The Overview

Who else remembers the blog-post by Kirith Kodachi about the new Overview?

Basically, its about how different ships should get different icons in the overview. I know it made it to the Test Server. How long is it going to take CCP to release this to the live server?

In addition to this, I remember them talking about a Beta Tested NeoCom. I run a mac, and their is no option to activate a new neocom.

CCP - Please spend more time bringing the Mac Client up to par with the PC client. The software and hardware are superior on a Mac, why cant the client be superior? Or screw superior. How bout 'on par!'

<3 BFF4EVER!

Amarrian Proverb #158

If you, upon meeting another man, speak with force in your words, you will knock him off his feet. Losing balance, he will want to push back with force in his tone and verbiage as well.

If you, upon meeting a man, stand side by side with him, you will see his point of view, and he will yours. You both will be able to walk together to a destination, than stand in one spot pushing each other back and forth.

The Human Resource

It's easy to get drawn in as an industry player by an array of different resources for production; minerals, ores, ice, gas. All serving a purpose to drive us in New Eden to the inevitable pewpew while in constant pursuit of the almighty isk.

Its equally easy to get distracted as a PvP'er by the never ending hunger to lock down the perfect target with you and your buddies, say the word and extract tears as someones hard-earned ship vaporizes into a cloud of gas, fumes, and essential fluids.

I've made the observation that Corporation's in New Eden tend to underestimate EVE's most valuable resource: The Human Resource.

Many corporation's get a solid group of players and think "That's it. We've recruited. Lets go blow shit up/mine/rat/mission." Down the line, however, these people will tend to run into a very real problem. By fault of inactivity, Real Life, family agro, burn out, or conflict, your people may very well fall off the map for you.

Many CEO's, myself included, have neglected the idea that major businesses in the world have long considered a principal rule-of-thumb: one-out, one-in. This meaning that once you lose an employee (or in our case, a player), you immediately begin the process of replacing him.

Now everyone here knows that recruitment and HR management (Yes, I used that term) in EVE is not so simple as to be governed by one rule. But this is a good starting point for CEO's who may have let recruiting and personnel management become a back-burner issue. I highly recommend that CEO's make this a top priority. Allow me to explain.

Last month, Genesis Invictus was hit hard with a war that came from within. We were wardec'd by a member of one of our member corps. The individual was frustrated at some of our policies and our handling of certain situations. While most of leadership, myself included, felt his concerns with overly critical and unwarranted, he felt that it was a very real problem. We, as an alliance, failed to provide adequate means for this individual to have his concerns seriously considered. As such, he hired a merc to wardec us without us knowing.

The Merc was very good, and long story short, he was able to cripple our industry wing and our navy that we had put together. Due to poor HRM infrastructure in our alliance, a grievance turned into something that put our alliance on life-support.

Currently we are getting things back on track, but due to poor investments in recruitment and HRM, we are now finding ourselves back to square one, recruiting new players, posting our recruitment ad in the eve-o forums, ect.

The moral of this story: its critical to consider the most valuable and potentially lethal resource that we have available to us in this game. Other Human Beings.

For those out there that feel that corporations in Eve are just pixilated internet spaceship groups of strangers... for the most part you're right. But there is a new, very real aspect that many of us are exploring as CEO's. The idea that in order to be a successful internet spaceship support group for wayward gamers (corporation for short), you need to have a functioning and effective Human Resource Element to the organization.

Interview with Candidate Ms Pacman for CSM6

Earlier today, I had the chance to interview Ms Pacman, current candidate for CSM6. She appears to share some core values, but on her platform, there were vague points that I wanted to address. In the following interview, she does well addressing my questions.

Although there are some topics that I think are too ambitious at this current time, the premise that she is ready, willing, and able to see past disagreements and come to stronger conclusions is why she will most likely have my vote come voting time.

Here it is:

Thank you for your willingness to answer a few interview questions. As you know, CSM is growing more and more important for players in EVE and the issues are piling up. The following questions are to make my readers understand what exactly will be done to fix the broken aspects of this game.

1. You say you want to increase the value of null sec by increasing Neo/Tech moons. How you do think this will impact the player base? How will this make null sec more attractive for Empire Organizations?

Technetium and Neodymium, two moon minerals in two very geographically specific regions, own them and you own the game. You make so much money from them that your pvp players effectively fly for free. An outsider in empire can't compete with that. They never have to take a break because the money flows so easily. By seeding more of these moons all over null sec the value of these moon products will go down. As an example: I personally own the Hulk BPO since 2005. In the beginning I could sell Hulks on market for 550M isk.

Later in game Invention got introduced and the Hulk price went down 120M isk (back then) as a result. In addition: Currently it is even not profitable to produce hulks or other T2 ships when you have to buy your materials from the empire market. When there will be more neo/tech moons going to be seeded through all of null sec the same will happen as that happened with my hulk sales value. So what it does is that the current null sec power alliances their isk printing neo/tech moons will become less valuable and so their dominating power (caused by this form of income) will drain out.

Also as a result that market prices will drop in empire everyone will get the opportunity to make better profit on selling T2 ships or to buy a T2 ship in empire from people that got a T2 bpc from their agent. How null sec will become more attractive for empire corporations has to be seen in a bigger picture. There is more than one measure needed to make this work. To get a better insight people should read my page at evelopedia: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Ms_PacMan_(Character) In order to make the whole idea work in my manifest there will have to be implemented a kind of transition period serving both nullsec and empire.

2. You state in your manifest that you want to make it harder to maintain coalitions of alliances. How do you plan to attack this issue? What changes will you be proposing? 

Coalitions of Alliances is the axis of all evil in game and is the main reason why empire corporations and small alliances cannot settle themselves independently in null sec. The only way to get access to null sec is to join an existing null sec alliance but your corp will be used as cannon fodder. Coalition of alliances causing blob wars and are the reason there are lag issues, making it much harder to maintain coalitions will solve a lot what lag and ‘blob’concerns. How to fix: First of all to make changes to the overview. If you are in null sec everyone not in your alliance will appear red but this won’t be enough as the power alliances have enhanced methods outside of eve but a good side effect of being red to your coalition partners outside empire en low sec will be that they no longer will be able to use eachothers jumpbridge networks, make use of eachothers pos’s.

3. Renter-space is a problem that most of us agree on. How would you end it, seeing how it is acceptable through current game-mechanics? 

Ending renter-space will need a transition period, serving all parties involved. Perhaps with my solution it will even stay possible to rent space but with a total different setup and on a way smaller scale. At least during the transition period the renting of space will have to go through ‘rent slots’. A rent slot will affect a system that is under sovereignty of an alliance. The alliance will have a limited number of rent slots that they can offer to corporations that are not member of the alliance (3rd party corporations). Rent fee’s will have a limit this way and extravagant fees like 5 billion a month will be history. 3rd party corporations will appear , say, yellow to the landlord alliance and vice versa at the overview. (in my manifest there is a larger setup plan about this matter) I agree that this does not completely answer your question about seeing how it is possible through current game mechanics but again it will be the pack of solutions provided that will aid in this. When power alliances no longer have exorbitant income from neo/tech moons rent space as it is today can no longer be guaranteed by them, concerning regional stability.

4. You want to eliminate power blocks and vacuums. What is your definition of "Power Block?" How would you end them? 

My definition of a power block is that it is currently impossible for small alliances to fight their way into null sec and claim some space after victory. My pack of solutions and the transition period will cause that Very Large Alliances will dry out. Smaller but more alliances will settle in null sec that will bring back ‘fun pvp’ instead of the annoying daily mandatory cta’s.

5. What methods would you bring up in Iceland that would help give empire corporations and alliances a fair chance at settling in null sec? 

Most of CCP´s resources are currently not invested in Eve. CCP perfectly knows what the problems are in game they won´t need me or that to tell them. I do think however that they are unable to think out of the box and that’s what we will have to do with CSM-6 working on an enhanced edition of my pack of plans, presenting them the total solution, worked out based on few programming time.

6. Finally more of a question for entertainment. Who do you want to win the next Alliance Tournament? 

The alliance tournament has become a toy for the oil barons and sheiks of Eve. I hope in better times that your alliance will become 2nd in the finale against my alliance.