Rebellion Pt 2: Let players change New Eden

We know that the goal for CCP is to let players create and destroy more, to the point of even creating stargates.  Why not let the shape the New Eden that we already have?  This post takes the ideas from Rebellion: Live Event Proposal and makes them part of the ongoing world.

Launching from the Live Event

After the Rebellion Live Event both CCP and the players will have had a chance to see what it is like to let the players change the map.  I expect it's a taste of power that players will not want to give up.  It also gives a chance for a lot of the following to be tweaked based on experience.  Players who aren't normally tuned into the Meta will also have more time to get the news before it impacts them personally.

In the following the term "Rebellion Release" indicates the release in which the new functionality needed below is delivered.

Declare your Loyalty, Part 2

In the Rebellion Release an attribute is added to all capsuleers called Loyalty.  This attribute can be equal to one of the empire or pirate faction names, or Neutral.  When this feature is rolled out all capsuleers are defaulted to Neutral unless they are in Faction War, in which case they are set to that faction.  Capsuleers can change this value on their Character Sheet, but they cannot select a faction they have negative standings towards.  If a capsuleer drops below zero standings with the faction they are listed as loyal to, they will be reset to Neutral.  A capsuleer in a militia cannot change their loyalty away from their faction.

If the Live Event is used, then many capsuleers may have their Loyalty already set via those mechanics.

A logical extension of this for a future stage is that Loyalty could also be set to a Coalition, thus allowing these mechanics or something else built on Loyalty to be used in nullsec and the promised new regions of the future.

Rebellion Sites

These are similar to Faction War plexes in that they are a warpable location which spawns in a system.  They have the same sizes and general characteristics as a FW plex, with the following additional aspects:

• The site has substantially more difficult defenders.  Novice plexes are defended by a pirate Burner NPC, Small with the Burner+Logistics NPC (coming in Oceanus), and so on scaling up.  Ideally I'd like Large sites to resemble Incursion sites, but since I'm not experienced with Incursions I'll leave that for others.
• Pirate NPCs will attack any capsuleers that isn't declared Loyal to their faction.
• The site will count down to despawning if the pirate NPC is killed.  A site that despawns by loyalist actions counts as Victory Points for the Empire.  The killer of the NPC will lose standings with that pirate faction.
• The sites will despawn on a timer (or more roughly but easier to code on downtime).  A site that despawns by timer counts as Victory Points for the Rebel faction.

Rewards:
Killing Pirate NPCs offer substantial immediate ISK and deferred LP rewards.  Small and Novice plexes would be in line win, but greater than, completing the equivalent level 4 burner mission.  Medium and Large should be scaled so that they offer even greater rewards even after divided by the expected number of fleet members needed.  This is because of the risk of having an enemy loyalist join in (or ganker, given the lack of protection).

Killing capsuleers in a Rebellion site will result in an deferred LP reward similar to FW payouts for opposing militia.

Rebellion Missions

The simple version of this would be that any mission run within a Rebellion System counts towards Empire control.  The more complicated form would be that there would be more specific missions of the opposing-player variety that have been often talked about in discussions on how to improve PVE and make it more like PVP.

This allows non-PVP oriented players to contribute towards keeping their home systems under Empire control.

A Living New Eden

When the each new release is rolled out after the Rebellion Release, the map of New Eden will change.  For systems in Rebellion Constellations where the Rebellion prevailed, the security status will drop by 0.1.  All Loyalists who earned deferred LP in that system will be paid out.  For systems where the Empire prevailed, the security status will increase by 0.1. All Loyalists who earned deferred LP in that system will be paid out.  Based on the new standings, a new set of four constellations are chosen for Rebellion.

In systems which have been won by the Pirates and are now low-sec, one or more stations switch ownership to a pirate corporation. Pirate agents and pirate missions would be set up there (see the Infiltration Agents in the previous post) as well as pirate LP stores.

Extensions: An End of Empire?

In an extreme possibility, if after multiple iterations a 0.1 system is won by the Rebels, it becomes a -0.1 NPC null sec system. Yes, this means that if the nullsec Coalitions really wanted they could grind all of empire down to NPC nullsec, though it might take years. That would logically start to drive a response which would require further mechanics. To briefly sketch, it would make sense then for a empire faction to be able to "declare war" (in some way) on the Coalition faction, which would cause the Faction Police NPCs and such to attack war targets in their space and such.

This also goes back to an idea I've posted on before (Eve Needs More Sandbox) where players would be allowed to lead from the empire side. As long as nullsec has player-run Coalitions and empire is just a fractured set of players then there will always be a power disparity.

Rebellion: Live Event Proposal

After the tears about the Revenant event I’ve been thinking about what would make for a better Live Event.  My proposal can stop at merely being a single live event, or could provide a series of events that move to additional functionality - and can be a test for some of the concepts discussed under the broad “fix nullsec” banner.

This the first post, aiming for a set of live events which engages the player base and changes New Eden.  In a later post I'll talk about where this could go beyond just the live event.

First we should ask ourselves what goals would we have for a live event:

• Geographically distributed to reduce the TiDi nightmare
• Distributed across time-zones to engage players around the world
• Cannot require heavy load on CCP resources
• Should be accessible to a range of players (new and old, pvp and pve)
• Should fit within the grand arc story for the Eve universe
• Should have meaning and impact to the Eve universe

Overall Theme: Rebellion

The theme of the Empires losing control has been a consistent one over the past few years.  Incursions represent the early Sansha moves in this direction.  All these things point to a change in the power distribution across New Eden.  Now it is time for the inhabitants of New Eden to declare their Loyalty and shape the New Eden that will come.

Build Up

Ahead of the Rebellion CCP builds up the story of increased pirate activity in eight constellations - four pairs of high-sec/low-sec constellations on the border of each empire.  These rebellions are led by the four predominant pirate factions.  Players are warned that CONCORD is reaching the point that it can no longer guarantee their safety in these constellations.  The Empires and Pirates put out a call for loyalists to gather in each of the four constellations, though a set of existing and new personas to give the lore-aware players something fun to latch onto.

Possible lore twist: Angry CONCORD Guy announces that the four empires have been reducing their financial support due to the continued cost of their proxy wars with each other.  As a result CONCORD may have to pull back from "frontier" systems.

This would be advertised to the player base through the kick-off devblog, which would also include the mechanics explanations on the scoring and prizes, as well as through a launcher news placement, social media outreach, and through the CSMs and their various blogs.

Declare your Loyalty

CCP allows all Alliances to declare loyalty to a single faction, either empire or pirate.  All Faction War corporations are automatically considered loyal to their faction.  All NPC corps are loyal to their faction.  The deadline will be set a bit more than two weeks before the new release comes out.  The implementation to this is relatively simple out-of-game - a web page lists alliances and factions, including a search facility to find corps/alliances. Players are warned that once the deadline passes, the loyalty declaration will be unchangeable for the duration of the live event.

Alliance level declaration was chosen to keep the overall number of data point down, as well as to keep Alliances from being split in loyalty.  Accommodating corporations without an Alliance would be a nice addition.

Kickoff

The live event period kicks off two weeks before the new release.  Loyalist alliances are encouraged to declare war on opposing loyalist alliances by a discounted war cost.  While much of the idea is that the players are generating content, there are specific CCP events and enablers during that time period as well.

Assault Forces

NPC characters (played by CCPers) will appear during the Live Event to lead assaults on the Rebellion Constellations.  These will generally appear in multiple constellations simultaneously to encourage players to respond across multiple servers.  Assaults should be scheduled in waves for the various time-zone.  These NPC characters will be flying blinged-out navy/pirate ships to make for desirable drops.  Some CCP leads could live stream on Twitch for increased engagement outside of Eve.  While most assault forces would be fleets with comms and chat channels set up to coordinate large numbers of loyalist forces to them, pilots like CCP Rise might revisit his solo glory days under the persona of an elite pirate or navy commander.  Empire forces may have a NPC Titan ready to bridge a loyalist fleet straight from a major high-sec system straight into the low-sec rebel area.

Loyalist Forces

Player capsuleers are also encouraged to create events, sponsored by CCP.  Generally we would look to the largest alliances to sign up for each faction to take the lead here.   CCP assistance would be in the form of re-broadcast of advertisements as well as logistics support like the NPC Titan mentioned above.  To encourage new players consider giving out T1 hulls with meta fittings for the fleets.  Envision this as something like Mangala Solaris leading a RVB-core fleet representing Caldari high-sec to preserve the Onivura constellation (RVB’s home, http://evemaps.dotlan.net/map/The_Forge/Onirvura#const).

Pirate Agent Infiltration

Agents will appear for the pirate forces on both the high-sec and low-sec sides of the Rebellion Constellations, infiltrating otherwise loyal stations.  These will offer level 1 through level 4 missions on behalf of the pirate faction.  Note that if the rebels are successful there will also be a way to turn that LP into goods.

Keeping Score

The event would have a scoreboard similar to the one used during the introduction of the Gecko drone.  There would be four sections, each of which would show the relative victory conditions of each set of Rebellions.

Player Ship kills

Points for the ISK value of ships destroyed by loyalist forces in the warzone.  Depending on how sophisticated CCP can be with tracking kills, this could be broken out more specifically with the Empire forces getting points only for killing Pirate loyalists but perhaps Pirates get points for any kills in the high-sec region.  This would match the theme of the pirates disrupting high-sec structure.  

Economic activity

Both sides gets points for mining and industrial jobs run by their loyalists.  It’s expected that this will bias for the Empire side, so that will need to be considered in the scoring system.

Missions run

Both sides get points for missions run in the warzone.  The pirate agent infiltration will provide an opportunity for pirate loyalists to even score these points in the relative safety of highsec.  In general this will also be biased towards Empire though.

Live Event Conclusion - Rewards and Consequences

Alliance Rewards

Alliances will be rewarded in appropriate faction hulls commensurate with the amount of damage they inflicted on the opposing faction, to be delivered into stations into the relevant Rebellion Constellation.

Individual Rewards

Individual pilots will be recognized for the ISK damage they inflicted on capsuleers of the opposing faction.  Top pilots in multiple categories would be rewarded with faction hulls (Most kills, most solo kills, most damage done).  Using the reward categories from previous player events would be a good start.  Another set of lesser rewards (faction frigates and modules) would be given to participating random pilots to help let newer pilots still have a chance at winning prizes.  Non-PVP prizes could also be given for the other scoring categories (mining, industry, missions) if CCP has a good way to track that.

Changing the world

When the next release is rolled out, the map of New Eden will change.  For systems in Rebellion Constellations where the Rebellion prevailed, the security status will drop by 0.1.  For systems where the Empire prevailed, the security status will increase by 0.1.  For this version of the proposal, the minimum security status remains 0.1 and the maximum 1.0.

Next time: Take it up a notch.  If we actually had mechanics implemented in the game, where could this take us?

Low sec wormhole fights

The frequency of wormholes in lowsec increased (in Kronos I think) and I've been enjoying them.  Last night was a good example of how the additional connectivity of WHs in lowsec have been fun.
Warning: This post is mostly of a breathless-battle-report style, so skill to the bottom if that's not your thing.

The Fights

Things were looking pretty quiet on Rifterlings comms and there weren't any fleets up.  So when I logged in I immediately undocked in my scanner Helios.  Fortunately for me though, someone else had already scanned down the WHs in Sirekur and a quick warp to the corp bookmark verified that they weren't out of date.  We had a WH to null, a WH to low, and a WH to an actually wormhole system (C3 I think it was).

I docked back up and hopped into an Ares to take a look at the null WH, just in case there were bubbles out there.  I asked on comms and heard that it went to CFC space, and the nullers had tried to come through and gank people unsuccessfully earlier.  That sounded like a great invitation to return the favor to me.  I popped through to MO-FIF and was very sad to find that the two pilots in system appeared to be inactive.  I went to check out the gates and found one bubbled up.  I considered belt-ratting but unlike CFCers I'm not used to fighting Guristas and I didn't really feel like red crosses with ECM.  There wasn't much interest in comms on a null roam, and since I have no experience soloing null I decided to pass.

I jumped back to Sirekur and went straight to the lowsec WH - which took me to Villasen in Black Rise, and thus into the Gallente / Caldari FW space.  Even better, there were Caldari FW pilots running plexes!  I bookmarked the hole and headed straight for the Small Outpost and the Kestrel inside.

Now there's a couple warning signs here.  I'm in an Ares more suited for tackling for a gang, chosen originally for its align and bubble immunity.  I also only recently skilled up Interceptors and have no experience really soloing in them yet.  But hey, how do you start anyway? Well...

I locked up the Kestrel and to my joy he returned the favor.  I'm so used to AB-ships in plexes that I didn't really process this properly as he scrammed and webbed me, and my ship rapidly turned into a puff of Ares-shaped debris.  And that was even before his friend in a Corax had a chance to join in and lock me up.  Umm, yeah.  GF in local and back to the hole, while calling out on comms that I have some Caldari who want fights.

I hop into the first ship I see in my dock, a gimmick Comet fit I stole from the inestimable HippoWhisperer.  Dual-tank with what some refer to as a "DPS point" - i.e. your point is that the target dies too fast to get out once they realize they're in trouble.  I'm back out and heading to the hole and two corpmates are on their way as well.  I'm a bit disappointed at myself - if I'm going to lead this group I really should be able to tackle, but oh well.  Back through the hole...

... just in time to see the Small Outpost disappear.  Well, surely they'll want the Small Compound next, right?  I head straight there and see a Merlin from the same corp.  Downside - the plex is 92.5 AU away from the WH, so once I call in the other two it will take a long time for them to get here.

I hit the gate and call for the backup.  Lock up the Merlin, go to close orbit and pile on the DPS, overheating guns off the bat since I expect trouble.  As the Merlin is dropping the Corax and Kestrel show up on short scan.  Oh damn.  The other Caldari land just in time to establish point before the Merlin pops.  And then their dps, oh my the dps of the Rocket Corax.  Now this little Comet has both a MASB and a SAAR.  Normally I'd let myself get into armor, run the SAAR and then before it reloads start the ASB as a troll-tank kind of move.  Nope, I fire them both up at the same time and overheat them both while I try to get back on the Kestrel.  I needed them both.  My shield and armor were see-sawing back and forth like crazy.  I wish I had FRAPsed it as I've never seen anything like it.  I heard the message loud and clear though, and aligned out.  Meanwhile my corpmates (CaptainZan Zan, Gideon Enderas ) were landing and engaging.

Pop goes my Comet.  I'm cheering them on, hit warp, and ooh, wait.. didn't I just hit warp?  Nope, apparently not.  And poof, podded.  Sigh.  As I wake up in an unexpected station (what, I'm not homed to Sirekur in this clone?) I hear as they finish off the Corax.  If I had been sent back to where I expected I would have jumped into another ship and gone right back in.

WH Connections for fun and profit

These local WHs provide some of my corpmates an opportunity to make ISK (and some fights) in W-space.  They provide a pretty common connection to null that provides roaming/ganking opportunities as well as exploration and ratting that is lower-risk than w-space.  I haven't even seen any of the frigate-sized holes yet, but I know some Rifterlings are excited about that possibility.  Honestly, unless it's going into a Wolf-Rayet I don't think our corp is big enough to field a frigate fleet that can take on the blingy T3 + capitals type fleets of w-space.  However, I could see RVB or a major FW/pirate lowsec group maybe hitting those numbers.

We did have a bit of a surprise since the guys that piled in after me didn't bookmark the WH back to Sirekur as they rushed to help out.  Since I got podded, I couldn't hang out and give them the location.  Fortunately another corpie was quickly able to poke through the WH to give them someone to warp to.  A good lesson for future WH roaming though!

Lessons Learned

* Take time to choose the right ship.  The Ares interceptor was fine for poking my nose into null, but since I knew I didn't have much backup I couldn't do any more than look.  The Ares was the wrong ship for a plex-fight, though fit and flown differently it might have been just fine.

* Take time to choose the right ship.  The Comet was fine for solo 1v1, but I rushed.  I also knew there was a Corax there who would be able to put out an immense amount of damage at short range to frigate sized targets.  A Slicer or Retribution would probably have been a better choice, or maybe even a Catalyst if I wanted to do a DPS race.

* Get the pod out.  I've been good about aligning and getting my pod out for a while.  I think I was too caught up in the fight happening behind me and slipped the mouse or something.  Perhaps also a reminder to use the keyboard more.


* Keep better track of clones.  Apparently since I had clone-jumped around recently, my current home for my clone was two regions away, which took me out of any ability to continue to contribute since I had to put together a ship and fly back to home.  I also realized halfway home I hadn't upgraded out of my Alpha clone, which could have been embarrassingly painful.

Shout out:
... to Proioxis Assault Force of Caldari FW. I'm glad to hear that despite the recent pounding in losing the warzone to the GalMil you guys are still out there and taking fights.
... to my corpies for following me blindly through a wormhole to find a fight.

Updated: Echos inside Glass Houses: SOMERBlink and The Mittani Dot Com

I've found The Mittani's new open columns interesting (Traffic Control, Mitten's Mailbox).  The personality certainly shines through as well as the incisive mind and wit.  It's very appropriate to me that in the "Unknown Virgins" column he uses the Rumsfeld quote - it is a good quote and a good insight of Rumsfeld, even if you don't like him as a person.  It seems that Mittani shares a lot of characteristics with the administration that Rumsfeld embodies.  The first characteristic is that Rumsfeld was a very sharp political actor who is fully aware of just smart he is. The other prominent characteristic of that administration was something Mittani also appears to be promoting in his recent articles: groupthink.  Let's start with that one before we get into the recent drama with SOMER.

To exaggerate a bit, if you haven't lived your whole life in nullsec under the current sov mechanics then you aren't qualified to make suggestions on radically transforming that system.  Outside opinions need not apply.  The goal that many seem to agree with is to have more small-group action that has consequences, but if you're from the leading Eve area where small groups successfully have consequences (faction war) then you'll be sneered out of the conversation on TMC.  I can't say I've heard any great new ideas out of the nullsec echo chamber that has resulted - just a lot of whining about how CCP is ignoring null and nobody understands them.  That said, I find it genuinely interesting to hear about the details and the massive investment of time and effort (and neglect of RL) is needed to be a leader in a major sov war.  I can see why they feel that nobody but themselves can understand that.  It fits into another major theme of Eve where elitism is formed around pain - if we had to have all this pain then we must be better than you and you can only understand this game if you have our pain - therefore all new players should admire our dedication and respect out pain.  Perhaps they are so scarred by the experience that now they really can't see any way out of the mess.  On the positive side, I get the impression that the CSM and CCP in generation aren't limiting themselves in terms of ideas and input.

You can see this harder-than-thou attitude blending over to the discussions on the whole SOMER blink thing as well.  I think these big EVE media sites need to be careful where they tread here.  For instance, this section of the EULA has been quoted pretty prominently:

Section "Your Account"
Subsection "A. Establishing a New Account"
Paragraph 4:
"Accounts may not be used for business purposes. Access to the System and playing EVE is intended for your personal entertainment, enjoyment and recreation, and not for corporate, business, commercial or income-seeking activities. Business entities and anyone who is acting for or on behalf of a business or for business purposes may not establish an Account, access the System or play EVE. Accessing the System or using the Game for commercial, business or income-seeking purposes is strictly prohibited."

Hmm, is The Mittani Dot Com a business?  It pays out its writers in ISK, but it surely sounds like Mittani himself is making a living off of the website which means RL dollars.  Which has content paid for in ISK.  From some Eve Account. That's not allowed to be used for business purposes. Ooops.  Nice glass house you have there, Mittani, be a shame if something happened to it.

So now that we've determined that TMC violates the EULA (and does that make the Mittani an RMTer?), should we look on to the other sites like Crossing Zebras and Eve24?  The logical reply here is that these are fan sites.  They need RL money to pay their server bills, which probably run a pretty good shot given the traffic they get.  They can't afford to pay their writers in RL money and pay for the sites, so they do it in ISK, saving those writers from having to buy PLEX.  Ah, oops, there's that cross-over again between RL and in-game assets.

So is the problem one of scale?  SOMER was too successful and thus they get shut down.  Was it the tie to the commercial PLEX-sales through Markee Dragon?  There's a good quote here in the TMC article "SOMER Blink: The Myth of a Monolithic CCP":

"This acknowledgement that the bottom line is a reality is something that we as players have to keep in the back of our minds as we form our responses, lest we end up in a land of fantasy where servers are powered by goodwill alone and developers are paid in hugs." 

That same thing applies to fan sites too.

Now perhaps SOMER deserves to get burned for some of the past sins and the shady dealing that seems to be going on, but this issue isn't done.  There still aren't coherent rules that make this a stable place for TMC, Eve-Bet, or any number of other Eve fan sites.  It's not going to be easy to put together those rules either, but I wish CCP (and the CSM) the best of luck.

Edit: There sounds like there is an exception for the bit I discuss below.  In Somer's Come and Gone over on Crossing Zebras, there is mention that CCP has authorized the payment of ISK for services in some cases:

"The one exception to that rule, repeated by Falcon a few days ago, is that you’re allowed to trade ISK for services if they are related to EVE Online. So you’re allowed to trade ISK for things like artwork, killboard hosting, and various other projects. Sites such as TMDC, EN24, and CZ are allowed to pay their EVE writers in ISK in exchange for written EVE content. This process has been vetted and approved by CCP; and there are rules to what it does and does not cover."

This doesn't cover the "Business Account" question, but it does help cover some of the player media sites (though I'd guess Eve-Bet wouldn't count).

Podcasting around the Universe

I like to listen to Eve podcasts on the homeward side of my commute (I generally stick with business & news on my way to work).  I realized that part of my summer malaise towards Eve was influenced by the negative bittervet nature of some of the podcasts, so I've started to scale those back or drop them.  I'd like to share the podcasts that make me look forward to playing Eve, and why some of the others don't.

The real downer for me is listening to a host or guest get all bittervet, particularly in an influential podcast.  I fear it makes a self-fulfilling prophecy when a well-known Eve personality goes all bitter-vet about "Eve dying" or the like, then drags down portions of their audience with them.  Look guys, if you don't enjoy the game anymore then take a break, stop playing, and definitely stop taking hours and hours out of your life to record a podcast, edit it, and post it out to the universe talking about why you don't enjoy the game anymore.  Then again in all walks of life I've found there are some people that are only happy when they're miserable.

Favorites:  Listen to them as soon as possible once they're out.

• Fly Reckless (http://flyreckless.com/).  The tagline sums it up: "Fly Reckless, because flying safe is no damn fun."  The outright joy that comes from Fly Reckless makes it my number one choice.  I've been a big fan since I first tuned in.  I think I've learned a lot about the ships from Connall's examinations of hulls as they come through rebalancing phases.  I've found the Build Reckless portion a bit rambling, perhaps because it doesn't have the give and take between the hosts, but I'm hopeful that when it comes to discussing the post-Crius changes it may be more engaging.
• High Drag (http://highdrag.wordpress.com/).  There is a great energy in the alcohol fueled interaction of the hosts in this live talk-show format stream. Indeed you can follow it on Fintarue's twitch stream live on every other Wednesday night, and may even get your comments inserted into the discussion.  As you might guess with the live format it is prone to tangential conversations, but generally is pulled back on topic pretty well.  Practical PVPers may appreciate the fit-and-flying segment once called "Dao of Zhao" but now "Yin of Fin" as Fintarue has become the resident solo PVP expert.  At its best you not only hear about interesting fits, but the tactics and circumstances that make them work.
• Hydrostatic Podcast (http://hydrostaticpodcast.blogspot.com/).  Ashterothi from High Drag heads this tightly edited new podcast.  It is the opposite of High Drag in that it runs to an agenda, is straight to its points, and moves right along crispy.  This shows a real flexibility, since Ashterothi often jokes on High Drag about not being able to keep his mouth shut.  Newer pilots will particularly like the segments reviewing concepts in Eve that often puzzle newbies.  Unique to this podcast (to my knowledge) is the Eve Lore segment which I've found entertaining and well told.  If you have found other podcasts to be too rambling and long for your tastes then this is the podcast for you.
• Broadcasts from the Ninveah (http://ninveah.podbean.com/).  This podcast from Kirith Kodachi is actually a podcasts about blogs, born from Kirith's love of the Eve meta combined with a personal self-improvement to work on his speaking presentation skills.  If you like podcasts and blogs, this is a great cross-over way to hear about new blogs as well as Kirith's take on notable recent blog posts.  I must say that I was pretty happy that one post from this blog has actually made his cut in the past.

Middlin': Subscribed to them, but find myself fast-forwarding sometimes.

• Down The Pipe (http://downthepipe-wh.com/).  This would be on my Favorites list if I was a wormholer.  Since I turned away from that I still enjoy hearing about the goings on.  Sometimes I find it tough that Bronya Boga's voice is too monotone, but that's balanced by Longinus Spear and their guests.  My favorite segment is "Storytime", though lately I think the hosts and guests have either not been playing enough to bring great stories or perhaps they're just having trouble telling them in an entertaining way other than "found site-runners, ganked them."
• Cap Stable (http://www.capstable.net/).  Similar to the above - Cap Stable would probably be on my Favorites list if either I was a null-sec resident or if the Cap Stable cast got out and talk more about things that aren't related to AIEU or null-sec.  They used to have a focus on new-player content, but they've gotten away from that lately.  With more of their hosts getting tied up in serious corporate/alliance roles and busier in real-life, I think there is a risk that Cap Stable may not be stable long-term.
• Declarations of War (http://declarationsofwar.com/).  This used to be one of my favorite podcasts, but recently it's seemed like Alekseyev Karrde is succumbing to bittervet disease.  The CSM updates with Ali Aras range from very interesting to awkward, largely based on how Alek's mood seems to be.  I fear that Alek's bittervet drags down Ali in many podcasts, enough to make me cross my fingers and hope she isn't too burned out as a CSM.  I'd love to see Declarations of War rise back up into my top list.
• Crossing Zebras (http://crossingzebras.com/).  CZ rocketed into the meta when Xander interviewed all the CSM8 candidates.  Now Xander is a member of CSM9 and Crossing Zebras is also a very active website with blogs by staff writers, providing an alternative to EN24 and TMC.  As a podcast, I think CZ is trying to find itself in this new "media empire" of Xander's.  Depending on guests and topics CZ can dive deep into bittervet, and indeed that's the kind of downer it feels like the recent podcasts have descended too.  And if anyone on CZ reads this, please please please - the "CCP #1 certified" running gag stopped being funny about six months ago.  CZ can be an awkward testosterone egofest between Xander and his guests sometimes, which makes it all the more interesting that I've heard the most touching moment on an Eve podcast on CZ when Xander and a guest wandered off onto a tangent on the wonder and joy of being a father.

Nope: Not subscribed

• Podside.  I tuned in once and almost immediate got an earful of bittervet, broken only by Longinius Spear (of Down The Pipe) trying to argue for players to keep finding new fun and reinventing themselves.  Given how often Eve vets tell other people to HTFU, it's particularly painful to hear them whining so bitter.  I find I have no desire to try another episode.
• Clueless Space Nerds.  I listed to one and it looked to be a recorded random chat between friends that might exactly fit the title.  Between the lack of any structure and the fact that the hosts seemed to be on rather different audio recording levels I really didn't have any desire to tune in again.

Saturday Night Fights - Back in the Capsule

Saturday night was a surprising example of log in, join fleet, receive pew pew bacon - particularly given the quiet systems I'd been seeing recently.  Between the quiet and lots of summer things to do I hadn't really done much in Eve for a while, even going so far as to install some new games for a bit.  But Saturday night was different.  Sara and Doc Odin had a standing fleet running and I heard them talking through diving into a small plex as soon as I hit comms, so I jumped into a Merlin.  That little Merlin was about to have quite a night.

Ishkur/Succubus

Doc Odin lost a Slicer before I could get to the fleet, but while he was reshipping Sara (in a Thrasher) and I found a Ishkur in a small plex.  We went in and soon enough the Ishkur was burning down hard.  Then a Succubus dropped in to join the fun.  I admit that I was worried to see the pirate frig join in, since the blasters and speed combination of the Merlin is very cap sensitive.  Fortunately for some reason the Succubus latched onto the Thrasher, perhaps because it was closer or perceived as a greater threat than my T1 frig.  However, trying to cap-drain an autocannon Thrasher over a blaster Merlin wasn't a great choice.  We finished off the Ishkur, swapped to the Succubus and burned it down too.  Sadly the shiny afterburner didn't drop.

Scythe Fleet Issue

We moved on and popped an unlucky Rifter.  It wasn't clear if it was meant to be bait or not, but by the time a pile of his friends were entering the plex we had already killed it and scampered on.  We kept moving on, picked up a fourth pilot (Kurt), and then Sara realized we'd walked our way out of the usual FW space.  Rather than retrace our steps Sara started to lead us in a couple hops through highsec towards the Gal/Cal FW space.  In the absence of plexes I was wondering if we might find people not used to the Rifterlings ticker and FW-like roaming.  When Sara and I came through a gate with a neutral Scythe Fleet Issue be decided to act like we were threatened - Sara warped to the nearest belt and I warped to the sun, while Doc and Kurt stayed on the other side.  The Scythe chased Sara and the fight was on.

Sara's Thrasher was running without a point, so I knew it was critical to get on him with my scram before the Scythe pilot realized he was taking on a gang (Thrasher, Worm, Rifter, Merlin).  That also meant I was quickly the primary - which was mostly a concern for the drones once I got into a close orbit under AB.  I really wish I'd thought to turn on Fraps here to see the details, but I started getting pounded - maybe I was orbiting too close and my speed was dropped.  My MASB was cycling and I overheated guns and the MASB.  My last charge was cycling and I was about to tell the gang I was going to lose scram when suddenly the damage stopped and my last charge took my shields back to near full.  The pilot must have gotten frustrated at not breaking me and switched targets.  He moved on to kill Doc's Worm (probably a good choice) and Sara's Thrasher (also a good choice), but then we took him down.  I was pretty damn proud as Sara called my Merlin a beast when we saw I had top damage on the downed Scythe.  Good fights and friendly chat in local - it was generally happy all round, though Doc probably was the worst off for having lost his Worm right after losing the Slicer earlier.

Brutix

Given that every module on my Merlin was heavily heat-damaged I ducked off to repair (and pick up more cap50s) while people reshipped.  On my wander back I was certain I D-scanned a Brutix on a planet.  I called for backup and warped in, scram overheated and hoping he had medium drones only that might not be able to chase me effectively.  But there was no Brutix.  Sure enough D-scan showed that he was within 1.0 AU.  Sara (now in a Firetail) joined me and we started asking on comms for a prober, since we were only two jumps out from home in Sirekur.  Sitting there probably wasn't a great idea, as suddenly we had a Garmur and a Slicer jumping in.  We warped out, but Sara went right back in to try to dance with them.  I tried again, but my Merlin wasn't going to be able play in that MWD speed world unless my warp-in managed to get me in scram range.  In the end I think it was a largely bloodless dance with neither side getting what they wanted, but I wasn't there for it.

Meanwhile Xenovenom dropped in with his Anathema and quickly pinged the Brutix and started orbiting it close under cloak.  Frosty grabbed a Cyclone to provide the heavy hitting, and we all dropped in hard and fast.  If the Brutix pilot (Twinkletoes) was AFK, he got back in control fast and primaried me since I was on top of him and providing the scram.  But between my orbit and Sara's TD his blasters couldn't track and I didn't see any signs of drones.    Soon enough the Brutix was down and that capped off the night for me.  Two hours, four fights, and that includes at least 30min where I was futzing around as I made my way back to our usual hunting grounds.

Lessons Learned:

* Ammo Choice: The Scythe Fleet Issue went down with Hail loaded and the Brutix had Null loaded.  Both were trying to fight off frigate attackers and yet loaded ammo that reduced their tracking.  I remembered to load Void when attacking the Scythe, though I'm honestly not sure I remembered for the Brutix and got some pretty massive damage numbers.

* FRAPS: If I'd remembered to start up Fraps I'd be able to review what happened in each fight to see what I missed, but I forgot.  I need to make that standard practice.

* Overview (Drones): I didn't have my overview loaded to have a Drones-only view, which could have been critical when taking on those bigger ships.  I got lucky that both times that didn't kill me.

Sidenote: I always get confused which ship people mean when they say "SFI" - I think it is generally the Stabber Fleet Issue, not the Scythe Fleet Issue.  Maybe the Stabber is the elder of the two?  Or just more used?

Silence in Space

And no, I'm not referring to the oft-puzzled case of how us pilots hear sounds when flying our ships around.  Turns out there's a lore answer to that, which I heard recently on the Hydrostatic Podcast IIRC, which is that capsuleers without any sound or tactile stimulus tend to go crazy.  That might also explain the "Eve has sound?" bittervet crowd I suppose.  But I digress.  What I was referring to was the low population right now in Eve, though it doesn't seem to be keeping all areas down.

Summer quiet time

It's not just you and it's not just me.  Things seem pretty quiet out there when I'm on too.Login numbers are down for the past few months (Eve Offline), though to hear the more experienced players talk this is pretty normal.  My playing has dropped to a night or two a week and may stay that way for a bit, plus absences for vacations and such.

So what to do?

I see that corpmates that are normally all PVP all the time are often off PVEing when I see them lately. I guess that makes sense, as the population is so low that fights are even harder to come by than before.  Perhaps I should get around to fitting up some better ships for combat exploration and the like and try to run up some ISK.  At my skill level (in character and in person) the higher DED sites might be a decent challenge too, though since I recently finished HAC 5 that might come into play.  I wouldn't mind if my sec-status went positive again either, since perhaps that would make people more likely to engage me when there is a possible fight to be had.

FW looks lively

From articles on TMC and such it sounds like FW isn't slowing down too much for the summer.  I suppose that unlike the nullsec stalemate there is something to gain and ISK to be made by conflict.  Plus if you really thought the other side was slipping into summer doldrums it would be a great time to push over the warzone on them.

So I hope to see people in space out there, and enjoy your RL summer too.
(Unless you're in the southern hemisphere of course)