My Loot, Your Tears

Today Honorless Internet Jerks destroyed another offline POS tower, for a return of around 1.55 billion ISK. It took roughly 6.5 hours with four battleships to destroy the large True Sansha Control Tower.

The Corporate Hangar Array and Ship Maintenance array were destroyed at the beginning, and did not drop anything. The value was entirely in the modules:

Siona Atreus, who had reported this POS to us, received 20% or around 311m. The other 80% was split nicely between the four Jerks involved, so we each got the same – 311m.

We encourage anyone who knows of, or finds, a valuable offline POS belonging to a small or medium sized corporation to bring it to our attention – and claim 20% of the proceeds if we take it down. I will be posting a guide on how to efficiently find offline POSes in the near future.

WARNING: Long Post. This post is about 6 pages long at 2200 words in Word, so… Use your judgment whether or not ya wanna read it. It’s intended to be a link-to guide for anyone asking me about corp infil.

When I first started dabbling in the art of corporate infiltration, I looked around for a guide. There were hints, and posts about people’s success with it, but I never found an all-in-one resource that focused on that playstyle alone.

Since having my own success with it, I’ve been asked by many people how exactly I go about doing it. Questions like “how do I know what will be a good target?” or “what do I do once I get into the corp?”

Initially, I educated individual people, but eventually, it gets kinda redundant. So, I hope this guide will explain to the reader exactly what to do during every step of the way. So without further adieu, let’s begin.

Step 1: Target selection.

This step is perhaps the most important, and is where a lot of people will fail. Finding a decent target is hard to do, as there are many, many worthless corps out there. A great place to start looking is the recruitment channel. Yes, that channel you were pointed to as a noob.

In this channel, are a lot of spammers, advertising their corp, their alliance, or whatever. You want to read these spam messages. Yep, every one of them. Generally, when looking for a new target, I’ll leave the channel up in its own window while I play with my main, and look at it every few seconds.

What you’re looking for is essentially a corp or alliance that has a crapload of assets, and minimal security. Great targets for this are industrial corps, and/or wormhole corps. These types of corporations generally have the manpower to get a lot of things done, but on the whole are not smart enough to manage themselves.

Look for corps that advertize things like mining ops, ship replacement, access to a POS for things like research, and possibly a corp hanger. Anything that catches your eye, show info on. In terms of numbers, you want something bigger than around 10 people, and less than a hundred. The reason I say this is because out of that hundred people, maybe 2 or 3 will be smart enough to figure things out on their own. And you want dumb people.

Whether you choose a corp or alliance is up to you. Alliances can be more difficult, but can have greater rewards. When choosing an alliance, I look for words like POS, carrier support, freighters, industrial arms, Orca supported mining, and the mother of all possibilities – a Rorqual.

In terms of security, the less the better. A corp that insta-accepts is good. Here’s how I find this out. When you have a corp spam message that has your interest, find their public channel. Never, EVER talk to them in recruitment. Otherwise, they can call you out later if they see you talking to another target corp. So, join their pub channel, and just lurk for a while. See what happens when someone else joins the channel. Does the corp try to sell itself to this person? Does the corp seem to be desperate for members? How long is it from when that person came into the channel to when they were admitted to the corp? Did they ask for an API?

These are the things you need to check before piping up. API is a large one. This doesn’t matter if your infiltration character is on a separate account, but if it’s on your main’s account, better avoid giving them your api.

But what do corps want? In general, industry / wormhole corps are going to want industrialists, and people to do sites with them. For example, industry corps will practically beg for you if you can fly a Hulk, any mining barge, an orca, or other industrial ship. MANY carebear corps that are great targets will love you if you have a ship to do missions, preferably L4’s in, with them.

All in all, here is an example of a decent choice for a corporate infiltration:

Note what they offer to their members.

And here is one that is not so good:

Just not enough of a description.

Step 2: Entering their midst.

So you’ve picked your target, and are lurking their public channel, finding things out about them. But how do you approach getting accepted?

This step is relatively easy. What you need to do here first is announce your presence to them. Say hi in their channel, and start asking questions you already know the answers to from lurking their channel. Things like where they’re based, what they do, how their leadership is structured…

Here is also where you want to find out what they have that you can steal. Ask whoever talks to you about the corp/alliance goals, short and long term. Ask what they offer their members, and what their members must give for the corp. Ask when and where they mission or mine. Ask their timezone, what their members fly (do this casually, like “I’m in such and such a ship, is this normal or do you guys like such and such a class”). Also ask if there are any positions you can fill within the corp, things that can potentially give you roles with which to steal. Finally, ask what you need to do to apply. If they say API, there’s your security red flag. If they just tell you to submit an app, go ahead, if you’re happy with the target.

CHECKLIST: Check these things off before you submit an application.

1. I have talked to a director, or the CEO.
2. I know where the corp is based, and how many people it has.
3. I know a rough guess of corporate assets.
4. I know corp security, and what’s required of me.
5. I have something they want.

Step Three : Building relations.

So you’ve gotten yourself into a corporation with lots of shiny ships and assets… But what do you do now?

First thing to do, is to get to their area with whatever ship that can help them. Generally, I try to mine for a few hours for them as soon as I join. Just do it around other members, so they can attest to your helping hand. If someone in the corp wants help with missions, now is the time to do it for them. Build trust early.

For recon, this is the stage where you need to find out everyone’s hours of operation. If you want, keep a table of when they log in, and when they log out, include things like what ships they fly, and their normal activities. Now is also the time to make a note detailing their POS setup, if they have one. Also make note on their base, things like how many of the members use it as home, also note whether or not you have access to corporate hangers. If you do, take a look at the contents – assess the value. Check market value on things, and just generally poke your head around everywhere.

Spend time doing missions with them, participating in mining ops, and things like that. Make it clear that you definitely want to help with the corporation. Ideally, what you want is to be given roles. POS management roles are one of the best things to strive for, as are hanger take roles. And, if you’re ambitious enough, ask what it takes to become a director.

This step can take a few days, and it can take months. It depends on your effort, and ability to manipulate people.

CHECKLIST: Check these off before looking at the next step.

1. I’m good friends with management in the corporation.
2. I’m looking to become someone in power, and know what it takes to get there.
3. I have corporate trust, and most members know me positively.
4. I assist corp members in things they need help with.
5. I know what ships people fly, what assets there are that are worth stealing, and when they are available.

Step 4: When to act.

Knowing when to spring into action is highly situational, and involves many, many factors. Generally, I wait until I have access to everything of value, or until I’m close to being found out. This involves knowing the people in your corp / alliance. If I’m liked in the corp, I know where the assets are, and when they aren’t in anyone’s hands, and I have the roles necessary to take from every hanger, this is generally the time to act.

Here is also when you’ll need to figure out whether or not you want to gank. You have two options. You can kill corp members after you steal everything, and risk not being able to use that alt again for infiltration (every kill you make is recorded somewhere, and people who see you corp killing won’t like you much), or you can do it the clean way, and just steal.

Either way can be rewarding, and the only thing that matters is whether or not you care about that character, and, whether or not that character can gank decently.

I’ll devote a special bit to POS’s here. If you intend to steal one, one of the best things you can do to avoid the offline timer (as I understand it), is to figure out its cycle point. You want to check the fuel levels in the POS every hour of a day, and see on which hour they drop. This is its cycle hour, or the time which it draws from its fuel reserves. Next day, come back at that hour, and sit at the POS, and figure out the exact minute it cycles.

What you’ll attempt to do here is work your corp theft so that everything is stolen and done before the POS draws its fuel. Then, just before it does, you remove all fuel from its bays, so when it goes to siphon more off, there is none, and it offlines. Then, you need only unanchor it and cart it off, along with everything else.

CHECKLIST:

1. I know when people in the corp are offline, and have worked out the best time to do this.
2. I have corporate trust.
3. I have as many roles as I can get that will allow me to take everything I want.
4. If there are carriers or large items floating in a POS, I know when / if they’re unmanned.
5. If I intend to yoink a POS, I know its fuel cycle point.

Step 5: The Job

Good, so you know you’re ready to roll. You know the ships people fly, the times when the corp is inactive, when the POS chugs more fuel, where all the assets are, you know exactly what your roles allow you to do, and nobody suspects a thing. Here’s the fun bit.

You need to bide your time, and not get all giddy and botch the job. You need to have your own plan in mind for how you want this to all work out. Generally, my plan would be to wait for the time the corp is the most inactive, on a day where I have nothing else to do but play.

When that time comes, wait for when you know the POS will chug fuel. This may or may not happen correctly, and the times might be way off, so you might need to wait for a POS, or, if you have the roles, what you can do is just start the offline process, and then start your thievery.

When everyone’s offline, and your POS is offlining and/or approaching its cycle point, start the show. Use your roles to empty every corp hangar, maintenance bay (needs to be done before pos starts offlining, I believe), and asset you can get your hands on. Put them all in your personal hanger. Don’t worry, no corp can take from your own hanger.

When that’s all done, and you have all their shinies sitting in your hanger, go back to the POS, and wait for it to finish offlining, or, at this point, you can choose to pull the fuel right before it cycles. After that, start the unanchoring process. After everything’s unanchored, cart it all off in a hauler, or at least the modules of any real value. Losing a POS can be one of the biggest middle fingers to a corp out there, and they’ll hate you for it. J

Lastly, go do a little dance. Your days to months of work have paid off, and you now own all their crap. Also, if this guide helped you at all, and you pulled something off, mail me! Either my ingame name or at charismatic@mylootyourtears.com I love hearing about my influence on someone to go do something that I would do, and hey, if it’s epic enough, I might even have to mention it on the blog.

Addendum:

This guide isn’t perfect. If you find something wrong with it, particularly in the POS procedures, as I’m rusty with those, don’t hesitate to mail me about it. Corrections and updates are good.

So I had logged in and was playing carebear with an alt of mine, while Khalia and Paul were bashing some POS left completely undefended, when Zarago piped up about a war target in a Machariel doing missions up near Ichoriya.

We all started burning over, some closer than others, I was around 20j out, and we waited until everyone was stationed a jump or so out of his mission system. It turned out a Golem showed up before we all got into position as well. While we waited for Zarago to give the call for a warpin, someone *cough*Paul*cough* told half of us to jump into system. Seconds later, Zarago told us he was still in mission, regardless of us botching the jump!

We all sped in, as our target went through the first mission gate, Jerks hot on his trail. When I warped into the second room, the Golem was in the process of GTFOing, and we couldn’t point it. Redirecting to the Mach, I noticed I was getting an assload of damage, probably due to burning right at him.

I warped my Cane out at about half tank, going to assist Khalia who was trying to get the Golem to engage. I landed at the gate they were at, and the Golem warped. On Vent, Jerks were having a hard time keeping the Mach down, as it was burning away at max speed. After a while, it warped, and managed to evade our tackle on the outbound gate.

On Khalia’s mention of logging to make them feel safe, Zarago moved us all into our target’s first mission room, and we all logged. About 10 minutes later, he was back in a shuttle on the gate into his mission system. He jumped through, and burned back, clearly testing the waters. Not to spook, we waited. About a minute later, the Golem jumped through the gate. Yay! We got word that he was warping to his mission, and Vent went crazy while we all logged in and started a new fleet going.

I warped to his mission gate, as did everyone else, save for Paul, who apparently logged into neverland or somesuch. We called point on the Golem, which started falling, three of us hitting him with everything we had. Seconds later, Kido Shihan’s Golem went up in a ball of flame, with Paul landing in his Raven as the cinders faded.

Jerks got screwed over on the drops, but not all was lost. Noticing he was dual-boxing, getting his other shuttle character out of harm’s way, the Kido’s pod landed on gate, which we proceded to kill. Zarago also ended up getting the other character’s shuttle.

As an added bonus, we ran a locator on the pod we popped, and we noticed he was now around 40j out.

I think I speak the truth when I say that this will not work again. At least not on this guy.

From my most recent exchange with GMs:

As we have stated in our replies, what you are referring to is not an advertised or supported feature. It may, at our discretion, in the future be declared an exploit. Current available information indicates that this is not as it should be, until we have more information we will not be announcing anything nor taking action against those making use of this.

Our actions have been fully within the boundaries of the EVE Online reimbursement policies which are available to you on our website.

URL: http://www.eve-online.com/pnp/

If you have any further questions or concerns then please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Best regards,
Senior GM Spiral
EVE Online Customer Support Team

CCP Spiral,

So it’s a bug. Why all the pussyfooting around? Why state that it’s “not an advertised nor supported feature”, a statement that is open to interpretation? If it’s a bug, call it a damn bug and be done with it. Instead you continually leave us wondering if it’s an emergent mechanic that is valid, or something that we really shouldn’t be doing. It took a week, thousands of words written on the subject here and elsewhere, and no doubt dozens of petitions that your staff had to deal with, and NOW you give a half-confidence “current information indicates that this is not as it should be”. Well, do you know how your game is supposed to work, or not? Do the other GMs?

I strongly suggest a memo to all your GMs informing them that this is a bug and reimbursements are valid for it, because there have been as many different answers to these questions as there have been GMs responding to petitions on it. I know that it only takes a GM 30 seconds to produce a noncommittal answer to an exploit petition, but for us it impacts the core of our gameplay. Next time, hold a damn meeting, decide on a stance, and start responding appropriately. These milquetoast responses from folks that are supposed to be authorities leave a tremendously sour taste in our mouths.

Phew. Sorry you all had to see that.

So if CCP won’t say it outright, I will. Aggro extension is a bug, and if taking advantage of it isn’t an exploit now, it certainly should be. I’m considering this “resolution” for my purposes, but I’m very unhappy with the way CCP has handled this. Customer service fail, CCP. Maybe the GM training program is taking an 18 month break just like development on your flagship software product?

Paul wrote a very nice post about things that matter, and I’m going to steal his format to talk about why I don’t live in null-security space.

You’ve Got A Friend In Me

EVE is best played with other people, in a corporation. No where is this more evident than in 0.0 space, where alliances with numbers of corporations fight over pieces of territory. Where everyone can shoot each other at will you want to have a group of friends for mutual safety, intelligence, and pooled resources. The solo player is at a huge disadvantage in 0.0 space.

The people that I’ve built friendships and trust relationships with during my time in EVE are not the type of people who form into large groups for mutual self-protection. My buddies are salvagers, griefers, and mercenaries. With the possible exception of mercenaries, these groups don’t translate well into the 0.0 scene. Salvagers and griefers are by nature independent creatures, and the fact that they have a 100+ person corporation (Suddenly Ninjas) is mainly due to new players wanting a home with like-minded individuals.

My active participation on this blog has linked my name to these activities, including corporate infiltration. If I wanted to join a 0.0 alliance I’d almost certainly get turned away – who wants a known spy in their corporation? It’s unlikely any existing 0.0 group is going to take me in.

Politics means ‘Many Bloodsuckers’

I really can’t give a damn about the alliance politics. CVA, Ushra’khan, BoB, Northern Coalition – they’re all just names to me, as they haven’t had much affect on my gameplay up until now. I have a healthy interest in real-life politics, but game politics just don’t mean anything to me.

The following of alliance politics seems to be a prerequisite for survival in nullsec, with people going so far as to make automated maps and complex non-aggression pact chains (thanks to commenter for the link). I just don’t care.

Going Where No Carebear Has Gone Before

My game play styles are salvaging, infiltration, scamming, and griefing. None of these really work in 0.0, except for infiltration which works anywhere. Scamming is best done in market hubs and on contracts; salvaging in 0.0 just gets you shot at by fifteen people; and griefing doesn’t really have any meaning when everyone can shoot everyone else all the time.

The real game of 0.0 appears to be two-fold: Resource farming and fleet warfare. Keeping sovereignty these days means keeping enough ISK flowing to pay the upkeep on your territory units and upgrades, and you need people to farm those. Then you have the option to try to take over some other corporation/alliance space, and defending your own.

Resource farming is a lot like mission running, which is really not interesting to me. (Aside: As the crappy economy has left me jobless for the moment, I have to pay my four accounts with PLEX. Which has forced me to run missions with my alts, as I need at least 40M ISK/day to PLEX all four accounts. NOT FUN.) Ratting and mining is terribly boring. I have to admit that the high-end complexes would be interesting in that they drop 100 million to billion ISK modules, but at the end of it you’re just farming again.

Fleet battles are notorious for lag issues. I have sat in on a few in a cloaky ship and seen it first hand, and it does indeed suck. I shudder to think at throwing a billion ISK carrier into one of these, only to lose it while waiting five minutes for the grid to load. If CCP ever resolves the lag issue – check again in 18 months apparently – I could see myself in some large fleet battles. The actual taking of a system or station isn’t really that exciting to me, but mass scale combat has appeal.

And Yet…

So for the tl;dr people, I’m not living in 0.0 because I don’t have any friends, no one trusts me, I’m not a farmer, and lag is a bitch.

Despite this I have to admit that I have occasionally daydreamed about tossing a barebones POS up in NPC-faction 0.0 space and using it as a base. Then I ask myself what I would *do* and I come back to ratting, plexing, and hoping to catch some other solo player alone before he notices me in local and cloaks up.

And then I’m back to the beginning.

A blog reader asks:

If you create a 21-day trial with the buddy system, Then activate it with a PLEX (crediting both accounts with the 30days, As I understand it) — Is there any connection between the accounts that would show up, for instance in the information available through limited API key, if said key was requested by the Corp you wished to join on the (hopefully, anonymous) alt?

First off, last time I did this it didn’t credit both accounts automagically as it should. This has something to do with PLEX activations being different from the traditional forms. You may have to petition a GM to get them to credit the account. Explain clearly what you’re trying to do and you should have no problems.

To answer your question: In order to get PLEX onto your new account to activate it, you’ll have to station trade it, contract it, give money to your alt for it, or drop it in a safe spot for your alt to pick up. All but the last option will leave an entry in your wallet, and will show up on a full API check. Dropping a PLEX in a can is something that is only recently possible with the ability to undock with them, but I haven’t tested it. I imagine that no entry will be made in your wallet at all that way, making it look as if you were paying a regular subscription. Can someone test this for me and post in the comments what you find out?

Ignoring PLEX for a moment, there is still no non-suspicious way to seed ISK to your alt unless you want to drop unrefined ore in a can, sell it a little at a time, and claim you were mining. Regardless, none of this will show up in a limited API key check, which should be all you are giving out anyway. In every case where I’ve been asked for a full API key I’ve (quite reasonably) refused on privacy grounds, but I can see that there are more and more corps that will not let you in without a full API check, period.

So as far as the buddy system? You’re good to go as long as you either refuse to give anything but a limited API key, or go through more trouble to transfer PLEX and pocket money to your alt through untraceable means.

Jerks dropped the war against Ludi Sacerdotales yesterday. We’d got our laughs out of them and were doing more interesting things like taking down POS towers.

Apparently former LUDI CEO jaksparra (he dropped to an NPC corp) thought this meant they “won”:

From: jaksparra
Sent: 2010.08.14 15:04

jaksparra has added you as contact with Terrible Standing

Piece of shit that cant afford to continue a war against us. Guess we win.

Sent: 2010.08.14 21:18
To: jaksparra,

We got 3/4 of your members to leave, you’re disbanding the corp, and we’ve had a spy inside the entire time. Not reading our blog, eh?

We don’t need to waste one of our three wardec slots on you anymore.

From: jaksparra
Sent: 2010.08.15 02:01

You should really check your spy again… LOL you FAIL

Sent: 2010.08.15 02:04
To: jaksparra,

LUDI corp members, two weeks ago: 40
LUDI corp members, today: 14

Who failed?

Sent: 2010.08.15 02:05
To: Johanes Miller,

you did.

Logic? Who needs that! But jak is on a LogicFail roll and so decides to (badly) bluff me, and provide some tears at the same time.

From: jaksparra
Sent: 2010.08.15 02:13

wow, your like a little kid. You have to have attention always. Did you ever stop to think we merged with another corp in o.o?

Sent: 2010.08.15 02:24
To: jaksparra,

Nice try, but no. The members all went to different places:

LCD DOG – his own self-made corp
Aaron Sarusake – some other corp, then NPC corp
Deceius – Test Alliance
tej kai – npc corp
Spacemonster72 – NPC corp
Phantomesk, DreamTrooperX (and his two other alts) – Pwn N’ Play
MentalMetal, Dominic Fergas – Frimosa
Maeyanie – Deathwyrm
your own alt Aglibol and yourself – Ludi and npc corp….

Awesome job getting everyone in the same 0.0 corp with you! Oh wait…
This will make a hilarious blog post, thanks.

From: jaksparra
Sent: 2010.08.15 02:28

OMG are you still trying to prove yourself. What a little kid you are.

Remember folks, if you send a “piece of shit” and “we win”, the other party is a little kid. Obviously!

I’ve been asked recently in public comments and private messages by friends and detractors alike why I am so butthurt about the recent aggro extension kill reimbursement fiasco playing out in forums, blogs, and dozens of separate petitions. I feel that an explanation is in order for the Griefer Tears that I have been giving during the last few days. This comes in the form of an explanation of what I think makes Eve great, and why I think that even minor encroachments on that are worth fighting passionately.

Eve is a Sandbox

Eve is a single-shard game where every single player has an opportunity to interact with every other player. There is no segregation according to time zone, language, or play style. If you have a problem with someone in this game, there is nowhere to run. You can scamper off to 0.0 to avoid an opponent, but if he is competent he will pursue you. You can join an NPC corp and be immune from wardecs, but you dare not undock in anything expensive and fragile for fear of suicide ganks. If you’ve pissed off some aggressive player, you have to deal with him, either by fighting back or by making hunting you more trouble than his anger is worth.

(It should be noted that for now, the Eve China servers are an exception to this unity. New rumors are circulating that CCP may be merging the Chinese player base into Tranquility. The thought of thousands of new potential victims is super exciting. I wonder if there are many Chinese mission griefers? It’s possible that I may have to change the Jerks logo to avoid confusion.)

In Eve, Your Decisions Matter

The “Butterfly Effect” promotional video presents the story of a rifter saving a mining barge from pirates and then joining miner’s alliance in a fleet fight that very day. While hilariously unlikely, the idea of a world where what you do has impacts far beyond your personal avatar is indeed another of Eve’s distinctions in a genre dominated by MMOs full of predictable, scripted, endlessly looping events. In Eve, you are the content for other players, and the other players are the content for you. The things that happened in your little corner of space today impact the game for everyone, forever.

In Eve, Your Actions Have Consequences

In World of Warcraft, the consequences of failure in PvP involve little more than a quick trip from your respawn point back to where you were when you died horribly. Usually this means less than five minutes of time lost. In Eve, failure in PvP can mean anything from the loss of a disposable ship to the destruction of the basket into which you’ve placed all your eggs, so to speak. This means that if you’re foolish, you can transform in moments from a badass flying a state-of-the-art ship capable of incredible force projection to a pauper who can barely afford to fit a cruiser.

In Eve, Knowledge is Survival

Knowledge is more than power in Eve: Without a thirst for it, the gameplay experience becomes worse than mediocre. The five-year-old character in a multi-billion ISK faction-fitted marauder will fall every time he engages a six-month-old character who has 100 million ISK to spend on the right tool for the job. This works both for the ninja and against him: Witness my billion-plus ISK JerkTengu being slaughtered by a handful of cheap battleships. With knowledge of what you’re facing, any ship can be killed.

Not only must one understand ship fittings and damage types, but the mechanics of combat aggression, gate jumping, and station docking/undocking must be understood if one is to escape a life as a pod-pilot punching bag. Most lowsec pirates can tell you about the first time they died to sentry guns before they fully understood criminal flags. Most nullsec players can tell you about the first time they encoutered a warp disruption bubble. I bet that nine out of ten of my mission gank victims will tell you that it’s the first time they’d dealt with the PvP aggression timer. Most will never make the same mistake again. Knowledge of little gotchas like these are the real power in Eve, not fancy ships or piles of ISK.

In Eve, There are No Takesie-Backsies

In most MMOs, the fact that time is a one-way street and you can’t revert to the last save point isn’t all that big a deal. The worst case is that your party wipes in a dungeon, and you get to start back where you died to try again. In Eve, because your actions have consequences both for you and your friends, mistakes are permanent and whether the price is high or low, it must be paid.

Without These Distinctions, Eve is Just Another Crappy MMO

If you take away the sandbox, the significance and consequences of player actions, the importance of intelligence, and the finality of events, what does Eve start to look like? WoW? I haven’t looked into the new Star Trek MMO, but I imagine that there would be parallels, and by all acounts Star Trek Online sucks.

Much Ado About Something

Now, for the aggro extension reimbursement thing. To be quite frank with you, I don’t really care for the mechanic. It’s confusing and unreliable, but the same could be said for a dozen other Eve mechanics that get ships killed on a regular basis. A lot of folks are mistakenly assuming that I’m crying big Ninja Tears over the aggro extension mechanic, when my problem is really with a senior GM that granted a petition from a carebear who had a warning from the game that he could be blown up, undocked a faction battleship, got blown up, then asked for a replacement. Yes, this is a minor issue, but allowing it to stand speaks volumes about what the GM staff and CCP as a whole think makes their game, in my opinion, the greatest video game ever launched.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It would take ONE GM 30 seconds to fix this, and not a byte of code need be involved. Just like the POS RR mechanic, all it takes is a forum post either declaring it an off-limits exploit, or working as intended. To say that it is not a bug, not an exploit, but that they’re still going to reimburse players who fall victim to it is to cut a neat little chunk out of the very things that keep Eve from being just another short-lived niche MMO.

“But Paul,” you say, gazing longingly at my stunning physique, “How is ONE freebie from ONE GM worth all this stink?” Do you really think that this is an isolated event? Stop and think for a moment about why you know about even this one occurrence. It’s because the carebear in question posted his petition and the results to his public blog. How many more victims featured on this blog have had their mistakes forgiven, to cost them no more than the proverbial graveyard run? It could be half, or a quarter, or one in twenty, or one in a hundred. It could be any number and we’d never, ever know, always assuming that CCP was doing the right thing. Yeah, it could be an isolated event. The odds, however, of this being the only incident of a carebear entering into PvP and losing more than he wanted to lose, then having a GM crap a new faction battleship into his hangar are absurdly low.

But why raise such a fuss over such a minor encroachment? Because there is nowhere else to go. If Eve isn’t the harsh, unforgiving world that CCP says it is, then where can I go where what the player does matters? My entire game revolves around causing players to put more on the table than they wanted to lose, and then lose it. If I can’t do that here, or if, as it appears is the case, CCP is slipping ships to players who lost them because they weren’t aware of some game mechanic, then I’d just as soon cancel my accounts take up woodworking. At least then I can count on nobody coming behind me and feeding a portion of my finished work into a wood chipper.

To CCP: All we want is a statement from you on this. Is aggro extension an exploit that will cause reimbursement? Is it a valid tactic whose victims are worthy of no mercy? If it’s not an exploit, but reimbursements are still an option, then in what other cases can a player request reimbursement after he ignored in-game warnings and lost big?

Eve is indeed the greatest game ever made, but the temptation to discard the ideals that made it great when nobody is looking is surely strong. It is important that CCP present a unified front when talking about the policy decisions that make Eve distinctive, or the game will slip into mediocrity and die with a whimper. The little things matter.

1) Find an inactive corporation with an offline POS tower full of goodies
2) Declare war on corporation
3) Fit and insure POS-bashing battleships
4) AFK pew tower
5) Scoop modules and profit!

One of our friends from Suddenly Ninjas, Aruca Meyers, contacted me about an offline POS tower he had found in the Kamokor system. Further research showed that the corporation, Shenda Innovations, was both small and apparently inactive. The Dread Gruistas’ Tower had a nice collection of modules:

6x Mobile Labs
6x Equipment Assembly Arrays
2x Component Assembly Arrays
4x Medium Pulse Laser Batteries
4x Medium Beam Laser Batteries
7x Cruise Missile Batteries
2x Sansha’s Small Pulse Laser Batteries
2x Warp Disruption Batteries
1x Stasis Webifier Battery
1x Energy Neut Battery
1x Ship Maintenance Array
1x Corporate Hangar Array

That was going to be worth at least 600M before whatever was in the CHA and SMA, so we figured it was worth a day of AFK shooting at the tower. We watched the area and corporation for a day or two, and didn’t see a single one of them log on. It seemed we’d be ok to AFK shoot this tower for however long it took.

Paul and I both fitted Amarr battleships for damage, insured them, and jumped into cheap clones. Even if we got pewed and podded, it wasn’t going to be a big loss. We put the call out to the other Jerks, but all of them were busy/drunk/working, so we deputized Aruca as a Jerk for a day and had him help us shoot the tower.

We blew up the CHA and SMA first in order to get any tasty ships or loot that were going to drop. The SMA only dropped a shuttle, but the CHA dropped a lot of POS fuel, 6x each of Medium Pulse and Medium Beam Laser batteries, and best of all 2 more Sansha Small Pulse Laser Batteries.

The DG Control tower has the most HP of any tower in the entire game. We weren’t expecting this to be quick, and it wasn’t. We started shooting at 06:50 EVE time, and kept shooting right up to downtime. We resuming shooting after downtime, and didn’t hit armor until around 22:30. The DG tower has 60M shields, plus recharge rate. The tower finally went down around 01:10, for a total of 18 hours or so of shooting.

We unanchored everything, stripped our insured pew ships, and then self-destructed them for the payout. Ending loot:

At Jita prices this comes in just under 900M. We had guessed at more, but that was at non-Jita prices, and I don’t feel like babysitting orders in another market for a week until everything sells.

Not bad for a day worth of shooting a tower, checking up every few hours or so. I actually drove my sister to her college – 2.5 hours away – and back, while this was going on. Payout to Aruca as a finders’ fee is 20%, or around 180M; Paul and I each pocket around 360M each.

Jerks will provide a similar 20% finders’ fee for anyone who provides us information on offline POS towers in small/inactive corporations which lead to a POS takedown. In order to be worthwhile, the tower should have at least 500M worth of modules.

Carebear loses a CNR to aggro extension from a ninja. Carebear admits that he saw the aggro timer and undocked anyway, but still petitions his loss. A senior GM gives him his ship back.

Since aggro extension has been a valid mechanic for some time, I petitioned to see if it was now considered an exploit.

This has come to my attention:

http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/2010/08/eve-exchange-of-views-with-ccp.html

A missionrunner undocked with aggro from a ninja salvager, lost his CNR, petitioned it, and got it back. Is extending aggro now considered an exploit? Will my future targets now be reimbursed after I kill them? It is very important for me to know if carebears are getting unequal treatment: It may well determine the future of my subscription.

Hi,

At this point in time we will not take any action against anyone using this. Please be aware however that we reserve the right to change our policy on this in the future should we deem it necessary.

Best regards,
GM Kaliastra
The EVE Online Customer Support Team

Hey there,

I do appreciate your swift response, but it does not answer my question. Is it now policy to reimburse ships lost due to ignorance? Will my targets have their losses replaced by GMs?

Hi, senior GM Spiral here.

We are currently not taking action against anyone doing this at the current time although this is not an advertised nor supported feature. We at CCP do reserve the right to adjust this policy at any given time in the future should the situation warrant it.

Customer Support does consider this something that may be reimbursed for pending an investigation into the situation of a given incident.

If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this then please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,
Senior GM Spiral
EVE Online Customer Support Team

So the summary is that CCP is giving ships back to players for losses that are not due to exploits.

On the Stabbed Up blog, “Reasoned Discourse” has broken out, and the author in question has started deleting all but the sympathetic comments. As an aside, note that we have not and will never squash comments from those who disagree with us, provided those comments are on-topic and don’t break any laws in our jurisdiction.

CCP: If I wanted to play a game where my actions in PvP had no consequences, I would go play WoW. If aggro extension is an exploit, then call it such and fix it. If it’s not an exploit, then don’t coddle players who fall victim to it. If in this case the ninja had lost his ship due to combat derived from aggro extension, I have trouble believing that you would have been so sympathetic. I play this game because actions are meaningful. If you remove the meaning, I will take the money from my subscriptions and go do something better with my time.

Related links: Crime and Punishment Thread – Likely to be locked. Note plenty of carebears calling it an exploit, which CCP has explicitly denied. Also note the “tears” accusation, which is true. When one sees that his successes are being invalidated and his failures are being allowed to stand, there will be tears. Why should I risk ships that won’t be reimbursed to kill ships that will be replaced by a GM?

By way of my own insignificant protest, I will not be ninja salvaging/ganking until either aggro extension is called an exploit or I receive assurances from CCP that my victims won’t get their mistakes reversed by CCP. I’ll still work my infiltration alts and wardecs, but I have no motivation to continue my primary profession when it’s so likely that the work will mean nothing.