Rubicon on a planetary scale

This is a speculation post.   As such it is subject to the vagaries of herd behaviour.

The single biggest change for me, is the player owned customs offices.

When bashing a customs office, you can achieve a lot given time and a t1 AFK fit glass cannon battleship or 2.  I understand that concord will not intervene, but really hope that players are given a suspect flag while shooting one.

I confess to a 'rent seeking' desire; that is, to complain about how the evils of highsec player owned customs offices will destroy wormhole/null/lowsec customs office ownership.

But it won't; not significantly.  Those doing extraction based PI will still suffer huge penalties in highsec; those wanting better returns in exchange for potentially higher risk will still seek out lowsec, null or wormholes.

There probably will be a difference in factory planets.  I can see many barren planets being set up as P4 factories, with 0% tax. 

I see many small industrialists doing so; then enjoying the attention of the bigger players, especially with planets close to trade hubs.

I have noticed already a large spike in certain P4 (advanced commodities) used in the construction of customs offices.  My personal speculation is that this will continue until after the expansion drops and the rush to build customs offices is over.

Long term, I do see a probable fall in both the P3/P4 prices, as more players do highsec import based manufacture on low/no tax planets. 


I also see a probable fall in lower priced PI commodities (Biofuels, Bacteria); as these are often lower bound by the highsec PI tax rate.

I think that the rest of the materials will remain largely as is, especially supply limited items.

There may also be a move away from single planet PI and towards multi planet PI as more players get access to reasonably taxed customs offices; I am unsure if this is enough to counteract a resurgent interest in PI long term.

Research numbers

A corp member would like me to do some research for him.  That makes sense to me, I have specialised research skills that take time to get; he does not. 

Please find below the email exchange, including his request and my response

--------------------------------
Research
From: <xx suppressed xx>
Sent: 2013.09.16 21:18
To: DoToo Foo, 

Hi

Do you have time to research some BPO's for me?

I'm interested in the following BPO's:

Hobgoblin I Blueprint
Cap Booster 50 Blueprint
Phased Plasma S Blueprint
Incursus Blueprint

If you could come up with a price for those BPO's ME researched.
--------------------------------
Re: Research
From: DoToo Foo
Sent: 2013.09.18 13:12
To: <xx suppressed xx>

Hi

Absolutely happy to research for you.

I do my research (primarily) in POS.  We are currently charging our highsec researchers 11,500 isk/hour for ME (Materiel Efficiency) (10,000 isk/hour for wh based research).  I suppose I should also charge a token for the use of the character research slot, but lets ignore that for the time being.

The question is how much isk/how long you wanted the research to be done.  POS based research is faster.

The other thing with research is that 1 point of ME has a huge impact; the 10th point of ME research less so, and the 90th point very little.

Hobgoblin I has an ideal ME of 91, taking 5 days, 17 hours, each ME takes me 1h 30.
Cap Booster 50 has an ideal ME of 90 taking 1 day 10 hours; each ME takes 23 minutes
Phase plasma S has an ideal ME of 29, taking 1 day 4 hours; each ME takes 57 minutes
Incursus has an ideal ME of 2400, taking 1875 *DAYS*; each ME takes 19 hours. 

To put the Incursus in perspective:
0ME : unit cost 328,453 ISK
1ME : unit cost of 313,026 ISK
10ME : unit cost of 300,672 ISK
50ME : unit cost of 298,671 ISK
1000ME : unit cost of 298,133 isk
2400ME : unit cost of 298,119 ISK

A rule of thumb is nothing needs more than a month of ME research.

0 ME has 10% waste
1 ME has 5% waste
10 ME has 0.9% waste
50 ME has 0.2% waste
Ideal ME has no waste.  That is the rounding errors on the formula is less than 1 unit of any mat.

So in summary, what ME do you want on each blueprint?

Mopping up

The main fighting is done and dusted.  Their POS is destroyed, along with most of their front line ships.  Their precious items hauler is destroyed in the flytrap.

We now have the joy of mopping up.  This means taking down the obviously insufficient small and medium POS.

To take down these POS, we also want to un-anchor our incapacitated modules.  A couple of repair modules on unskilled pilots will be fine?  Umm.  no.  I had previously taken down Customs Offices with barely sufficient DPS; Unlike a Customs Office with passive shield regeneration that must be overcome, each unit of armour repaired stays repaired. But there are so many units to be repaired.

So, position repair ships just outside the shield, lurk under POS guns, and try to pretend that you are not AFK.  If you ever find a T1 logi ship repairing POS guns, you can probably guess that they are paying as much attention as a miner.  The remaining POS guns are however another matter, they don't sleep so much.  Sometimes you really are at keyboard and actively spamming dscan, honest.

To put a module back online, you must repair not only armour but also hull.  Both must be at 100%.  Not 99.99999%, which still shows as 100% but is not.  Is there any way to display raw numbers rather than just the percentage?  I spent a lot of time not knowing what it was that I had to repair, having both hull and armour repairers on guns until the modules became 'anchored', so much more satisfying than 'incapacitated'. There are no hull repair drones, and the hull repair modules that I used seemed to be very close range.  5k is a long way from the safety of a POS forcefield.

Also, after repairing a module, make sure to restock it with ammo.  I spent way to long under the 'protection' of recently repaired and onlined guns, assuming that all those guns I had just repaired had their remaining ammo (hint : they did not).  A Hoarder with spare ammo put aside has its advantages.


Eventually I break down and set up some real repairing ships and repair drones.  Much much faster.  This time I really am at keyboard and almost always paying attention.

Once all the modules are repaired, start stripping modules.  While you can now launch modules and repair them from within the safety of your POS, no such luck with collecting them.  I used a small/fast/tanky industrial and spent a bit of time warping away then back to the next module. Faster than slowboating, though I also did my share of that.

Finally stripped all the modules and offlined them.  On the last small POS I was wondering what an SMA was still doing on my overview.  I had not picked it up before putting the POS offline.  No harm or loss done, though that was good fortune and not good management.

Fortunately, POCO shields regenerate themselves.

And the walls come tumbling down

The important timer happens.  Their re-inforcement timer finishes and they become vulnerable.

It's a week-day timer for me; I should be at work.  Instead I am home sick (really), and I eventually manage to log on.

Their POS is smashed. They lose 2 T3 strategic cruisers.  Rumour has it they have thrown everything valuable into an industrial and logged out, and maybe another T3 strategic cruiser also logged out.

One of our POS come out of re-inforcement at this time; no one thinks they will even attempt to meet the timers, especially with lots of friendly ships online and around.

Daktaklakpak. and Cold Moon Destruction have successfully completed the reverse eviction. (Both are recruiting), leave with a 'call us if they turn up again', and head off to both sleep and then cause mischief in other parts of space.

We set up a flytrap POS where theirs was, or at least where we think theirs was.  There is still some discussion about where a POS will be placed by the game. "Center of grid",  whatever that means, but comparing bookmarks (old and new) make us think we are in the right spot.

Now, a flytrap POS, for our purposes at least, is a deathstar POS, mostly surrounded by warp disruption bubbles.  We made mistakes in setting up, we know this.  (As in not much point in having guns anchored when most of our ammo is back at the main tower)

The flytrap still had a kill, https://zkillboard.com/detail/33186339/ followed shortly by https://zkillboard.com/detail/33186460/ 

For those that don't like following links to other sites; that kill is our POS tower destroying a Bestower full of expensive but portable items, followed by the POS destroying a rookie ship with the same pilot a few minutes later.

Moral of this story.  Don't log out on all your alts in your POS.  When logging in your industrial in a hostile system, ensure the space is clear.


I do not consider myself bloodthirsty by nature.  I still took great delight in knowing we had organised those reports.  Tower defence games at their best.

Red frog corporate theft, and my solution

What gives a second rate, part time blogger the right to offer advice to an otherwise far more successful corpration?

In first life, I work for a medium sized financial organisation, I am one of those that enforces separation of duties. I know (a lot of) how we fight fraud.

I hear that Red Frog lost 45B in isk and ships from their insurance plan, from a director level theft.

First of all, that hurts.  However, I don't see terrible things happening out of it; they will recover.

What I don't know is whether 45B was a small part of their insurance fund, or the entirety of it.

I read that it was a director that went rogue.  What are Red Frog doing with directors for insurance corporations?  A very bizarre decision.


Trust is a necessary evil of doing business.  You want as little to do with it as possible. You want a single defection to not destroy your entire assets.

How I would set up such an insurance scheme is with (at least) 2 insurance corporations, and other players with divisional wallets. 

The CEO's of each insurance corporation should be different real life people, of long term standing, with as much proof of that as possible.  A player of the standing of chribba (the real one and not fakes) is the type of player you want.

Each insurance corporation has an approximately equal share of the insurance fund.

Some of the items in the insurance fund will be locked down by vote items; maybe capital or titan BPO's that are undergoing research, or maybe simply copying.

One of the corporations should have a working 'division', holding a small reserve and maybe a few ships.  Multiple real life players may have access to this account.

Member insurance payments should be deposited into an account (or corporate division) that has nothing to do with insurance claims. 

All other assets (ISK, maybe plex, ships) should be stored across all available divisions, where one player (plus CEO of necessity) has access.  These divisions should represent players from different timezones so that they are available as quickly as possible.

There would be an 'insurance board', of many players, each with access to at most a working division plus one of the reserve divisions.

If a CEO goes rogue; you will lose that corporations items, less any asset locked down by vote.  This will be at most 1/2 of your assets, and should be less (due to locking items down).

If a single member of the 'insurance board' goes rogue, you lose your working account and 1/14th (2 corps, 7 divisions) of the reserve accounts/ships.  Lets assume that the Red Frog insurance corp lost everything.  A 45 B loss deserves to make a post on themittani.com.  However a 4B from a relatively new insurance officer would hardly rate a mention.

Industrial Corporations

Gevlon asks why there are no industrial corporations?  

I think they already exist.  However due to mechanics (kill own members without issues, lack of POS security for more than 7 players, wardecs), many are small scale events.

To a degree, any corp advertising as a research, mining corp, manufacturing or trade is your 'industrial corporation'.  Well, those with more than 3 pilots maybe.

I am not sure at what point the combined Foo corps would be considered 'an industrial corporation' by Gevlon's definitions.  I had a look at our numbers, and am considering that just maybe, we are becoming one.  We make the best we can of existing corporation mechanics.

It could be that because we are wormhole based, missing the empire facilities that many players are accustomed to, that a corporation to provide these services makes sense in here.

We even have a touch of his 'exploitation' in that we have a buying program paying a little less than players will get in trade hubs.

If you are interested in a PI based wormhole corporation, please see http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/p/foo-signature-industries.html

Ps.  the Industry defence series will continue on Monday.

Keeping Watch

At the end of my last post, their POS was under re-inforcement and completely bubbled.  Our medium POS was also re-inforced but not bubbled.  A POCO had just come out of reinforcement, but with the number of 'us' online, there is no risk of loss.

The combined natives (us) and our newfound friends (Cold Moon Destruction and Daktak), had plans on shutting them down inside their bubbled POS.

Maintaining a 24 hour/day watch, in sufficient numbers, is a task. 

The defenders have the choice of when to make a break for it.  They can organise to check for attackers and 'make a concerted push' at a time that suits them, and at a time that does not suit you.

You do leave a few online.  Your bluff is that your allies are only a 'batphone' away.  Sometimes this is true; other times your allies are asleep.  Even a failed break-away attempt brings the attackers the cost of additional needed surveillance.  For defenders, feints are worth considering.

The besieged, with their re-inforced POS, can no longer empty large POS storage arrays (LSAA, CHA), but can use ship maintenance arrays.  If the besieged overwhelm the standing guard, it can take minutes (or hours) to get reinforcements online; in which time their escape with the most valuable items has already happened.

We know; we have now been both the siegers and the beseiged.  In both instances, there were gaps with those standing guard.

Guard duty, staring at the same screen for many hours straight, is a tiring job. Especially on the back of a grind of POS re-inforcement.

While we were sieging, they broke one of the warp disruption bubbles, and even managed to re-inforce our small pos and a few more customs offices.  The purpose of the small pos was as time sink and backup ammo store, so I am pleased it was paid attention.  I noticed that they left our large POS alone (now with a huge number of backup guns; Please let this be a huge number.).  As residents, we should have been more on the ball.  Our new friends were spending time; we could have spent more.

When we got organised, we replaced the broken bubble (with a few large T1's,  so much smaller than the T2's).  But we had to be online and pay attention. 

We are now waiting for their re-inforcement timer.  Much better than waiting for ours.