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Thursday, 9 September 2010

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Corporate espionage and infiltration

'Feline industrial espionage' by studiospecialplace

I’ve started to get interested in the metagame behind EVE. If you’ve not read the Sins of a Solar Spymaster column series from The Mittani, I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

Of course, espionage and infiltration are just methods to achieve objectives. And my objectives would differ materially from his: I don’t have any serious involvement in nullsec, at least not in player-sovereignty nullsec. But I can think of a number of interesting ways to roll with this:

  1. General information brokerage, mostly for profit.
  2. Infiltration for corporate theft
  3. Limited roleplay (e.g. related to Casiella’s connections to the Republic Security Services). Matar victor, and that
  4. Data gathering for other nefarious deeds, particularly against enemies of friendly corporations

I haven’t started any of this, to be clear. But I’ve started exploring my options in relation to various industrial and mission-running corporations, as well as potential allies and mentors.

I need to establish my own boundaries, though. For example, I’ve started to work toward joining a corp on another character (if you’re reading this and think I mean you, then you’re right), and I really want to make them my “real” group. My home, in other words, where my other activities support them directly or indirectly. Betraying them simply wouldn’t be something I would ever contemplate. And I don’t actually want to destroy a corporation, at least not in general. Gather information, yes. Make some ISK through “creative reallocation of assets”, very possible. But I need to figure out how far I’m willing to go, because I’ve seen things in the past that actually killed a corporation (e.g. taking the shares then passing CEO duties to an inactive member).

As part of this changing focus, I’ve started to pay close attention to the Crime & Punishment forum. It has a lot of trolling, obviously, but the list of corporate thieves presents some interesting data. And while I don’t have the PVP chops to participate myself, the MERC list and channel really seem to scratch that itch for a seedy underbelly of EVE.

Do any of my readers participate in the Great Metagame? Anything you’d like to share on the subject?

Related posts:

  1. Cloak and Dagger: Infiltration links
  2. Copernicus Coalition launch
  3. Inventors Summit

Date: 2010-07-26

Categories: OOC

Tags: , , , , , , ,

  • http://twitter.com/Mynxee Mynxee

    Well TECHNICALLY you could say CSM is the META metagame :) But…seriously, yes I have been involved with infiltrations done for purposes of corp theft and heists. But I draw the line at stealing, infiltrating with evil intent, etc., from those I have come to consider friends in the game. People I engage with having a plan to delude from the start, well…that's different. Hard to say what might look tempting when you get 10s of billions of ISK waved in front of your nose though. I mean…it IS a game.

  • Harmonic Design

    The best fun we had recently was having an alt of our CEO join and then attack his alt with our corp members. They war dec'd us. We had lots of fun chasing them around high sec. Came clean to them in the end.

    Just did it for the fight, in the end we recruited a bunch of folks from that corp…

  • http://www.velocilogic.com Velocity Prime

    The metageme is interesting indeed, and one of the reasons I love EVE. It's something that I dip into from time to time. ;) On that note, I am always in need of agents… if you happen to know any, that is…

  • Latrodanes

    Good luck with the boundaries. Once you go down the path, it can lead to some very difficult decisions. You say you would not want to destroy a corp. You say you do not want to betray friends. You say you would “just” gather information. However, in all those cases, you will enter a corporation with nefarious intent, operate alongside its pilots, develop relations with them in order to gain greater placement and access, and then you will betray their plans to others, steal their assets, and the corp could very well implode. I am not at all against any of it, but do not delude yourself, it can be a slippery slope.

  • http://rift.chromebits.net Casiella Truza

    If I get anywhere, I'll certainly look for clients. :)

  • http://rift.chromebits.net Casiella Truza

    The CSM is a metagame in a whole different way, sure.

    And you expressed what I tried to say much better: I know who my friends are. Well, sort of — I know who I want to be friends with. ;) And so there are some groups I wouldn't hurt, even if I reached a position of trust.

  • http://rift.chromebits.net Casiella Truza

    Infiltration undoubtedly will present some thorny ethical issues. What I mean is that I wouldn't intentionally take actions to kill a corp, rendering it useless (as what happened with the 17th Minmatar Tactical Wing). They remain in control of their reaction to adversity.

    It's similar to destroying a pilot's most valuable ship. That ship might be his main mission running ship, or he might have packed everything he owns into a hauler. A pirate won't necessarily let the ship go just because it would be destroying all that pilot's assets. And even if that happens to you, you have to choose how to respond. Leave EVE? Find a new career? Start over? Get friends to help?

    Similarly, I wouldn't intentionally try to start OOC drama between friends. That is, if I know two pilots are RL friends, I wouldn't personally feel comfortable suborning their friendship (“did you know what X said about you the other night after you logged?”).

    But I recognize that, sure, folks might emoragequit. That happens anytime folks take their Internet spaceship pixels too seriously. :)

  • Scrapyard Attendant

    http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi..., if you do in fact pay attention to C&P :)

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