A day's worth of things to love about Eve

So I was killing time in Eve before I had to take my daughter off to skating practice on Sunday and had a great little bundle of fun that made me want to write up four things I enjoy about Eve: two game things (a gudfite and the battle for Oto) and two community things (PLEX For Good, Parody songs). I'm going to push this out to some non-eve players so I'll try to explain things as I go.

Gudfite: Worm v Daredevil

This morning I had a short time window to play, so I flew over to run some sites to help Gallente keep control of our systems. I decided to hop in my Worm frigate in part because I wanted to learn to fly it better, but also in full knowledge that many people would see the ship and leave me alone. I dove in on a Merlin and he got away, doubled back on an Incursus whose warp stabilizer kept me from forcing him to stick around. The things got quiet until I had about 10min until I had to go, when a Daredevil showed up on my short-range scan.

Daredevil - that should be a fun. I'm expecting short-range neutron blasters on a very fast hull, so if he gets on top of me then I'm dead. I'm already orbiting 20km off the beacon so I'll have a good start. Acolyte drones are out already, and I pre-overheat my warp disruptor, web, and rockets. I double-click away from the beacon and hit the microwarpdrive as the Dardevil lands, and immediately lock him, sic my drones on him, and fire up the rockets. He charges at me and I see the the warp disruption icon and I think it's going to be over fast. But wait, he's still 16km away, so that mean it wont shut down my microwarpdrive - yup, still running. I've pounded through shields and into his armor, but he's got a armor repairer running as I expected. But wait, my shield is disappearing! He's smacking through my ship's defenses at 16km. I'm so used to running armor tanked that I'm still processing options as I see I'm in armor, which is shortly followed by my ship's explosion. 

The pilot and I exchange GFs in local, and end up having a great conversation as my pod races back to my home station. Turns out he was in a rail-fit Daredevil, which is unusual and certainly explains the damage projection.  He said he's never lost one (and I didn't see any on his killboard) which is impressive.  We chatted about the fight and about pirate frigates as I headed home to Fliet to log off.  A shout out to Kondrel Krense who may be an enemy, but who was a fun opponent as well.

Fights in Eve are great for post-analysis.  What if I had put out Hobgoblins instead of  Acolytes, which would have better at damaging the armor tank I should have known the Daredevil would have?  What if I had pulled more range to keep him closer to 20km instead of 16km, which would have pushed into farther into the long range of his guns, while he still would have been racing head-first into my rockets.  I wish I had FRAPS'd it to see more, too.

Community: Parody Songs

I pulled up my Eve Parody Song list Friday at the end of the day at work. While I have a lot that I like, the ones sticking in my head recently are Sindel Pellion's Blue List (Blank Space), Shut up and Shave's I Robbed a Goon (I Kissed A Girl), and David K Magnus' Hey Pilot (Hey Brother).

Honestly, I'm much more familiar with the parodies of these modern songs than I am the original pop songs.  When I hear them in a store I find myself remembering the Eve lyrics instead.  The creativity (and production values) here are a great testament to the breadth of Eve players out there as well as how much they love this game.

Battle for Oto

Last night I logged on to find that the neighboring enemy system of Oto was being pushed hard by my Gallente brethren.  I was surprised to hear that our fleet was made up of Atrons, which I certainly like for their high-speed tackle capabilities but which I hadn't seen us field as a full fleet (instead of our usual drone-centric Tristans).  We worked with a allied fleet to dodge back and forth trying to claim the sites in the system against a good-sized Caldari Corax fleet.  We got some good fights, and took down a number of their destroyers, but they were definitely being more effective in terms of controlling the sites.  Given the low cost of their chosen Corax fit I expect they did very well in terms of the war of attrition.  Looking at the killboard for the system I can see that activity has continued, if perhaps not with as much intensity as last night.

This is where I think Faction Warfare really shines.  Log in, have fights, lead battles that push back and forth to claim systems for your side.

PLEX for Good

After the recent Earthquake in Nepal CCP fired back up the PLEX for Good program.  This lets play donate game-time to be converted into dollars to the International Red Cross.  Last time around (Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines) Eve players donated over $190,000 worth of PLEX to this great cause.

My employer has a nice matching program for donations, so that's my first go-to.  But I'm really tempted to buy some PLEX and split it between the PLEX for Good and some new SKINs...

Crossing a line, almost without notice

So yesterday Gallente pushed up to Tier 3.  That's handy, since it increases the LP we get from plexing and FW mission activities.  Apparently it was pretty straightfoward too, as it was done before I even had a chance to log in.  Just pull up to the iHub and dump in the LPs.  Which is pretty disappointing from a player activity point of view, and perhaps points a lesson for the null activity guidelines.

Essentially the Tier 3 was a non-event as far as anything dramatic goes.  It's not like we had to take additional systems, or hold down a Large complex in every system, or do anything that involved fighting the Caldari.  Yeah, people had to do things to gain those systems in the first place, and to gain the LP to donate to upgrade the systems, but that's all incremental activity.

If anything, we've gained this higher tier despite the Caldari climbing their way back in the warzone.  I was surprised to check and see that they actually hold 41 systems to our 60 now.  That's good in terms of having a more viable opponent for pew-pew, but seems disconnected from this whole Tier thing.

The recent nullsec dev blog goes into more detail about the indicies that will affect contesting systems and structures under the new "FozzieSov."  This was touched on in the o7 show yesterday as well, with Fozzie mentioning looking for more things to fold in to the activity metrics that won't be blatantly gamable.

So when a nullsec entity pushes their system up to Index 5, will anyone notice?  Will there be any event that players might celebrate, that might drive behavior and make everyone excited?  Or will it be an "oh yeah, that happened" like our GalMil push to Tier 3.

Or in a game like Eve is it up to us the players to make those events?  If there isn't some big mechanism from crossing one of these lines, should the Alliances (or militias) take on themselves to celebrate these with roams and giveaways and new videos and parody songs to taunt our opponents?

Eve Planet Money?

So I'm a fan of a very economics geeky NPR show called Planet Money.  They've done a couple shows about Iceland (started by the economic collapse) and they've done at least one show about a virtual economy (Second Life) and a recent one about Magic: The Gathering.  So I figured I'd plug a show idea about Eve.  Anyone know anyone in NPR?

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Hey there Planet Money hosts,

I thought I'd plug an idea for you that combines two things you'd like: Iceland and Virtual Economies.  What happens when you combine a free-wheeling libertarian economic model with massively multiplayer online game with an aggressive and very technically minded player base?
You get Eve Online, by Iceland software developer CCP.  A game that is primarily about virtual spaceships fighting in a fictional universe, but very strongly underpinned by economics that can be just as much of a player versus player battle as the combat between ships.  Not only do manufacturers contest through the markets in the traditional means of undercutting each others prices and exploiting new sales location, but also through manipulating those markets through speculation, hoarding, and controlling the means of products.  It's also a game where one of the best known player (Chribba) is an industrialist and trusted proxy for high-value deals.

You also get a player base that has a huge investment in economics, such as:
* The Eve Prospect Market Analysis podcast show (http://eve-prosper.blogspot.co.uk/)
* Markets for Isk (http://marketsforisk.blogspot.com/)
* Live data from the markets (http://null-sec.com/tycoon/, http://eve-marketdata.com/)
* A player presentation on how he became a space trillionaire (https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLQvKSs1k6DLOiGGb44McruXcndTtzUUlu&v=1jytAfRGsjw)

Until recently CCP had an in-house economist, Dr. Eyj­ólf­ur Guðmunds­son, who has recently moved on to become Rector at the University of Akureyri.  Dr. Eyjo (as he is known to the player base) produced Quarterly Economic Newsletters (https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Quarterly_Economic_Newsletter) that include Consumer Price Indicies, Producer Price Indicies, etc.  There is an interview with Dr. Eyjo by the host of Eve Prospect from March 2015 here (http://eve-prosper.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/special-report-dr-eyjo-interview.html) which includes discussions about mineral price movements, inflation in the economy, and privately issued bonds.  You see references to the in-game currency (ISK) which is of course a reference to Iceland's own currency.
Eve Online is a subscription based game, but it also has a in-game item (a Pilot License EXtension or PLEX) that people can buy with in-game currency that gives another 30-days of play time.  So players who are good at economics can effectively play for free.
So that's a lot of information.  I've attached a few images as well.  I would be glad to help point you towards people who could help in development of a story if you folks are interested.  In particular I am in the same in-game group as the host of Eve Prosper (John Purcell, aka Lockefox) and he could be a great starting point.
Thanks for all your Planet Money content!

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Anyone else have ideas for plugging Eve through such means?  Anyone else want to volunteer to be contacted if Planet Money actually gets back to me?  Anyone else I should plug as economics-geek friendly?

I didn't plug Gevlon Goblin for all his economics because his blog is mostly about Grr Goons for the past year or so, Mynnna hasn't been posting since mid-CSM9, etc.

It's a long shot, but man it would be cool.

My Baby Booster Alt Skill Plan

First up on my alt training plans is the Baby Booster, inspired by a post on Eve Lost and Found.  There are three variations depending on how long you're willing to train them: 30 day, 60 day, and "long term".  Before we get into that a quick note on the recent discovery that new accounts are getting 4 remaps now from CCP - I've found that this is only the first character on the account.  So if you're spinning up a new account make sure that the more long-term and complicated alt is created first.  Unfortunately I spun up a station-sitting trade alt first, so he's unlikely to make use of all those remaps compared to the Booster alt.

A disclaimer here: I'm learning this as I go from reading around the eve meta-verse.  I'll update this blog post as I learn more from experience, commenters here, or other sources.

What is the Baby Booster?  Eve fleet mechanics are such that if you have more than one person in a fleet then the Leadership skills can give a boost to the performance of everyone in that fleet.  A single pilot with Leadership skills by themselves will not get these bonuses.  This leads to the infamous "solo PVP" where the actual combat pilot is receiving boosts from off grid, something that pretty much everyone I've heard of wants to see fixed including CCP Fozzie and CCP Rise.  Outside of this more controversial application, a booster is great for the kind of small gangs of lower-skilled players I see in my own corp where none of us have gotten around to training the leadership skills.  Given the arms-race nature of PVP, if you're going up an opponent who is going to have a full T3 link/booster alt this will at least help out.

What kind of bonuses are we talking about?

• Leadership: 2% bonus to targeting speed per level
• Armored Warfare: 2% bonus to armor hitpoints per level
• Siege Warfare: 2% bonus to shield capacity per level
• Skirmish Warfare: 2% bonus to agility per level
• Information Warfare: 2% bonus to targeting range per level

So for having a T1 frigate in a safe somewhere in system you get bonuses in excess of what a really expensive pirate implant set in the head of every member of your fleet.

Open question: The EveUni and official wiki entries only mention being in space and in the solar system as limitations.  If you can provide bonuses while cloaked I'll definitely alter this plan to include the ability to put a crude cloak on your alts T1 frigate.

Options:

• 30-day Baby Booster: 10% bonus to targeting speed, choose one other at 10%, others at 8% bonus, over four squadrons.
• 60-day Baby Booster: All bonuses at 10%, over five squadrons.
• Long term: Keep running with the above up to a full T3 with mindlinks.  That's beyond the scope of this article.

Training Pattern:
Train Cybernetics 1, then plug in +3 Cha and Will implants, remap to maximize Cha first, Will second.  If you're going to go for the "Long term" option, instead continue to Cybernetics 4 and plug in +4 implants.

Train Leadership 1, then each of the Warfare skills to 1.  Congrats! After 80 minutes of training your alt can already give to 2% bonuses to a minimal fleet (i.e. your main).

"Solo" branch point: If this is really just to boost your "solo" main then you can skip the Leadership over 1 that we're about to cover and instead just focus on the Warfare skills.  It won't let you squeeze any more level 5 warfare skills on the 30-day or 60-day plan, but you will have more time to get some ship skills in.

Train up Leadership and the Warfare skills to 4.  I'd recommend mixing in a Infomorph Psychology 1 or 2 as well so you can clone into a combat position then clone out to your learning implants.  You're now only 9 days into training and you can give a decent sized squadron 8% bonuses in all categories.

Train Leadership to 5 and start Wing Commander.  Now you can boost multiple full-size squadrons.  Choose what your priority is for Warfare skills to get to level 5.  I figure this is pretty much driven by your tank style, with the agility and targeting range bonuses being less useful.

Where I am:
My own new alt is now at the point of training the level 4 warfare skills.  I'm not going to prioritize Wing Command yet, since if our corp ever gets more than one squad we're pretty much guaranteed to have one of the veterans around with level 5 warfare skills.  Soon it's off to Estel Arador to pick up a clone I can move into the warzone and then it's time to start experimenting!

New characters and the last of the learning skills

Once upon a time in Eve there were learning skills.  When I was googling for information about character builds before starting up my first character I found lots of advice about what order to train the learning skills, even though they were gone by the time I started.  There's one learning skill left in Eve that you need to consider when starting a new character (main or alt): Cybernetics.  I expect it will be gone (or more likely changed) in the next year.  I'll make a recommendation below on a simple option there.

Learning Skills/Implants

The nature of learning skills was that they give no direct game benefit, only a second order benefit in terms of your speed of learning.  Apparently under the old learning skill system the best way to start playing Eve was to create a character, queue up the learning skills, and then don't log back into the game except to queue more skills for a couple days.  Cybernetics is pretty much the same.  Cybernetics lets you plug in implants that increase your attributes, which drive your learning speed, which you should do as soon as possible in terms of optimizing your growth.  Surprisingly a number of the articles I saw on alts just assume you know this.  The exception is Gevlon Goblin's guide to making a market alt (which is good, but slightly dated now):

"The first step in the way of building a trader (or rather any) character is to learn cybernetics. If you are a new player, lvl 1 is enough. This skill allows you to get implants that speed up your skillpoint collection. The +2 implants costs around 2M ISK, money you don't have as newbie. If it's not your first account and you are not a total newbie, I'd strongly suggest to learn Cybernetics 4 to be able to use +4 implants"

I'd alter that a bit if you aren't making a dedicated trader alt.  If you're a new player and you didn't come in on a buddy invite then contact someone in your player corporation - and if you didn't join a player corp do that now (Eve University, Brave, RvB, or our own Aideron Robotics).  If you're absolutely new it is worth it to make a simple deal: you give me a buddy invite, I start over on the buddy invite, we split the money from the PLEX you get.  Use that PLEX to buy (amongst other things) +4 implants.  Note that some new player corps also apparently give out low grade implants free.

Basically, Cybernetics 4 (75 hours of training) will pay off in 62 days (with some variation based on your mapping).  So Cybernetics 4 is not worth it for your two-PLEX-and-done alt, but for pretty much anything else go do it first.

But is that really good for the game?

An Alternative Cybernetics

A simple change would be as follows:

All new pilots start with Cybernetics 1, just like they start with racial frigate 3 and the like.  Lore wise this represents knowledge needed to get the capsuleer clone implants.

Skill requirements for +4 learning implants (those with attribute bonuses only) changes to only need Cybernetics 1.  Other skill requirements do not change.  For instance, Cybernetics 4 is still required for the High Grade pirate implants, and Cybernetics 5 is still required for Mindlinks.

I expect that CCP will go farther and radically change the attribute/remap/skill linked mechanisms, but this would be a simple way to get new players going without taking away the risk vs reward of losing your implants in PvP.

Edit: updated thanks to correction from maxpowerdup in the comments below.

Future of Big Battles in Null

When FozzieSov was first announced, there were complaints that there would be no more B-R fights.  The immediate counter was "so how fun is to be at max TiDi for hours and hours on end?"  I thought surely the real response of "yes, there will be big battles" would come around but apparently not.  I was particularly frustrated when one of my favorite podcasts went on and on recently, but apparently none of them had actually read the devblog (or at least could articulate it).  We even had one guest reinforce the stereotype that "I don't need to read, my superiors in the alliance will tell me I need to know" before he went on to spout stuff that was just plain wrong.  So I'll put our my statement, as a non-null resident no less, that we will have huge battles to rival B-R - just not the TiDi fests of Dominion Sov.

Background

If you still haven't read about the new sov, please do so before you go commenting on blogs and podcasts and such.  It's not that hard, let me help:
* Politics by Other Means: Sovereignty Part Two (Fozzie Sov's introduction)
* Entosis Links and Ship Balance: original thread on F&I - read the first post and then skip to
* Entosis Links and Ship Balance Part Two

And now, on with the show

The Battle of D-Day

Let's start with a comparison to military history: the Battle of D-Day.  Here's a quote from the History.com article:

During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region.

Hmm, notice how this isn't referred to the Battle of Juno Beach, the Battle of Sword Beach, the Battle for Cherbourg, etc etc.  We don't talk about how many men died on each of those beaches as separate events and compare them against the battles that have gone before on that.  We don't treat how many men came in on gliders and by parachutes into the enemy backfield as separate skirmishes.  That's because those were just smaller locations in support of a larger mission objection: flipping Sov of the Normandy Constellation from the Germans [NAZI] to the Western Alliance [ALLY].

Oops, did I just say Sov? Well, let's take this back to New Eden then. If D-Day was under FozzieSov, what might we see?

The Battle of the Normandy Constellation

Operation Overload starts with five large fleets surging into the Normandy Constellation.  Thanks to intel leaks, the defenders set up heavy gate camps but were unable to stop interceptors and CovOps ships from getting past and using cynos to allow larger forces to land.  The defenders break off of gate camps to chase down intruders using Entosis Links to reinforce sovereignty structures, POSes and other structures.  As the initial defenses are breached and some of the attacks succeed, command nodes start to spawn across the constellation.  The battle rages back and forth for days, with each day running into the hundreds of billions of ISK destroyed.

War-reporters stream from their covops as battles run around command nodes, eagerly watched to learn what tactics and fits both sides are using.  Third-party groups swing into the constellations hoping to kite off the edges of the command nodes, or catch juicy Entosis-laden ships.  An NPSI streamer laughs as someone in his fleet takes a shot at a Drifter Battleship that apparently is observing one such battle, leading to a whelp of the entire NPSI fleet.  Mercenaries are pulled in on both sides with instructions to reinforce POSes and hunt down Entosis-ships.

Eventually the defending forces are pushed back and control of structures begins to swing to the attackers.  The Command Nodes for the headquarters station are triggered and the attacker starts to take them.  At risk of losing the final nodes, the defenders commit their capital and super-capital assets.  Cynos in the final command nodes on both sides bring in dreads and carriers to secure the grids, both sides not wanting to be the first to commit supers and titans on one command node lest their opponent overwhelm the other four.

On the final day the last five command nodes see waves of attack, reinforce, commit reserves until capital and super-capital assets are deployed in multiple systems and multiple nodes.  TiDi ramps up as the doomsdays start to rain down, hitting 10% dilation for a full two hours in three of the systems before the final command node is secured.  The defender manages to extract their forces from four of the five command nodes as they realized they are overmatched, but enemy bubbles and hictors keep it from going cleanly.

In the aftermath the analysis and reporting goes into overdrive.  Billed as the "largest player battle in video game history" the link gets passed around about how thousands of Eve players battled back and forth for over a week, with trillions of ISK lost and the inevitable conversions to USD and Euros.  A popular eve-news side features a ten-part series of interviews with skirmish commanders from the most nail-biting of the command node fights, the final article of which is picked up by a mainstream gaming media site.

Player videos and commentary swamp /r/Eve, along with recriminations over spies and betrayals.  Hero-Entosis pilots regale friends on how they managed to keep their link up for a few moments more even as enemy battleships took the grid, just enough time for a corpie to land and light off a cyno that brought the pivotal caps on field. As the defenders lick their wounds, they harass the new sov-holders with Entosis HAC gangs, but only half-heartedly as they let people know that they didn't really want that constellation anyway.

Future Fights

Saying that they won't match the old fights is like saying that D-Day wasn't that big because each individual beach and para-drop and airstrike involved was small.  You just have to shift your definition of what a "battle" in Eve means to something that more approaches reality.  It's a new kind of battle that, as an outsider to null, actually sounds interesting compared to the 24-hour long 10% TiDi battle that frankly sounds boring.  The idea of having these raging battles across a constellation, now that's something I could get into.

But we'll still have TiDi, you know, if you were missing that.

The end of attributes, a good time for alts

As recently posted on Reddit by Bizpit, new characters now have four bonus remaps rather than two.  I checked my new baby alt and indeed he has the four remaps.  If you've recently created a character and managed to just miss the unannounced new policy by a few days then definitely put in a ticket.  One poster reports that he was given the additional two remaps when he asked.  As always with support tickets, be polite and you're more likely to get what you want.

Does this mean the end of attributes, with a policy coming where we'll always train at the same value as an optimal remap?  Perhaps.  But if you're starting up an alt this should make it extra juicy.

Map Int/Mem
Learn Cybernetics to IV
Plug in +4 Implants for Int and Mem
Run through all of the Core Skills you need for your alt's focus

Map Per/Will
Plug in +4 Implants for Per and Will
Run through all of the ship/weapon skills you need

and continue depending on what kind of alt you're making.

I'm thinking of posting skill plans for each of the alt types I'm considering and will include the four-remap pattern as part of that.  I'm seeing a number of skill plans out there, some of which need updating to take advantage of new opportunities.

So far I'm thinking:
* Baby Booster (with potential to grow to full Link Alt)
* Cyno Alt
* Industrial Alt
* Market Trader Alt
* Planetary Interaction Alt
* Hauler Alt
* ???