Since my scout alt has improved in skillpoints significantly, it was time to go for a longer journey to nullsec. Here is the planned way:
And the beautiful screenshots I made all over New Eden:
I choose the Battlecruiser skillbook for the post as it's a necessary skill for every pod-jumping newbie and veteran alt. Of course I checked ammo, implants, other skillbooks. The results are pretty poor. Besides Deklein and some low- or NPC-null systems the market is in terrible shape. The reason for it is the poor population of nullsec:
One can wonder which was first? There is no market because there are no people, or there are no people because they can't sell or buy anything and must haul themselves or go highsec. I will definitely build up a nullsec hub somewhere to figure it out.
Monday comes a bubblecamp survival guide. After I lost my ship to a warpin-side camp and figured out, I traveled nullsec with relative safety. While you can lose covops ships to well-planned bubblecamps, you can travel in enemy space long if you do it right.
Friday morning report: 132.8B The miners are in overdrive, buying all the mining implants. (2.5+1 spent on main accounts, 1.9 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.7 on Ragnarok, 1.1 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.8 on Avatar).
And the beautiful screenshots I made all over New Eden:
I choose the Battlecruiser skillbook for the post as it's a necessary skill for every pod-jumping newbie and veteran alt. Of course I checked ammo, implants, other skillbooks. The results are pretty poor. Besides Deklein and some low- or NPC-null systems the market is in terrible shape. The reason for it is the poor population of nullsec:
One can wonder which was first? There is no market because there are no people, or there are no people because they can't sell or buy anything and must haul themselves or go highsec. I will definitely build up a nullsec hub somewhere to figure it out.
Monday comes a bubblecamp survival guide. After I lost my ship to a warpin-side camp and figured out, I traveled nullsec with relative safety. While you can lose covops ships to well-planned bubblecamps, you can travel in enemy space long if you do it right.
Friday morning report: 132.8B The miners are in overdrive, buying all the mining implants. (2.5+1 spent on main accounts, 1.9 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.7 on Ragnarok, 1.1 on Rorqual, 1.4 on Nyx, 1.8 on Avatar).
36 comments:
How big of a dent do you expect 7% of the population to make on the map, even at prime time?
Prime time is not prime time for my alliance for instance. The population stats are 100% not logged in at any given time.
Couple of things. A lot of guys in null have a jump clone out in an empire trade hub. When they want to inject a skill they might jump back, buy a few skills and inject them.
OTOH I belong in a large alliance with a JF service. Rates are around 100isk^m3, with skillbooks (up to 5m^3) shipped for free.
It's easy enough to put a trading alt in Jita and contract it to my main.
Alot of nullsec alliances make an effort to not use the market in 0sec.
Using the market allows hostiles to fiddle with the prices and mess with the equipment your pilots need.
So what those alliance do: they have delivery service from Jita, and they use Corp/Alliance contracts for Fleet Ships.
A low sec / null hub can be made but profits will be much less than Jita trade.
I expect that Gevlon will write a long post after several weeks explaining how he proved that actually profits are too low for 0.0 / Low sec and thus he busted another myth.
@Peter: this is silly. The enemies would just hurt themselves buying up things that they can't carry away due to no docking rights.
I have seen countless time how enemies clear all sell orders before major battles so that pilots couldn't reship 3-4th time (usually pilots keep only 1 replacement ship). Also many times someone messes with the market and relists items at higher price. We have always been advised to ship items through JF services and to put doctrine ships on corp/alliance contracts.
It's silly for you because you have no experience other than being carebear in high sec.
It's silly because it's silly. At first having a good market doesn't interfere with having more replacements. Secondly there should be enough on the market with various prices. If someone wants to buy out even the 50% overpriced ships, more power to him. At the end he'll have to sell it back to you below price since he can't carry it away.
The buy out, relist higher idiots always made me rich and see no reason why should it be different in null.
Actually having the ships on alliance contract without extra price is more risky since a single spy could buy it out, deny you ships AND get profit in the process.
@Gevlon: I think you are not getting Peters argument right.
Surely the enemy would hurt his wallet, if he buys all items, that he afterwards cannot carry away.
But the reason for this is not getting the items, but denying them to the enemy.
And if the enemy would aim for a sov change, he actually can get them back.
It might all sounds silly to you, and I understand your point. But if I would be an enemy trader working for my alliance, I would use my capital exactly like that, if I knew that this alliance was solemnly trading through market.
The point is not earning ISK through that move, but completely removing those assets from the alliance.
most deployments are done from an npc station that the enemy CAN dock at. sov stations can easily be lost. even in my home region i dont keep all my ships in 1 system. buying all the replacement ships so you cant defend and than flipping sov is a valid tactic. do a few searches you should be able to find a guide on the goon wiki how to mess with enemy market hubs and why its just as important as combat.
I got it. Players don't stack up properly, want to buy in the last second and they can't because someone bought it up even at a loss.
However the problem can be solved the same way as it's solved now, the ships are stacked on alliance contracts and such. A working market would just let the alliance stockpiling guys get the ships with less hassle.
Also it does not affect non-military items like roaming ships, skillbooks, T1 ammo for ratting, ores, rat drops, implants and I did not see them on the market either.
Market attacks are done because they work in denying the enemy potential assets - obviously if you know how to do it. Who cares in what station they get trapped into, we'll deal with it after we take it, they might as well just vaporize into ether/be blown up via ISK, the point is to prevent them from appearing in enemy fleets shooting at you at the critical strategic moments.
"You're not a sociopath, you're a vulcan..." Arrogance and self superiority combined with ignorance and lack of counter-intuitive thinking. Sure you can "question everything" and "learn something 100%", but there is a humble way of doing it, and an arrogant way of doing it. But it's ok as long as you can edit out the megafails before they end up on reddit and Tobold the comments. Is that a social, emotional response I'm detecting there?
To ease your burden of discovery a bit - in general, the macroscopic answer to why?/why not? questions in 0.0 warfare is: natural selection. Doing it that way lead to you surviving and winning. Doing it the other way/not doing it lead to you losing and being exterminated.
skillbooks dont sell well. most ppl have the basics when they move to null. the corp or alliance normally buys the ore since its not really safe or efficient to solo mine. no one uses T1 ammo mostly faction for pvp. T2 for ratting. i have been able to find some implants but less of a market for expensive ones. no penalty for killing pods out here
@Steel: You are right that everything is the way it is because it's the only way or die. Where can I join BoB that owns half the sov and will never lose it, especially not to those Rifter idiot Goons?
EVERYTHING must be questioned, if it works it will be answered and explained, if not, changed. Of course it irritates the plebs who have no clue why they do what they do and they indeed give me some extra work clearing up their "u haz no experience itz shit" spam.
I'm 100% sure that nullsec economy is far from optimal, even more far than highsec which still allows 500M/hour income to those who bother to optimize it a bit.
Also, why do you think that a market can only be manipulated against the alliance and not against the enemy? Let me give a simple example. Doctrine ship hull costs 100M. I have 100 on the market for 120. An hour before a timer they all disappear. I list another 100, now for 150M. +50% isn't much to ask from those who DID NOT READ THE DAMN ALLIANCE MESSAGE of "bloody battle is coming, have enough replacement ships" They disappear too instantly. I list another 100, and so on.
Let's say I can sell 50B worth of ships for 50% profit. That's 25B damage to the enemy alliance wallet they can't get get back ever, and another 50B that is locked up in a station that they can't access. On the other hand all my assets are free and I made 25B that allows me to play the same game with 50% more ships on the next timer.
The funniest thing is that you call me out for talking about things I have no experience when I talk about the thing I'm one of the most experts in EVE: Market PvP.
So read my post one(a few more) time?
The market can be manipulated in every way by everyone, both by your own alliance wiseguys that will buy out and relist 50% higher (hate corp mail threads on this just the other day), by your enemy to deny you assets, and by everyone in between. What are we debating here?
Also my beef(and the other plebe's) isn't the questioning, it's the tone and the arrogance. I have learned (the hard way) to watch your blog around the time you post and always screenshot the posts the instance they appear. You were warned...
The other beef I (we plebes) have is with the "hey guys, look, I just invented the Internet!". The nullsec markets are not "far from optimal", they are complete shit, or they just don't exist at all, everyone and their hisec alt brother knows this. Unless you are an alliance that actually lives in your space, and fosters a culture of growth and newbie recruiting - that's pretty much goons, which is why VFK is the best market hub in 0.0, and even that is 20% above Jita sell prices. You're welcome.
My nullsec corp has a "corp store" where I place orders. Within a day or two those orders are filled and the goods delivered to the station I choose at the Jita price. Also, some ships and mods are probably Jita + 3% at alliance stations. What costs way more are T1 meta stuff.
Goon and TEST space probably has the best stocked 0.0 markets.
Goons even developed a tool to help importers :
http://goonmetrics.com/
It gives indications on what items have the highest trade volume and what kind of mark-up you can expect over Jita prices.
You might want to take a look at it.
Trading in null sec seems to be mostly about importing stuff and selling at a 10-50% markup over Jita prices.
just thought I would post this broadcast from TEST alliance, literally just received now:
So, fyi, Darkos relisted all the scimitars in -A- space at 200%. Also all the remote reps, ECCM, ECM, and sensor damps.
So all those scimis you just killed? Yeah. You're helping TEST not be spacepoor anymore, since they are buying them from us at 200% cost!
This is market pvp in nullsec. those ships are needed by -A- and friends. TEST had the resources to buy them out. any -A- scimi pilot who did not have a spare ship is now forced to buy them at 200% cost.
On the buyout comments... when I was engaged with GSF in my home space, somebody came and bought out all the Damage Control IIs I had on the market (200). I posted 200, more, and the same guy insta-bought them. i posted 200 more... purchased. 200 more, etc. After buying around two thousand DC IIs, he convo'd me asking how many I was going to post. I replied "How many do you want".
He stopped buying them.
If your alliance wants to use the in-game system, have a supply KNOWING your enemy will buy-relist important mods / ammo / ships. Otherwise YOU'RE doing it wrong. (Especially since MAJOR conflicts are known in advance.)
0.0 markets are special as far as competition is concerned
1. You will get a lot of heat if you charge more than Jita + 20% (this kills ideas such as "the guy putting up ships on contracts should just buy from the local market" that require profit to be split several ways; I tried selling ships I bought in Rens [as Jita was another 15 jumps away] - not possible as everyone thought I was ripping them of even if I sold at cost, the markup of Rens over Jita was too much).
Yes, they would rather have nothing on the market/on contracts at all than overpay.
2. Competition form jf services has already been mentioned. My corporation has daily jf runs to our staging system (wherever that currently is) and we can just evemail the jf pilot our shopping lists of things we want him to get for us from Jita and we will have them within a few hours.
Our service is tip-based (which is probably better for the jf pilot) but usual fees for alliance jf services are in my experience 300-500 isk/m^3.
You are also competing with Black Frog (who are more expensive than in-alliance jf services and only deliver to NPC stations).
3. Buying out "friendly" competition is a big "no" in most places. Some idiot decides to list an item at Jita price without any markup - you have no option but to wait until his order has sold.
This leads to informal cartels - you have an upper price ceiling that is very low (Jita+20) and a lower price ceiling (JIta) and not much wiggle room in between.
There are usually very few people who seed markets or contracts on a significant scale and these people have to be very careful not to ruin each others profits.
Altruists who list items without any markup are not uncommon and you can't speak out against them (look at the recent reports by TEST members rgd the defense of 49-, they are proud of members altruistically seeding the market at Jita prices).
4. 0.0 prices lag behind empire prices.
That's a big opportunity for profit when prices are on the rise. I found a NPC 0.0 tradehub in June where almost all T2 modules were still listed at pre-OTEC prices. Apparently one single guy had seeded the market with 300-500 items of each type 2 months ago and not adjusted prices at any point afterwards. Now these items were significantly cheaper than in Jita.
@Anonymous: Trading is never easy. "I farmed for free" people are everywhere, you just have to live with that.
Point 3 is just common sense. Buying out someone who is already at or above Jita price is stupid. He declared that he is ready to supply for that price so he can do it again. You MUST wait him out not because someone says so but because if you buy him out for relisting higher (you can do it as an AFK-cloak neut) he just JF in more items for sale.
OK, first of all calling yourself an "expert" in Market PvP is just laughable Gevlon - the only PvP involved in your trading is when you try and break the 0.01 ISK cartels. I really hope you play long enough and get deep enough into the EVE markets that you realise just how little you know now. I know you'll never admit it on here but I hope that just to yourself you look back at these posts and say "Wow, I really was clueless back then"
Real market PvP is far more than just breaking the local 0.01 ISKers and moving stuff from supply to demand. When you can do things like cause a rush of speculation on an item in a major market hub, profiting as you plough its price into the ground and then scooping up a vast quantity of the supply when the price has hit rock bottom to relist when it recovers, then you can say you know market PvP.
In the case of Nullsec economic warfare there's a lot more to it than you're considering. Bear in mind that it's not just (and sometimes not even) being done to make money, it's also supporting a wider campaign. You say it won't work because you can just keep posting whatever items are being bought out at higher prices but that only works as long as you have more supplies to post. Eventually you run out of stock locally, then you've got to either abandon your attempts to restock the market or acquire more stock, probably importing from hisec. That takes time and doesn't really help people who need to reship now because there's a major fight going on. You also say that it leaves the people buying up your markets with a lot of items they can't use. While it's true that they can't fly the items out (unless they've got an infiltrator who does have access to the station) they can repost the items for sale themselve - Evemonkey's shown how that can be an ISK source above - and of course if they conquer the station (say, because the defenders couldn't replace their lost ships because none were for sale) they do get access to everything.
You're also ignoring the psychological effect this kind of economic warfare has on the victims; having your enemies take over your market hurts morale and makes people feel vulnerable even if their space is secure. It can foster dissent between corporations as well, especially if seeding the markets falls mainly to one specific corp or group of corps. Aside from doctrine equipment you can also buy up PvE equipment as well while hunting down the players PvEing between operations; take out a player's ratting ship while you've also made sure there are no replacements on the market and you make it a lot harder for that player to make ISK.
If you really want to you can get into social engineering as well; for example, what if in your example I buy all your ships until you start posting at 2x Jita price, then leave them there. I buy anything you post under that. You make a tidy sum of ISK but now the items on the alliance markets have a huge markup on them and as other commenters have said that doesn't tend to go over well with your customers. Then one of my spies starts a rumour suggesting that the character I'm buying the market out with is actually your alt and it's just a con so you can pocket more of the alliance members' ISK. Maybe the alliance kicks you, maybe you get so frustrated at the other mebers' suspicions that you leave, maybe some corps that are having doubts about the alliance use the situation to make an ultimatum - "Gevlon goes or we go" as an excuse to get out. Never forget that the goal of nullsec warfare is to destroy the enemy's will to resist; getting them to tear each other apart in suspicion and doubt works just as well for that as crushing them with your military, if not better.
@Hivemind: now it's you who make laughable comments coming from obvious ignorance of the markets.
"major speculators" that profit on price changes they create are one of my favorite targets. If anyone calls my attention on one, I make them pay badly for their idiotic idea. There was one guy who tried to do it with Takhmal Technology. He bought up like 100 pieces and relisted at 50% markup. He is still selling these.
You buying out at 2x Jita price won't last long, as you run out of money much faster than I run out of items which is *never* since these can be imported from Jita endlessly.
Having 100+B means that the cost for you to do that against me is higher than the whole damn battle. I mean you buy up 100B ships for 2x price? Fine, you just made your alliance 100B losses and another 100B locked down (I'm sure no one would try to pull it with his own money).
Even the bloodiest subcap battle doesn't cause that high damage to the enemy. True, it can cause us to be unable to continue the battle. Who cares, we just pull off and let you take that system, and take it back next day thanks to your generous 100B donation.
The quote of EVEMonkey worked only because AAA had zero defense against market PvP, which is not a big surprise.
Whenever you hear someone telling "I can control the market" you see a liar or a terribly weak market.
@Gevlon no, it's not silly
what you do is you do is either:
a) you know you will hold the station at some point, and you will collect items then
b) you sell them for exorbitant high prices back to the people living in that station (you don't need docking rights for that), further crippeling their morale.
So are you saying that it's impossible to make more ISK back from market manipulation than you put into it? That you can't take an item that you already have a large stock or steady supply of, artificially inflate the price and cash out before the bubble bursts?
Incidentally a quick check gives Takmahl Technology a price of around 80-100mil so your example of a "major speculator" is someone who spent 10bil. That really isn't that major by the standards of long term market veterans.
As for the rest, what game are you playing that has magical logistics that don't take any time, cost or effort and draw from an infinite pool of ships and items that have a fixed price that isn't going to respond to sudden spikes in demand? Because I thought we were talking about EVE.
Firstly, importing from hisec is time consuming. Depending on where you are you'll need 2-6 or more Cyno beacons to get you all the way to a lowsec border system, then you have to fly the ship from your border system to your preferred market hub gate by gate because you can't cyno into hisec.
Even assuming that you have dedicated alts parked in each location so you don't need to wait as they get into position, and assuming that you're using station systems so you don't need to wait to recharge cap and you don't wind up getting camped into a system en route you're looking at 10+ minutes before you get into hisec, probably another 15-20 minutes from your border system to a market hub (because JFs are not fast ships) and then once you're loaded up it's another 10+ minutes back up the cyno chain.
That's about 40+ minutes for a round trip; not a massive timesink but you have to do it every time you need to pick up a new batch of stock, and I'm making some very generous assumptions here.
More important than the time involved though, there are not an infinite number of ships to import. Using Scimis as an example, there are (as I type this) only 115 for sale in Jita. That's far short of the "unlimited" number you're talking about - you could buy them all up for 1/4 of your 100bn ISK in fact. What do you do when they've been bought up, shipped out, sold and then bought out by your enemies and relisted at 50% more than what you sold them for?
Finally you miss the point of the 100% markup - it's about spreading distrust and suspicion throughout your alliance and ideally removing the player(s) who are actually stocking their market in a cloud of mutual resentment. It doesn't need to be a 100% markup to do that, anything that will annoy the general members will do, and if you've got the right foundations laid (relatively trusted infiltrators to spread rumours etc) it can be worth the ISK invested to hasten a failcascade and to cripple the target alliance's markets for the duration of the campaign. Doubly so if it hastens capture of the station and liberation of the purchased items.
@Hivemind: Except you can't sov mistrust as it makes absolutely no sense to sell for myself. Also can't lower morale as most people are not so stupid to have no replacement ships. That few who has to pay the +100% will be laughed at by everyone.
To what Hivemind said. Forget about the nullsec market itself, even Jita itself is vulnerable. I remember reading a forum post by the main reimbursement officer about how some hull types like T2 cruisers need to be trickle bought slowly over time, because if you buy them all the day before the invasion you can blow up the market and the prices for weeks following.
You may be overestimating the intelligence of your overall nullsec grunt. You may also overestimate your understanding of social mechanics at alliance level. Sure you could name and shame someone who is without backup ships. But it's more productive (from a social pov) to have a fully stoked market and fitted ships on contracts, and at "acceptable" prices, so that guy can instantly reship and get back on the titan. I have never seen it happen, actually. Probably because if you rage at that guy, he'll say "fuck you asshole, It's 3AM here and I'm going to work tomorrow...". Actually you won't even have the chance to do that, because when he is out of ships, and sees there's only one ship on contract for 3x Jita price he'll say "thanks for fleet FC, goodnight". You may also not want to piss him off, he might just quit the game or find a different alliance. And in here, when someone "leaves", he usually takes with him things like all your forum content, your corp hangar content, your reimbursement wallet content, etc. And so on.
In your hardcore 25 man WoW raiding guild you'd have kicked him long ago (actually never hired him), but in in your 10000 man megablob alliance you want him in your fleet, happy and content, shooting another set of guns at the enemy, or another set of shield reps on your main command ship, at 3AM in the morning, on a Wednesday. No numbers cap, remember? In this game, it's the alliance that needs to endear itself to the grunts (read: M&S), not the other way around. You want to maximize morale and happiness and fun(the horror), so that your pilots have good participation and log in to your fleets. So if you have the choice between a social positive-happy-shinny thing that increases morale a bit (like having enough ships available no questions asked), and one negative-rainy thing, but one that makes you all fuzzy and self-righteous inside, like sperg-nerdraging, being a dick, and taking yourself all too serious in a game of internet spaceships, you pick the first one, everytime.
Well, at least that's how (parts of?)my coalition does it...
@Gevlon: The most important currency in null warfare is warm bodies in ships that are capable of targeting and pressing F1. Remember that.
Warm bodies do not think rationally. You would consider them "M&S". They would be outraged and demand you stop your "abuse" of the market. It's easy to do this kind of manipulation. Just ask the Jews.
It is worth noting that in an hypotetical situation where the enemy allaince has enough money to buy 100 scmis (or any ship) at 100% its very doubtfull that those 100 scmis would have mattered in the battle anyway.
case and point:
You win, the fleet needs to acheive a greater ratio than 2:1 for it to be better (for the ship) to be out in the field, does not seem likely and even if they did you won so who cares?
You lose: if you lsoe the battle well those scmis achevied a 2:1 ratio even though they never saw combat aka, good.
you lose Sov well then the Scmis performed to 1:1 ratio - in a loss you typicaly take greater losses than 1:1 so you still performed Well.
now this is a simplified model of course and while defending you are typicaly forced to take losses to defend the objective (you can thus have negative ratios while defending an objective making those sold Scmis an even better deal for your alliance).
and as a final note, an enemy than can defeat you in space, couch upp money to buy all your ships and generaly owns you would likely win anyway rendering it mostly moot to begin with.
Funny, you talking about unlimited ships in Null.
A simple point:
- How exactly are you planning to get those ships there?
Assuming a JF holds a max of 32 Scimitars (Depending on your travel distance, Fuel considerations, etc. You can go to 35, but that's it.)
A geddon? 6 of them.
Assuming:
a) You are an extremely experienced JF pilot that really knows what and how to do the job.
b) You have excellent Intel about your route of travel
c) You are not hindered by natural causes to complete your jumps
d) You have enough alternatives in case your route is compromised
I would say you can fly in a load every hour and a half, assuming a range of 22 LY that will also cost 25,000 Isotopes, so roundabout 20M if you fly it "high priority", by using jumps. The way back is about the same if you want to get close to Jita.
So, theoretically, 1 1/2h hours of work for a Jump Capable Char, 40M costs, and you got in 32 or 6 ships, while also putting your 7B JF at risk deploying it during an active engagement.
This is just assuming the technicality of the issue, not the real situation.
So, if, during an engagement someone buys all scimis or geddons, it will take an experienced JF Pilot about 30 minutes until replacement arrives, if he acts immediately. So he's running against the clock, and so are all the adrenaline filled pilots that need to reship under combat conditions. Even if he takes the all in option, he can supply a max of 30 or 6 ships/h for reshipping.
Of course you can keep ships in stock, but then you lock down *your* money. Assuming those 300 "ships" you mentioned, and a Geddon being 80M and Scimitars 180M, you will lock tons of your own cash on the *eventuality* that this will happen. And still leave more than enough attack vectors in other market items.
Not using the market is a simple way to actively remedy this kind of attack on an Alliance or Corp.
And actually, this part is only the tip of the ice. There is soo much more to consider.
@Anonymous: you should stock up BEFORE it happen, not after.
@Steel: What you say is outright nonsense. You are practically suggesting that I should kiss the ass of a random idiot who is outright wrong but I still have to make him feel good because I need him.
Consider who is "I" on this suggestion? Me, Gevlon? And what about all the alliances where I am not present? Who play the role of "I" there? Do you honestly believe that there is a group of people out there who spend their time making a random idiot happy?
I mean do you really think there is someone who logs in the game with the idea "I go and spend a few hours to get ships for some raging idiot kid because if he don't get it he might leave this alliance"?
At this point it almost feels like you're trolling Gevlon. To answer your question: Yes, that's exactly what leaders of major alliances do. They have squads, so members can get a community to be a part of. They have newbie programs, free skillbooks etc. to get the new players hooked. They use propaganda to motivate people to log on. There's jabber where people chat and socialize around the clock, and forums with lots of out-of-game social stuff.
As a member of GSF, we have a great logistics team. They ensure that ships are brought to Deklein regularly, and that there are contracts up. And if they fail to supply a shiptype, we have Goonmetrics that makes it very easy for random members to import and sell with a markup.
In large nullsec conflicts, more bodies is always an advantage. You get more dps, and you get another body the enemy has to primary and kill. Nullsec fights are also a big numbers game, where fleets will stand down if they see they are vastly outnumbered, so another body is never a bad thing (unless they awox or something).
I'm not a social person myself, but I'm not stupid. I understand very well how these mechanics work on people, even if they don't work on me. How it's possible that you can be so ignorant of how the average person works, to the point shown in these comments, is baffling me. So much that I find it hard to believe you really do, and that you're either trolling, or you're simply unable to accept that you're wrong (or you simply cannot stand to lose a discussion and admit to being wrong)
@Babar: you seem to assume that there are two kind of players:
1: "warm body" who is welcomed and fed with free items just to keep him in fleets
2: "others" who for some reason feed the first type
I wonder why would anyone want to belong to the second type?
Because they use the others as tools.
Hasn't thousands of years of human evolution, which you claim to be peak of, taught you anything?
It's simply a matter of opportunity cost.
Actually neither I nor Babar is assuming that people are... anything. It's actually you that is always trying to divide people into neatly defined groups of leet, m&s, casuals, socials whatever. People are people. They are diverse, they are lazy, they are crazy, emo, irrational, they want shit their way, they go on vacations to Vegas while you decide to invade another internet pixel spaceship empire, they have sex with their wives (fap to porn) during your capital system's final timer, some get off on moving pieces on a chessboard, or wearing the emperor's killboard stat clothes, or whatever. And, there are 5000-50000 of them.
We are not talking about kissing someone's ass, since that implies a certain level of um... intimacy that just doesn't exist in a 10000 man alliance (so actually you couldn't even if you wanted to). It's about people skills, and people managing skills, and idiot managing skills, and cat-herding strategies at a massive (multilayer online) scale. One can try to re-engineer (internet nerd)humanity in their own image, pass endless rules, rage and sperg indefinitely, or one can design macro systems to work with/around/compensate for people's idiosyncrasies and messed up way of being. As the great Donald Rumsfeld put it, one goes to internet pixel spaceship war with the turbo-nerd army they have, not the one they wish they'd had.
Sorry for the offtopic.
@Evemonkey and Gav: -A- response to TEST market warfare.
SO this is a ping that they sent out to everyone:
-------------------
(11:56:39 PM) So, fyi, Darkos relisted all the scimitars in -A- space at 200%. Also all the remote reps, ECCM, ECM, and sensor damps.
So all those scimis you just killed? Yeah. You're helping TEST not be spacepoor anymore, since they are buying them from us at 200% cost!
#### SENT BY - Barrien Truespike to honeybadger @ Aug 10 2012 23:56:39 EVE Time ####
-------------------
Apparently Test doesn't realise all our scimitars are on alliance contracts or given out for free and we are 1j from empire. lol
PK
From the looks of it TEST believes that they've invented market warfare and believe -A- are noobs that don't know about it. -A- handles all strategical equipment like ships and stuff on alliance/corp contracts because we are aware and do market warfare as well. -A- corporations are encouraged to be self sufficient (self sufficiency, on alliance, corp and rank and file member, is a very important part of the -A- 'culture' or whatever you want to call it, it has helped us survive for a long time) and have logistical wings to make sure their pilots are stocked up and are less affected by market warfare. Logistics ships in particular are of high importance for us and sometimes we even just hand them out free to pilots. However I do agree that market warfare can impact the effectiveness of an alliance even when they do have similar mechanisms in place to guard against it. Sometimes a pilot just needs one module or a script or something, so in that case it can be a pain in the ass. It is therefore the job of the alliance to make sure that market warfare does not impact it's operations. The biggest problem with alliance/corp contracts is that other blue alliances cannot access your contracts, and that can be problem. You can do public contracts, but they are also vulnerable to market warfare (we made a killing on goon/test ship contracts in Delve during the first part of the war, buying everything out and relisting it with ridiculous margins (and the best thing was, they we buying it back like crazy, my guess is their rank and file did not bother to even look at the price, figuring it will be refunded or whatever).
The way I operate is borne out of the first time I went to null when I was in a small alliance that was living out of a POS, although we had a station nearby that was sometimes stocked up. However I always hated to pay higher prices so I always carried with me 1-2 GSCs full of everything I would need. This I do today as well. In my corp and alliance base I have 2 GSCs with all the stuff (sufficient for fitting and rearming about 30-40 ships of various types as well as implants and all the little things that people need in their daily EVE life) and when we deploy my carrier is full of format ships and a GSC with the necessary loadout. If I need anything in particular we have a logistics service in our corp that can get me any ship, fitted accordingly, delivered to wherever we operate at Jita price+transport costs for corp members. Our logistic guys also do some alliance contracting and alliance market seeding on the side for profit.
When you've got a market war in nullsec on, it can be quite profitable. There was actually one time when we sank like 25 bil units of ozone isotopes to some market warfare guy in GE-. He started buying our fuel, which was at like jita+20% and we would just buy it in Jita or Amarr, deliver it as fast as possible to GE and sank it to him for even higher margins. By the time the guy stopped buying we made a fortune. He relisted it soon at below our price to sell fast. We did some extra griefing on him by undercutting strong. Point is, as long as you're within 1 jump from highsec, market warfare is not as efficient as it can be as long as the entity holding that space has good logistics. However when you're into deeper nullsec, it can be very painful.
In my little corner of null-sec, the only skill books that move are the ones with "specialization" in the title.
And the only time I bring any down there is when someone asks me to buy one - then I bring 2-3 more to sell on the market.
Based on my experiences so far (less than a month in null-sec), it appears that most things are made and distributed inside corps and alliances, rather than placed on the market.
Post a Comment