop this or there will be no EVE Online.

EVE is a game with losses, but losses to newbies are very different from losses to us. If I'd lose a 3B Orca to a gatecamp, I'd understand what happened and why. I'd knew that I took risk by putting so much value in a ship and could have prevented it happening. The newbie has no clue what just happened. He was just happily flying like he used to and then he was in a station. Why? How?

However the way CCP is trying to do it isn't looking either good or effective. They try to limit highsec aggression patch by patch to prevent newbies from being massacred by gankers. The next expansion will make the life of gankers harder by making them a "suspect" that anyone can kill. However EVE is a PvP game where fighting shouldn't be artificially limited. To make it worse, sacrificing the core of EVE step by step has no effect as the newbies don't only die to "evil" highsec gangers. Low/null entry systems are full of newbie corpses, because they click off the warning without even reading and there are even newbie corps in nullsec, serving no other purpose than amusement.

Danger is manageable in EVE. You can prevent losses by good playing. If you die, it's your fault. You were careless, dumb, or just took too much risk and your luck ran out. The problem with newbies is their knowledge is way too small to know how to prevent losses besides being a 100% "carebear".

The solution is not stopping PvP but stopping the newbie from being stupid. I'd suggest the following limitations to accounts that are younger than 4 months and not confirmed alts of veterans:

• Using a bonus remap.
• He can do his first remap, but must put at least 1 pt to every attribute and not more than 5 to any. So he can start specializing but not in a way that cripple himself.
• Creating a corporation
• Joining a corporation with no "PvP corp" or "PvE corp" tag.
• Entering lowsec, nullsec or WH unless he is a member of a "PvP corp"
• Performing a criminal action unless he is a member of a "PvP corp". This includes flipping back flipped cans or any other way baited into aggression.
  
• Selling, contracting, direct trading or undocking with PLEX. He can receive PLEX and use it to add time to account
• Undocking in anything worth more than 1/3 of his total net worth unless he is in a "PvE corp".
• Undocking uninsured.

With these limitations the newbie simply couldn't hurt himself. He is forced to live a similar life he is used to in other games so he can learn the basics of EVE before he loses recently PLEX-ed billions to a gatecamp or scam.

The "PvP corp" and "PvE corp" in the above are important exceptions: if one has friends who can guide him in the game, he can take bigger risks. The "PvP corp" status could be earned by corporations with a minimum number of active accounts in the game (to exclude few-man scamming corps) and a minimum ISK destroyed in PvP in the last 2 months (to exclude ineffective lolcorps). The "PvE corp" status can be earned after a minimum amount of ISK is deposited at CONCORD. The deposit can be retrieved by giving up the "PvE corp" title. The titles are needed to prevent malicious or simply bad players from gathering newbies into a corp where they can't learn anything. EVE isn't WoW, it's much better to be in the starter corporation alone than with "friends" who tell you to fly a cargohold expander fit Brutix to Syndicate.

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Scouring of the Shire

Jester and his alliance started he "Scouring of the Shire" campaign, cleaning Syndicate from alliances that give them no good fights, either by docking up or by showing up with a logi-heavy team. They attack structures of the ones they find unworthy of living in Syndicate to stop them making money, making them leave. It goes well, which isn't surprising if you consider that the targets are picked exactly for not fighting. However it doesn't make Jester happy:

"The other interesting thing about this campaign so far is how it's both revitalized Rote Kapelle and recommited us to the alliance's mission not to hold sov. We're having to use so many tactics that are required for sov warfare: the blobs, the hell-camps, the alarm clock ops, the bridging. Most of it just isn't our style and never will be. This is and remains the biggest problem with this game, and the one that threatens to eventually wreck the whole thing. The number of EVE Online super-powers continues to dwindle from eight to six to four to three... and now threatens to become two over the next year. The blobs are getting bigger and bigger and bigger while ironically the targets for them dwindle. Where does that leave those few groups like Rote Kapelle that just have no interest in being part of that game?"

Poor Jester bumped into the same problem as my girlfriend, just from the other direction. Jester would like to participate in the gameplay but it's denied from him by others running from a fight unless they have a massively overwhelming fleet. Jester actively refuses to take part in the main storyline while my girlfriend simply sees no reason to participate.

Practically all PvP games offer "good fights". EVE is probably the worst place for looking for "good fights" because the defeated one must grind his losses back by doing PvE to be able to fight again. I guess half-life counterstrike wouldn't be so popular if the defeated team would be placed to a special map where they must shovel manure and carry boxes for half an hour to earn money for weapons. You must have a reason to do so. To go and do something you don't like to be able to fight again.

The powerblocks Jester denounces are formed around and against ideas. The Mittani, Makalu, Vince "FalconMate" Draken aren't just friendly/enemy players. Your reaction towards their internet persona is real (which hopefully you don't mix with real life person). The "no shits given" attitude of TEST and the "we are the elite" attitude of -A- aren't about pixels but real egos. The combatants of the South aren't grinding ISK to blow up pixels but to "silence that yelling ass Makalu" or "show those TEST retards who's the man". Something real.

The only sin the "Syndicate carebears" committed is being bad in a video game. They are doing PvE in the worst possible region for it. They should be in highsec, rented null or a C3. But I doubt Rote Kapelle members really dislike the "being bad in a video game" people. Therefore grinding them down isn't satisfying, as it's not real. You could do the same in Arathi Basin with much less grinding, bridging, alarm clocks.

The goals of Jester can't be reached. The evicted bad players will be replaced by even worse players. Or by nothing. If Jester and his friends have enough stamina, they can clean up Syndicate, making it the most desolate place in New Eden. But they can't get what they want, a group that will fight good. Because those people have much better options than blowing up battlecruisers just for the sake of it. They can fight for something real. Or they can just stay in highsec and watch their wallet grow. There are three ways to get into fights:

• Joining a nullsec empire and fight in huge fleets. The enemy must show up or they lose their space.
• Lowsec piracy, highsec ganking: bringing the fight to people who don't want it.
• RvB: consensual PvP

Finding a worthy opponent who suffers living in NPC null for no other reason than "good fights" is practically impossible.

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The moron of the week is Ice Slicer whose social thinking is absurd. "I would think less of myself" could be a motto for M&S.
Hard contender for the moron of the week position is the -A- FC who thought the HBC staging system is a good place for a battleship roam.

Saturday morning report: 182.1B Sent 2B to my nullsec industrial alt to start up some trading in Delve. (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3+2.0 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 182.9B (6.6+0.5 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3+2.0 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 183.7B (6.6+0.5 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3+2.0 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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The "problem" and the solution of the "failed" null industry

Breaking news for Orca pilots about winter changes:
- Corp hangars *on ships* are now fleet hangars
- Fleet hangars will now behave like normal cargo hold when it comes to ship scanners and loot drops (ie, will be scannable, and loot will drop from them)

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Nullsec being a zone of wealth destruction instead of wealth creation is a central issue of EVE economy. While it creates a unique World where winning is harder and harder, it is also responsible for the small playerbase of the game. EVE is the direct opposite of the standard MMOs: as you "progress", your character and player group becomes weaker and weaker. The more Sov you want, the more time your highsec "alt" (with much more play time than your "main") must spend farming just to be able to pay your Sov bills and other costs. This game only appeal to players who like the (anti)social aspect of the game. To like EVE you must either use it as a human behavior simulator, or simply like griefing or helping people.

I'm absolutely sure that CCP did not plan the game this way. Every guide, intro, post they make has the mantra of "the more risky zone you go, the rewards are larger". It's even true on the surface: the lower the security status of the system, the more materials can come from a planetary extractor, the more valuable NPCs spawn and more valuable ore you can find.

The "problem" comes from the core design idea of EVE: "there is no absolute safety". The "owners" of the system don't own it at all. There is absolutely no tool for them to keep enemies out any more than shooting them with ships. But you have that without ownership too. The bonuses of ownership are rather convenience: jump bridges, stations to respawn/reship. There is a passive income source: moon mining, but that doesn't add to security.

This, combined with the "every ship is valuable" doctrine of EVE means that hostiles, literally in ships given by the newbie starter missions are able to get in and successfully attack the "owners". While their ship is no match to any combat ship the owners have, it can take down ratting (NPC farming), mining or hauling ships. His risks are near-zero as his ship has very low price. While his chances are slim against anyone cares to undock particularly to clear him up, he has a chance to catch valuable industrial ships. A multi billion ratting faction battleship can die to a stealth bomber or in a gatecamp set up by destroyers and frigates.

"Fixing" this is impossible without removing most PvP actions in EVE. However some players found the "fix" and their alliances, TEST and Goons are progressing well towards map domination. The fix is accepting newbies. Most alliances are elitist and accept only highly trained, skilled and rich players. Accepting newbies isn't just good for your fleet numbers. Accepting newbies is extremely helpful for your alliance economy.

This seems awkward. Why would newbies generate more income to the alliance then established players? Because of the different income vs skillpoints/knowledge/assets in highsec and nullsec. It is something like this: After the nullsec ratter can fly a Naga or the nullsec miner can grab a Retreiver they are ready to make nice money. The equally fitted highsec counterparts are still doing L3 securities or mine Scordite. However as they earn power, the highsec ones can add more accounts, more expensive and effective ships. Two-three faction fit faction battleships and a Noctis can pull some serious ISK in level 4 missions or deadspace complexes. Of course the same group could pull even higher ISK in a sanctum, except if they try to, they soon end up on the killboard of some cloaky Loki. Similarly the 10 account Orca supported scordite miner has nothing to complain about (besides bumpers maybe) while a similar multibox miner team is likely to not even reach the stationless system it supposed to be mining if a few destroyers are camping a gate. Also good luck AFK-autopiloting multiboxed freighters in Stain like you do in The Forge.

While the potential in nullsec is larger for everyone, the experienced and rich player can't use it due to risks of loss. On the other hand the newbie is able to grab the full potential of nullsec since his losses are miniscule next to his gains. A ratting Naga can earn its pricetag in an hour. A ratting Tengu must work ten-something hours to pay for a loss. I don't want to calculate this time of return for a ratting Nyx.

The reason why CCP did not notice it at design is that during planning and testing phase everyone was newbie. Those who were there at the start tell stories about corporations roaming null. There wasn't even alliance interface. People just went out in whatever they had to mine, rat or fight. If you are at the keyboard and use one account, you still can pull in more money in nullsec than in high. I don't think CCP expected 10 account AFK mining fleets or 5B Machariel missioner bots when they planned the game. They simply underestimated how far one can go with multiple accounts and lot of money and maybe a keyboard script.

This isn't something that CCP can fix without banning multiple accounts or AFK-ing, that they will surely not do. However it's something that the players can fix. You must fill your land with battlecruiser ratting, Retreiver mining, P1 PI doing newbies. They want to be at the keyboard (Spaceships!!!) and they have just one account. The real problem is that in most player groups one cannot join before reaching a level where he has no reason to join. Someone with a 60M SP pilot could make much more ISK in highsec than in null. The future belongs to alliances that bring the few days old newbies to the resources of null, letting them zerg down the ores, rats and planets, leaving only special tasks (JF hauling, below-POS-shield Rorqual boost, P4 PI, escalation fleets) to experienced players. Experienced players doing the busywork of industry in null is simply waste of ISK. If they need money, they should pull out those mission Machariels or 10 Mackinaw fleets, obviously in highsec.

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I still play WoW sometimes, but the utter incompetence of the average player, combined with Blizzards choice to force us to suffer them (instead of podding them like in EVE) reinforces my decision and my account will expire:
Will of the Emperor (the endboss) LFR, kill after a 1% wipe
Friday morning report: 183.4B (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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