AZN-D2

I do hate to drop one post on top of another, but some events call for an extra edition.

Remember when I said that taking down Against All Authorities (-A-) was like killing a vampire? That you had to make sure that sucker was buried in the crossroads decapitated, garlic in its mouth and a stake in its heart before you turned your back on it? Remember that?

Why does nobody listen?

The fight took place in AZN-D2 today.  Circle of Two (CO2) and Dead Terrorists (DT) against -A-, Stain Empire and friends. PL was nowhere in sight, having finished their contract with CO2 and moved on.

At 19:56 the first carrier went down - A CO2 Chimera. Thirteen minutes later a CO2 Hel supercarrier joined the Chimera. For the next two agonizing hours, CO2 and Dead Terrorists watched as they lost a total of  seventeen carriers (DT-13, CO2-4), four supercarriers (DT-2, CO2-2) and two Erebus-class Titans (DT-1, CO2-1).

Ladies and gentlemen, assuming the killboard numbers hold, that is one family sized can of whup-ass that got opened on DT and CO2.

In the course of those two hours the chatter on the forums changed from a party celebrating the end of -A-, to speculation as to how long the newcomers to nullsec space would be able to hold onto their newly acquired systems once the old occupant came calling.

Rumble in the Reach

There's a restlessness to nullsec at the moment. The upheaval begun with the conquest of Atlas and AAA space continues to to generate aftershocks as alliances, mobilized for war and looking at a sovereignty map in flux, are tempted to see what they can harvest from the chaos.

Regular readers of The Edge (or those of you who've taken the time to read the back issues) will recall I wrote that the current expansion of the Russian Coalition (RUS - White Noise, Legion of Death, Red Alliance, et al) into space formerly occupied by Atlas and Against All Authorities (AAA) had moved a substantial part of its forces away from their traditional base in systems like Etherium Reach, the back door of Legion's sphere of influence. This, along with the use of their forces to secure recently won territories, I posited, left Etherium Reach vulnerable to attack. 

Several days ago, the Northern Coalition took that advice and launched just such an invasion, attacking RUS forces and their renter alliances in Etherium Reach and elsewhere. Mind, they waited longer than I'd recommend, which allowed the RUS forces to settle their new frontier - freeing forces previously occupied there to return and defend their home turf. Earlier would have been better.

Further, they staged their invasion of Etherium Reach from Paala in The Forge and are presently attempting to take the gateway system, LXQ2-T. NC appears to be bottle-necked there for the moment, with RUS employing a 400 member blob to repulse NC's most recent attempt to take the system.

NC would do well to take a page from the RUS victory over Bobby Atlas. Rather than attempting to force their way into a blobbed and well fortified system by sheer force of arms, bypass that system altogether and attack the enemy at multiple high-value targets. This forces the enemy to either hunker down while you take their space and structures (which are often their forces' re-supply points), or spread themselves out and fight the war on your terms. 

Sending an attack force into Etherium Reach by way of lightly defended L4X-1V, the gateway system to Molden Heath, would put NC forces in the RUS back yard. Once out of the 1VN-XC constellation, they could bypass LXQ, and attack the Red Alliance stations in the 6TT8-Z constellation; the region's largest concentration of stations and commerce. I imagine that might break the RUS concentration in LXQ.

Just a thought, lads. First one's free.

Rope-a-dope

The Caldari Drake versus the Amarr Zealot. That's the flavor of the month in nullsec.

There are some serious set-tos going on between these boats. Large fleets of sniping Drakes maneuver for range as their counterpart Zealots attempt to stay outside the reach of the Drake's long range missiles until they can slip inside and lay in some heavy hits before dancing away again.

As many of you know, the current trend is away from the massive t1 battleship fleets toward a pairing of super-caps and armored HACs - particularly the Zealot. This is particularly true of what I like to call boutique PvP alliances. Such alliances don't have the membership of the traditional (and every day more extinct) heavyweight alliances. However, by pairing the right hook of the Super-cap with the jabbing left of the Zealot, they can outfight the traditional battleship fleets. In fact, standing orders for some alliances (C02, for example) are to train Zealots as a matter of course as soon as possible (See Rixx, I do read your blog).

Direct Zealot/Drake shootouts have tended to favor the Zealots in terms of sheer numbers. However, in terms of the cost associated with the losses, the Zealot's done far worse, with Team Zealot having to kill up to four Drakes in order break even for a single Zealot kill by Team Drake. Further, a lost Drake is much easier to replace than a lost Zealot, which may account for their reduced presence in fleets fielded by Zealot -intensive alliances.

Consequently, the Drake is taking a larger and larger role in fleets fielded against the boutique alliances. Take a recent dust-up in XWY-YM off in Impass where Circle of Two (CO2) with help from Pandemic Legion (PL), who are trying to put down the last pockets of resistance in the region, ran up against defense fleets fielded by Stain Empire, Against All Authorities, Red Overlord and Vera Cruz alliances.

There are conflicting accounts as to the number of Drakes fielded in the battle by defending Stain fleet. Some Stain accounts give the defenders an about four to three advantage of Drakes and Scimitars against the mixed fleet (Abbadons and Armageddons providing the primary punch) fielded by CO2 and PL. CO2 pilots place the number of Drakes higher, with one pilot reporting wave after wave of Drakes pounding the CO2 fleet.

In terms of losses, the kill count appears to have been somewhere around 120 for each side. However, many of the ships lost by CO2 were battleships, Armageddons showing a particular vulnerability to the Drake fleets.

The Drake fleet has become the cost-effective response to the Super cap/Armored HAC 1-2 punch that's the flavor of the moment. The Drake's success there has led to a broader role for it in the fleets of nullsec. Cheaper, insurable ships with a legendary shield tank and a long reach. Easy to fly and a low training threshold relative to armored HACs like the Zealot.

Pound for pound, isk for isk, skill-point for skill point the venerable Drake is showing itself to be one of the best ships out there.

Galactic Landlords

Generally speaking, PVP alliances make lousy landlords.

Take Shadows of Death, the renter alliance run by Legion of Death, for instance:

At the beginning of October, they found that system rentals were down. Withing their sphere of influence, a full 25 designated renter systems were without occupants. As a result, Shadows wasn't making their earnings targets - i.e., Legion wasn't getting as much money as they expected out of their renter alliance.

Well, to the brilliant business minds at Legion/Shadows the answer was obvious: Raise the rents on their occupied systems. Tenant corporations were informed of the following changes to their rental agreements.

- Rents would no longer be based the number of belts in the system
- Base rental for all systems is 300 million ISK per week
- For each level of sovereignty a system holds, add an additional 100 million ISK per week "sovereignty tax'
- The jump bridge tax would be discontinued

In other words, rent of the wormiest, nastiest Sov 1 system in the drone regions, the monthly rent is 1.6 billion. A Sov 5 system? 3.2 billion per month.

Of course anyone with the slightest insight into business and/or economics will know what happened next:

Within three days of this announcement 40 additional renter systems went vacant.

In some cases, the renting corporation simply got angry enough to go looking for a better deal. With all the territories changing hands in nullsec, Carebear corporations are in high demand. Everybody wants the renters necessary to generate the income needed to pay the sovereignty bills and, (if the landlord is the wise, insightful sort), to support a lively market and a healthy industrial sector within their sphere of influence. Consequently, those renter corporations who've departed Shadows likely walked out with a warm welcome and much better rental terms awaiting them elsewhere.

In other cases, the tenant corporations stayed with Shadows/Legion, but reduced the number of system they were renting. Such corporations assessed the relative trade-offs of the systems in their possession and released those that returned the least value once the new rent structure was taken into consideration.

Now, I expect the Carebears in question could have made enough cash in their systems to pay that rent. However, though it may shock the lads down at Shadows/Legion HQ to hear it, Carebear corporations don't exist merely to pay alliance rents.

They exist to enrich themselves and their members.

I know, it seems so petty of them, but there it is. If you're charging 3.2 billion a month for a system your Carebears can rent elsewhere for 500 million to a billion, any business bear worth the name is going to head for the doors. Even if he has no other options, why would your business bear keep the overhead of three systems at an elevated price when his corporation can do quite as well with only two?

Chances are, the last brick from this barrel hasn't hit Shadows/Legion on the head as yet. Some corporations will have made the decision to leave, but are waiting until they've got their stuff out of Shadows' sphere of influence before announcing it. This is often a wise tack to take when your landlord is grumpy, well-armed and capable of reprisals. Other corporations will remain with Shadows, but will take a month before deciding which systems to dump ... er, that is, to opt out of.

Now, even if those abandoned systems were all of the Sov 1 variety, that's 192 billion in expected revenue Shadows is not going to take in. Makes me glad I'm not the Donald Trump who came up with the rent recovery plan and promised all that missing money to the parent alliance. Boy, his face must be red right now, assuming he hasn't been vented into deep space by the alliance directorate by now.

In his February blog post, The Mittani lamented the loss of pre-dominion sovereignty mechanics, where holding space was just a matter of dropping POS and superior firepower. He complained that, with sovereignty costs in place, PVP alliances had to trouble themselves with the headaches of administration and revenue generation. That now, instead of just looking for good PVP, a nullsec empire had to administer their space - to involve themselves in the petty concerns of the CareBears who make the money, that pays the cost of empire, that frees the warrior class from the tedium of day-to-day revenue generation.   

As I've said elsewhere, all this is by design. Those crafty devils at CCP have made the CareBear a nullsec empire must-have.

I've yet to meet a PVP alliance that understands the mechanics of the industrial side of New Eden, or has the faintest grasp of how markets work. To top it off, the PVPer's natural contempt for Carebears tends to slop over into their business dealings with them - never the sort of thing that wins hearts and minds. With the current renter's market in nullsec, this is a big problem for alliances that take the old-school 'youz my bitch' approach to managing tenants.

Never forget: The relationship between a Carebear renter and the renter alliance is transactional. Loyalty - the lynch pin of the PVP alliance has limited application in the landlord/tenant relationship. The Carebear renter gives you money, which spends better than loyalty. All he wants in return is fair value for his ISK. But even so, a little Carebear love and understanding goes a long way toward keeping some slick-talking alliance in Teneferis or Catch from luring your revenue bears out from under you.

The Undead

There is an ongoing postmortem for Against All Authorities (AAA) cascading through various blogs and forums. And though they are, to a degree, merited, it appears that the funeral may be a bit premature.

In Catch, The Collective and Russian Thunder Squad are putting up a spirited defense of their systems, reportedly getting aid from Black Aces, a recent corporation add to AAA (formerly of AAAC), and VVS Corporation. Meanwhile, AAA itself stubbornly refuses to roll into failscade.

History is full of cases where the enemy's on the run and battle looks to be over, until suddenly the troops of the apparent victors decide this would be a good time go looting. I suspect that's what's happening in Catch at the moment. With most AAA possessions in four regions rolled over and Catch looking pretty well in the bag, a lot of the Catch Invading Forces (CIF) have turned their attention to securing their new real estate in other regions. Meanwhile, PL's contract is rumored to be near completion. All of this removes CIF troops from the main front and gives AAA the breathing room to recover.

This explains RUS/Initiative/CO2 reaching out to IT Alliance to open a second front, and thereby inject additional forces into the fight's supposed end-game. Part of the agreement appears to be that IT will not keep any systems it captures, but turn them back over to the CIF alliances.

Meanwhile, as I pointed out last week, IT Alliance has to wonder how friendly its new neighbors are going to be once they've removed AAA from the map. One has to assume that AAA is making similar overtures to IT Alliance. IT Alliance may well play both ends against the middle - though I don't attribute SirMolle with that degree of diplomatic or strategic subtlety. 

The outlook is still bleak for AAA, but their enemies have provided an opening. We should see fairly soon whether AAA's leadership has the steel to take advantage of the opportunity.

How many times have I told my minions, "Don't forget to stake the vampire," only to have them come back with holes in their necks saying, "Really Boss, that vampire looked totally dead when I turned my back on him,"?  If you want a vampire dead, you have to drive a stake through its heart.

Despite the eulogies, AAA still walks among us.  

The Smile on the Face of the Tiger

There once was a lady from Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger

A quick look at the Catch region shows the tight spot Against All Authorities (AAA) is in. Their Main trade center at GE-8JV and, more importantly HED-GP, the region's primary gateway to empire are in enemy hands. AAA is pushed back and making a stand in the region's West-South-West quadrant.

Worse yet, AAA's defense has been complicated by IT Alliance attacking AAA holdings in Catch from Querious. IT has rolled up Catch BRK2-K constellation and are presently staking their claim on 6JCS-4 constellation, which is a direct attack on the remaining concentration of AAA systems rather than the nibbling at the edges IT has engaged in until now. 

It's understandable that IT Alliance would like to grab some real estate before AAA is completely over-run. However, I have the sense that IT is making a very serious and short-sighted mistake. 

IT Alliance's long term interests would have been better served by salvaging the remains of AAA and helping it stabilize as a buffer vassal alliance between IT Alliance and the RUS coalition, their new vassals and Pandemic Legion. 

Should AAA fall, IT Alliance will be the last of the pre-Dominion "great powers". It sits on some of the most valuable real estate in all of nullsec. Rumors abound that IT is not the fighting alliance BOB of old once was. Over time IT has made many enemies - some of whom are whetting their knives a mere step away from IT Alliance's doorstep. 

SirMolle is deluding himself if he thinks that sitting down next to the tiger at the AAA feast is going to keep IT Alliance off the tiger's menu. 

The Deflated ISK

The ISK cost of PLEX is going up.

As most readers of Fiddler's Edge know, a player may purchase PLEX (30 day Pilot License EXtensions) with real world currency. A PLEX  can then be sold in-game by other players for EVE Interstellar Credits (ISK) and used by the buyer to pay for EVE subscription time.

In addition to allowing those players without thick real money wallets to pay for their subscriptions with in-game currency, the buying and selling of PLEX puts a ceiling on the real money value of ISK.

Previously, the ISK/PLEX trade had been fairly steady - running around 300 million ISK per PLEX. In fact as of my last check a month or two ago, a PLEX could be had for around 280 mil in and around the major trade hubs.

As of this weekend, that  price had ticked up to consistently above 350 million.


From an economics standpoint, this means something has gone agley in the world of supply and demand. Either the amount of ISK chasing PLEX has increased, or the number of PLEX available for sale has decreased.

Now, looking tracking backwards along the price history, there's one event that could explain the current (and apparently ongoing) price increase. And that's a change in PLEX mechanics.

Originally, PLEX could only be redeemed in NPC stations. Further, PLEX were effectively nailed to the floor in whatever station they were redeemed. On July 13, CCP put into place a change in PLEX mechanics that allows PLEX to be redeemed in any station, and once redeemed, they can be loaded onto a ship and transported like any other in-game item.

This means that nullsec residents no longer need to travel to empire in order to buy PLEX. PLEX can be redeemed in nullsec, or purchased in empire and flown down to nullsec for use or sale like any other commodity. As 300 million or so isk pile up easier in nullsec than empire, and most nullsec players willing to  pay a premium on key items in order to avoid trips to empire, nullsec is an attractive market for the PLEX trade.

With a sizable portion of the PLEX available for sale moving from empire to nullsec (and therefore largely taken out of the open market) empire buyers must now compete for a substantially smaller pool of PLEX, driving the price upwards. 

"But Mord," you ask, "With the price of PLEX on the rise, won't people who purchase them out of game for real money buy more of them to take advantage of the higher ISK return on their investment? Won't that increase the number of PLEX available and compensate for the nullsec shift of the current market?"

I'm glad you asked.

Normally, you might be right.  However, the initial purchase of a PLEX to sell in-game requires a real dollar investment. As ISK are of no use outside of EVE, and if we assume a purchaser's ISK needs are taken care of at their present rate of consumption, the number of PLEX injected in the game by the casual purchaser should be sticky, i.e. resistant to change. A person spending $36 per month for two PLEX that net 600 million ISK is unlikely to increase his PLEX purchases to net the additional 100 million ISK.

In fact, as is common in deflationary markets, the opposite is true. Said person will often hold off making the purchase - waiting for the price to rise further in order to optimize the return on his $36 investment - as a result driving down the value of the ISK relative to real world money even further. Which, of course, causes the person to hold off spending dollars for PLEX even longer. And so on.

Meanwhile, players who are unwilling or unable to pay for their EVE subscriptions for real dollars are price inelastic - if they wish to play EVE they must buy PLEX regardless of how high the ISK price goes.

Now, this would seem to be a bonanza for sellers of PLEX.


However, nobody wants to spend all their time in EVE grinding ISK to pay for play time, only to have no time (or decent ships) in which to play. If the price of PLEX continues to rise, a tipping point will be reached. Then the subscription base will suffer as the new PLEX underclass votes with its feet and finds another game.

As I often say, people don’t pay CCP every month for a bummer. They pay to have fun.  No one should lose sight of that.

Particularly CCP.