Low Sec: I Wanna Talk to You

He said I'm going to buy this place and see it go
Stand here beside my baby watch the orange glow
Some'll laugh and some just sit and cry
But you just sit down there and you wonder why
So I'm going to buy a gun and start a war
If you can tell me something worth fighting for
And I'm going to buy this place, that's what I said
Blame it upon a rush of blood to the head
Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head

I can feel that little creeping fear in the back of my spine. The thing that makes you rise off the edge of your chair and immediately you know, even though it's over, that was a good fight. That's the fun of an unsure ending. It's been a while. More on that later.

'Fore I get started on the blog banter, and before you get bored with this mighty long post: Mynxee's doing some things with some people in some place at some time. I honestly have no idea what's going on, but it pertains to low-sec, and Mynxee is involved. That usually means you should listen. You should listen, I sometimes just hum the national anthem or something.

Now the blogfather CrazyKinux has sent me a mail with the next blog banter. I'm not against the banter concept. I like community building events... I just have a problem with being expected to link other people's blogs, good or not. The ones I read are on the far right, those are the blogs I know for a fact are good. There are other good ones I do not read, either for lack of time or my not knowing about them. I'm still going to answer the blog banters, but my jumping through hoops has ended.

That said, lets jump through another hoop!

If you're completely fresh to blogging, let me sum it up quickly: A blog banter is where a bunch of bloggers answer a simple question. CrazyKinux runs ours.

This month topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost who a few month ago asked "Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?" Is it? I'd like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What's needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

The truth about pirates is that they operate under terrible and restrictive rules that CCP has created to discourage PvP in Empire Space, including low-sec.

So what do you do about a part of the playerbase that has chosen a difficult lifestyle? It's nearly impossible to do anything without having to take account of about 5 different rules at a time. The penalty for the playstyle is being completely cut off from another playstyle. Living by your own rules in reality means living by more rules than anyone else when it comes to simple ship to ship combat.

What do you do when a part of the playerbase willingly takes on these penalties and tries to have fun with them? Ignore them. In essence it's the only logical solution to someone who's strapped for resources for development.

You've chosen the lifestyle that is the most difficult in EVE and you did so willingly. You're the least likely person to leave the game. You are the least likely then, to get anything you actually want.

High Sec is the refuge of the people who take the easy way out. Imagine how many carebears would stop playing if they had to do level 4 missions in lowsec. Yes, as a solution to low secs problems, that would be a big deal. More people, more killing, more fun.

Carebears wouldn't play anymore though. Large swaths of Eve players would simple pack their shit and go home. So is it easier to give low sec what they want, if they're already willing to put up with shit as it is, or keep the status quo on that point? If you're CCP, what would you decide?

That decision is easy, and we all know what CCP's going to do. So lets just say this now: Any change to low sec that penalizes high sec will probably not happen. I'd go even further and say that any changes to low sec that make high sec significantly less good in comparison are pretty unlikely to happen.

So I guess to answer the first question: Of course CCP is treating low-sec differently than the rest of EVE. It would be irresponsible from a business standpoint to treat low sec equally.

Next up, can I make a living as a pirate? I think myself and numerous others will tell you wholeheartedly, yes you can. It's a simple life that profits, but a good one. Use cheap ships and cheap fits. Have some fun. Any number of pirate bloggers out there can explain just how much money they've made over time, and I know that when I pirated I had a blast and made money. Not much mind you, certainly not enough for a plex in a month, but the income was not negative.

Lastly, the question of "What can be changed, or is everything find as it is,". Yes things can be changed. Things that don't require even that much thought. Stuff that doesn't require intense coding like having rats work for you or some bullshit like that.

1. Shorten GCC to 5 minutes instead of 15.
2. Gate guns don't shoot at you unless you fire at someone in front of them. Warping in and out clears their Aggro.
3. Gate guns should have tracking that isn't perfect.
4. Gate guns should have a range of 100k instead of 150k.
5. Make low sec mining more profitable than high sec mining. For the love of god. Carebears already think this is the case. So no harm no foul in making the logical both true and logical.
   
6. Add yet more combat agents in low sec, with higher quality.
7. Cap the quality of agents in high sec at 5.
8. Allow an annual amnesty like the neural remap: once a year you can clear your sec status completely.
9. Delays in local chat should reflect the security status of the system. .4 being 15 secs, with an additional 15 seconds after that for each .1 to null-sec, which would have W-Space like local. If that's too complicated, make it all like w-space.
10. Create new pirate gates that can only be activated if you personally have a certain standing with the controlling pirate corp. This allows shortcuts and smuggler routes in low sec. This is my favorite idea I just came up with.
    

It's so good in fact that I'll just stop listing there. Man it's easy for me to impress myself.

This shit is simple. A bunch of little things that together could make low-sec a heck of a lot of fun.

That said, lets get back to the fun I had a bit earlier tonight. After reading this blog banter question, I knew I had to go out and experience some low sec, before I went ranting about it.

So I hopped onto my alt Bonn Mott, and flew down to my low sec base, picked up my Rifter and decided to take a look at Eifer. It didn't take long at all for the Jokers Wild to find a thrasher in a belt on scan. A quick look up and I confirmed his age as 2 years. More than enough to skill up a thrasher to kill my Rifter alt, but I decided to give it a go anyway. I warped down on top of him, and locked him up. His autocannons stripped away huge parts of my shield, but I wasn't too worried. My armor would be the real test. He on the other hand was shield boosting his ass off.

I pulled into a tight orbit and waited. Soon enough my shields were gone and he got his teeth into my armor. I was still doing pretty good, eventually beating his shield boosting and I started to nibble on his armor a bit too. Eventually my armor was completely stripped away. Then he stopped shooting. I could've taken this opportunity to run, it was obvious this guy wasn't just some random newb, and could fly his ship. I decided that meant the kill would be even sweeter, and kept firing. Finally taking out the last of his armor.

As I burned into his structure, he started to fire again, and it hurt. My armor rep wasn't able to do much to help... so I just fired and hoped. I got him to 30% structure before I died. Another volley might've done it. Two would have.

It was disappointing, but I told him good fight and moved on. Nothing ventured nothing gained, right?

A conversation later, and I found out he'd run out of ammo mid fight, and had to reload. It almost killed him, and if this alt had overheating, it would have. Next time.

New Item For Trade!

Got a Cynabal. Man it's pretty. Trade me something worth more than it!

What's Your Greatest Escape Story?

Oh right, a Muninn. Hey Lag. Ok, a Dramiel has me tackled and I'm at half armor.

I should interject here and say that if not for my own stupidity, I wouldn't have ended up in the situation in the first place.

This was back during my time in Noir., the good old days, which weren't too long ago. We're fighting some Legiunea Romana and we're camping them into a system. Sorry, let me be clear, camping them into their own systems. The camp is going good, but they finally bring in enough people and organize them properly to drive us off for a while. I'm hanging back, still watching in my stealth bomber. I see a Dramiel Micro Warping in a tight orbit of the gate.

"Hey Alek," I said, knowing he wouldn't pay attention till I gave him actual intel, "There's a Dramiel on the gate just MWDing around,"

"Really?" He'd answered. I knew he'd fit a bomb launcher for this particular excercise, and I also knew enough about it that he wouldn't kill it in one bomb... and I didn't have one.

"I can target paint it while you bomb it," I'd said without thinking. It sounded good right?

"Yeah, ok, you ready?" He'd said without hesitation.

"Yup," I answered just as quickly.

"Bombing,"

"Painting,"

It was at this point that I recognized a few things. On the field were a number of ships, but the ones that worried me the most... or I guess more accurately should have worried me the most were the Muninn and the target Dramiel. I let my mind wander for a few minutes I guess... cause on top of the expected risk of being decloaked for almost fifteen seconds, I completely failed to tracking disrupt the Muninn.

Oh right, a Muninn. Hey Lag. Ok, a Dramiel has me tackled and I'm at half armor.

We're been here before, right?

So the Muninn puts another volley into me before I make his guns useless, but I've got a Dramiel on my ass and he ain't letting go. I already had him targeted, so I just threw on a target range dampening script after aligning out and spammed the warp button.

And away I went. No fuss, no fanfair, no armor and almost no structure, but alive.

I'll take it. What's your best escape?

State of The Blog

Light from the sun can take millions of years to get to the surface, but once its there it only takes 8 minutes to get to Earth. I don't have a point here, except to say to guys waiting on their wives to get ready, "It could be worse"
Me

This first bit isn't directed at the majority of you. This is directed at the rather small minority of folks that sent me a ingame mail on Friday asking for an update. Take a good long look at the first bit of writing, right below the banner.

I used to do updates on Monday, Wednsday and Friday. That kind of schedule got to be too much once I took over a leadership role in Noir., and I quit doing it. I have made an update every week since I started blogging. You're guaranteed one Wednesday(ish) and that's it. I'm not going to bitch anyone out... just sayin'. Anything more than one a week is extra.

Since the Stealth Bomber Guide has about doubled my regular traffic, I've been trying to get a few posts in a week, just to make sure the traffic sticks around. So far I've got a whole month of a solid bump, so I'd say it's not going away.

But I do have some extra time since leaving Noir., and I'm enjoying that free time.

However I've spent the last four months paying for game time with ingame isk, and I've just about drained my account dry. Fortunately I now have a job, and will do my ingame self the favor of repaying the debt by buying a couple of sixty day time codes and selling them.

Once I get back to having money, I'm going to step up my search for a new home. I've got a corp in the northern coalition that I've zero'd in on, and I'm probably gonna put an application in by next weekend. Time to see what it's like to be part of a huge coalition.

Edit: Oh and one more thing I meant to include. Back when the chinese blogger accounts were spamming my blog with links, I got tired of going back to old posts and finding their crap. I also got annoyed that I missed genuine comments from people who were late to the party.

So I put a system in place that forces me to read and approve comments on any post older than seven days. So if you post to one, and it says it's awaiting moderation, I'll see it in one or two days and read it. I might not post back, but I will read it.

One Foxfire Rocket Update #1

Check it out. I've got a Hulk to trade now.

Why Does it Work Like That?

The tendency to whining and complaining may be taken as the surest sign symptom of little souls and inferior intellects.
Lord Jeffrey

I would like to start this rant with a simple proclamation: In the wide world of CCP petition responses, I've gotten the better end of things more often than not.

That said, in this case, I'm more bothered by the original mechanic not working as intended than anything else.

You see, I went down to 0.0 for a trip to play around with some story ideas, been a while since I did any fiction and I felt like trying for some inspiration ingame. So I went to a very hot system, the home station of the Society of Concious Thought. I figured once I undocked I'd be dealing with some pretty fucked up shit, but I was ready to have a bit of fun while dying. Sure enough I undock into a Crow, Stilleto and Curse. Man am I fucked, right?

So I get ready to burn out and see how far I get before my cap gets neuted or see if I can somehow get aligned and slip away... when my game crashes. Full on shuts down. Windows error message comes up.

So at this point, I'm thinking to myself, "Well darn, that sucks, but at least I've emergency warped away, I'll just log back in and land whereever I crashed at," No bubbles up, so it's nothing more than a delay of what was going to happen anyway.

I try repeatedly to get my game running again, but the lag from the start up screen is unbearable. Nothing works. I sit there for a few minutes, and give my computer the three finger salute. Sure enough windows says two Eve clients are running. I end both tasks and try again.

Now despite all this, nothing else is actually running.

I think most people can figure as to where this story ends. I log back in to my pod, a million kilometers away from what I can only assume is my wreck. I then emergency warp back into combat, and then I warp myself away. Then I take a moment to savor the irony.

Dozens, if not hundreds of people have escaped death at my hands by abusing the game and logging off. I genuinely crash and still die.

I've seen the mechanic at work. In log offs, the target is completely unlockable from the moment he starts to initiate the emergency warp.

But apparently that's only in the case of deliberate log offs. Now if you crash, there's nothing that can be done about it.

The petition I made said explicitly that in reply. I didn't bother escalating it since I most likely would've died anyway, and I don't think it should work ever, even in my case.

But it does bother me to know that the mechanic only protects those who abuse it. As for those that it's meant for, well... those people may or may not find it useful.

I've defended CCP on this very point to corp mates frustrated at how the mechanic works. I could totally see where they were coming from, since it's supposed to protect people when they crash.

Only it doesn't, so tear it the fuck down.

Things Not Yet Done

Why is the path unclear?
When we know home is near...
Once More With Feeling - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

So, there are different play styles in Eve. Different avenues of play, as it were. You could spend years doing just one thing, or be like me and never spend to long(six months as a pirate and a year as a merc aren't that long in the grand scheme of things) on one thing.

What kind of play styles are there?

There's the wardeccing playstyle... which is normally played fast and loose(unlike how it was done in my time in Noir.). Where people try to get as much out of some high sec alliance/corp as possible. But the basics are simple, declare war and try to kill the target's assets.

Or the full carebear play style, mining, mission running, salvaging, production, transport or trading. Done from the safety of high sec, the depths of wormhole space, Amamake or null sec, it's all the same. You're just waiting to eventually be someone else's victim.

The null sec alliance members... people who have hours upon hours of pos shooting to look forwards to. And CTAs or roaming gangs that aren't always that much fun. Or the occasional giant mega death battle. Where none of your modules work and you die before the grid loads. Fun.

Maybe you've taken to the pirate lifestyle, one of the most free ways to fly, but the game puts heavy penalties on you for doing so. Go out, find people and kill them, but avoid the law and the bigger fish while you do so. Can be a lot of fun with the right people.

Or the non-traditional PvPers... the ninja salvagers, scammers and suicide gankers. Looking for victims in and endless sea of smaller fish. There's plenty of fish in the sea, and if they like it, why not?

Not many people fall into neat little categories. Most people spill into one or all of them at one point.

But I look back at my time in Eve so far, and realize something important. I've done most of this. I've done highsec war decs, I've done piracy, I've been part of a null sec alliance, I've done my own share of carebearing and preyed on the carebears of high sec and beyond.

So what does that leave me?

Well, it required a closer look, but there are a couple of things I haven't done, in regards to my play styles. Most importantly, I think is that I've yet to be part of a huge null sec alliance. Sure, I was part of Noir., and they hold a nice chunk of null sec, but I rose to the top rather quickly there. I've got a hankering, oddly enough, to be just another soldier in someone else's war machine. Maybe it won't be fun, but I'm tired of missing the experience.

I want to join a big ole' null sec alliance. Given that my first option of Pandemic Legion is surprisingly tough to get into, I'm going to have to look around a bit harder for a second option.