Ecliptic Rift

I have done some reading on Gandhi recently, beyond the “sound bite” version we get in Western culture. I’m actually really interested in the opportunity to discuss some of these ideas about nonviolence within the context of EVE Online, as opposed to real life.

Personal views

I don’t have a good way yet to express how I actually feel about it IRL: sort of “I wish I could be the sort of man that practices that belief”, or maybe “I aspire to that”. This concept of satyagraha, or “civil resistance” (not really a good English word for the concept) strikes incredibly close to what I think I should be, and it builds upon the concept of ahimsa. It’s just hard. I’ve had Gandhi on my mind for some time now, and I’ve experienced my own “crisis of faith”. Please note that I don’t really like that phrase, as it sounds overly dramatic for what I feel at the moment. I’ve simply taken some time to re-examine the expressions of my values in an effort to get to the core of them, not necessarily to change the foundations but to focus on them. This helps me do that, in a sense.

Note, I definitely don’t mean to say that games cause violence, nor that how one chooses to play EVE clearly reflects one’s RL values. A player who engages in piracy within the game probably does not kill and steal in real life. However, I personally would like to explore the possibility of a truly nonviolent play style, particularly within a PvP-focused game like EVE.

In-game background

EVE has no “good guys” in its background lore. Despite some efforts by individuals on the staff there, we’ve managed to preserve a fictional universe that, in terms of the human motivations and qualities, looks realistic. Some individuals may overall act with greater humanity, ethics, or morality, but in general no particular faction can lay a broad claim to “heroes” or “villains”.

With that said, certainly some act with less violence than others. The Sisters of EVE come to mind on one end of the spectrum, for example, and I don’t doubt that at least some religious orders within the Amarr Empire have similar humanitarian goals and efforts. (Even the Amarrians have more than one dimension to them.) And, given the extreme variance within the Gallente Federation and their overall adherence to what we would think of as modern Western ideals of classical liberalism, certainly some within that faction probably also follow this sort of path. I don’t know as much as I wish I did about the Intaki, but they have potential in this direction as well.

So, despite the endless warfare within the cluster, or perhaps even because of it, one can see small corners within it that fit characters who wish to follow that path. This only really matters in terms of fiction, roleplay, and character development, but those things matter to me and quite a few other players.

This really only addresses the question of non-violence, however, and not the civil resistance philosophy for which Gandhi became so well-known. I’ll probably have to address that in the future separately.

Mechanics

This actually gets a little more complicated. After all, one who makes claims in opposition of violent solutions before facilitating them directly acts with hypocrisy and inconsistency. So while “industry” sounds like a simple answer, we have to look a little more closely.

Miners typically can do so without ever having to destroy someone else’s ships, although belt pirates can present an issue in some locations. And selling materials on the open market resolves most of the ethical issues I’d foresee, though some might prefer instead to provide them via contract directly to producers whose ethics match their own.

In manufacturing and research, though, things can get a little murkier. Clearly the bulk of the market serves combat pilots: most ship hulls, for example, and quite a bit of the modules and equipment. Industrial pilots not wishing to contribute to that part of the market can choose to produce industrial and engineering equipment. The same goes for those of us focusing on trade.

The Tyrannis expansion should open up more possibilities in planetary management. The analogues to current industrial activities look fairly clear for the purposes discussed here.

While discussing some related matters with a friend, another idea occurred to me. Ironically, the actual inspiration comes from the Python Cartel, a group of pirates and (dare I say) griefers. But their Amamake Defense Force initiative actually shows how combat pilots could use their electronic warfare skills to try to neutralize opposing forces without firing upon them. What would happen if groups dedicated to that sort of engagement began to show up more often?

Conclusion

I’ve explored the OOC and IC motivations behind an interest in a truly nonviolent play style within EVE. And clearly our shared pastime offers enough variety in game activities to support many different pilots. Therefore, my readers and friends can expect to see Casiella shifting back in this direction, complete with (hopefully) appropriate internal character development to reflect the sort of person she’s been for some time as well.

I finally put some of my, erm, more esoteric skills to use. I’d spent some time doing delivery work and such for Core Complexion out of Eram, when the agent contacted me with this:

The government says we’re prepared for war. You wouldn’t know it by looking at our wounded. Space makes everything worse. Just look through the medical bay. Second-degree burns and frostbite are both alarmingly common, and are usually in conjunction with other serious injuries.

I need pain medications badly. I can’t just wait for the next delivery. I need to produce my own drugs. For that I’m going to need Gamboge Cytoserocin. I heard a smuggler say there was a pocket at Eram. Go there, and bring back everything you can. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

My Neocom gave me some additional background info:

Medicinal Drugs

Although the compounds that are popularly called “boosters” are illegal in empire space, other legal derivatives of gas cloud materials are used in the medical community. These medicinal drugs are highly controlled, but are often the difference between life and death for many citizens.

So what did I do? What could I do? I had my engineering crew warm up my gas harvesting ship Whirlwind, a properly-fitted Cyclone battlecruiser.

When I got there, I found an old abandoned station of Caldari design.

The smuggler’s data proved correct: a nice-sized cloud of Gamboge Cytoserocin hung gingerly in space, right at the site of a ship which had wrecked into a medium-sized asteroid.

The agent paid decently well and I feel like maybe I did some good after all. Dad would have been proud, if he were still around.

So Hulkageddon II has fallen upon us. I won’t go into all the controversy over Hitler and colon cancer, but suffice it to say that some folks really don’t like the concept.

I have some advice for these folks. No, not “seek professional help”. I recognize that few of them are invoking Godwin’s Law or Matthew 5:21-22, though the ones doing the name-calling really should know better.

In addition to “fit your ship properly” and “don’t mine AFK”, try this: “don’t mine in belts.”

Mining doesn’t have to happen in planetary asteroid belts, you know. It works just as well any place you can find asteroids. For example, we have asteroid belts available via exploration (gravimetric sites). High-sec grav sites don’t get a lot of attention, but if you want to shoot at rocks, suck them dry, and stay under the radar, they’ll work fine.

You can also go out and mine in missions. I don’t mean those terrible abominations of “mining missions“, but regular agent-assigned combat missions with lots of rocks in the deadspace pockets.

Maybe these options take a little more preparation and organization, but they sure beat replacing a 200m ISK ship and the associated equipment, don’t they? Seriously, try them. You might have some fun and you won’t have to risk your mental, emotional, or spiritual health to do so.

Overview

Everything starts with biochemical gas clouds. Mykoserocin clouds get used for the weakest (and only legal) variety, synth boosters, while cytoserocin clouds get used for standard, strong, and improved boosters. These clouds reside in ladar sites, particularly in null sec but also in some limited high/low sec regions. Harvesting this gas requires you to train one level of Gas Harvesting for each harvesting module you want to equip. Note that specialized mining ships like barges and exhumers cannot use these modules. Generally, you should use a tanked cruiser or battlecruiser for this activity. Mining bonuses don’t generally apply, though those from mining command links (e.g. on the Orca and Rorqual) do.

The Syndicate produces a faction version that has lower fitting requirements but does not mine any faster. It only requires 26 tf of CPU (reduced from 60 tf for the stock tech I version or 70 tf for the tech II). The Gas Cloud Harvester II, however, pulls 20 m³ every 40 seconds instead of 10 m³ every 30 seconds, giving 50% better yield. It also requires 5 MW of powergrid (instead of 2 MW) and the rank 1 skill Gas Gloud Harvesting trained to V (instead of I). No other factions have specialized gas harvesters available.

The Syndicate harvester arose out of a joint research project undertaken by dozens of Station owners across the region. The residents and industrialists of Syndicate appreciated, more than most, the latent potential of the underground booster industry. Although their modified harvesters offered no improvements in yield, they were easier for newer pilots to fit. Their investment in more accessible harvesting technology paid off, when eventually the empires quietly backpedalled and legalized the production and sale of Synth boosters.

Note that some ladar sites actually contain facilities and NPCs rather than gas clouds. These sites provide the blueprints, reactions, and sometimes skillbooks needed for the production post.

Once you’ve acquired gas, you’ll need a reaction and a blueprint to actually produce the booster. Using a biochemical silo and reactor array, you react the gas with water (or other materials, depending on the quality of booster to produce) to produce a pure version of the booster. Producing the final booster requires cutting the pure booster with megacyte in a drug lab at a low-security starbase.

While customs officials will not like standard boosters or better in high-security space, the market administrators don’t mind. So you can either sell the boosters at a market hub (assuming you can smuggle it successfully there) or via alternate methods, including direct trades or in low-security space.

References

• EVE Evolved: Combat boosters – description of each booster’s effect
• Combat booster manufacturing – excellent overview from EVE Wiki (eve-wiki.net)
• Boosters Part 2: The Secrets of the Drug Cartels – older overview by Kirith Kodachi
• Getting high on your own supply – dev blog detailing changes in Apocrypha
• Meanwhile, back in the exploration bunker – slightly older dev blog about synth boosters
• Booster production – support page explanation

Image credit nick_russill

I flew out to Jita last night. Far from my favorite place, but sometimes you have to go to the market first in order to bring the market to you. Still running some numbers, but it seems that various reactions can produce profit on the margin in terms of the reaction items themselves. I’ll need to account for fuel costs and a risk premium, but we’ve discussed this internally quite a bit and I think we may finally pull the trigger on that project.

In not unrelated news, I’ve replaced my Prowler (with a few improvements other pilots have suggested) and the Matrix Inversion made her maiden flight last night back to Hatakani. Endless tinkering with blockade runners is still fun, and this one will fall right into line.

In a larger sense, though, now that major nullsec powers (like IT Alliance) seem to have moved on from Syndicate, we feel confident about our ability to move back into our home region as a corp. We’ve come up with some short and mid range plans that should address what most of the corp wants to do.

I don’t want to put everything into the public, of course, but for those interested in the Back Alley Trading Company, I’ll lay a few things out here.

Enforcement operations will focus directly on combat. We will run missions for Syndicate agents in small squads, which should help with security as well as improve everyone’s standings with them. Additionally, we will run patrols and roams focused on finding pilots attacking Serpentis ships in belts and similar locations, as part of providing defensive services to our patrons.

Commerce operations should directly generate revenue and will fall under my direct supervision. Given that the Syndicate region does not have arkonor, bistot, or crokite (to my knowledge), we expect to find resources in other ways, including gravimetric and ladar sites as well as wormholes. From these resources, and others acquired via the market, we will carry out a number of industrial processes, including gas reactions, as well as consumable items like ammunition and drones.

Clearly, these goals will provide lots of room for participation from all of our pilots. Please note, pilots do not have to limit themselves to one area. Many of us have skills and interests across the board, so everyone can participate in operations that interest them (or help schedule them if they haven’t run at convenient times).

Now let’s fly wreck less out there.

Image credits duncan and drewish

CCP has released the dev blog detailing the new sovereignty upgrades and upkeep for Dominion. The tears in the resultant threadnaught have started to fall in upon themselves and may form a black hole from whose event horizon the existing PvP nullsec alliances may never escape.

Looking at things from the perspective of a small alliance, however, the new design will cost 14m every two weeks just to hold sovereignty over a system, plus an additional 70m every two weeks for the infrastructure hub (based on the decreased price). Essentially, we’re talking 6m/day. So you’d have to spend something like 180m/month to have a system you can upgrade. If you install “strategic upgrades” like cynojammers and jump bridges, the cost spirals upwards rapidly.

To counteract this, after the first week you can install various industry and military upgrades (more grav sites, WHs, guaranteed anomalies, DED plexes, etc.), then after two more weeks you can upgrade those, etc. Assuming you can hold the system for 100 days, you can have up to 10 (!) guaranteed anomalies, etc. etc. At this point, you will have spent around 600m ISK just in fees, not to mention any logistics. After all, you’ll almost certainly need at least one starbase there.

A fully upgraded system, which has reached level 5, will then provide 10 guaranteed anomalies, 5 guaranteed grav sites in addition to any belts, and probably lots of signatures, plexes, and wormholes (depending on what a “significant” increase in probability means). I think that can easily support 30+ pilots: 10-20 combat pilots running an anomaly or two a day on average, plus miners and explorers with plenty to do. This means that your industrial and PvE-type pilots will not need to roam all over the cluster just to find something they want. The PvP combat pilots will probably need to defend the system from time to time, not to mention roam and look for fights since presumably the anomalies don’t really get their motors running beyond just enough to keep their hardware (ships, ammo, etc.) replaced.

Let’s compare this to W-space, where anyone wanting to take your space away from you must work much harder due to the difficulty of bringing in a fleet of sufficient size. Logistics can take more work out there, I’d think, since you must import fuel for your towers while the nullsec stuff only requires fee payment, assuming you can find appropriate ice nearby (not necessarily a valid assumption). You also don’t have anything resembling guaranteed anomalies (combat sites) or radar / magnetometric (hacking / archaeology) sites, but if you choose a system with static links to higher-class WHs, you can usually find something to do, albeit with a little more effort. And I believe miners nearly always can find a gravimetric or ladar site (mining or gas) out in W-space. Also, you don’t actually have to ally with anyone, much less work with your neighbors since those will change frequently.

A nullsec system can definitely look attractive once you have enough pilots to justify it. Your pilots can almost certainly reach it more easily, albeit this implies that you may have a little more difficulty holding it. And they have said they may tweak the costs even a little bit lower as well. That doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad design to me, as long as we have the tools to manage income (e.g. making sure alliances get some revenue from their member corps who collect the taxes, et cetera).

So I don’t think this actually means the sky will fall on us. I think it does mean that small organizations that want to live in 0.0 K-space may need to reach out and talk to their neighbors, work out mutual defense pacts, and consider incorporating more and more industrial operations into their overall plan. Or, you know, live in W-space. More options can lead to more interesting gameplay and social structures.

(UPDATE: Galen has organized a small feed of community blog posts analyzing this new information.)

(UPDATE 2: Prometheus09 had a post that helped me note something I’d missed before: the sov upkeep tweak, not just the infrastructure hub. Figures updated above.)

Image credit: thebadastronomer

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