CSM Campaigns

Mynnna will be on my ticket as I think he has been a very effective CSM member and have heard nothing but good things about him.

You're assuming that these things are not the intended goals of CCP and the sov system.

A better question than "what would it take to break the blue donut," would be "should the blue donut be broken, and why?"

We could always have war games in Fountain.

I'm going to defer on answering basically everything sov related for the moment, as it intertwines with something I've actually been writing lately. More incentive to hurry up and finish it, I guess. I hope to have it finished today and posted tomorrow.

With respect to "smaller groups", I'm all in favor of my more diverse nullsec in concept. That said, I hate the question - it's too ill defined and everyone has a different idea of what they want. First, what's 'small'? In w-space, 200-300 people is considered "large" yet is dwarfed by (for example) Li3 Federation, which is one of the smallest alliances in the CFC at just under 1100 members. Likewise, how little 'patronage' with larger alliances or indeed anyone are we after? There are obviously large differences between mechanics that we have now, mechanics that allow a 300 man alliance to hold some space but will have them wiped out if their 3,000 man neighbor looks at them funny, and mechanics that allow that 300 man alliance to live more or less with impunity alongside that 3,000 man neighbor. And suffice it to say, the solution is further complicated by the fact that like it or not, answers like "just implement handwavey things that eliminate large alliances entirely, problem solved" just won't happen (said space exists already, it's called wormhole space) and so must consider that 300v3000 example. In any case, I'm going to once again defer until I have that article written.

Skipping industry for now - I'm on my iPad at lunch, and that's a topic larger to an I want to tackle on limited time and a small keyboard I will revisit it tonight when I'm home.

Finally, lowsec resources. Really what you're saying here is 'moons', which are easily exploited by nullsec because current mechanics - primarily the ability to project power - allows it. So that part of the question answers itself, which is convenient because some kind of power projection adjustment is going to be needed anyway. The other approach, though, would be to create new resources which require a local, pilot level presence to utilize and exploit. Level 5 missions are a very soft example of this.

Mynnna - I of course already know your feelings on this, but I think it is important you let everyone else know your opinion on mechanics like the mobile siphon units.

I'm pretty sure that you do not, in fact, know my feelings on it. I'm fine with the concept of the siphon and mechanics like it, though it's just as important that we have mechanics like the ESS, tools that enable the farms & fields concept by space owners to 'cultivate' and improve their territory but are vulnerable to raiding.

The execution of the siphon in particular, though, is what I've got a beef with. Spend approximately **** all time warping in, deploying siphon, and warp out, and anything short of 23/7 coverage on the part of the moon owner means said owner loses goo, whether or not the person who dropped the siphon comes back - there's very much a "siphoner always wins" element. I'm strongly in favor of changing up the mechanics so that the siphon no longer steals by the hour and no longer passively destroys goo, but tracks how much it should steal, but doesn't actually do anything until someone presses a "steal" button. When that happens, the goo is transferred into the siphon and available to take. On the surface, the overall effect is the same - a negligent moon owner gets screwed. However, to cause that damage, someone has to actually return and press that big red button. On the flip side, dealing with siphons as a moon owner would then be less of a pointlessly tedious task and a variety of new options if you didn't want to deal with them yourself would become available.



While it's not a bad question, the great thing about "14,000 mindless drones" is that when someone whose character and posting history suggests they're the alt of someone with a serious attitude issue regarding goons wanders into my thread and mouths off, I don't have to bow and scrape in an attempt to get their vote - I can just tell them to shove off.

So, shove off.



Back to this question.

The issue with building anything in nullsec actually starts with those supposed 'good ores', in that anyone sane avoids mining when they can just rat instead - the money's just not there. Obviously hard to build things if we can't get the minerals... and "just pay enough that it's worth their time" isn't really a solution, as you're then paying double the cost you would to buy the same thing in Empire and ship it in.

Get past that and you run into issues with the stations. Empire is chock full of 50 production slot stations with a perfect refine in everyone one of them. Nullsec, not so much. The best production stations and the best refining stations are two distinctly different things, which means a lot of hauling very bulky minerals between stations (or, to be fair, spending a few dozen billion isk to upgrade my refining station with more build slots and still wind up with fewer than a single station in Empire.) Since it's nullsec, "just AFK autopilot your freighter" isn't really an option. Moving those minerals means a lot more potentially very dangerous work for the producer...and still more work to move the goods to point of sale. So, once again the fairly trivial cost of simply importing finished goods from empire is the preferable option.

The short version here is that while nullsec certainly does have direct access to the top end ores, highsec is where virtually all the advantages for doing the actual production exist, and that's what has to change. That doesn't necessarily mean nerfing highsec into the ground, either, just that nullsec needs its own set of compelling upsides. Ideally, a logistician in nullsec would have the choice of getting ships & equipment at a much lower price locally, or go to Empire and import what he needed, but pay a steep markup to do so.

An example of a set of changes to get there? It's quick, dirty and off the cuff, but:

• A null-only means to significantly increase rate of mineral gathering in null, low ends especially. Highsec has the advantage of raw manpower, but nullsec could compensate with superior technology.
• Refactor all blueprints to have 'Extra Materials', the way that post-tiericide ships do. Extra materials are not returned when an item is refined, which is a critical point a little later.
• Solve the problem of mineral movement. Any number of possibilities here - a null-only supersized mineral freighter with short range jump drives, a POS upgrade or deployable structure that 'teleports' minerals back to a station (this isn't that great of an idea), or the mundane option, co-located production & refining facilities, just like in Empire.
• Finally, give nullsec production slots a bonus that reduces the extra materials, allowing items to be built at "better than perfect" rates. As mentioned earlier, extra materials aren't returned on refine, so there's no risk of an infinite mineral fountain.

With a bit more time to think on it, I'm sure that could be refined, or taken in a different way entirely, but I think it displays the sort of concept I'd want to aim to achieve.

I'm a masochist. I get off on it.



The real answer is that I am allowed to view things differently than dear leader. I consider eve to be my primary hobby, and I kinda enjoy having the opportunity to directly influence its future development.

I'd be very interested to see what you have to say sov related. I personally believe the stagnation is mostly to do with how easy it is to project power and cross vast distances almost instantly. is the reason for blueing everyone for 50 jumps is because it's so quick and easy to send huge fleets 51 jumps to crush the dwindling number of non-blues.

I think you have some unusual ideas about how democracy and naked, capitalist self interest work. Can you give an examples of contemporary democracies which don't have political parties? Because that's essentially what the "mindless drones" you keep banging on about are: a group of people who have decided to band together to try and get mutually agreed goals advanced. The reason that every democracy in the world is based on political parties is that it's hugely more effective from a game theory perspective to definitely get 80% of what you want as part of a large group than it is to almost certainly not get 100% of what you want as a lone individual.

So far from being "mindless drones", the CFC voters are making a rational calculation of self interest. Granted, part of their interest lies in making people such as yourself angry, but your own post shows that even this part of their strategy is working well. Also there is strong evidence that CFC members do not universally vote in lockstep with The Party's wishes.

The problem, to be frank, does not lie with the CFC, but with other interest demographics who have failed to organise and motivate themselves. There is nothing stopping them matching or exceeding goon efforts; goons are, what? ~3.5% of the playerbase. If the other 96.5% of players can't find it in themselves to outvote those 3.5%, then who's fault is that?

The CSM isn't a "joke". In fact compared to most real-world democracies, it's almost painfully fair. CSM8 was pretty diverse, and in fact Mynnna was the only active CFC member in it.

With respect to voting list links, the current CSM is pretty much unanimous that they should not only be allowed, but should be directly supported by the voting system itself. Failure to do so merely hands a very significant advantage to large, well-organised groups. You know: "mindless drones".

Ooooh let me try.

Ahem. Hey mynnna-- what's your elevator-pitch version of what's broken in nullsec? Where would you like to see it go, and what fixes would get it there?

For a slightly more concrete version I should probably ask all the other nullsec candidates too: What's the #1 thing CCP could do (as, say, a feature among others in an expansion) to improve the situation? Is there one?