CSM X

Voting for CSM is now open. PLEASE VOTE HERE.

If you aren't sure what CSM is, check out this post by CCP Leeloo - in short, it's an elected body of players who consult with the game's benevolent masters CCP. They are given direct access to developers and upcoming changes to the game are shown to them first, so they are the most important avenue of feedback and representation we players have available to us. Voting is by no means mandatory, but you can count on the big nullsec alliances to push their hundred thousand accounts to vote, so I want to make sure smaller voices, particularly "highsec carebear" types, get heard too.

I have just finished listening to all of the Cap Stable interviews and panels, w00t! They have put together some great resources which can be found here, if you are interested in doing some research of your own. There are only 5 days left at this point though, so if you don't feel like you have the time to do enough in-depth research, I'm presenting my ballot here for consideration.

The full roles of voting can be found here, and further information on single transferrable voting can be found on Wikipedia. In short (for those who don't use preferential voting... *coughAmericans*), you order your preference amongst the candidates (in the case of the CSM, the most you can vote for is 14). Anyone who exceeds the quota (a set number of votes, usually dependant on the total number cast) is elected outright. After that, the fun of distributing preferences takes place. After initial preferences (ie #1 votes) have been tallied, the candidate with the least votes will be eliminated, and their preferences distributed. If you have voted for only one candidate and they are knocked out at this stage, your vote will "exhaust" and not count; as such, I'm recommending a full ballot of 14, ranging from generally smaller candidates to generally bigger ones.

With that in mind, my recommended ticket:

- #1 Jayne Fillion

Jayne is responsible for adding great content to the game, which a number of SLYCE members take part in and enjoy. Since the game is all about "what can I do", any player that creates content for others to enjoy is a great candidate in my opinion. He represents the NPSI community (Not Purple, Shoot It) - groups who form up fleets and go shoot other players regardless of ordinary allegiances. It's the only way I've been able to enjoy PVP sofar. Campaign thread here.

- #2 Chance Ravinne

I loved Chance's energy and enthusiasm. He runs a great youtube channel, knows about marketing the game, and flies in bombers and wormholes, which are parts of my gameplay (that I haven't covered on this blog yet). Campaign thread. 

- #3 Erika Mizune / Yumene

EVE radio host and industrialist. Erika's ideas on reworking mining and industrial systems are very interesting to me, and represent the PVE content that I'm writing about on this blog. In particular, the idea that finished asteroids have a chance of spawning smaller chunks of bonus ore would make mining a little more fun. That being said, her interview on Cap Stable was pretty poor, with nervous answers and issues understanding the interviewer's accent. Campaign thread.

- #4 Aeon Boirelle

A high sec candidate representing for the carebears. While I don't like all their ideas, particularly on revisiting input duplication, they want to represent parts of highsec gameplay at the core for me, and anyone who wants to fuck CODE. over is OK by me. Campaign post.

- #5 Bam Stoker

AUTZ = BEST TZ. Bam organised the only EVE meet up that I've been to. He is a nullsec player, but standing to represent community interests, and lobbying to introduce better ways for communities to network through the game client itself. Campaign thread.

- #6 Lorelei Ierendi

Who is Lorelei? A high sec carebear. Tick. Some ideas of changes that might have unintended consequences on the economy, but in general, another representative of grinders, and one who is particularly reaching out to the solo players, which I was for a long time. Campaign thread.

- #7 Nervon
Another high-sec carebear candidate. They seem to be a bit more rainbow minded in terms of a mix of PVE play with a little PVP, much like myself, but they have done themselves no favours in terms of having little existence in the metagame. Campaign post.

- #8 June Ting

The recently announced rework of Sovereign Nullsec space means I want to put at least a couple of nullsec candidates on here, and of those, June is the one who appeals to me the most. Her ideas seem to match the thrust of the announced changes, so I trust her to get the details right. Campaign thread

- #9 Mike Azariah

The incumbent highsec resident and blogger who inspired me to start this blog. If you've ever experienced a watering mouth at the sight of the Bowhead like I have, thank Mike. Has done a fantastic job on CSM, and also on Operation Magic School Bus, helping to retain newbies after the success of the "This Is EVE" trailer. Campaign thread.

- #10 Xander Phoena

Incumbent. Although the crazy Scotsman has gotten some bad press in recent weeks, his blogs on CSM 9 have been highly informative. He makes it onto my ballot for his work on input duplication, if nothing else. Disclaimer: former Goon, now flies with Pandemic Legion. Campaign thread.

- #11 Sugar Kyle

The most respected incumbent candidate. Although she represents lowsec, where I barely dip my toes to nab a little ice or deal with market orders, she has also represented PVE content, and been one of the strongest workhorses of CSM 9. Campaign thread.

- #12 Corbexx

Incumbent wormhole candidate, which covers me during wartime and a fair whack of other time too. Has done good work in rebalancing the wormholes I spend time in (c1/c2) so that they are ISK fountains worth the inherent risks. Campaign thread.

- #13 Steve "FuzzySteve" Ronuken

Incumbent third party developer and industrialist. Highly specialised and involved with the CREST API, which has allowed for better market data on sites like Eve Central. Runs Fuzzworks, which has allowed me to optomise my PVE gaming to no end. Campaign thread.

- #14 Khador Vess

RVB fleet commander and all round good guy with some interesting ideas on how to make life in high sec more interesting. Loses out to Jayne, Bam and June for me, but I think he's worth having on the end in case all of the above get exhausted. Campaign thread.

Mining

Busting rocks in a Proc

The What

As the name would suggest, mining is the harvesting of mineral resources from celestial features - asteroid belts, ice belts, or gas clouds. It's one of the easiest ways to make ISK: unlike 'rats, rocks don't shoot back. However, it comes with its own risks, most notably bumping and ganking. Despite the risks, it's still one of the most boring forms of PVE; grinding, pure and simple.

The Where

There's something to mine everywhere in New Eden - usually multiple kinds of things, so it can often be hard to know what's the most lucrative choice. The rule here is the same as with all PVE: more risk, more reward. Asteroid belts in highest sec systems have the smallest rocks with generally the lowest worth, working their way up through to the lower sec systems, then with better rocks and the other better value options becoming available in the lawless areas of space - lowsec, nullsec and wormholes. Disclaimer: I'm only familiar with high sec and wormholes at this point in time.

Huffing gas in a C1 wormhole

The How

You warp in to the belt or site. You target the rock or gas. You switch on your lasers or harvesters. You collect ore. Mining is one of the simplest activities in EVE, which is probably why it is one of the career paths many players try early in their career. However, there is still quite a bit to think about in order to optimise mining, even for a brand new player or account:

• Rule of solo mining #101: don't sit on the warp in - move your ship to the other side of the belt. Don't be the low hanging fruit for gankers. 
• It's generally not a good idea to refine your minerals until you have all of your reprocessing skills to V and sufficient standings with the corporation whose station you are using to refine. Generally, taking the time to train an industrial like the Miasmos and haul all that ore to a market hub will be a better option initially. For more info on reprocessing, check out the Eve Uni Wiki.
• It's generally worth checking which are the most valuable rocks to mine, not just in your local area but in the market hubs through a site like Eve Central. If you're at the point where you are reprocessing minerals to sell, then it's worth going even more in depth on an ore calculator with a site like Fuzzworks or Grismar. At the end of the day rocks are rocks and spending more than a few minutes looking around for something better cuts down your overall ISK/hr efficiency, but it's worth knowing what to look for.
• If the drive for bigger and better rocks sends you into 0.5 or 0.6 security space, don't make the mistake of thinking your Retriever or Covetor will be safe. Predators are out there and they live for juicy killmails from expensive barges. A well tanked Procurer can survive the 30 seconds it usually takes Concord to respond to a ganking attempt. Stay tuned for some fits.
• That being said, Rettys and Covs have their place - generally in fleet mining. Even in a more basic ship, the yield and range boost from an Orca pilot can make mining considerably easier and improve your ISK/hr quite a bit. Flying a well organised fleet op with Covetors and an Orca/hauler combo can pull over 10m ISK/hr, even in highsec. 

Warning: not all mining ops include celebratory fireworks...

For a more in-depth guide to mining, check out the Eve Uni Wiki page.

The Why

As suggested in the How, mining is one of the easiest ways to start making decent ISK, and relatively simple to get into - the tutorial missions give you a Venture, which is a solid ship to start flying and my tool of choice for Wormhole gas, which can provide way better income than you ever get mining in highsec (helped along by the rise in demand due to the ongoing release of T3 destroyers). Even if you find it bores you to tears, it's a part of the gameplay that everyone will have a brush with at one point or another, simply because minerals are the base of the whole EVE economy.

Many players mine because they need the minerals for manufacturing, but (in EVE and IRL) I'm no industrialist. For a grinder like myself, always looking towards the possible income, solo highsec ore mining is one of the least effective ways I can spend my time. But it's relaxing, simple, and, assuming the above precautions have been taken, fairly safe. If there isn't a fleet on first thing in the morning and I'm in highsec, I'll usually undock and pick up a hold ore two in the Proc while I make breakfast, etc. And there's even AFK mining - which I'll cover in another post - that allows you to play EVE and make ISK while doing the groceries, laundry, etc.

The income from my minerals is only a small portion of the month's total, but it appeals to the proletarian in me to be toiling away at the lowest tier of industry.

Universal Narrative

Another war dec finds me flying around from A to B in a stealth bomber that I just trained for and planning to buy my first Ishtar. It's an unusual level to be flying at with 42m skillpoints, or close to 7 years in the game.

Other players have different goals to me. They enjoy the rush of PVP more than I do, or the power trip that comes from skilling up for a capital ship and being the biggest fish in the (rather large) small pond. Others just enjoy the graphics, mechanics or the social interaction. For me these things are all very appealing, but something else about EVE Online appeals to me more: the unique sense of narrative.

Narrative is powerful. It's how we understand the whole universe. As a student of creative writing, I've made it my job to understand the different narratives being presented to us - not just in fictional works but in the media, politics, etc. We fit all the pieces of these different things together into coherent narratives to make sense of them; we even do it to things where it might not make sense, like the behaviour of our co-workers, the weather, our own plans for the future...

EVE, more than other games, allows us to shape a narrative in very special ways. That's what sets it apart from other MMOs, what has kept me coming back to EVE after bouts of Minecraft, Civ IV, Zelda and Borderlands. "Player Created Content" is the watchword in this sandbox.

Does that mean I should head out to nullsec, play the politics and sovereignty game, where grand narratives of empires and colonization (without the negative consequences to indigenous peoples) are written by players every day? Mebbe I will at some point. I certainly listen to enough podcasts to do so.

But one of the main reasons I'm writing this blog is to point out that there are narratives in EVE, even for high-sec care bears. Every succesful hauling trip to Jita is a narrative of cat-and-mouse (and every unsucessful one a bad horror story). Every succesful fleet op - or even the slow, patient game of growing your wealth - it's all narrative. And we have our own grand narratives, too - wars between Marmite and CODE., the fights over highsec POCOs. There is content to be found, even for the carebears.

Shoutouts: The Carebears

So this will be an ongoing series of shoutouts to those who are out there in the Meta doing something I consider to be representing the "carebear" playstyle. Some of these peeps might not consider what they do "carebear", but they are people who I've looked to for inspiration and ideas on the way I play.

Firstly, to Mike Azaraiah, CSM member, owner of the blog A Missioneer in Eve, and frequent podcast guest. His style of narrative posting is very interesting and unique, and he often sees a side of the story that other, more direct players might miss when it comes to upcoming changes or the kind of content creation going on in the game.

Secondly, Von Keigai, owner of the blog Deep in EVE, for this interesting post on high sec ice mining. The reasoning and philosophy behind it applies to other forms of gankable mining (basically all of them) just as much as ice. Otherwise he's also a wormholer, which is a place I find myself ending up more and more these days (pretty much 100% of undocked playtime during our current wardec and the previous couple too), and he's documenting some of his more exciting adventures there.

That's it for now. There will be more.

WAR! Woah-Woah-Woah-Woah

So it turns out a fellow lefty on my Facebook page likes to prey upon the carebears of Eve. I can't really figure it - in many ways we are the proletariat of this game, collecting the raw resources through various forms of basic grinding that go into the hulls and modules for PVP fights and alliance tournaments. Almost all minerals being collected out in null sec space get put straight into making titans and other capital ships, so most of everything else out there is bought in the market hubs and comes from us too. But each to their own. Now we are at war with CODE. Fuck 'em.

One of my golden rules for playing EVE is - never take a risk you don't have to. A legal war dec means CONCORD won't keep us safe from our war targets. That means regular activities like mission running, mining or hauling goods all come with the risk of getting ganked. Our Alliance's SOPs are not to do any of these activities during a war; if we can see there are no WTs online we might risk something, but for notorious suicide gankers like these guys, its not really worth it.

So what can a highsec carebear grinder like me do for the week the war will last that doesn't incur unnecessary risk? For a long time for me, the list was short and mostly involved playing other games or doing productive things, but lately I've been branching out a little more. I'll make more confession posts in full about each of these activities, just wanted to reflect on what there is to do during wartime for anyone who might be tempted to stay in an NPC corp and avoid war forever.

• Planetary Interaction (PI): It is generally a background process, but when you spend more time than usual sitting in station it can seem a little more fun to micromanage the process. There's still danger in taking a hauler through space to sell the goods, though, so if need be I collect them in a station until war is over.
• Station Trading: Although I've got a Dodixie jump clone to safely get in & out of the closest market hub to home, I'm finding it more fun and profitable to trade in our home region of Verge Vendor. It's a pretty quiet market, but has some virtues: less need to babysit orders and adjust them every 15 minutes to ensure they aren't outbid by another player, and with the right mix of items which people want to pick up close to home, I can trade enough volume to be growing my ISK satisfactorily. Plus if I were to get caught by the WTs, backup is only a few jumps away.
• Cloaky cloaky: using a cloak and microwarp drive it's possible to navigate lowsec space fairly safely, and the same principle applies in highsec too. This is a way to move goods around discretely, although I don't have room to move any ships or large quantities of rocks which will also have to wait before I can sell them. I've also recently gotten into a stealth bomber, which can warp while cloaked without the use of the cloak+mwd trick... and could be used for laying traps on our enemy, too ;)
• Wormhole Living: Some of our alliance mates live in a wormhole - we've got bases in both a c1 and c2 - and this war is the first time I've joined them living there for an extended period. Other corp mates have tried basing themselves out in our lowsec base also. Both come with the risk of PVP violence, but I think the wormhole is a little safer due to the lack of a local chat channel obscuring who is inside. Normally I just have my PI running in here and occasionally pop in when someone's scanned a good site; now I'm having a bit of fun being the one who does the scanning, and gets first crack at whatever goodies pop up. It's brought in a fair bit of ISKies, although since the risk is higher I'd normally be happy just grinding away in high sec :)

This isn't exhaustive, of course; more a chronicle of what I have been doing than a suggested check-list. There's many forms of PvE at which I'm still a n00b, and one of the reasons why I started this blog was to force myself to stop procrastinating and giving those different activities a go.

At the end of the day, I think of myself as a high sec care bear, but I can enjoy the thrill of flying in more dangerous space and earning the rewards as much as the next player. They just aren't at the core of my gameplay. It comes down to your goals in the game - what you find fun about it - which will be the subject of a future post.

Mission Running

Since this is my first post in the series about the kinds of activities I do in EVE (what I'll be calling my "confessions"), a note: I'll cover all the basics of how to go about doing it, but not in particularly great depth as there are generally much better how-to guides out there. I'll link any of those I've found useful. Instead I'll spend most of my time talking about the "why" - why it is I do this part of the game, why I take enjoyment out of it, why I'm repping for the people who do these kinds of activities and get tarnished with the label "carebear" for it.

The What 

Mission running is one of the most basic Player Vs Environment (PVE) activities in EVE, starting with the tutorial missions that introduce the player to the game mechanics and give you your first ships. You dock your ship in a station owned by an NPC corporation. Agents of that corporation offer you a mission, generally involving flying somewhere, doing something (blowing up pirates (rats), mining ice or asteroids (roids), couriering an item), and coming back when you've completed the objectives for your reward. The more missions you do with a particular corp the higher your standing with them gets - and as your standing grows, more agents and better missions become available to you.
 

The Where

Anywhere there's an NPC station there's generally some sort of agents available. Players tend to concentrate their efforts in "mission hubs", though, where several high-level agents of the same type are available in close proximity, so if one gives you a bad mission you can move onto another.

The How

As always, the best place to study the mechanics is Eve Uni Wiki's page on the topic. The majority of mission running, particularly at the high end, is done for Security agents, and involved blowing up a deadspace pocket(s) full of rats for the bounty on their heads, the salvage you can take from their wrecks, and the ISK and corporation Loyalty Points (LP) you get given for completing the mission.

A few notes:

• always check the mission out on Eve Survival. Their search function can be screwy so I usually end up googling the mission name, faction and level to get the details. They catalogue exactly what kind of damage will be done by who as well as giving handy tips on managing aggression and how to blitz the mission if that's your goal.
• I've only recently started using a Mobile Tractor Unit. This is a noobish thing to admit, but whatever. As soon as you can afford to buy one, do it; definitely by the time you are running level 3 missions. Pop it down as soon as you enter the pocket and as you're blowing stuff up it's hauling it in and stripping it of modules, allowing you to get right to the business of salvaging the wrecks once you're done blowing everything up. SUCH a timesaver.
• Flying in a fleet is great when you are starting level 4s, especially if you're only skilled to BattleCruiser level or only just got into a Battleship. I lost my first Dominix to lowly NPC rats flying solo; having a more experienced player along for the ride meant I wasn't riding on the edge of my tank. 
• That being said, once you've trained the skills and got the procedures down to comfortably solo a L4 mission, you probably lose ISK flying in a fleet compared to what you could be making doing it yourself - unless the fleet is well organised with a dedicated salvager and logi. 

The Why

Mission running is a pretty basic form of PVE activity in EVE, but after two years of running level 4s it's still fun to crack your knuckles, warp in on the bonus room of Angel Extravaganza, and let rip on a whole fleet of rats. Plus there's something fun about tinkering with a fit, or coming up with a new one, and trying things a little differently. If you're after something a little more challenging, there's the Epic Arc missions - once you get standing to 5 with a faction you get access to this narrative-driven series of missions, generally tougher than their equivalent level. Another option for a challenge is the recently introduced burner missions - a special type where you can only fly frigates, and will face a single enemy with the equivalent fit and skills of another player. I'm yet to do one!

Why spend time mission running: it's pretty safe ISK, good reliable isk per hour, and more fun than putting lasers on rocks. Plus it's pretty much the only way to increase your faction standings, which come in handy for things like refining and sales.

Why not: once you've run the same mission a few times over they can get pretty tedious, and it's also not the most lucrative PVE activity by far. For me it's a staple; when our corp isn't at war I like to put in a good couple of hours of solo missioning, plus our corp's once weekly mission fleet, as a minimum. But once I've done that I'm usually looking for another way to make the ISK.

Mission "griefing" - hostile players warping in on your deadspace and taking your kills/attacking you - isn't that common in high sec space. Although it does happen, it's only occured to me once in several years - so much less so than miner ganking,. However a good l4 mission fit is a more expensive boat to risk than a miner and requires more skill points to fly well (in a coming post I'll link my normal Dominix fit and discuss some tactics). There's no such thing as risk-free ISK in EVE, but the risk for missioning is minimal.

Despite the above considerations, I think missions are a great fleet activity. They are a good way for newbies to cut their teeth on the procedures of flying in a fleet, as well as for the vets to help newbies turn in for higher level rewards quicker than they'd make on their own, and a way to make some ISK while having a laugh - I'll never forget two corpies starting a duel over the 10m3 of Quafe needed to complete a mission! For us, a corp of mostly high sec care bears who dip our toes into other areas, Mission Mondays is a common denominator.