Lend them a firehose?

So there’s been an interesting dynamic lately in North Provi. A cloaky camper’s been hanging out in an ice belt for an inordinate number of days, trying to score some kills (He has more or less failed, spectacularly). He’s tough to catch though, because he’s generally cloaked. But more importantly, every time he decloaks and gets reported in intel, he immediately warps off. So clearly, he’s got intel channel access. Nothing new there, except there are also rumors that he’s got friends in the alliance that runs the intel channel, and those friends have been protecting him. The fact that he’s been able to dock up in their outposts kind of reinforces that. Either that, or the outpost owners don't really care to fix their docking rights.

If the rumors end up being true, that would seem rather problematic for the neighboring alliance. Essentially, there would be blues protecting a red that’s targeting their mates. Doesn’t sound particularly good looking at it from the outside. Doesn’t sound too sustainable, either, at an alliance level. Which would be a shame, as there are a lot of good people in that alliance being subjected to unneeded attacks. Sounds like the alliance needs a house-cleaning, or a re-examining of how they view themselves. At least from my perspective. There’s a decent chance someone from that alliance is reading this and has another take on things. If so, I’d love to hear it. My viewpoint is shared by quite a few others besides myself though, so take note, boys. Things aren’t looking real rosy from the outside. You’re all mostly great neighbors, but there’s a huge pile of crap on your yard and it’s starting to stink.

Ice, Ice, Baby...

So it’s been a little while since my last post, and I’m sorry about that. Who knew that coming up with a fresh topic every day would be so tough? Some major industry-related stuff has happened since that last post, by the way. Stuff that definitely changed my daily Eve activities for the time being. The latest dev blog (and what great reads they are!) talked about the upcoming changes to POS mechanics, so I’ve been altering plans as a result.

First up, the BPO changes: with remote researching out of the question once the summer expansion hits, it’s time to really start cranking on the expensive BPOs and get them researched and ready so I won’t have to pay for outpost research. Getting some of the larger hull BPOs researched, even to ME 10, takes weeks. All of the other BPOs cruiser-level and lower I’ve determined will just continue to be researched in the POS labs. Compared to the overall value of the POS itself, even an 80M cruiser BPO isn’t a huge deal. The trick, just like everything in Eve, is to not be stupid. Don’t put everything expensive in the POS at once, and the liability is limited. I know some will say the whole corp theft thing could become an issue, but Kym’s corp is tight-knit and small enough that all the researchers get their own lab division, so there’s no increased concern there. Plus, nobody’s got anything really valuable anyway, so it’d be comparable to robbing a candy store. Wheee.

Second, the larger, game-changing announcement: no more standings requirements for anchoring a POS in highsec. Hooray! I had just started the standings grind, and for once my procrastination paid off. The new plan for ore compression now is to build a “roving compression camp” of sorts. I’m sure others already do something similar, or have plans to do something similar once the expansion comes out. It’s fairly basic and straightforward: highsec Orca, small POS tower, compression array, and some fuel blocks & charters. Haul everything around highsec in the Orca, including a Miasmos, buy cheap ore, compress it, and get it back to nullsec (no, not in the Orca). Why not use a jump freighter? Scale. And cost. I don’t build at the scales that would necessitate using a JF (yet). This way takes longer, but it risks less ISK and the Orca is a multi-use hull, whereas a freighter isn’t.

Speaking of anchoring POS towers… yes, I know everyone’s going to be doing it. I think there will be less of a supply bottleneck than people are predicting, though, for a few reasons. 1) CCP said, in the comments section, that they’ll figure out a way to take down, or make irrelevant, abandoned POS towers. 2) There will be folks who take down their research POSes. 3) There are going to be thousands of new moons in the 0.8-1.0 systems now available. So in totality, things should remain as they are now in terms of being able to find a moon. Fuel costs, however, are another matter.

There’s going to be a vast increase in demand for POS fuel. I don’t see any other way around it. Unless CCP is going to change the mechanics of ice belts and ice belt spawns, the available supply of POS fuel that exists in highsec isn’t going to dramatically increase, though. Surging demand and a topped-out supply only means one thing: a price increase. And, I’m betting, a big one. Can that demand be met? Yep, but only by exporting more ice or fuel blocks out of nullsec. With the refinery changes chronicled in the first blog, it’s now clear that there will be a) way more ice products in nullsec than highsec and b) a cheaper manufacturing tree in nullsec compared to highsec. Suddenly, nullsec fuel block fabrication looks pretty lucrative to me. So that’s been my focus for the last week: mining ice. It’s something Kym is really, really good at, and a cheap, well-fit procurer can mine ice nearly as well as a much pricier Mackinaw. It’s less likely to be targeted, too. So bring on the ice! The plan is to build and sell Amarr and Caldari blocks on the local market (assuming they sell), and try to work on exporting blocks to nearby highsec too, and hopefully capitalize on that increased demand. I say nearby highsec because blocks are bulky, and I bet folks would rather pay a bit more than haul millions of bulky blocks out of Jita or Amarr. I guess we’ll see what happens. It’s Eve, it’s always unpredictable, and that’s what makes it fun.

Cue the AFK Campers

It’s been about a week since the last blog post and, to be perfectly honest, it’s been boring as hell from an industrial perspective. The market has been totally dead, and nearly my entire inventory (even the missiles) sat. My prices weren’t the problem, nor my selection, etc. It was just a dead week. Why? Theories abound. Spring break. Warmer weather (somewhere). Natural cycles. Or perhaps the afk campers in my constellation nearly all week drove people away, to play Eve in other systems and other regions. I know that’s what I did.

All of the missiles built this week, roughly 200,000 of them, were hauled to Amarr or Jita and sold there for a decent profit. The Orca was completed a few hours ago, and Kym will be able to fly it next week, but that pretty much concludes the highlights in North Provi. Aside from flying back to check on stuff, I hung out in Gallente highsec grinding distribution and storyline missions, mined highsec ice, and did other such boring things. And after a week of that, I’m bored. These campers need to leave.

Reds coming and going into the home system are one thing, and a part of nullsec life. Interceptor gangs, gate camps, and the like are all fine by me. Hotdroppers suck, but they’re part of the game too. What drives me crazy are people who come to the system, cloak up, and leave. They go afk for quite literally the entire day. There is nothing anybody can do about it either. No game mechanic exists to uncloak these people. It ruins the experience for players, and there is absolutely no recourse. Is that really what CCP wants? Somebody going afk for hours at a time, with literally no way for folks to do anything about it? I realize this is a tired topic, but it’s been at the forefront of my mind while playing Eve this week. These people suck. In every other part of the game, there is some sort of recourse for dealing with people. Not this situation though. That needs to change.

Cloaking as a game mechanic isn’t bad. There are valid uses for it. Sitting AFK for an entire day isn’t one of them. Aren’t folks in Eve supposed to hate AFK-ers? The highsec miners, the autopiloting freighters, the drone-assist PvP fleets, and everyone else who undocks, goes into space, and walks away? Why do the cloaky AFK-ers get a free pass when the miners, and everybody else, don’t? It’s been described as a form of botting, of shutting down the ability of people to play the game- and this is the important part- with nothing that anybody can do about it.

That’s gotta change. And it’s really a simple, simple change. First, put a timer on the cloak. Make it an hour. Or two. Whatever. At the end of that timer, the ship stays cloaked. However, it can be scanned down by a T2 Destroyer. Not the Light Interdictor hulls, but a new shiptype. Call it whatever you’d like. A hunter-killer of sorts. It’d be based off of the other racial destroyer hulls, like the Algos, etc. Let it be the sole ship that can fit a new probe launcher, one that can launch probes that’ll find cloaked ships whose timers have run out. Problem solved. People won’t be able to AFK for the whole day any more. I suspect these ships would sell quickly, too. Which will give me something new to build. I think they would be quite popular.

If you like this idea, share the blog! Tell others! It's the player base that drives change in Eve, after all.