Fellow blogger Jester wrote a post over on his blog (which I recommend) regarding high-security wars and the recent decision by CCP to allow corp or alliance hopping and other “tricks” to avoid high-security wars.

While I enjoy Jester’s blog and admire his writing skills, I disagree with him almost entirely on this topic.

What lingers for me today about this incident was the inherent unfairness of it. All of us that were fighting were sub-5m SP characters, trying to defend our right to mine veldspar in a 1.0 system. The aggressors were much older characters with tens of millions of SP and ships and income streams that we couldn’t dream of. They could keep the war-decs going cheaply for weeks, and we had no defense against them.

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Some of you are no doubt bristling at my use of the word “unfair”. EVE is a dark, cold, risky universe where you can get killed at any moment, blah blah blah. Fine. I accept that. Wouldn’t still be playing this game if I didn’t.

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Guys, I sympathize with high-sec PvPers and mercs. I really do. But in this, I have to look at the Big Picture, and the Big Picture says that such high-sec war-decs are often bad for the health of the game.

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I’m all for teaching new EVE players that New Eden is dangerous. But I also feel like the true newbies — the ones that are still trying to learn how this game works — should be protected more than they are today. That’s why I say the current high-sec war-dec mechanics are badly broken.

This attitude is wrong because “true newbies” are immune to wardecs; they are already in NPC corporations. New characters start in an NPC corp for this very reason – they have to learn the game mechanics before they get exposed to the issues of warfare. Even non-new characters get a chance to avoid wardecs, at the cost of an 11% tax, the lack of corporate wallets, hangars, etc. and the inability to deploy and use POS towers.

Another fallacy is the “health of the game” argument. The assumption underlying this is that we want new players to keep playing the game. The fallacy behind this assumption is that not all players are equal. I do not want the EVE player base to increase with players who lack the resilience or determination to keep playing when the odds are against them. If you stop playing after your shiny new Hulk is killed by suicide gankers, then this is GOOD for the game.

EVE *is* unfair. That’s why many of us like it. That shouldn’t change.

This said, here are my own suggestions for fixing the current high-security warfare problems:

1. The corporation or alliance declaring the war must produce a certain number of ship kills, pod kills, or ISK value destroyed in order for the war to continue for another week. The formula for this is determined by the game, not by the group declaring war, and is based on the number of players in the target corporation or alliance.
2. The war can be ended early if the target corporation agrees to pay a certain ISK value to end the war. This is a fixed value based on the number of players in the target corporation or alliance.
3. When a war has ended either due to surrender or due to the group declaring war not meeting their goals, or from voluntarily ending the war, the target can not have war re-declared on them from the same aggressors for the same length of time as the war took place. If war lasted six weeks, the target is immune to wars from same aggressors for six weeks.
4. No member may leave a corporation while the corporation is at war. Members who are forcefully removed from the corporation may not re-join the corporation for one full week.
5. No corporation at war can join an alliance. No corporation in an alliance at war may leave the alliance. Corporations in an alliance which are forcefully removed may not re-join the alliance for two full weeks.
6. Warp scrambling of any sort prevents a ship from docking or using a gate.

I’d go into greater detail about the suggested changes, but the ideas should be clear if you think through the implications. I also have to be awake at 0500 local time and need my fucking sleep.

Leave a comment.

So a lot of the time I spend online, I see newer players coming into the SN public chat looking for advice on how to start up with doing ninja salvage.

MLYT has hosted many guides, on how to scan, find a system, and more. These guides are great, but they get outdated, and they’re all separate.

I set out with this in mind to produce a sort of all inclusive guide to ninja salvaging, showing beginners to the trade exactly what they’ll need to get themselves started, as well as demonstrate how easy and quickly you can get into it.

In the video embedded below, I discuss what ship to scan and loot with, how to fit them, how to scan, and how to go about ninja salvaging someone’s wrecks. The main purpose for this guide is to be a complete tool to link to people who ask questions, so I can give them good visual advice, rather than have to repeat the same few hours over for each person one on one.

Feedback is always good, but if you comment to say something like “X fit is better cause I do this with it”, then the door is over there ->

This video is intended to give the newest of players the absolute cheapest and easiest way to get started in the trade, and as such makes use of very cheap modules and ships. Yes, you will upgrade, but this is meant as a starting point.

Some folks have asked why I’m joining in the Goonswarm gank-fest on ice miners in Gallente space. After all, I’m not profiting personally from Goons takeover of the market, or of their ship-reinbursment program. I’ll tell you why: It’s fun! Today you can fly into an ice belt in a Velator, lock up an Orca, and the whole belt full of miners will warp away. It’s priceless.

Some brave/clueless/stupid miners (and bots) are still trying to collect Blue Ice. Is it worth it? Let’s find out!

With perfect skills in a Mackinaw, a miner will collect 44 units of ice per hour. With perfect refining skills, each unit of blue ice yields: 50 Heavy Water, 25 Liquid Ozone, 1 Strontium, 300 Oxygen Isotopes.

Current sell market prices in Jita for these items are:
* Heavy Water: 23/unit
* Liquid Ozone: 398/unit
* Oxy Isotopes: 1218/unit
* Strontium: 520/unit

Punching the numbers, we come up with 50,600 ISK for Heavy Water; 437,800 ISK for Liquid Ozone; 16.07M for Oxy Topes; and 22,880 ISK for Stront. Call it 16.5M/hour. A Mack hull is going for 140M. If you can manage to survive ice mining in Gallente space for 8.5 hours, you’ll come out ahead even if you lose your Mack. Of course, I’m not counting the module costs or rig costs either.

I’m not sure any one is surviving more than four or five hours at a time right now. If you’re using a Hulk the numbers are even worse; a Hulk only returns 36 units per hour and costs 200M. At that point you’ll have to mine for close to 15 hours to survive loss of a Hulk.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14352233

[05:48:11] Mafioz Invader > why are you killing anybody thats mining ic
[05:48:13] Mafioz Invader > ice
[05:49:23] Johanes Miller > New rules, ice mining is not allowed in Gallente space.
[05:49:37] Mafioz Invader > why not
[05:50:03] Johanes Miller > New Miner Union rules.
[05:50:08] Johanes Miller > You should have gotten the mail.
[05:50:32] Mafioz Invader > no i havent
[05:51:16] Johanes Miller > Well, ignorance is no excuse.
[05:51:35] Johanes Miller > Go to Caldari space, mine there.
[05:51:44] Mafioz Invader > is this rule a long term thing or not
[05:51:51] Johanes Miller > Oh, this is for good.
[05:52:45] Johanes Miller > Ice mining in gallente space is outlawed from now on.
[05:53:10] Mafioz Invader > any where in galente
[05:53:18] Johanes Miller > Yep.
[05:53:48] Mafioz Invader > sux

So Goonswarm has decided to corner the Oxygen Isotope market by killing every blue ice miner in high-security space. I find the idea both clever and interesting – I want to see if they can actually keep it up to make a long-term impact on the market.

Meanwhile lots of hilarity is to be found by people still trying to ice mine. Miners are using super-tanked Hulks and Mackinaw, remote repair, and even Orca-swapping. Good laughs are to be found when you can kill one of these guys. I suggest an alpha-strike fit Tempest or Malestrom.

Here’s a sample from last night:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14344961

[08:21:18] Commander Reymond > wow
[08:21:24] Commander Reymond > wtf
[08:21:32] Fishbone > never saw him lock – they getting sneaky
[08:21:39] Zarazor Haargrim > yeah, suspected that, which is why I warped down originally
[08:21:44] Khalia Nestune > Your friendly insurance company has transferred 72,927,368.00 ISK into your account for the recent loss of your ship.
[08:21:44] Zarazor Haargrim > keep an eye on local
[08:22:03] Zarazor Haargrim > as soon as a goon goes GCC you know they are about to attack, draw concorde off first
[08:22:13] Zarazor Haargrim > or some random npc corp
[08:22:24] Commander Reymond > bastards
[08:22:41] Fishbone > yep – i was just saying that earlier – they draw them off
[08:22:47] Zarazor Haargrim > yep
[08:22:57] Zarazor Haargrim > exploit
[08:23:06] Fishbone > yep
[08:23:12] Isabella Tatsushiro > mmmm alloyed trit bars
[08:23:50] Zarazor Haargrim > i’ll do a trial petiton and see what the response is
[08:24:09] Commander Reymond > >_< damit fish i was looking at him too wasnt for sure if he was a spai
[08:24:23] Witch Mountain > was a non Goon that attacked as well
[08:24:41] Isabella Tatsushiro > maybe an alt?
[08:24:49] Commander Reymond > yes alt
[08:24:53] Commander Reymond > Sudden ninja
[08:25:00] Commander Reymond > ex

Exploits? Goon alts? Oh the LOLs.

Khalia and I spend most of our spaceship time with a Skype call going between us these days. Some time ago I started recording these conversations and lifting out the amusing parts, with the intention of turning into a very-not-srs-business podcast where we discuss everything, Even Eve.

This is the first episode. You may or may not like it. We didn’t work very hard on it. New episodes will be released when they’re released, not on a set schedule.

RSS Feed for your podcast apps here.

iTunes subscription link here.

Episode page here.

Or you can click here to start listening now:

Hadn’t tried Incursions at all, and being bored with what we’ve been doing, I thought I’d give it a run. All the info I got was from at http://incursionguide.wordpress.com/ and http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/08/guide-introduction-to-incursions-part-1.html which are both great guides.

Since I have an alt that is a highly skilled Basilisk pilot he was my guy to use; Khalia is unfortunately blacklisted =)

I got a decent fit, headed off to Amarr where the current highsec incursions are, and started broadcoasting my request for a fleet invite in the well-known ‘BTL Pub’ channel. Got picked up pretty quickly to run Vanguard sites. I had done logistic chains before in PvP, so this was fairly straight forward.

Income on a ten man fleet (2-3 logistics, rest DPS/webs/painters) runs 10.5m per site plus 1500 LP. These sites can be done in about 5-10 minutes. My first FC was decent, and we got into a nice rhythm. After an hour or so, he left and made me FC.

As Paul said to me “the essence of leadership is delegation”. So I found someone in my fleet who knew these sites to tag, and I started furiously reading site guides while making sure reps kept up on people. And it worked! We did a few sites before I passed the ball onto someone else.

Later I was picked up into a larger 30 man fleet running a Headquarters site. This was not quite as fun, as getting 30 people all in the same place at the same time and listening consistently to orders is way harder than 10 people. Not a linear scale at all. Our site took about 30 minutes and paid out around 30.5m plus 7k LP.

Second night, I got into a pickup fleet with an excellent FC and a great group of players. This FC really knew his shit and we blitzed through about 20 Vanguard sites in a few hours; I made about 200m plus a lot of LP. This was a lot of fun, and the 10-man fast blitz is definitely the way to go. Catching other fleets at a gate and racing to complete a site against them was enjoyable.

Final fleet before this post was a 22-man fleet running a Nation Commander Stronghold site with five logistics. This fleet took a long time to form up, a long time for everyone to get together, and about 20 minutes to run the site, for a 18.2m payout… and then a break. A number of people new to Incursions complicated matters, and a Machariel panicked on low shields and shot a fleet member; CONCORDOKEN and ragequit resulted.

Summary: Incursions are great ISK. Incursions are fun, IF you get a competent FC and play with a small group who have some experience and understand each other well.

Oh, some actual Loot and Tears to come soon.

Khalia made a post detailing why he thinks that Ninja Salvaging is Dying. I wanted to make a quick post to clarify my position. As the Gold Ammo scandal posts indicated, being Space-BFFs doesn’t mean that Khalia and I always agree 100% on everything.

I agree with Khalia that the dynamic has changed for Ninja Salvaging and Baiting. Salvage and loot are less valuable. Mission runners are more spread out. In general, Mission Runners are less likely to shoot. I suspect that Khalia and I in particular are less likely to be shot at because of the widespread popularity of MLYT.

The Orca hot-swap nerf? Meh. Although swapping my faction-fit Tengu for a shuttle and warping away was very LOL, ultimately it was a bad mechanic and needed to be changed. Though recently most Ninjas have been getting their kills by aggressing with tanked bait-frigates and swapping to pew ships from a speed-fit Orca, I never really stopped doing my ganks the old-fashioned way, warping out, swapping ships, and coming back. Some ninjas will fall back on this, and others will find something else to do.

The biggest reason that I have not personally been out ripping off carebears has been, as Khalia said, my stupidly busy schedule. My leisure times begin on weeknights at about the time that most normal people go to bed, and I’m completely unable to play on weekends. Khalia and I are having a lot of fun during the non-prime hours getting space-rich in wspace. My departure from Suddenly Ninjas was in name only–I’ll always be a Ninja at heart.

I don’t think Ninja Salvaging is dying. It’s changing, as it always has been. As for the community “declining”? I disagree. I remember the days when Khalia, Aiden, and Zav were new to the corp. I referred to them as “the new kids” and was nostalgic for the “old crew”. Now those kids are the old crew and a new batch of Ninjas are carrying the banner. Likewise, the forum community hasn’t changed in maturity, only in meme-of-the-week. I would have no objection to flying with them again if my schedule allowed it. I hope to do so again someday, and make the bears sad!

This is an opinion piece. I expect a lot of disagreement in comments; please do. Both Paul and I like to see the blog as a place where people can freely express opinions, even when we don’t agree with them, or you with us.

Commenters have recently asked why Paul and I are living in wormhole space killing sleepers instead of playing in hisec and ganking mission runners. Part of the reason is Paul’s new business which keeps him extremely busy; and the Advanced Emergency Medical Technician class I had been taking this summer. Another reason was that we wanted to get Space Rich, and sleepers are one good way to do it.

But for me, there is another reason: The Ninja Salvage (plus Bait & Gank) play style is no longer anywhere as enjoyable as it once was. When I first started, it was possible to kill two or three ships a night, sometimes even more. And a strong possibility of tears. Now it takes time and effort to get even a single kill. Here’s some of the reasons why this play style, for me, has gone downhill:

When I first started, way back in Quantum Rise, probing was an entirely different affair. It was more difficult to scan down a player, and players had no expectation of someone showing up in their mission and plundering salvage and loot. As a result, shock factor led to shooting. The new scanning system – which I love, don’t get me wrong – makes it fast and easy to scan mission runners down. Combined with a rapid rise in the ninja play style – thanks to visibility from Suddenly Ninjas – today’s mission runners expect to see people popping in on their missions. They know it’s not that hard, and they learned that we can and will come back and blow them up if they decide to shoot us. Suddenly Ninjas have said often, and clearly, “If you don’t want to get shot, don’t shoot ninjas”. They listened.

Changes to missions have also made the ninja/bait lifestyle harder. The Level 4 mission loot nerf sharply reduced the value of looting these missions. As a result mission runners aren’t as eager to loot their missions; many just speed through them to get more ISK/hour from loyalty point rewards. So why shoot at those stealing it? Even if they do decide to salvage and loot, the Noctis has made it all but impossible for a ninja to out salvage a mission runner. The speedy Vigil can’t keep up with 70km tractor beams and salvagers with cycle time bonuses.

Mission runners also used to be congregated in a few places, all well known – Dodixie, Ruvas, Ichiyora to name a few. Changes to missions since then have included missions now being spread to surrounding systems more often and the changing of agents to all of the same quality. Now mission runners don’t need to stay in one place for those L4Q20 missions, and those missions are spread all over the surrounding area. With more diffuse targets, it’s harder to find targets, and if you travel you have to bring your ship collection with you.

I’m not saying you can’t still get a Raven Navy or Rattlesnake kill – people can and do – but it’s not the same fun per hour that it was when I started. This is why I’m not doing this right now. Like Paul, I’m pleased to see people carrying on in the emails to us.

The general decline in the communities around this playstyle are a final reason that I am not highly interested in going back. Suddenly Ninjas and TEARS was at a high point around 18 months ago, but has steadily declined. I am sorry to say that the group which I thought had a lot of intelligent, classy people, now seems more like 4chan’s /b/ section.

As always, comments welcome.

Though Khalia and I have been in wspace winning and failing spectacularly, there are those who carry my banner without my even asking. I’ve commented more than once that I feel like the Joe/Jack protagonist in Fight Club, with people off doing things in my name that are entirely outside of my knowledge. I will post two Eve mails I have received recently without any further comment.

Inspiration
From: Kim Jong Illest
Sent: 2011.09.08 18:03
To: Paul Clavet,

o/ Paul,

Reading your blog has inspired me to become a collector of tears. I have created this alt as a suicide ganker of miners, and, as a tribute to you would like to send all my victims a message that “Paul Clavet sends his regards”. Is that ok with you? Thanks for all your hard work on the Blog, as well as to everyone else involved. Fly Safe

Kim

And then…

sending regards
From: aflixxion
Sent: 2011.09.08 14:15
To: Paul Clavet,

your buddy Kim Jong Illest just ganked a friend that is a indy pilot and said you send your regards. So i hope you sent your buddy out to gank the right person cause clearly you have my friend mistaken for someone unless that is your alt or what ever you friend kim duck dong or whatever his name is no matter just another gook

\o/