Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Carebears Unbowed

There's an old story about a man of faith who prays mightily to win the lottery. Year after year he prays with all his heart, yet he never, ever wins the lottery. One day, the man dies. In heaven, he approaches God and asks with some asperity why God refused to let him win the lottery despite his steadfast prayers.

God rolls his eyes and says "You never bought a ticket."

Over at Haberdashers Run Amok, Corelin was waiting for me to do a write up on the fate of the nullsec Carebear after the fall of NC. Alas, my psychic powers are a bit out of tune these days, so I failed to pick up on his expectations.

Sigh. My bad.

Happily, Corelin didn't sit around wallowing in disappointment. He bought a ticket. He stepped up to the plate and wrote his own post about the prospects for nullsec bears. Well done, Corelin.

Following up on his comments, I don't think the end of NC spelled disaster for nullsec bears. As Corelin points out, most of the bears who migrated to nullsec in 2010 are still in nullsec. As I've written elsewhere, they are a tougher breed of bear than their highsec cousins. Some have retreated to safer high and low security regions to await the outcomes of the DRF invasions, but those are in the minority.

Some nullsec bears have barely changed location since the NC fall, and rent or hold Sov in and about DRF territory. That's pretty quiet space these days, and quiet space is meat and potatoes to a mining or building bear. An opportunistic bear might see his way to a tidy living without having to move much of his stuff. New landlord? OK. Bears are nothing if not adaptable.

Other bears have moved on, either following their NC alliance or shifting over to another alliance heading in a more preferred direction. Some nullsec bears have become fair hands at PvP, and trade fours between building stuff and blowing stuff up. I know a number of bears who both build and pilot supercapitals. That, my friends, is one valuable breed of bear.  No, they're not going anywhere.

Most folk who hold sov want a good set of bears on the payroll. The Dominion sov rules have done their work. Carebears are integrated into nullsec life and it's going to take a major rewrite of the sov rules to dislodge them. By all accounts, such changes as are on the board for nullsec will not weaken the nullsec bear's position. Quite the contrary.

After all, we're not a bunch of fragile PvP divas. We're tough.

Bear tough.

10 comments:

  1. I think it is quite funny that PvP alliances publicly condemn bearing (or Jewing, as the edgier among us are apt to say) and love rhetoric of "shedding the fat" and stuff, but yet the moment they settle into space, they bring in Bears to build their supercapitals. They talk the anti-bear talk, but they walk the pro-bear walk.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder, if what you say is true that most of the bears are still in place in 0.0 then how come the highend minerals prices have gone up quite a bit lately?
    I have seen significant profit losses on both capital and subcapital ship building.
    Also the moon material prices went up a bit but stabilized soon after that way before the DRF would have been able to setup proper mining and reaction facilities.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @o.o Carebear - I said most bears are still in nullsec. Some are still or near their locations but many have moved.

    Their remaining in nullsec doesn't guarantee uninterrupted production. Recall that when war comes most bears break down their industrial infrastructure and move it out of harms way.

    Getting production back online, particularly if they have to move takes time. Then you have CCP's war on botters which appears to be a bit more effective than usual and large scale PvP wars in nullsec during which bears fly Zealots and Guardians instead of Hulks and Orcas; both types of war will suppress mining outputs.

    Viz ship building, I'm not sure what you mean by "profit losses". Are you speaking to reduced profits, a drop in prices or outright losses when ship building/buying costs are subtracted from sales revenue?

    Finally, where are you getting your numbers? Market tool or your own sampling of regional market data?

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Stevie - They also loves the rents.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A carebear's prime desire is peace and quiet. Most renters now understand the true nature of a rental relationship. They pay for the use of space. There is no illusion that the landlord will offer any protection. When war comes, carebears weigh what will bring about peace and quiet the quickest; helping the landlord or sitting back to watch events unfold. They all tend to pack everything up. Some move to a new alliance, some relocate to hisec to wait it out, and some just queue up the long skills and park in a nearby station. When the war is over, they either continue as before, or strike an agreement with the new landlord. In all cases, it brings a disruption to mining and industry for a few weeks.

    This perception and reality actually serves the renters very well. Invaders tend to ignore the renters, except in the most opportune moments. Those are their future tenants, afterall, and stirring them up to help the landlord is a losing proposition. This is very similar to most historical wars when armies attack military and government structures and largely leave the farms, markets, and general populace alone.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Mordis - From an historical perspective, farms and markets have tended to fare poorly during wars.

    They were looted by the armies involved in order to feed and supply the troops (recall that, until relatively recently, armies lived by forage - picking the surrounding countryside clean of anything useful to them), destroyed by retreating armies to deny the enemy those resources, or destroyed by raiders in order to ruin the economy of the local powers (sort of medieval griefing).

    All local farmers and merchants could do was to hide their goods if possible, hunker down and hope for the best.

    Happily for Eve Carebears, one they move their goods and equipment into station, it can't be pillaged even if the station falls to the enemy. Otherwise, it would be quite a different game. If the change that allows station self-destruct goes through, it'll change that risk equation considerably.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Those numbers come from my own production.
    And they are mostly because of prices drop due to over production (and loads of peeps selling of their capitals since a lot see no more use in them after being kicked form 0.0)and high end mineral prices goign up (probably due to DRC activities).

    ReplyDelete
  8. o.o Carebear - Bear in mind too that the prices for mere capital ships have been slowly dropping in price for a while as supercap proliferation pushed them into an auxiliary role. The break-up of the NC would have accelerated that trend as supercap pilots liquidated their garaged capitals in order free up funds to replace other, more PvP critical ships.

    It is, as you say, a great time to buy capitals.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Finally! I've finished reading from the beginning to where you are at now. I must say I've considerably enjoyed reading the history you have provided.

    In one of the posts (don't remember which one) I think you posted a link to the map of what null sec looked like at that time. The influence spheres or whatever. Have you considered taking screen caps of it and adding it to each post? That way readers could see the progression of null sec with each post. Would be a neat addition.

    A quick question as well if I may. I'm a carebear and I've been interested in joining a carebear corp that is in nullsec. Any suggestions on where to go to read up on doing just that?

    Thanks again for the blog and awesome job.

    -Xeonio

    ReplyDelete
  10. So I'm doing my two weeks a year playing dress up for Uncle Sam. I see I have a comment to moderate. I come home, check out wordpress and I've got practically 0 views for the week until yesterday. Starting yesterday I've set consecutive records for hits. Thanks for the traffic Mord!

    Also I meant to add a song for folks to listen to. I finally got around to it... you know AFTER the hordes got done storming through.

    ReplyDelete