CSM Campaigns

Best for csm by far, 10/10 would vote again!

So i've been giving a lot of thought to Syndicate lately.

Syndicate is a very unique region in EvE. It is NPC null is situated geographically close to Hi Sec, which makes it logistically viable for an aspirant group trying to live there. It's proximity to active areas of FW also positions it well. At the same time, NPC null is a great place to get your feet wet - none of the aggression rules and penalties of low sec or gate guns, and none of the overhead or hassle of sovereignty. One would think that these two factors would make it flourish with new life, new groups, and people just trying to live on the edge.

Dotlan routinely puts Syndicate as one of the most violent regions of nullsec. However, if you think about it, this should seem very odd. Why? Compare it to any sovereign nullsec region; How much value in minerals, moon goo, dead space loot, and raw ISK does that region produce on a daily basis compared to Syndicate? What if we compared how much ISK in losses a region generates compared to a composite value of how much a region produces? While I do not have hard numbers on this, and I would do a thorough analysis on them if I had them, I'd wager that Syndicate would pretty much be king of such a metric; it destroys far more than it is capable of producing. Now one could argue that the value and resources of sov regions cannot be so simply tabulated as they are spent on wars that span multiple regions, making this comparison a little unfair.

However, it does make one think about Syndicate's financial situation, namely, it does not have that many ways to fund itself; clearly there is lots of interest in the region, but on a whole, it cannot support that interest autonomously. More goes into it than comes out of it. Basically it is a playstyle that is craved and desired far more than it is supported. Compare that to faction warfare, which by and large does support the playstyle it fosters. Now it would be a shame to homogenize it's resources with sov null; it should be distinct and different entirely. Just that a bread and butter way for NPC nullsec residents to earn income is called for. I realize things are not as bad in some NPC nullsec regions via really good LP stores, but some of those regions are not as geographically viable as Syndicate is, and barring player made star gates, they never will be.

While you couldn't ever guarantee that any changes would have the desired effects, in an ideal world, you'd have the runaway Barleguet effect in NPC null - by putting resources out there in space, bottom up resources, you'd create a self feeding loop of content. Think about the weekend after they released the Mordu spawns in lowsec - how many people went to look for them, how many people went to go catch people looking for them, and how much content did it create? You just need to get the ball rolling, and space begins to fill up with people, reasons to set up market hubs, form alliances, and get rowdy.

Barleguet is the only named system in Placid.

Wait...

Okay, so Barleguet is actually a system in Placid, that outside of historical context, is rather unremarkable. It is non-FW lowsec, off the beaten, crowded path, with a few L5 agents. It is usually quite empty and devoid of content, as most non-FW lowsec tends to be. Many moons ago, when BRAVE was just forming under the auspice of maximizing fun per hour, they made this system home. In the course of a few weeks, local went from hovering at 3-4 to being a stable 130-250 or more, at all hours of the day. Their home station became as well stocked as any secondary hub, full of new opportunities for competitive trading. No matter the time, or how big or small your gang was, you could rush to Barleguet and find fun, and even reship on demand. Silly fun was never in short supply, repeated welping of cheap ships trained many newbies into hardened pilots. Planet seven's belts were perhaps one of the better places to get good with Dscan, and find threats or targets. People camped, roamed, dropped, and otherwise had fun based a simple concentration of people.

However, BRAVE outgrew Barleguet, and headed for sov-null. That may be natural ecological progression, but it was a very sad day indeed for Placid and Syndicate - where else could one go for instant content?

A premise of my campaign is that, against all odds, a group of moderate size was able to live in poor, unremarkable space, and in doing so, that space came alive. If Low Sec and NPC null was made even slightly more competitive for newer players with bottom up resources accessible to non veteran players, we could see people doing far more interesting things. Currently, far too many people get trapped in Hi Sec, waiting for SP or ISK to accumulate enough before venturing out. It shouldn't be that way. Risk and reward should be in synch.

hahaha

e. that flying bee

Responding to an in game mail from ShadowandLight, with permission to re-post the response here.



1)I am against Input Duplication in EvE Online. Manually operating several clients however, is perfectly fine.

2)If it requires an additional program to run, then it is the computer playing the game for you, and my response would be that I am against that. I dabble in programing for my real job, and I see how interesting it can be to program a virtual army of EvE characters and pit it against New Eden, or other virtual capsuleer armies, but I do not believe EvE is the right place for it.

3)Given current game mechanics, yes. When off-grid links are no longer a thing, maybe, but then there are still lots of compelling reasons to have multiple characters logged on, such as industry/hauler alts, cyno alts, supercap alts, etc. The game's design at the moment is heavily biased to having very specialized characters. You could even reasonably describe Faction Warfare as a game of alts given present standings mechanics. Some sort of arbitrary limit seems difficult to place, rather as long as software isn't used to enhance or streamline, as many as you want really.

4)False parallelism is sort of a no-no, and I see any and all comparisons of EvE to either of those two games to be heavily pushing this fallacy, unless they are full of all the errata that would go with such a comparison. This seems impossible given the wall of mechanics, as well as years of people valuing and depending on their alts.

5)Give people reasons not to multibox, carrots, rather than just sticks, bans, and punishments. Put links on grid, so they require an active pilot that is part of the team. Logi belongs on killmails, so people aren't tempted to just relegate that to alts; its part of the team. Even putting links on killmails would be good, so the "true soloist' can have something, whereas all other pretenders now have their solo mail filled up with logi and links alts.

You can take this further, especially with PvE activities. Currently it makes far more sense to multibox ratting or mining characters than having each one be a real person playing together, doing something together. The game's design itself makes me want to have 3 characters each running a barge or ishtar separately, rather than me giving full attention to one client with two friends in the other ships.

There is no arbitrary limit that I am interested in seeing, rather, limiting the reasons why people do multibox seems to be the better solution. Treat the disease, not the symptoms.

You got my vote.

gl with the elections

Seeing as we seem to agree on many things and disagree only on some fine points of detail, you get my vote. Hope to see you round Syndicate for some time to come!