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Argoni Brinalle for CSM XI
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Argoni Brinalle
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2016-01-14 23:13:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Argoni Brinalle
I am Argoni Brinalle one of the directors of the Red Frog Freight Alliance. In addition to hauling for the three divisions of our alliance I actively manage over 200 freighter pilots and 30 jump freighter pilots throughout high, low, and null. In the past I have also run incursions, mined, and have pvp’d in all regions of space with various corps and alliances

In addition to learning what changes are expected by service and industry focused players, I would like to see work done to make improvements in the following areas.


Contract System

The courier contract system is old. On a basic level it does work but there is a lot of improvements that are long overdue. A lot of very good suggestions where given back in April when CCP asked for feedback. Since then nothing has been done or any suggestions that CCP is planning on working on it.
To help clarify going forward all hauling corps and most alliance and bloc hauling is done on out of corp characters to avoid wardecs. This forces us to use one character the (CA) to accept a courier contract and another character the (FA) to haul the contract.

A) Currently you can’t see what is inside of a courier contract like you can with an item exchange. Being able to see the contents after you accept the contract eliminate secrecy as a reason for this
a) Proposal: Have courier contracts show the contents before the contract is accepted.

B) Containers: Currently the contract system doesn’t allow item exchange contracts to be created if there is a container inside of a courier package. This forces in station trading of the contract which necessitates the CA to fly out to the station. Once at the station the CA direct trades with the FA. This also necessitates two separate active accounts.
a) Proposal: Either allow item exchange contracts for courier contracts with a container in them or show a flag like cargo size that denotes the existence of a container in a container.

C) Stack Size: To go along with the containers change a lot of containers are used in courier contract to bypass the 200 item stack size limit.
a) Proposal: If there must be a limit increase it to something much higher or ideally remove the limit all together and let storage size be the limiting factor.

D) Contract Auto Rejection: Currently freight corporations must manually check the courier contracts issued to them to ensure that the size, collateral, expirations are correct.
a) Proposal: Allow corporations to set maximum and minimum values for courier contracts to be issued to the corporation. If the contract doesn’t match the allowed values then the contract is auto rejected and the issuer is told why the contract failed to be issued. Further down the road maybe even allow corporations to set restrictions on security status serviced or Systems not delivered to.

E) Quality of Life Setting Up Contracts: Currently there are 5 screens you must click through before you can issue a contract.
a) Proposal: Condense the contract screen to a items and rewards screen and a confirm screen. Easy Quality of Life Improvement
The Proposals listed above are the changes I see as critical to the improvement of the contract system. There are further changes I would like to see made and would like to hear any further ideas you have as well.

Chat Management
Currently the management of a large intel or multi corp – multi alliance channel is to be blunt a major headache. As an example Red Frog Freight maintains two such channels, one for red frog and one for black frog. In these channels we have our relevant corps added as well as over 700 individual characters.

A) Ability to search inside of the access list
B) Ability to see if the character is in the corp or alliance without having to manually personal standings
C) Auto Trim: Once a character or corp is added that entry stays in the channel list until removed. Overtime this leads to a lot of inactive characters that are no actually using the channel.
a) Proposal: Allow channel admins to have an option to auto remove the character is after a certain amount of time the character hasn’t joined the channel
Argoni Brinalle
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2016-01-14 23:14:31 UTC
IGB Changes
Not much to say here. CCP announced that they would like to remove the IGB. I agree something needs to be done with as it is super outdated and requires special design or websites just to allow its use. But the IGB is widely used in all manner of in game tasks. We need to ensure that before the IGB is removed all parties using it have the ability to replace the task in some way. As an example for Red Frog we use the IGB to monitor, accept, and reject all contracts. If the IGB were to be removed today we would be force to return to the default contract finder which doesn’t have a lot of the super specific functionality we enjoy. CCP is doing a great job on this front with the CREST API additions that have been added as well as the EVE auth functionality.

Ganking
Yes I know the HS carebear is going to complain about ganking… Well not really. I think ganking has its place in eve and in high sec. Honestly without it hauling service corps wouldn’t be in business except to serve the super lazy. Not being safe in eve ever unless you are docked in an NPC station is what makes eve, well, eve. I think as we look at the ability to gank vs the ability to avoid the gank is in a decent spot for all but the freighter class.
All other ship types allowed in HS have the ability to counter the bumping mechanics that freighters fall prey to. A freighter on the other hand once bumped is a sitting duck. There is one way to avoid getting bumped in a freighter, external webbing (if your webber its self isn’t ganked first). This is the one area that needs addressing. TBH no other single relationship in eve is so one dimensional. The breakdown that allows this I believe is the ability to continuously bump without repercussion. I would like to hear ideas that don’t break the ganking gameplay itself but do help bring the freighter part inline.

Proposal: Make bumping of a ship outside of 100km? of a gate, or station grant a criminal tag after a certain amount of bumps on a single ship in a certain time period.


Corp History
Currently your time in corp is set to count the time since you last joined to the present day. Will this is an alright count of corp senority a better way I think would be to count total time in the current corp for all stays in corp. Maybe have two lines in the character profile, one for time of current stay and one for total time in history. This would allow players to more easily recognize members of a corp with extensive history without having to manually search through corp history.


Bookmark System
Alliance Bookmarks: The increase in allowed number of corp bookmarks has helped. Thank you CCP for that. But we need to go one step further and address a quality of life issue that affect mostly WH alliances. Because the path to go somewhere is constantly changing corps are constantly copying their bookmarks and dropping them in space for other corps in the alliance. Why do we need this extra step to achieve what could be done by implementing alliance bookmarks. Rights to edit the bookmarks would be tricky since how do you assign rights to edit alliance wide. I think a good place to start would be expand the role that allows you to delete bookmarks from corp to be allowed to also copy to and remove from alliance bookmarks.
Vic Jefferson
Stimulus
Rote Kapelle
#3 - 2016-01-15 00:40:39 UTC
Argoni Brinalle wrote:
TBH no other single relationship in eve is so one dimensional.


Not so sure on this. For example, a neut in local will send the vast majority of ratters to their station, a pos, or a safe. It is extremely one dimensional.

You do have other options here you aren't discussing. For example, you can scout the gate to check for people who would gank your webs, or you could use a webbing ship that is harder to gank or use multiple webbing ships, thus making you more unattractive to gank as there are easier targets. You could even gank the bumping ship, or bump it back. When you realize that groups that do lots of freighter ganking are very organized, and require many characters each doing a very specialized job, they should have countermeasures they can take for the preventative measures you take. As it is, webbing alts are already extremely powerful; your one extra hand can already mitigate the efforts of many ganking characters; two or three could suitably stall a ganking fleet onto a different target.

I think your proposal of ship bumps +100km from gate needs some work. This negates the possibility of counter-bumping by making it criminal, and could also get a lot of people CONCORD'ed for just flying normally.

I can see where Hi Sec generally needs better criminal mechanics, as the antagonists have no skin in the game at any time, and can wait indefinitely until someone makes a mistake which is punishable. There is no way to take the fight to the antagonists, which is just strange that all the onus of remaining vigilant lays on the freighters and miners.

It's great that, as you point out, shipping services largely exist due to the risks involved, i.e. contract your stuff the specialists who are used to being good at moving stuff so it does arrive safely, making it a rewarding and valuable profession. The riskier a profession is, the more the game and its players sort out the good players from the bad, and the more profitable it can become to those who devote the resources to become good at it.

Vote Vic Jefferson for CSM X.....XI.....XII?
Argoni Brinalle
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2016-01-15 01:17:58 UTC  |  Edited by: Argoni Brinalle
Vic Jefferson wrote:
Argoni Brinalle wrote:
TBH no other single relationship in eve is so one dimensional.


Not so sure on this. For example, a neut in local will send the vast majority of ratters to their station, a pos, or a safe. It is extremely one dimensional.

You do have other options here you aren't discussing. For example, you can scout the gate to check for people who would gank your webs, or you could use a webbing ship that is harder to gank or use multiple webbing ships, thus making you more unattractive to gank as there are easier targets. You could even gank the bumping ship, or bump it back. When you realize that groups that do lots of freighter ganking are very organized, and require many characters each doing a very specialized job, they should have countermeasures they can take for the preventative measures you take. As it is, webbing alts are already extremely powerful; your one extra hand can already mitigate the efforts of many ganking characters; two or three could suitably stall a ganking fleet onto a different target.

I think your proposal of ship bumps +100km from gate needs some work. This negates the possibility of counter-bumping by making it criminal, and could also get a lot of people CONCORD'ed for just flying normally.

I can see where Hi Sec generally needs better criminal mechanics, as the antagonists have no skin in the game at any time, and can wait indefinitely until someone makes a mistake which is punishable. There is no way to take the fight to the antagonists, which is just strange that all the onus of remaining vigilant lays on the freighters and miners.

It's great that, as you point out, shipping services largely exist due to the risks involved, i.e. contract your stuff the specialists who are used to being good at moving stuff so it does arrive safely, making it a rewarding and valuable profession. The riskier a profession is, the more the game and its players sort out the good players from the bad, and the more profitable it can become to those who devote the resources to become good at it.


Like you said criminal mechanics does need work. How do we make criminal mechanics more dynamic and interesting without breaking ganking as a part of eve. How do we help the target of the gank stand a chance without making the ganker have no chance. How do we balance the cost of ganking a mostly empty ship be much closer to the cost of the ship being ganked. Honestly I have no good idea for that right now but I think the discussion needs to happen.

Like I said ganking sub freighter is in a decent place, but once you start looking at freighters I know a couple things need to change.

1) Cost of a single ganking catalyst is 2-3mil. Cost of a ganking fleet of catalysts is sub 100mil. Compare this to the 1.25bil cost of a totally empty freighter. Lets use Red Frog's operating guideline of only carrying up to 1bil in cargo, which is honestly not a lot of isk in the big picture. This makes the cost of the freighter 2.25bil that can be without risk ganked by sub 100mil.

Do I think the player numbers it takes to down a freighter needs to increase? NO! But the isk value being risked needs to move closer the haul value.

2) The ability of a single mach to prevent a freighter from warping for an indefinite period of time with very little risk needs to change. Do I have a problem with the mach being able to prevent a frighter from warping? No not really. But I do think that there needs to be a mechanic in place that forces the ganking party to act "quickly" or allow the freighter to pass. I have watched freighters bumped for a good hour + with no attempt at ganking it. That is broken.
Vic Jefferson
Stimulus
Rote Kapelle
#5 - 2016-01-15 02:02:10 UTC
Argoni Brinalle wrote:

1) Cost of a single ganking catalyst is 2-3mil. Cost of a ganking fleet of catalysts is sub 100mil. Compare this to the 1.25bil cost of a totally empty freighter. Lets use Red Frog's operating guideline of only carrying up to 1bil in cargo, which is honestly not a lot of isk in the big picture. This makes the cost of the freighter 2.25bil that can be without risk ganked by sub 100mil.

Do I think the player numbers it takes to down a freighter needs to increase? NO! But the isk value being risked needs to move closer the haul value.


Naw. It's good as it is. You do not want to raise the bar too high for ganking. If you really want a huge disparity, look a the people that use thrashers to gank auto-piloting pods: 5m for a chance at a multi-billion isk killmail. Effort and organizational manpower factor into this equation as well, so I am 100% ok with very cheap things en-masse overwhelming very expensive things.

Argoni Brinalle wrote:

2) The ability of a single mach to prevent a freighter from warping for an indefinite period of time with very little risk needs to change. Do I have a problem with the mach being able to prevent a frighter from warping? No not really. But I do think that there needs to be a mechanic in place that forces the ganking party to act "quickly" or allow the freighter to pass. I have watched freighters bumped for a good hour + with no attempt at ganking it. That is broken.


I don't really? If you had one counter bumper you could deal with the bumping. It's pretty symmetrical. The bumper is at risk the entire time if you had a ganking fleet of your own. Straight

Vote Vic Jefferson for CSM X.....XI.....XII?
Argoni Brinalle
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2016-01-15 21:31:52 UTC
Argoni Brinalle wrote:

2) The ability of a single mach to prevent a freighter from warping for an indefinite period of time with very little risk needs to change. Do I have a problem with the mach being able to prevent a frighter from warping? No not really. But I do think that there needs to be a mechanic in place that forces the ganking party to act "quickly" or allow the freighter to pass. I have watched freighters bumped for a good hour + with no attempt at ganking it. That is broken.


I don't really? If you had one counter bumper you could deal with the bumping. It's pretty symmetrical. The bumper is at risk the entire time if you had a ganking fleet of your own. Straight[/quote]

I would argue that those interested in ganking the mach are already on the side of the mach. If I want to gank I don't go looking for gankers to gank I side with the gankers. So really the mach is at little to no risk in this equation.
Black Pedro
Mine.
#7 - 2016-01-15 22:49:20 UTC
Argoni Brinalle wrote:
I would argue that those interested in ganking the mach are already on the side of the mach. If I want to gank I don't go looking for gankers to gank I side with the gankers. So really the mach is at little to no risk in this equation.

Really? Doesn't the organization whose freighter is being bumped have a strong incentive to gank the bumper to save their associate? I mean capitals get tackled (and even bump-tackled) all over New Eden leading to frantic calls for assistance and often escalation. Why is it only highsec freighter pilots who seem to feel game mechanics should save their capital ship from an opponent once a PvP engagement has begun?

Clearly bumping is not the greatest mechanic, and one can imagine alternative interdiction mechanics for capital ships in highsec, but do you agree that whatever hypothetical changes are made to the mechanic should preserve, and even increase the chance for escalation of fights? If so, do you have any preferred ideas on how to do so, something better than the solo-get-out-of-PvP-free mechanic you just proposed above?

The 8 Golden Rules of Eve

Why Do They Gank?
Vic Jefferson
Stimulus
Rote Kapelle
#8 - 2016-01-15 23:26:05 UTC
Argoni Brinalle wrote:
I would argue that those interested in ganking the mach are already on the side of the mach. If I want to gank I don't go looking for gankers to gank I side with the gankers. So really the mach is at little to no risk in this equation.


Organizational strength is a big part of EvE Online.

Why doesn't red frog hire professional counter-bumpers? Surely it is of the size and strength that hiring professional white knights isn't unreasonable?

Gankers take time to set up, organize, stay supplied, and to fill every role to make a gank successful. You should have to put in some effort to counter an entire fleet's effort in order to stay safe. There are plenty of white knight types, but as far as I know, they are poorly coordinated and even less organized; emergent gameplay's solution would be to fix this problem before the mechanics do it by themselves. The side that is more organized quite frankly deserves to succeed, where the less organized side deserves to lose.

Basically, the more mechanics do to protect people, the less player involvement is required. Player involvement and identity is the literal lifeblood of this game. I don't think the mechanics are unbalanced here at all, rather that they remain under utilized and under exploited by one side.

I remember one time where our freighter was being bumped in High Sec. He was auto-piloting and deserved to be in the situation he got himself into. A certain infamous high sec antagonist whom we were blue to at the time literally counter bumped our freighter into warp before it was ganked, effectively rescuing it. I think this just shows you how one side has done more homework than the other - learning these tricks and effectively integrating them into an organization works, and is much healthier for fostering actual game play than heavy handed mechanics changes. It is possible to rescue a freighter if you have the tools on hand - you should not expect to counter the efforts of an entire fleet alone though. Mechanics rescuing that freighter would have made that incident any other game, but having one of the most prolific gankers save a freighter? That wasn't just a game, that was EvE.



Vote Vic Jefferson for CSM X.....XI.....XII?
RF Gnaeus Crassus
Red Frog Freight
Red-Frog
#9 - 2016-01-30 15:33:52 UTC  |  Edited by: RF Gnaeus Crassus
[quote=Vic JeffersonWhy doesn't red frog hire professional counter-bumpers? Surely it is of the size and strength that hiring professional white knights isn't unreasonable?


[/quote]

The trouble is that you would need a 24/7 (-20mins Smile ) anti counter bumper group covering all high sec, where a dedicated bumper/ganker group can setup in 1 hour where ever they want and only need to be active for 2-3 hours to do real damage.

With about 300 and more contracts a day the costs for a protection team would far exceed the results anyway.