Everyone does their part
Lyncyne leans into the spanner as she fastens two panels together. Small conduits to protect control lines and transport coolant run across the engine she has started to cover. The roar of impulse engines firing up echo through the hangar as hefty Brutors wrestle machinery into place, but the noise doesn’t appear to distract her in the slightest. The capsuleer who flew this Claw had quietly explained the goals of his next sortie, and so the mechanic felt she owed it to him to ensure that the polycarbon engine housing didn’t come apart during maneuvers.
That had happened to somebody else in their wing last week, actually, when an overheated microwarp drive had come apart on the pilot. A Wolf assault frigate in the same squadron had managed to finish off the enemy Retribution from the 24th Imperial Crusade before it could take full advantage of the mishap. The mechanic responsible took a very long walk out the airlock the next day, and everybody else in the maintenance hangar worked well into the next shift in order to check and double-check the equipment.
Of course, Lyncyne hates the hours and feels like she’ll never get the grease completely off her hands. But she has listened to the pilots or space traffic controllers as they told ale-fueled stories of Amarrian industrial transports and starbase reactors exploding. She knows of the Crusade pilots and commanders introduced to their vengeful god earlier than they’d anticipated. Every day, at mess, she sees the dull eyes of the Starkmanir busboys and cooks working in the cafeteria as part of the Tribal Republic’s re-integration program. Sometimes at night, she thinks back to the girl in her second-year mechanics class who’d taken an assignment to an agricultural world somewhere in the low-security Hed constellation. Her transport never arrived, and while the Tribal Liberation Force had little to say about it, everyone assumed that one of the raiding parties had destroyed it — or, worse, captured it.
So now, in the hangar, perched on the cowling of a pod-pilot’s interceptor, she focuses tightly on rigging the bolts, the housing, and the conduits. Everyone does their part.
Someone Else’s Terms (part 2)
NB: While not required, you might want to read Part 1 first.
“No.”
“Again?”
“I don’t like it. What else do you have?”
The TLF agent slammed the table. “I have had it with you. Get out of my office.”
Casiella arched an eyebrow, stretching a facial tattoo slightly. “Perhaps you don’t remember who I am…”
“I know damn well who you are. Now move your ass out of here. If I can still see you in thirty seconds, Security will fix that. One.”
“You just haven’t given me an assignm–”
“Two.”
“–ent that works for me.”
“Twenty-one.”
“What about, you know, three?”
“I counted fast. Get out.”
The diminutive Sebiestor pulled herself up with what dignity she could muster and ripped the patch off her flight suit, throwing it in the agent’s face.
“I’m damn tired of fighting on someone else’s terms. You can keep your fake little war.”
The agent’s face turned red and he began to spout obscure obscenities that even Casiella hadn’t heard before. So, instead, she just smirked and turned to leave. As she exited through the door, she heard something whistling through the air and ducked slightly. An ancient Lustrevik vase shattered on the door frame next to her head.
The militia didn’t really suit somebody like her. Which meant that her handlers in the RSS — and, worse, her attaché Jorunn — turned out to have been right.
She hated it when things worked out like that.
to be continued…
Someone Else’s Terms (part 1)
The massive battlecruiser finally slid back into its hangar after its return voyage. The magnetic clamps engaged to hold it in place and prevent it from accidentally crushing any of the small maintenance drones that now swarmed over it for inspection and fueling. A gantry lifted out the piloting capsule through a small recess and hauled it to a disembarkation chamber for the captain to exit with at least a small bit of dignity.
Casiella hated this part: gasping for air as her lungs switched back to oxygen from the ambiotic fluid of the pod gave her a brief sensation of drowning. She knew, of course, that she wouldn’t drown and that the systems always worked. But something deep in the reptilian hindbrain just refused to learn the lesson. She didn’t enjoy the sensation of entering the pod and swallowing the fluid, either. Leaving the pod, though, felt much worse because it came accompanied by the disengaging of the neural connection to her ship.
Moments before, she could navigate among the stars as easily as any other human might turn their heads. She could see millions of kilometers to focus on a specific object. With the same effort usually required to gesture with a hand, she could sweep away enemies (or competitors, which amounted to the same thing) via volleys of missiles. Her drones acted to accomplish her whims. That structure there? Demolish it? She just needed to want it to happen, and it did. Back on her own two feet, in her “meatspace body,” all those advantages went away.
But flesh has its own advantages.
She quickly ducked into the nearby shower to rinse off the remaining fluid and don a dry jumpsuit. A light above the door turned green and one of her senior staff assistants entered: a Krusual woman whose splotchy facial birthmarks made her an outcast in most of Minmatar society.
Casiella addressed her assistant while the cosmetibots attended to her hair. “That part of the plan went well, Jorunn. The RSS agent seemed very pleased.”
Jorunn focused on her datapad for a moment before speaking. “Yes, the intel dataflows have already engaged. Nearly all their agents have requested your attention. I suppose those Angel Diamond tags went over well.”
Before responding, Casiella selected a facial tattoo type for the night and the cosmetibots went to work. “He didn’t even ask where I’d got them. I think he just assumed I’d gone out and found them myself. Enough ISK can get you anything, though.”
“These days, that’s true enough. The Republic has warmed to you somewhat since you returned from Syndicate space. By now, they’ve chosen to overlook some of the work we did out there.”
The hint of a cruel smile curled across Casiella’s lips. “So much the better for them. The RSS knows the value of a good informant when it finds one, and they’d rather have me working for them than against them.” Now that the cosmetibots finished their tasks and buzzed rapidly back into their receptacles, she stood and looked up at Jorunn, waiting for the inevitable.
“You’ll have a tough time balancing the internal factions, though. Outwardly, of course, they’ll have nothing for praise for you now that you’ve joined the Tribal Liberation Force, but internally they will prefer that you work with them.” Jorunn turned around the datapad and presented a few dossiers before explaining that her employer would need to choose an agent or two.
Casiella pondered for a few moments before tapping a thin finger against her chin. “So you just assumed I’d go right for contract work rather than patrolling or ‘plex security?”
This time, Jorunn smiled cruelly in an echo of her employer’s expression a few moments ago. “You wanted that starbase in high-security space. I told you that the TLF would put you on the fast track to it, and agent contracts will get you there fastest.”
“Fine, then.” The petite Sebiestor sighed. “But let’s get this done quickly. I’ve better things to do than fight this war on someone else’s terms.”
Sebiestor tribal corp concept
We frequently see corp or alliance identities in EVE revolving around larger factions. The Amarr have CVA, the Minmatar have Electus Matari and Ushra’khan, not to mention innumerable militias in factional warfare for all four of the primary factions. Smaller, interesting factions (Angels, Thukkers, Intaki, Sansha etc) also inspire a number of corporations and even alliances.
I know, we already have the NPC corporation, but nearly everybody in EVE knows why NPC corps stink. I don’t know whether bloodline NPC corps obviate any need for (or interest in) player-managed bloodline corps, and that could present an issue. But what would a player Sebiestor tribe corp look like? First, the bloodline description:
Widely respected as being among the most innovative thinkers of the cluster, the Sebiestor are an ingenious people with a natural fondness for engineering. For the last millennium, they have been pioneering advances in applied sciences despite laboring under chronic material shortages. Sebiestor engineers believe they can build anything, with anything, out of anything. Veritable masters of deriving solutions from impossible circumstances, they are most commonly found working in shipyards, assembly lines, terraforming projects, outpost construction, and aboard starships.
So maybe this hypothetical group could take the form of an industrial corp, based near Eram (the tribal HQ system)? Manufacturing and invention, in particular, make sense for Sebiestor pilots, and perhaps reverse engineering to support strategic cruiser production. Pilots could also participate in mission running, especially with the aim of gaining high standings with the tribe and perhaps the Minmatar Republic itself. The corp’s industrial focus could even turn to supporting the war effort by providing supplies and equipment to militia corps working with the Tribal Liberation Force in Metropolis. Alternately, salvaging, trading, and smuggling seem to fit the feel of a hard-scrabble, inventive group that turns junk into the most advances devices humanity has ever known…
This thinking doesn’t necessarily mean I’d leave the Back Alley Trading Company, of course. Right now, I’m just thinking out loud and musing on ideas, since I have always loved planning corp or guild concepts and organization in every MMOG I’ve ever played or even closely examined. This particular concept has a lot appeal for me, no doubt, but I have to weigh that against all the other concepts and game play that interest me. On the other hand, I wouldn’t quite rule it out, either.
Also, this marks my 200th post on Ecliptic Rift. My geek identity means I really look forward to the 256th post more, though…
3 Suggestions for fixing factional warfare
Since I joined factional warfare with my alt Ghost Outrider, I’ve had a few enjoyable fights, made a good bit of ISK, and jumped up the standings ladder. For roleplay purposes and access to nice faction goodies, the militia has really served well.
Problems
Unfortunately, at this point, all the incentives related to FW really get driven by running missions for the TLF (and the other militia NPC corps). When comparing missions versus running plexes (contesting and decontesting systems), the former generate lots of easy loyalty points, ISK, and much more standing increase than plexing.
At the same time, though, missions create far less PVP opportunity because of the ability to complete a mission in less than two or three minutes. By the time the enemy realizes you’re in a beacon, finds out what ship you have, and gets a ship that can pass through the gate but still beat yours, you often have finished the mission. So the PVP opportunities all come on gates.
Another game mechanic makes plexing more difficult. The system only shuffles plexes when one is conquered or defended and at downtime, moving them into a random system elsewhere in-theater. Originally, players believed that this happened within constellations, but subsequent comments from CCP and other testing have not tended to support this theory. So defending systems tends to push beacons into uncontested systems. Defenders get tired of scanning contested systems only to find no plexes at all, as they can only find them with any frequency shortly after downtime. Pilots can do offensive plexing at all times, although the problems listed above make it less likely that people will do anything but sit on gates or run missions.
Solutions
So what can CCP do to fix this? First, balance rewards (standing increases and loyalty points) between plexes and missions. When I can get 2% increase from a level 3 mission and 0.5% from a major complex, something has gone terribly wrong. This at least gives incentives for players to stay at the beacons, pulling PVP off gates, driving small-ship warfare, and matching general hull sizes.
The downtime mechanic presents a thornier problem. CCP Explorer (the software director) has explained that they don’t like it, either, but that the other solutions generate too much server load. So perhaps they should create a different scaled-down version of the new sovereignty mechanics coming in Dominion. The design in the winter expansion clearly has its roots in FW but improves upon it (as it should, given the stakes), so let’s learn from the additional iterations and push those improvements back down.
Or perhaps beacon announcements could show up in militia chat or the Battlefield Intelligence window when the enemy starts to run a plex or mission (e.g. “a listening post in Ezzara has detected an enemy fleet assaulting a minor stronghold”). This would give pilots the ability to go defend systems and generally have the benefits described for giving more incentives in plexing versus missioning.
Faction warfare has a lot of potential in it. Originally, players complained about rewards, and CCP has addressed that. Now they need to work on driving more PVP for the pilots that join up.
Musings on loss
I’ve rejoined the Minmatar militia, this time with Ghost Outrider. I’ve started a series over at EVE-Mag, “Ghost Outrider in the Sky“, which will chronicle her adventures from an IC first-person perspective. (By the way, don’t get intimidated at all about submitting a piece to them. Very friendly folks and I didn’t have any trouble working with them.)
In any case, I didn’t want to put a whole lot here so that I leave material for there, but I did want to muse on my recent loss of a Cyclone to the Python Cartel which led to an amusing little exchange in Local.
[ 2009.09.10 03:01:29 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Arzad Local Channel
[ 2009.09.10 03:03:04 ] Ghost Outrider > Thought you folks would give up the chase
[ 2009.09.10 03:03:20 ] Ghost Outrider > Was worth a try, anyway
[ 2009.09.10 03:06:46 ] Ghost Outrider > /emote sings, “shot dowwwwn in a blaze of glory”
[ 2009.09.10 03:07:15 ] Spectre3353 > your vocal talents are inspiring
[ 2009.09.10 03:07:31 ] Ghost Outrider > Thanks, some days it’s all I got.
[ 2009.09.10 03:09:16 ] Ghost Outrider > You folks are quiet.
[ 2009.09.10 03:09:31 ] Ghost Outrider > I figured the pilot who singlehandedly wiped out the Goons would have lots to say…
[ 2009.09.10 03:09:39 ] Ghost Outrider > I mean, they felt the pain you laid down on them.
[ 2009.09.10 03:10:02 ] Spectre3353 > i try to keep quiet these days because i dont want to hurt anyones feelings
[ 2009.09.10 03:10:11 ] Spectre3353 > im like a pirate bull in a carebear china shop
[ 2009.09.10 03:10:12 ] Ghost Outrider > I’ve got a thick skin, really.
[ 2009.09.10 03:11:54 ] Ghost Outrider > You folks enjoy your roam.
[ 2009.09.10 03:12:00 ] Spectre3353 > thanks bud
[ 2009.09.10 03:12:01 ] Spectre3353 > cya later
This happened after they’d seen me on a gate when they arrived just after my scout had jumped through, then pursued me through several star systems. I was running a mission for the Tribal Liberation Force and so had a mission fit, not set up for PVP at all (though usually I do when I run TLF missions). As I told my corp’s XO, wartime involves losses. “Can’t win ‘em all,” my dad would say. (Given my win/loss record, that’s particularly true.)
Look, folks, at the end of the day, we’re all just playing with Internet spaceships. I don’t get frothing-at-the-mouth angry when somebody takes my rook playing Chess, or when my daughter beats me at tic-tac-toe. Despite all the anger about pirates, gankers, and what-have-you, I distinctly remember my childhood lessons on good sportsmanship. We were always taught to lose (and win) graciously. I gambled and lost; next time, maybe they’ll take the hit. Or maybe we’ll end up shooting at the same people.
And for those who complain that the other side doesn’t act graciously when they win: remember, they fuel their ships with your tears. Crying only adds to their victory. Smile, nod, and act like you know it’s just a game.
Image credits somethingstartedcrazy and pareeerica via Flickr
Ghost Outrider rides again
Thanks to the magic of the timecode bazaar, I have reactivated Ghost Outrider’s account. She has just over 5m SP and focuses almost exclusively on combat with Minmatar ships and weaponry. More fiction featuring her and that slightly more fantastical writing style I have occasionally explored will appear here soon.
But I need help from you friendly (hah hah) EVE bloggers and players. I really want to indulge in some PVP for the next couple of months. And you may have noticed that I like to tell a story through gameplay, though this need not require roleplay in the strictest sense. “Ghost Outrider” has mixed Brutor/Thukker heritage and tends to support the traditions of her Thukker tribe over the Republic or even current tribal leadership when they conflict in any way. To date, I’ve explicitly avoided missions against Angels because I want to stay out of the pirate faction standing hole. Yes, this makes mission running and raising my Thukker standings difficult, but that’s life for a representational roleplayer.
For the moment, then, I need to choose between joining the Tribal Liberation Force (or an associated militia corp) and traditional low-sec piracy. I realize that the two don’t have to exclude each other and frequently don’t. For now and for me, however, I want to focus on one at a time.
I participated in factional warfare when CCP first released it, but with the impending FW changes in Apocrypha 1.5 and the continuing evolution of the NPC storylines, this imperfect game system still holds substantial interest for me. I can also continue to traverse Republic high-sec without any real concerns about security status. Then again, I don’t like the downtime plex shuffling mechanic, the focus on blob warfare, or the cesspool of Militia Chat.
But the yarr still calls to me. Terrorizing Amarrian or possibly even Caldari low-sec in a Rifter… mmmm. EVE’s support for piracy has undeniable romanticism, and you pirate bloggers feed that quite well. I’ve done essentially none of this and don’t even know whether I’d seek out a pirate corp (as it might prove difficult to find one where I’d fit), but anybody who knows anything about EVE has felt the call of the yarr.
Feedback! Comments! Suggestions! Whatever! I’d love to hear what you have to say.
Photo credit: Russ Morris via Flickr
Discussion on traitors and corruption
For those interested, I’ve responded to Colonel Roc Wieler’s Mission Briefing post a couple of times regarding the readmission of Megan Maynard to the Tribal Liberation Force (Minmatar militia). I’ve also started a thread on militia corruption on the Intergalactic Summit.
And as I broadcast recently:
If you’ve got a known traitor around, not granting corp roles isn’t enough. Stay out of web and scram range when they’re on your wing
I welcome your opinions and comments, even if you disagree with me. Maybe even especially if you disagree with me.
UPDATE: To repost here what I told Roc and preserve it for the future:
After Kudon Astraisx stepped down from the wing command role, Neu Bastian was named as the wing commander. He later promoted Megan Maynard to a director and command role. One weekend when most pilots were out of pod and out of comm range, she took the shares that the corp itself still owned, which was our mistake. This let her elect herself CEO and lock everyone else out of their permissions. She then proceeded take all the ISK, expensive modules, most ships, then named as CEO some highly inactive pilot and resigned herself, heading for CVA space.
I flew as the original logistics pilot for 17TW and something of a liaison to the Republic, even before the formation of the TLF, and remember the whole thing quite bitterly, as of course it was a scam and an exploit ((in the “legitimate” sense)). But I really am surprised that the TLF admits Megan back so quickly and evidently to a position of some responsibility.
