The DC Meetup

For those of you who don't get over to the forums often, I've posted a CTA for a DC Metro Area Meetup in the Eve-O Out of Game Events and Gatherings forum. The meetup will take place on August 7 at a little watering hole a mere stone's throw from DC's Tenlytown/American University Metro.

The operational details:

The Date: Tuesday, August 7 2012
Start Time: 18:00 EST
The Place: Public Tenley
The Address: 4611 41st St NW, Washington, DC 20016

A handful of brave capsuleers have already stepped to the line for the operation.  Alekseyev Karrde is being lobbied heavily to bring chocolate cupcakes. I can't commit on his behalf, but I hear he's a mean hand with the frosting spatula.

Head on over to the forum to RSVP or do so in game so I'll know how much space to reserve. 

Comparative Advantages

I've said elsewhere that Goonswarm Federation alliance's DNA has a healthy dallop of nullsec bear in it.  Nullsec bears, as you'll recall, are former highsec carebears who have migrated to nullsec at some point and adapted to that rough an tumble lifestyle with its sovereignty wars, calls to arms, bug-outs and quickly shifting turns of fortune.  Some set aside their carebear ways altogether once they get a taste for fleet combat, but many switch hit.  They play the industrial side of the nullsec game when the skies are clear, and fleet up to do their bit when war clouds loom. 

Though it sounds counter-intuitive, nullsec space can be a fairly safe place for an industrialist to ply his trade when the barbarians are not rushing the gate.  Depending on where in player controlled nullsec one is, one can travel many jumps without encountering another ship.  Quite a contrast from the crowded gates in highsec.  In fact, given the relative peace and quiet of nullsec, along with the plethora of raw materials needed for production so readily at hand, one would think the markets in nullsec would be fairly bursting at the seams with high value goods produced by part time bears.

Alas.  Not so much.

Nullsec markets tend to be much less functional than their highsec counterparts.  There are a number of factors driving this phenomenon; drags, and on occasions outright obstacles, to nullsec manufacturing productivity.  Some of them have to to with a healthy logistics infrastructure, including jump ships and jump bridges that allow goods to move with relative ease from highsec market hubs to the deepest corners of nullsec space.  Others include the relatively high cost and low efficiency of nullsec refining and production services which are often structured by nullsec alliances such that if makes better economic sense to compress rare minerals and jump them to highsec for refining and subsequent production than to attempt the same in nullsec. 

With the exception of items of particular interest to nullsec alliances or items that can only be produced in nullsec (such as capital and supercapital ships) there is little incentive for a nullsec bear to turn his hand to production.  Meanwhile, the obstacles and high overhead associated with nullsec production means that items produced there are not competitive with the same items shipped in from highsec.  The combination of barriers to production and ease of transport mean that nullsec producers' best prices can nearly always be undercut by traders with jumpships.  And, as I pointed out above, the population of nullsec is smaller on a system by system basis than it is in highsec which means less demand for most goods in nullsec than in the highsec market hubs.

Further, the small nullsec customer base means that highest end minerals and moon goo that are not used for nullsec specific products such as supercapitals, and are often controlled at the alliance level, are sold in highsec where the demand and the prices are highest.  As a result, those bears that do produce in nullsec are unlikely to get high value product inputs originating in nullsec at a significantly lower cost than their highsec counterparts. 

While nullsec tends to be safer on a day to day basis than lowsec, it is not a terribly secure place to locate inventory.   The ebb and flow of nullsec sov warfare means that inventory maintained in player owned outposts are subject to loss if the owner's alliance loses control of the outpost.  I've written elsewhere that careful advance planning is required in order to minimize the impact of sovereign space loss on player assets.  This is a non-trivial exercise when dealing with the usual player's collection of ships and fittings.  Moving and securing a high-volume market inventory that may span multiple nullsec outposts in a given regional market during time of war and invasion would require extensive planning and infrastructure.  While investing in such an exit strategy is costly from both a time and ISK standpoint, failure to do so exposes anyone heavily invested in nullsec markets to excessive loss.

Finally, even after the anomalies nerf, ratting is by far the easiest and preferred means of making ISK in nullsec.  Not only does it provide quick and easy ISK to the ratter, the automated taxing of this activity fills corporate and alliance coffers, pays nullsec rents and alliance membership fees, and drives system upgrades. Industrial activity, on the other hand, only fills alliance and corporation coffers through fees on industrial services such as mining and assembly.  As a result, most alliances maintain such fees at a high level, often discouraging or outright banning the use of POS as a means of obtaining those services, in an attempt to eliminate competition to outpost services and maximize outpost service revenues.  Of course the result in such cases is that nullsec productivity is further reduced and, more often than not, stations earn only a fraction of what they might if service charges were properly optimized. 

CCP has been grappling with this problem for some time.  It is, in large part, the reason behind the partial nerf of jump-bridge networks and CCP Greyscale's love affair with nerfing jump freighters.  It is also a bit of an obsession with Mittens and drives much of his "farms and fields" thinking and is, in some part, behind his attacks on high sec mining and trade hubs.  Indeed, Mittens (or a few of his more thoughtful underlings) may be the first nullsec alliance leader to put significant thought to the nullsec industrial production and the balance of trade with highsec.

Unfortunately, the solutions Mittens' economic team have come up to date seem sharply focused on diminishing the highsec side of the equation rather than the development of a robust industrial infrastructure in nullsec.  Rather than lowering the barriers to and creating incentives for production in nullsec, they seem myopically focused on degrading the productivity in highsec in order to bring it into parity with nullsec's structurally and functionally less efficient productivity.

Like many nullsec alliances, Goonswarm is much better disposed toward tearing down than to building up.   This is the road of least resistance Mittens currently seeks to travel in order to get to his goal of a market dominant nullsec.  However, if Mittens' economic ministers are truly interested in developing the farms and fields paradigm, building up nullsec's industrial capacity must become the primary focus of their efforts.  That will take some clever thinking on their part and require an incentives program geared toward creation rather than merely destruction.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost—the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield

- Milton, 'Paradise Lost'

 Upon a time, the worlds of high, low and null security space were as ships passing in the night; aware of but not truly engaged with one other.  Mittens, not content with the vast wealth provided by holding some of the richest real estate in nullsec, has begun an economic war with high and low security space (as well as with wormhole space - more on that another time) that has blurred the lines of play between the three major parts of New Eden.

I mentioned in Fiddler's War that emergent game play is a door that swings both ways.  As Mittens' nullsec ambitions intrude more and more into empire space, empire has begin some intrusions of their own into Mittens' back yard.  Small stuff at the moment, primarily involving stealthy ships (though a Tuskers crew ran an amusing t1 frig and dessie fleet up a Deklein pipe last week).  And while the denizens of Deklein may shrug them off as inconsequential, even small incursions like these have an impact in the 'for want of a nail' sense.  The Drake that doesn't make it from Deklein to Delve is a Drake Mittens' FCs can't field against his enemies.  Such small acts are the pins upon which the vast doors of history swing.

Having said that, it's time to tighten the noose around Mittens' neck.  To that end, the word is given.  The call is going out.  Saddle up, you bears.  We're going to go shake the Technetium throne.

Now, I don't want you to doubt the unlikely nature of this venture.  This is a long throw in the dark and odds are we'll lose more scraps than we'll win.  But the outcome of the fights is not what matters.  What matters is the mere fact that you resist.  What matters is that you refuse to let some chin-pussy wearing cheese-head write your story for you.  Dubious battle?  Hell yeah.  But one worth the fight.

If you're in, contact me in game or via my gmail address on this page.  Tell me what you can bring to the fight and I'll respond with instructions.  If you have experienced FCs call it out.  If you run stealth operations, call it out.  If you've got hictors/dictors, call it out.  POS buster?  Call it out.  Even if you're a total carebear corporation that can't field a single PvP ship, you can help with supply and transport.
  
If you can't join the fight, you can still help.  Spread the word.  Tell your friends.  Link to this post in the forums.  Drop message cans at gates.

Every bear counts.

White Rose Conventicle

As many of you know, Yuki Onna of  the blog White Rose Conventicle dropped out of sight toward the end of May, abruptly disappearing from Eve, Twitter and the blogosphere all at once.  There had been much speculation as to what caused Yuki to exit the Eve player community so suddenly.  Though wardecced by Gooswarm Federation's massive alliance under the new Inferno rules, Yuki seemed to be soldiering on rather blithely at the time and was one of the first to point out that the new rules could be turned on their head, creating a market for bargain-basement wardecs against large nullsec alliances. Thus, the sudden drop of White Rose Conventicle and its author from the radar screen surprised many of those following events at the time.  

Earlier today Yuki surfaced and entered a comment on my post The Presumption of Safety Reconsidered from a few weeks back.  It answers a number of questions raised at the time, and raises some new questions as well.  It certainly bears reading and so I've taken the liberty of publishing Yuki's comment here in full as a stand-alone post. 

Mord
 

Why I Quit EVE

Yuki Onna - July 3, 2012

I have read a number of posts and tweets suggesting, as Poetic Stanziel did the other day, that I "left the game in a huff after Goonswarm wardecced" my corporation The White Rose Conventicle.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

On 25/May/2012:18:04:36 PST, a massive Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDOS) was launched against my EVE corp website www.whiteroseconventicle.com, taking out the entire colo facility and affecting local ATT network service for a number of hours.

This was not "meta-gaming," nothing done "ironically" or "just in play." It was a criminal act; one for which I hold CCP not directly but indirectly responsible.

CCP's gross negligence in failing to restrain and, arguably, fostering over a period of years the growth of a virulent "Lord of the Flies" culture of crowing bullies in EVE Online has succeeded in creating a manifestly unsafe online environment for its paying subscribers and, indirectly, for Internet users beyond the game.

As an IT professional, I saw little alternative but to quit EVE, which I have enjoyed playing on and off since 2007, and to take down and keep down a website I very much enjoyed making and running. I cannot justify further risking a game that CCP has so irresponsibly allowed a relatively few players to make such a rhetorically vicious and, thereby, genuinely dangerous environment. Sadly, it has come to such a pass that EVE Crime is "Real," too.

You who are still free to enjoy EVE, who have not yet been put at real-life risk by being individually targeted to be punished and silenced for speaking your mind, must demand that CCP put a halt to this poisoning of EVE, by whatever means necessary.

CCP must assume its responsibility to the paying subscribers it exposes to an online environment that CCP, not some other entity, creates and manages. CCP must cease to pad its bottom-line by shirking necessary player-behavior management expenses under the convenient pretense that all it provides are "tools which players are free to use as they please." In sum, CCP must face up to its duty to all its subscribers to promote a safe, congenial online environment and to lessen the chance that what happened to me ever happens to you or to any other EVE player.

Fiddler's War

"I intend to demonstrate to this rabble the consequence of actually provoking us to true war.

You have three days to prepare. We – and ‘We’ means ‘Everyone’ – are going to Delve, and it will burn.  No mercy, no respite, no ‘freeports’, just brutal conquest – conquest which will not stop until this threat to our bloc is extinguished.  If that means that we must set all of Catch on fire to remind this ex-NC, ex-IT, ex-BoB excrement of their proper place in the universe, so be it."

- Mittens declares war against -A-, Raiden[DOT] and Nulli Secundus alliances

I write this floating in Goonswarm nullsec space; a song in my heart and a covert cyno generator glowing softly on my HUD.

Mittens' strategy for his war on empire space rests on the supposition that he will be free to call the tempo of the conflict.  His forces, he supposes, will launch attacks at the time and place of their choosing while his targets, the denizens highsec and lowsec alike, will be helpless to do anything but react to his attacks where and when they occur.  His own forces and resources based out of nullsec should be, by common Eve-O wisdom, secure from any credible threat from the direction of empire.

After all, the reasoning goes, highsec carebears haven't the will or the wherewithal to mount any sort of campaign against him.  And even if they did, and could make common cause with some of the small gang PvP elite who ply the lowsec roads to nullsec, the latter are too fractious and scornful of large fleet PvP operations to present a credible threat to Goonswarm's nullsec holdings. 

Thus Mittens feels himself free to turn his attention from empire in order to lead the Deklein coalition into a new nullsec war, this time in Delve/Querious/Fountain against the forces of Against All Authorities (-A-) and Raiden[dot] who deployed there over the weekend in support of Nulli Secunda.  The Delve scene has been slowly escalating for some time, driven primarily by the limited availability of meaningful sov war action elsewhere since the wheels fell off the Drone Russian coalition.

You'll recall that Red Alliance, driven from their drone space holdings, attempted to resettle in Delve and was battling with Nulli Secunda to that end.  For want of other mischief, Pandemic Legion pounced on Nulli and Red Alliance, playing the spoiler against both alliances, and were soon joined in the spoiler's role by Test Alliance Please Ignore.  Red Alliance shifted the bulk of their efforts to Querious while Nulli Secunda has carried on fighting in Delve.  Over time there's been a slow build up of Deklein forces joining the fray in Delve, and Nulli has been hard pressed. 

Now, with -A- and Raiden riding to Nulli's rescue, Mittens has announced publicly that Goonswarm will go "all in" on the conflict.  One might wonder why he would do so.  After all, the advantage in the conflict was arguably already with the Deklein/Pandemic forces even after the arrival of the -A- and Raiden reinforcements.  Adding fresh Goon forces to the fight needn't have been done in such a noisy fashion.  It seems that Mittens wishes to not merely win the fight for Delve, but win it in a manner as decisive as the Branch campaign earlier this Spring; to shatter the troublesome Raiden once and for all and land a crippling blow on -A- in the process.  Further, announcing a total war posture publicly allows Mittens to claim ownership of the conflict despite the fact that so many Deklein forces are already engaged.  Thus, though Mittens arrives late to the feast, the place of honor and the laurels for a Delve victory would go entirely to him. 

However.....

Regular readers of The Edge will recall that announcing an "all in" campaign is a door that swings both ways.  Having taken ownership of the Delve campaign, Mittens has staked his reputation on not only winning it, but winning it in a profoundly decisive manner.  Anything less will be a severe blow to Goonswarm morale.  Responding to Mittens' announcement, some wildly confident Goon posters in various forums are already declaring victory, though the all-in deployment has yet to occur.  A wise leader would recall what I've said elsewhere as to how much mass hubris has in nullsec.

War is, by its nature, uncertain.  Nullsec alliances, yet uncommitted, could get pulled into the Delve campaign on either side.  Secondary fronts may open in support of the anti-Goon forces.  Any number of nullsec entities, seeing Mittens fully committed in Delve, may take the opportunity to attack him elsewhere for a bit of payback or a few lulz, or a little bit of both.  War gives birth to the unpredictable, makes mock of the mighty and turns conventional wisdom on its head.

Which brings me to the subject of irony.

I have often pointed out that Goonswarm has a long strand of carebear in its DNA.  For many years a central tenet of Goondom has been that even the least pilot contributes to the greater victory; that in sufficient numbers, humble pilots flying humble ships can make life hell for even the best trained and best equipped enemy given determination, grit and a few good leaders. This is the idea that put the swarm in Goonswarm.  And amidst all that shiny technetium, and the supercaps and Tengu fleets it buys, it seems an idea Mittens has forgotten. 

Now, despite his own alliance's history and culture, Mittens turns his back on empire in order to strike at Delve.  Despite having raised a storm of ill-will there, he is confident that this rabble of carebears and pirates will not dare raise their hands against him while he's away.  And even if they did, what possible harm could those humble pilots flying their humble ships do the man who sits astride nullsec's Technetium throne?

Rise up you bears. Rise up.

The Trip to Bountiful

Never let it be said that Mord Fiddle is not a helpful bear.

As many of you know already, Mittens has implemented a bounty system that pays enterprising Goons for podding persons on his enemies list.  For most Goons, the glory of podding one of the Beloved Leader's hated enemies would be reward enough.  However Mittens, being mindful that glory doesn't pay the bar bill or fit out that shiny new Tengu, is sweetening the reward for those minions who lay low his special enemies. 

Now, there are a lot of Goons who would love to join this parade of cash and glory.  Alas, the ratio of Goons to bounty targets means the competition for the honor of ganking one of them will be fairly fierce.  And, alas again, what with highsec being a slightly dangerous place for the undisguised Goon these days, the solo hunting and killing of an Enemy Of Mittens (EOM) can be problematic.  One is more likely to end up the poddee than the podder should one simply wander up from nullsec and start sniffing around Jade Constantine's neighborhood without some trusty Goon muscle at your back.

And at the end of the day, does an enterprising young Goon want to share the cash and glory from the kill with a bunch of trusty Goon muscle when he/she can keep all the cash and glory for him/her self?

No. Not so much.

On the other side of this fence we have the bounty targets.  While Mittens' setting a bounty on their collective heads could be construed as a negative, there is an upside to it as well:  Their deaths have been imbued with a non trivial cash value.  There are lowsec pirates who would sell their eye-patches and peg-legs in order to swagger about with an half-billion isk price on their heads.  Admittedly, the value can only be paid out to a Goon or to a member of one of their close highsec affiliates such as Goonwafie.  However the value is there if it can be extracted.

So, the Goons lining up to execute the bounty targets and claim Mittens' largess in cash and glory represent the demand side of a price equation.  And since the set of bounty targets control the supply side of the equation (I shall call it the Mittens Enemy Cartel) they can reap a financial windfall from their status as a member of Mittens' enemies list.  Thus, we have the foundation for a lucrative market that could benefit bounty hunter and bounty target alike. 

For a price, a bounty target can arrange to be "ambushed" and podded by an enterprising Goonswarm bounty hunter.  Now, this is a common practice among lowsec pirates and griefers, done using the in-game bounty system.  However with the Mittens' enemies list the financial rewards are much higher than the average Concord bounty;  and there are intangible rewards beyond cash for the Goon bounty hunter.  Thus the negotiated price for the opportunity to pod Jade Constantine (Jade being higher profile target within Goondom) should sell for more than the opportunity to off Mabrick (sorry Mab) even if the actual bounties offered for the two of them were the same.  Further, while Concord does not scrutinize poddings or the mail and convo logs of participants in poddings to prevent this sort of deal-making, Mittens surely will.  Thus, any consensual EOM poddings must look genuine. 

However, one essential element is required to make this a functional market:  Trust.

That's were I come in. I am willing to offer my services as an intermediary between bounty hunters and bounty targets seeking to arrange consensual EOM poddings.

If you are a Goon and have a target in mind, contact me via the Hyperspace Com Uplink listed at the top right of the page.  Provide me with your in-game name, the in-game name of your preferred victim, the in-game name of the toon that will execute the kill (if different from your own) and the price you are willing to pay for a consensual podding.

If you are a bounty target (or believe you are) looking to cash in on your new-found value to Goondom, contact me via the Hyperspace Com Uplink listed at the top right of the page.  Provide me with your in-game name and the minimum price you are willing to accept for a consensual podding.

When a match between bounty hunter and target has been made and a price agreed upon, the hunter will transfer the payment to me by a means I will communicate.  The podding will then be scheduled and the details communicated to the hunter.

• If the podding goes off as planned, the payment will be forwarded to the target. 
• If the target backs out, fails to make the agreed upon appointment, or accidentally gets him/herself podded prior to the appointment by another bounty hunter, the payment will be returned to the hunter in full.  
• If the target makes the agreed-upon appointment but is podded by someone other than the hunter, the payment will be forwarded to the target in full unless deception on the targets part (a friendly gank, for example) is evident.  In such cases the payment will be returned to the hunter.
• If the hunter backs out, or fails to make the agreed-upon appointment, the payment will be forwarded to the target in full. 
• If both parties fail to make the agreed-upon appointment I will retain the payment.  It is perilous to waste my time. 

What happens in the Consensual EOM Podding program stays in the Consensual EOM Podding program.

For obvious reasons, participants should not contact each other or representatives of the Consensual EOM Podding program in game.  All information regarding participants in the Consensual EOM Podding program will be kept in strict confidence.  In game identities will not be communicated to either party except in a manner that minimizes the chances of their being explicitly identified as participants in the Consensual EOM Podding program.

The Visitor

In American crime novels of the "Noir" school there is often a scene in which the protagonist (never hero, Noir protagonists are often as touched by darkness as are their opposites) is confronted by the story's lead antagonist; a master criminal, crooked official or underworld boss.  Said antagonist may be, in his way, as likeable or darkly admirable as he is dangerous.  He is often portrayed as both genial and powerful, capable of dispensing favors as easily as he dispenses violence and mayhem.

At a high level, such scenes are formulaic:  The lead antagonist confronts the protagonist, often in an office setting.  The protagonist's actions against the lead antagonist's plans or organization to date are trivialized by the lead antagonist, who may dismiss them as 'amusing' or 'a mere inconvenience'.  The lead antagonist then attempts to convince the protagonist that continued resistance to the lead antagonist's plans or organization is unreasonable.  While simple, this little literary device has vast utility from a plot exposition standpoint and lends itself to endless variations on its basic theme.  Consequently,  it is deeply ingrained in popular film and literature.

Last week Mittens suddenly showed up on my virtual doorstep*.  And as we engaged in a brief back and forth, I couldn't help but smile as the old noir plot device came to mind. 

Mittens:  "You keep trying to provoke me. It's adorable. :D Unfortunately for you, I enjoyed your bacon post too much, back in the day."

Mord Fiddle: "Doh! Curse my l33t writing skills." 

Mittens:  "I mean, feel free to write more blog posts about me, they're off base about the purpose of miniluv, but they feed the ego!  Miniluv is primarily aimed at eve-o badposters, not bloggers, though some bloggers may get caught in the crossfire."

Mord Fiddle:  "Glad you're enjoying them. The purpose of Miniluv is no never mind to me. Just step back from the bloggers and we're all good."

Now,  New Eden is littered with the frozen corpses and broken fortunes of persons who have taken Mittens' words at face value.  Mittens' raison d'etre is misinformation and misdirection and it's wise to keep that knowledge in sharp focus whenever he's talking in your direction.  With that in mind, let's break this little chat down.

The fact that Mittens side-stepped a private convo and communicated this publicly via Twitter indicates that he is interested in sending a message not merely to Mord Fiddle, but to the larger audience watching Mittens' war on bloggers and to the bloggers themselves.  So this is a note meant to communicate at two levels.

When someone announces to all and sundry within earshot that something you've done to bother them hasn't bothered them, you can rest assured that you have, in fact, bothered them.  Thus, when Mittens goes out of his way to say in a public forum that my recent posts and chin pussy tweaks have not provoked or otherwise harmed him, the smart money is on the opposite.  Mind, I don't think he's suffering some dark night of self-doubt or putting down palace coups over anything I've written.  But the protest itself bespeaks a certain discomfort - as if his minions are beginning to suppress giggles whenever they look him in the chin...er, face.

For those not up to speed on their Goon-speak, the "Miniluv" he refers to is the Ministry of Love; both Mitten's enemies list and the ongoing harassment of those whose names are writ thereupon.  It is ground zero in Mitten's war on his critics in the Eve Online media.  In our little exchange, Mittens tells me that I've got him all wrong and that Miniluv isn't aimed at Eve bloggers.  Miniluv, he says, only targets "badposters" in the Eve Online Forums.  Eve bloggers on Mittens' enemies list?  Regrettable but unavoidable collateral damage according to Mittens.

At first blush this appears to be Mittens doing a walk-back from the original statements of intent, which do not discriminate between media outlets or types.  However, at the end of the day it has the tang of sophistry.  Most members of the Eve blogosphere and podcast net also post in the Eve Online forums at one time or another.  In fact, statistically speaking, bloggers and podcasters are probably more likely to post in the Eve forums than their non blogger/podcaster counterparts.  If "forum crossfire" is intended as verbal cover for the continued intimidation of bloggers the full force of my righteous anger shall continue to fall upon him, his chin pussy, and his unfortunate followers.

If, on the other hand, Mittens ceases his intimidation of bloggers (I note, for example, the Goons have not renewed their war on Mabrick's tiny highsec corporation) through overt or covert means, he will have met the first of my terms for his surrender.

In that case, peace with honor in our time may be within reach.



* Fiddler's Note: The exchange occurred on Twitter, but I dislike describing non-avian communications using words 'tweet' and 'twitter'.