What can die to 50 man gangs?

Like just about every corp that has ever based out of a POS, I am trying to work out if a citadel is defend-able.

I have been involved in POS bashes before, both as aggressor and defender.  At one point I had a medium POS reinforced by a 10 man gang in a C1.  I learned the benefits of multiple POS gunners and what you can do in the event of an eviction attempt.  Evacuate the expensive non-pvp ready assets and find some more guns.

If you can make a 50 man fleet that is partly competent against an unsupported tower, you can reinforce a large tower, come back 42 hours later and finish the job.

I have little surprise that even in wormhole space, you can make a 50 man fleet that is partly competent to reinforce an unsupported medium citadel, repeat in 24 hours, then repeat in another 24 hours.

The time commitment (DPS grind) is less on a medium citadel, but there is a requirement to show up in a much smaller window 3 times.  A successful defender is not left with the 'joy' of repairing guns while feeling incredibly skittish.

Looking at the current page of zkillboard for Astrahus : https://zkillboard.com/ship/35832/

• There are 40 unfit citadels that were stillborn, and died unfit.
• https://zkillboard.com/kill/54325101/ is a partially fit, nullsec industry rigged citadel, ganked by 101 pilots
• https://zkillboard.com/kill/54317387/ is a twin neut, wormhole pvp rigged citadel, ganked by 14 pilots with twin guardians.  A Large POS may have survived this better.  Nothing except tower fittings is visible on zkillboard as having dropped.
• https://zkillboard.com/kill/54288932/ has a token fit in highsec, ganked by 19 pilots.
• https://zkillboard.com/kill/54254569/ is another partially fit, industry rigged highsec citadel, ganked by 19 pilots.

Of all of these citadels, one had a reasonable shot of being defended.  The rest?  Unless you have a defense fleet, don't deploy a citadel with someone in local, or with open wormholes in Jspace.  When I previously read zkillboard I was seeing similar ratios.

If you are ganking with 101 moderately competant pilots without a significant number of experienced defenders, I don't expect either a citadel or a POS to have much luck.

As a potential defender, I am somewhat concerned about loot drops out of citadels.  I did however support the call that wormholes should not have the full known space safety rules (and a small part of me thinks that they should not in known space either).  I do want better mechanisms for citadel owners to forcibly clean wormhole citadels occasionally.  If, as a citadel owner, I am pro-active about keeping loot limited, I want the tools to do so.  I have not checked what is visible outside the citadel during any citadel shutdown timer, but would want this to not be a call to loot for a full 7 days.

So far, ganking of empty citadels looks like 'content' rather than 'loot' motivation.  Sufficient numbers are being generally brought so that it probably does not matter what structure is being lived in.

(ninja edit  on first line : like every corp that has based out of a POS )

The citadels are coming ... and not just for me

PI prices right now are in an interesting place.

A lot of PI is very expensive compared to historical prices.

I prefer to trade mostly in 'P2' , easy to make, with good compression (not as good as P3, but certainly easier).  P2 'refines' being the first of Foo's Eve PI spreadsheet - Manufacture Tab

Fuel block based PI  (Coolant, oxygen, mechanical parts) have mostly depressed pricing. Enriched Enriched Uranium is ok but even that is down from it's peak.  POS fuel is more expensive but that is due to the addition of strontium clathrates (now being 14% of the cost), and is not caught up in the PI demand for citadels.

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/9832

Some 'P2' is crazy expensive.  Microfibre shielding, Polyaramids, Silicate Glass and Test cultures are all sitting above 30k.  These normally are at the 10k mark.

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/2321

On that note, I have changed (again) the cache setting on my pricing spreadsheet. Possibly less stable, but definitely more up to date.

I also have been trying my hand at twitter,   For someone as verbose as I can be, the 140 character limit is an interesting challenge.  I have already found that there are some ideas worth expressing but not worth a full blog post.

Moving slowly to citadels

At some stage soon, the Foo wormhole corps will be moving to citadels.

Our large Minmatar POS are currently costing approx 700M/month to fuel, and citadels don't have ongoing fuel costs just to exist.

Astrahus - the medium citadels is what we will set up in our C1 and C2 wormholes.  The C1 is for those that prefer the comfort of highsec nearby, and our C2 is for those that prefer to remain in wormholes with a little better PI.

The first citadels of are built in POS, with a significant time efficiency bonus.  (Well maybe not the Palentine Keepstar - but that is a 'unique' proposition.)

Just because I have my eye on the 700M/month prize, does not stop me from keeping an eye out on citadel prices.  When they first came out, the medium citadels were costing 9B, and are currently fairly rapidly.  I expect that the mediums will settle around the 1.5 Bil mark for a while and I will be looking for a few more days of stabilised prices before I go on a spending spree.

From Fuzzworks - my current preferred market history site

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/35832

I am also after a Fortizar for our C5.  Yes ... the lure of capital escalations exists for some of us, and we will get around to it again one day ... honest (Nullsec is keeping me very busy, and Bob only knows what I am even training at the moment.  All I know is something random I set up quite a while ago).

Unsurprisingly the Fortizar's are not heavily stocked.  At roughly 10 times the cost price, and (I believe an even longer research time), they will be slower.  Where there are a lot of mediums on market, there are precious few of these large citadels.  I would like to spend 15B but I might be pushing it somewhat.  Until now the Fortizars will be POS built, with the station based large citadels starting to come out very soon.  I expect that will drop the prices somewhat once station based citadels come out ... maybe.

https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/market/link/10000002/35833

The Keepstars are not even available yet.  30 days for the first citadel off an unresearched blueprint, so the first off the factory lines that are POS based will be approximately 19 May, with the station based builds ones coming out roughly 28 May.

Oops playing with twitter a little too much

I have been playing with twitter blogger intergration.

It seems like I may have been too successful and need to not write new posts just because of tweets.

Looking to fix now.

Democracy is the worst form of selecting player representatives, except for all the others.

I have a plan.

• I love the idea of player representation bringing ideas, thoughts and fears to CCP.  
• We know in huge groups there is a low 'signal to noise' ratio.  Somewhere between 10 and 20 people still make a very large group on a day to day basis, but we probably need this many pilots to represent diverse groups
• CCP should talk to this group 'in confidence'.  Nothing earth shattering if it gets leaked, but still sanctionable if someone should step too far out of line.  It doesn't matter the game, there is always the 'but you promised me a pony' crowd to upset.  Making a pony is hard, and not all attempts work out.
• The largest groups in the game should have people stand up to represent them.  Some of these groups are called 'bears', others have less savoury names.
• Democracy is a the worst way to elect representatives, except for all the others.  (Well, you could vote me in as benevolent dictator, but I am not entirely sure I would return the favour)

If other players see the value in such an organisation, they should support it, and support the candidates.  I know that such an event will be work, and tempers will be exposed, and sometimes people will get inappropriately passionate about this game.  I still support such a body.

Some are even asking that the 85% be represented on such a body.

I might even call this body the Council of Stellar Management.  However the name is unimportant. The number of seats or length of service are also less important than giving the feedback.

I ran for CSM.  Other very worthy highsec and lowsec candidates of various stripes spring to mind. Steve of course who was elected.  I thought other candidates here were also worthy; ranging from bear though lowsec pirate, all the way to highsec wardeccer.

High and lowsec had an opportunity to have more voices.  My initial response to seeing this year's representation was ... to use an eve phrase: salty.  I would love to see a wider representation this year's CSM, and I suspect CCP would too.  If you want a better representation, promote the best candidate you see, or even better run for yourself.

Sorry Rixx, if you read this, reserving votes for some sections of the game won't work.  I might prefer different results for the CSM, but highsec has 85% of the population, and lowsec has been well represented in the past.  Carving off quota's either ends up where 3% of the voters get 30% of the representatives, or it ends up being meta-gamed into pointlessness.  I do endorse one thing though:
In addition CCP needs to help bring the election to the game itself. An active and participatory player base is good for everyone. So I'd like to see more log-in screen support, in-game notifications, billboard and hangar ads, etc., next year.  I want voting for player representing groups to be an 'in game' activity.


Highsec, lowsec and even WH groups can be motivated, and it is up to the bloggers, the FC's, alliance leads and redditors, even the forum posters.  This is a sandbox.  Go build a castle and put 'eve is great' advertising on it.

I want contstructive criticism of the CSM and CCP.  Shine a light on interesting decisions.  There is a however a difference between 'this group can't be all things to all people' and 'all player representation is evil'.  I don't even care if commentators on EVE get it right, as usually even the worst critic's have an element of truth.  If you claim that someone/something will get an unreasonable nerf or buff, you may be right.  If you claim that the sky is going to fall because of it, I want to see compelling evidence.

Where the opportunity exists for me to affect the game in a positive way in the future, I will endeavour to take it.  This includes my blog, and my time, and using the contacts I have made through this CSM attempt.

As usual, I will do what I can, with what I have, where I am.






P.S.  The last few years, CSM released the STV results themselves.  I have not seen them this year.  I would like to peruse those particular tea leaves if anyone has the link.

You got stuck out of your wormhole?

If you live in a wormhole, one day, that shifting door will shut down behind you.

It is embarrassing but it happens.  A little preparation goes a long way towards fixing this.

If you are flying in a wormhole, you have a probe launcher and 16 core scanner probes with you.  16 because sometimes the first 8 get lost.

Before you enter a wormhole, do a 'show info', and compare the text with this page.

Having access to probes and a launcher is even more important if you see any of :

• This wormhole is reaching the end of its natural lifetime
• This wormhole is on the verge of dissipating into the ether (I have never seen this message)
• This wormhole has had its stability critically disrupted by the mass of numerous ships passing through and is on the verge of collapse
• (or if you are in a capital, an orca, or a higgs rigged battleship: This wormhole has had its stability reduced by ships passing through it, but not to a critical degree yet

Please remember to make sure you have bookmarks for both sides of any wormhole you fly through.  

How to have probes regardless of what ship you fly

On a combat ship, a mobile depot and probes + launcher in the hold works well.

On my Epithals, my probe launchers are offline as I don't have the fitting for shields, stabs and launcher.  If I ever get stuck I can offline a shield, online a launcher and get back to empire space. Some ships have so called 'utility slots' that are unused for weapons

There is also the alt account.  Every Eve account has 3 pilots. Send in an alt with a T1 scanning frigate, prototype cloak, scanning mids, nanofibre lows and gravimetric rigs before you send in you pricey combat ship.

I have some 'recruit a friend' trial accounts for scanning alts.  21 days of training gives plenty of time for training astrometrics 4, astrometrics rangefinding/pinpointing/acquisition at 3 on 3 pilots.  Grab the same scanning frigate as above, but put the cloaking skillbook into the cargo hold.  Log off two of these pilots in any wormhole you may need (either defensive for getting home - or offensive for invading someone later).  When it comes time to activate your emergency pilot, you will get either a month of gametime or a plex on your main, essentially making your emergency alt very close to free.  You still need to pay approximately 10M ISK for skillbooks and a basic scanning frigate.

Note: you can not be logged into a trial account and a real account on the same computer at the same time, but you can create your alt, swap accounts and send ISK then log back in again.

If you are stuck in wormhole space

So, for better or worse the above advice is not followed.  Maybe your scanner had an encounter with slightly used ammunition.  Maybe the wormhole was collapsed by your scanning pilot returning home.


Are you truly stuck?  Did a corp member already scan down other exits?  Check your corporation and personal bookmarks.

If you get really stuck in a wormhole without a scanner, your options become limited. If you are in a cheap ship with a cheap set of implants (or even no implants), self destruct your ship for the insurance, then self destruct your pod.  This will be painful but may save you a lot of time.

If you are in a ship or pod too expensive to do this with, you are permitted to break the golden wormhole rule, and ask for help in local.  You are already in trouble, and maybe someone will help, or maybe they will help for a price.

http://www.torpedodelivery.com/wormhole-location/ may be worth a look.  I have never used their service, but would not rule it out either.

Look at the owners of any Customs Offices or POS (or even citadels?) in system and contact their CEO's or diplomats (from corp or alliance descriptions).

Watch the system in Zkillboard (eg https://zkillboard.com/system/31000477/ - just a random wormhole) looking for kills.  If someone is in there, you might be able to get bookmarks from them.

If you end up in a bad place in known space

If you get back to known space and are in an expensive ship, but are in a horrible place, pirates all around or hostiles between you and highsec, then note what system you are in and logout.

Grab another pilot, corp member, alt, or even a activate an emergency 'recruit a friend' alt.  There are some options for ships : A Yacht (Stats , Pricing ) - ideal for a brand new alt, an interceptor with scanner and cloak, ideally a T3 cruiser interdiction nullified and covert with plenty of stabs; and escort your main home.  This escort may be flying +1 system checking for camps or bubbles, or it might be scanning down wormholes or both. It might even be with an extra mobile depot in the hold and a set of warp core stabs (See also http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/how-to-transfer-mobile-depot-in-deep.html )



Getting stuck without a scanner in a wormhole is something I try to avoid, but these are some tips to recover from disaster.

Drone Walkers Recruitment

Greetings and salutations!

I'm  Achaeus Amellion CEO of  Requiem Eternal and member of the Drone Walkers and I have an offer for you.

Let's look at what you do right now. You pay rent. BILLIONS of isk per month. To play the game. You spend your ingame money to make money.

What do you get for that? Systems to play in. Do you get defense? Do they protect your systems? Do they fight for you? No. They do not.

What happens, if you can't make a payment? Well they'll be bros and give you credit right? Wrong. They'll be lenient, but they expect that money on the next payment. If you don't pay? You get kicked, with all your assets locked up.

For the billions of isk you spend, are you getting access to all of the moons in the system?  No. You're not. They're keeping the moons, and collecting money FROM YOU, to help THEM keep their space safe.

Are you free? No. You're nothing but a slave. You work the fields, and they profit.


I SAY IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO TAKE YOUR CHAINS OFF!

Why should you make isk, only to hand it someone else?

Why should you pay isk, to someone who doesn't defend you?

COME JOIN DRONE WALKERS!


Drone Walkers has conquered the region of Tenal, and has a large amount of space in Cobalt Edge and Oasa already.

The war for the Drone Lands is underway.

Join us, and help us win.

If you join up with us, you can rat in Tenal, mine in Tenal, and not pay a single month's rent.

THERE ARE NO FEES TO LIVE WITH THE DRONE WALKERS

WHO ARE THE DRONE WALKERS?!??!?!?!??!?!

We are a coalition of former pvp alliances from the Drone Federation. We decided we were going to fight the CFC, whether we lost our space or not. THEN, the manager of the dronelands gathered us together, and talked to XIX, and they gave us PERMISSION to fight. We would NOT BE LOSING OUR SPACE for fighting the CFC. There was only one stipulation. We were told that when the CFC Won the War, we could not ask XIX for help to protect our space for them.We were told that whatever we conquered... We could decide what would happen.

So we decided, we would make Tenal a place to live, RENT FREE. Where NEIGHBORS, PROTECT NEIGHBORS. We would use R64 moons, to pay ihub bills, and purchase upgrades, all around the region.

They found out about this, and were PISSED. They wanted to consider Tenal part of their "Renter Empire." They wanted those R64s for themselves. Then the CFC started getting it's ass KICKED. They thought we would get broken on the CFC, and we'd be weaker and easier for them to manage. Then they saw how many people we were fielding in fleets. The manager of the dronelands, got us MONEY to fight the CFC. We didn't ask for it, but hey, isk is isk right?

Then the XIX Rentershitlords put out a statement, saying we were breaking the NIP. (CFC invaded Cobalt Edge two years ago, HELLO?!) They said we were taking isk, to break NIP. (Their manager is the one who gave it to us.) They said we broke an agreement by holding R64 moons. (They didn't fight for Tenal, why should they get them?)

Why do you align with this group? They're the worst! Come join us! Have a say in your future. Don't pay rent to the machine!

If you are interested in joining, please send me a mail or join this channel:  01100110 01110010 01100101 01100101

Regards, Achaeus Amellion


This is a mail I received from Achaeus to keep us informed.  If you are interested, evemail Achaeus Amellion or DoToo Foo