Quantum olive
Pilots out in the darkest depths of lawless space know that not everything matches the cozy little categories that their colleagues back in CONCORD-policed space expect. This applies to conflicts as much as it does to the places and objects they find in their travels.
One such type of object occasionally shows up on their scanners. At its small size, ships generally need to engage their sensor boosters to lock onto it, even at relatively short ranges. Human eyes have difficulty keeping it in focus as it seems to slip in and out of reality. This object (occasionally called a “quantum olive”) has intrigued researchers since its initial discovery in the Curse region. Perhaps it represents some natural phenomenon, or perhaps the remnants of a Jovian experiment, or perhaps an even older culture. Perhaps some ancient non-human intelligence built it and let it float away once the artifact no longer held its interest, as a child with a suddenly-boring plaything. In truth, no one knows. Or anyone who does know hasn’t said publicly, at any rate…
Flash Fiction 2: “What might have been”
Like everyone else in the transportation terminal, he stood transfixed while watching the reports come across the data screens.
He didn’t travel often. Wife, children, and a government desk post tied him down. But he didn’t get the urge to travel, either, so this suited him just fine.
Something had changed a few months ago. He found himself thinking more, reminiscing, examining the paths he’d not followed earlier in life. What if he’d studied in a different field? What if he’d not taken this position? What if they hadn’t had children? What if he hadn’t married her?
Perhaps these questions occur to all men of a certain age and station. Not all men had the access he did, though, working for the Republic Security Services. So he began to indulge his “what-if” dreams, furtively examining a file here and there. He reasoned that he hadn’t hurt anyone, as he hadn’t passed on the information to anyone or even saved it. But what about that recruiting officer that had pulled him into the RSS? What happened to the students he knew who’d entered the Fleet? Had anyone analyzed the relation of career trajectory in the RSS with family status? What about his own wife’s past?
The inquiries turned into an addiction for him, the endless data dumps like a drug that kept his mind off his own dreary life. They provided far more interest for him than just processing CONCORD criminal reports and trying to keep the peace when he got home.
One of his what-if scenarios drifted to a girl he’d known back in school. Time had dulled his memory somewhat, or perhaps burnished it, so that he could no longer see her face so precisely in his dreams. But as he thought more about their relationship, or at least their friendship, he believed he saw more potential in that past than he’d realized. Perhaps his life would have turned into something better, or at least different, if that had gone somewhere.
And that tormented him.
So now he dug further. She’d moved to Luminaire sometime in the distant past. He found her dossier and kept reading. In fact, now she was a civilian employee for CONCORD, working in their Yulai datacenter as some sort of budget manager.
An eternity of restless nights later, he had enough. He needed to see her, to know what could have happened. Late one night, after the children had been put to bed, he coldly informed his wife that he had to travel and didn’t know when, or if, he’d return. No, he didn’t want to discuss it. Yes, he’d contact them later. No, he didn’t want her to try to find him. Yes, of course his job knew.
She stared at him with un-cried tears in her eyes as he finished packing his bags and left for the shuttle terminal to catch a liner for Yulai.
Then it happened, and, like everyone else in the transportation terminal, he stood transfixed while watching the reports come across the data screens.
Translating your RL job to EVE
Yargok, who writes the excellently-named blog Wherever I May Roam, had a great post idea about discussing your RL job in EVE terms. So, how would your exact job look, translated into EVE?
In my job, I’d work for some financial-industry megacorp, monitoring our portion of the fluid router network for security violations or attempts to breach our network. I’d spend time poring through the connection and transaction data, all to protect the corporation’s net from folks trying to run codebreakers on our data systems. And I’d frequently work with the CONCORD CRC in order to coordinate threat response and share intel on the sorts of activity we’re seeing or might see. Yes, the anti-explorer, that would be me.
This probably explains why I play the sort of character I do: escapism, the anti-reality…
Image credit mugley
Syndicate-Thukker deterioration
The intricacies of power politics never cease to confuse me. I spent some time out in Syndicate this week, conferring with the Intaki Bank offices in TXW-EI (and a few other corporations) to clear up some confusion from a few months ago. An agent had asked me to remove a troublesome Minmatar Republic convoy, and I had trouble. We exchanged some heated words and evidently he filed a report indicating that the Syndicate couldn’t trust me. I’ve got it all fixed now, or nearly so.
But during this renegotiation process, when Louis Stiers, another agent, had asked me to deal with some police surveillance squadrons and listening posts, an odd request came up. Interspersed with various assignments focused on the Khanids, apparently working with the CONCORD Directive Enforcement Department (DED), and, to a lesser degree, the Republic and even the Gallente Federation, I received a nudge to hit a Thukker convoy. When the agent transmitted the contract to me, I immediately turned it back around. Not only did the Thukker tribe have traditionally good relations with the Syndicate (if a little strained due to Maleatu Shakor’s political efforts), but they have a station in the same system. I may not mind starting all sorts of violence among podders, but I’d rather stay out of an underworld war against two large groups with whom I really like working, particularly where Back Alley has an office and various business interests.
For a bit, I wondered if they not might have just tried to test me. I thought this because, as soon as I rejected it, the agent immediately gave out an assignment to deal with some regular scum who had made the mistake of falling behind on rent payments for their pleasure hub location in the next system up the pipe.
Yeah, right...
At any rate, the Bank has assigned me another agent for now, one Guispon Meganier. He understands how to use my abilities a little better, so I’ve done some discreet deliveries and even inserted a marine detachment into a Syndicate station whose guard commander had gotten a little corrupt (well, independently corrupt). Unfortunately, I lost my Prowler to a Nighthawk underneath the station while I argued with traffic control to let me back into the hangar.
So I clone-jumped back to Oursulaert for a few days to attend to business there. In the meantime, I consulted with my old friend Eran Mintor, who seemed equally troubled. Wonder if I should go talk to somebody back at the Tribe about this?
Image credits josh.liba and america.gov
Piracy in high-security space
It wasn't me!
Despite what Egonics and their ilk will tell us, copying music isn’t piracy. Doing violence against somebody’s ship to gain something from their cargo or passengers, though, definitely qualifies. And pilots can make a bit of ISK engaging in piracy, even in “high security space”.
So while CONCORD provides consequences., pilots have to provide their own safety. They can do so generally through tactical awareness, battlefield intelligence, and good flying. For example, let’s say a mining barge, such as a Retriever, sits calmly in a belt in 0.5 security space, mutilating rocks for commercial gain. Perhaps the local non-pod craft pirates (NPC rats) might harass them a little, but they keep a few combat drones deployed just to deal with the pesky little frigates. (That NPC pilot provides a great example of somebody with poor tactical awareness.) The Retriever doesn’t have much in the way of defensive equipment because the pilot doesn’t intend to get into any fights.
Now, a podder ship warps into the belt, maybe in a combat cruiser like a Rupture, and burns toward their ship. It could have arrived just to take out the rats and get the CONCORD bounty, but that assumption doesn’t actually protect the barge very much. Suddenly, the cruiser bumps the barge off of a possible alignment to a celestial, locks it, and opens fire.
CONCORD takes a few seconds to warp to the belt. During that time, the Rupture can get off four or five rounds from each of four autocannons, maybe a few heavy assault missile salvos, all enhanced by target painters. The Retriever will have exploded before CONCORD arrives, and the destruction of that pirate ship won’t console the victim very much. The pirate warps away from both wrecks in his pod.
Then it gets worse: another ship warps in and loots the wrecks. Oddly enough, those wrecks don’t belong to the victim pilot, but to the pirate. Now the victim, who might have swapped to a combat ship like a Rifter, or maybe a friend of said victim, open fire on this third ship out of frustration. Bad idea, because CONCORD enforces the law without favoritism or empathy. The victim of the first engagement has now broken the law and they will warp in before methodically scramming, jamming, and blamming. And the third ship gets away with the loot, for which the market will generally pay a decent amount if that Retriever had nice equipment on it. The Rupture pilot, who would have insured the ship that CONCORD destroyed, also probably used cheap “meta level 0″ equipment and not lost very much ISK. In fact, it could well be that the equipment from the Retriever easily pays the remainder of the replacement of the pirate’s ship.
Not that this happened in Nakugard tonight with any of my associates. Or Hek. (Or Uttindar, but that incident can get left out of this discussion…) No, I just think that pilots should understand how all this works.
Image credit Dyanna
Construction through colonization
Colonies depend on towers
For a long time, I’ve dreamed of a world without centralized power structures. A world where people work together in an effort to build something new, with their efforts rewarded with freedom and liberty.
My dream just took another step on the road to reality with the establishment of a starbase for the Back Alley Trading Company in a wormhole system.
Granted, it took a bit to find our foothold. We’d spent several days scouting every wormhole we could find, looking for a place that met our criteria. One of my scouts found a promising connection in the Khanid region, but a couple of other pod pilots had gotten there already for a quick raid. I vectored in another scout and raced across 17 jumps to reach it myself in my Drake.
A Maller and Myrmidon evidently paid no attention while my scouts stalked them, so when I arrived, I had a scout give me a warp-in point. I landed on the grid and started spewing missiles from range. Of course, we didn’t have any warp disruption on them from that range and didn’t want to use covops frigates for that purpose, so they fled back to K-space. In reality, while I wouldn’t have minded a kill or two, this accomplished our primary tactical goal of clearing the system. I had little intention of actually destroying their ships (though I would have done so if they’d chosen to engage).
When I chased them back into Ashi, the wormhole closed behind me, with my scouts still inside. Perfect.
We hurriedly arranged logistics while they probed out a new entrance and set up our starbase. We’ve already cleared out quite a bit of Sleeper activity, plus some gas clouds. I left pod for a while and came back to find that my associates had lost a couple of barges due to not watching their directional scanners or staying aligned. As I told them, I don’t mind losses, but I do mind losses from which they learn no lessons. I think they got the point… actually, I know they got the point.
A few other lessons I learned: in tower management, you can choose which roles can perform various tasks on specific structures in the base. The settings for Ship Management Arrays and Corporate Management Arrays have selections for Starbase Fuel Technician, Config Starbase Equipment, Corporation, and Alliance. I set those to Corporation and then created a title, “W-space Pilot”, for the folks out there that gave them access to the proper hangars and such. This lets everyone do their jobs without having the ability to take the whole thing offline themselves. Security matters, and I’ve learned paranoia in my years as a podder. (Fortunately, I had a consultant come in and help us with the organization, so we have the needed bureaucracy already in place to grow quite a bit.)
Also, if you want your tower to shoot at neutrals, you need to set the defense AI to target anyone below 0.1, not the default 0.0. Obvious in hindsight but I just did too many things at once.
Later we’ll move to a system with a higher rating, but for now, this system gives us a great opportunity to work out the kinks in our operation and get some of the newer pilots accustomed to flying in space without CONCORD’s paternalistic protection.
New joint venture
Some of you may have noticed that CONCORD no longer registers me as flying for the Ecliptic Rift corporation, nor some of my associates. While ERIFT still exists (and I still own it in full), I now manage Back Alley Trading Company, a joint venture between several pilots located in the Placid region.
BKAT is a free market syndicate dedicated to market development in low and null security space. We have begun some forays into the Syndicate region as part of a new working arrangement with the Intaki Bank.
Traders, miners, and other industrial pilots with an interest in the profits that can result from flying in these areas are welcome to join the “Streetlight” channel, as are combat pilots interested in escort and security duty. In fact, we’d happily discuss our services with anyone with an interest.
We’ll have more to say about the Company in the future as events warrant. This site, though, will continue under its current name and focus.
Fly risky!
New Eden Macroeconomics: ISK Sources
ISK makes the cluster go ’round. It lubricates the wheels of commerce, motivates men and women to take risks, and generally makes things happen. To help my fellow players understand the EVE economy a little more, I’ve put together a series of short articles on some of the core fundamentals. In this first article, let’s look at ISK sources.
EVE follows a “faucet and drain” model: in-game currency enters through various faucets (ISK sources), sloshes around in the sink (market and other transactions), then drains out (ISK sinks).
ISK enters the universe in a few ways: mission payouts, NPC bounties, and NPC buy orders. All of these activities directly generate ISK into a player or corporation wallet, increasing the amount of currency in the game. It doesn’t come from some hidden Fort Knox wallet deep in Jita or Yulai, but rather gets generated on-the-fly by the game engine. NPC buy orders (like for trade goods and tags) also generate ISK in the same way.
Some players and even a few CCP developers (fortunately, not game designers, at least that I have seen) think that mining also creates ISK. That fundamentally misunderstands how the EVE economy works. Mining does not create any ISK. Mining is not an ISK source.
Right about now, a few of you have already started to compose replies in your head to tell me why I’m wrong and stupid and should go pod myself. But I’m not. Sure, mining creates value. It creates resources. What do miners do with those resources? Sell them to other players for ISK that someone else has already generated. Those other players then trade those resources or convert them into manufactured items, but nobody generates ISK directly here. Resources and items have value, but they do not actually equate to ISK because the money used to purchase them came from somewhere else.
Unlike in the real world, the overall economy never has a shortage of ISK. NPC corporations don’t tighten their budgets and stop giving out missions, CONCORD doesn’t stop paying out bounties because they’re broke, etc. The supply side of monetary policy, such as it is, comes in the form of CCP tweaking payouts and sell orders, but this doesn’t happen too often. So as more money enters the system, somebody is getting richer. More money is available to spend on items, and thus the dreaded word “inflation” starts getting thrown around.
Of course, on a micro level, lots of players have ISK shortages. This usually results from not having much due to just starting out, losing what they have to the harsh consequences for which EVE is so famous, or simply preferring activities that do not bring much monetary gain (like roleplay, PvP, or blogging).
The next two articles will talk about sloshing ISK around (transactions that move ISK among players) and draining it from the economy. Future articles will discuss employment, inflation, security ratings, and why the QEN doesn’t tell us everything we want to know.
Photo credit Shermeee via Flickr
Stargate software fix
I see that the New Eden stargate network got a firmware upgrade earlier today. From what I could tell, the interfacing routines between the actual gates and the pod interface had some sort of esoteric race condition, so that occasionally they just didn’t agree on the ship’s actual location. Quantum uncertainty writ large, maybe? Anyway, while resetting the pod interface usually resolved the problem temporarily (I can only assume in favor of the gate), that definitely presented issues when jumping into low-sec. You might come back from the reset to find yourself in a medical facility, assuming that the emergency backup transmission actually worked and beamed you over to your clone.
All in all, glad to see this. Though maybe CONCORD’s quality control process needs a few upgrades. Not that I plan to volunteer.
Brutish
Author’s Note: I traveled out of town on business for a few days and wanted to explain Casiella’s absence from the pod. This is the result.
The doors exploded open as a furious woman burst through into the anteroom. Despite her actual lack of physical stature, her anger seemed to double her size as she stormed past a protesting receptionist and into a large, luxuriously-appointed office with the Brutor tribal symbol embossed into the walls.
