The tragedy of commons is a well-known economical problem, described by the anecdote: "herders sharing a common parcel of land, on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze. It is in each herder's interest to put the next (and succeeding) cows he acquires onto the land, even if the quality of the common is damaged for all as a result, through overgrazing. The herder receives all of the benefits from an additional cow, while the damage to the common is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational economic decision, the common will be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all."
In more precise terms, when the cost of an action is shared by all while the benefits are private, the rational interest of every individual is to perform the action, even if they know that at the end, the costs will be higher than the benefit, because if they don't do it, they still have to bear the costs of the actions of others. The tragedy of commons can only be prevented by regulation or privatization. In both cases an individual or body assumes control over the resource (or parts of it) and fends off those who would exploit it for their own benefit at a greater cost of all.
How does it manifest in the current EVE wars? The star systems can be utilized for various activities if they are protected from enemies. The costs of having systems is to raise an army capable of protecting it. Even if the individual agrees it and finds protection of the systems a worthy goal, the rational self-interest is to not waste resources defending it but hope that others do. If he chooses to defend, he puts in his resources and everyone receives the benefits. If the fleet wins, all members of the alliance equally win the system. The guy who spent a year of training and billions of ISK to fly a supercap don't get more sovereignity than the guy who disappeared for a week and played an anonymous alt for fun.
For this reason the block where the governing body has more control over the resources (not pilots) will win the war, regardless the amount of total resources or pilots. In simpler words, the wealth of the pilots is irrelevant, the wealth of the alliance matters. Clearly not SoCo or DotBros has such funds but CFC and HB. Everyone mention tech moons as the source of CFC-HB power and they are right, however they don't see how. 1T/month seems huge income, but if we divide it by 20K pilots, we get lousy 50M. The members of SoCo and DotBro could clearly overcome this disadvantage by farming a few hours every month. I'm sure they do farm. However what they farm goes to their individual wallet, while moon money go to the wallet of the leadership, allowing them to use it on the war effort. The leaders are motivated to use money for war, the individuals are not.
The above can not be broken by individualists, even if they all agree that army is needed and defeating the enemy is a worthy goal. Since formal control over players cannot be assumed (as you can't force players to log in a video game if they don't want to), only financial control can happen: an alliance that wishes to defeat another must have higher alliance level income. Ergo, the members doing PvE must be taxed or donations must be collected. From this chest the leadership can buy ships and pay pilots to spend their time on shooting structures, camping gates and so on.
Obviously the above assumes that "defeating the enemy" or "capturing sov" is an individually accepted aim of the members. If it's not, such alliance will be destroyed in a minute as the members quit it instead of paying the tax. The philosophy "I don't care about politics, I just care about myself and I move where I can" is completely legitimate. One can be a freelancer, one can live in highsec, lowsec, NPC-null, unprotected wormholes hoping no one finds. These are valid, philosophical choices.
However what SoCo did is not a choice, it's a mistake. They choose to be a powerblock and they did not fill up a war chest hoping that members will act against their personal interest and defend the alliance on their own costs. They clearly didn't. When the enemy were strong, they did not undock or did not log in, while CFC-HB happily waste fleets in uncertain battles. The pilots did not lose anything on this as they are fully reimbursed.
If you choose to be a powerblock, you must have a budget to fund the common goal: defending your land and capturing more.
Friday morning report: 147.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)
In more precise terms, when the cost of an action is shared by all while the benefits are private, the rational interest of every individual is to perform the action, even if they know that at the end, the costs will be higher than the benefit, because if they don't do it, they still have to bear the costs of the actions of others. The tragedy of commons can only be prevented by regulation or privatization. In both cases an individual or body assumes control over the resource (or parts of it) and fends off those who would exploit it for their own benefit at a greater cost of all.
How does it manifest in the current EVE wars? The star systems can be utilized for various activities if they are protected from enemies. The costs of having systems is to raise an army capable of protecting it. Even if the individual agrees it and finds protection of the systems a worthy goal, the rational self-interest is to not waste resources defending it but hope that others do. If he chooses to defend, he puts in his resources and everyone receives the benefits. If the fleet wins, all members of the alliance equally win the system. The guy who spent a year of training and billions of ISK to fly a supercap don't get more sovereignity than the guy who disappeared for a week and played an anonymous alt for fun.
For this reason the block where the governing body has more control over the resources (not pilots) will win the war, regardless the amount of total resources or pilots. In simpler words, the wealth of the pilots is irrelevant, the wealth of the alliance matters. Clearly not SoCo or DotBros has such funds but CFC and HB. Everyone mention tech moons as the source of CFC-HB power and they are right, however they don't see how. 1T/month seems huge income, but if we divide it by 20K pilots, we get lousy 50M. The members of SoCo and DotBro could clearly overcome this disadvantage by farming a few hours every month. I'm sure they do farm. However what they farm goes to their individual wallet, while moon money go to the wallet of the leadership, allowing them to use it on the war effort. The leaders are motivated to use money for war, the individuals are not.
The above can not be broken by individualists, even if they all agree that army is needed and defeating the enemy is a worthy goal. Since formal control over players cannot be assumed (as you can't force players to log in a video game if they don't want to), only financial control can happen: an alliance that wishes to defeat another must have higher alliance level income. Ergo, the members doing PvE must be taxed or donations must be collected. From this chest the leadership can buy ships and pay pilots to spend their time on shooting structures, camping gates and so on.
Obviously the above assumes that "defeating the enemy" or "capturing sov" is an individually accepted aim of the members. If it's not, such alliance will be destroyed in a minute as the members quit it instead of paying the tax. The philosophy "I don't care about politics, I just care about myself and I move where I can" is completely legitimate. One can be a freelancer, one can live in highsec, lowsec, NPC-null, unprotected wormholes hoping no one finds. These are valid, philosophical choices.
However what SoCo did is not a choice, it's a mistake. They choose to be a powerblock and they did not fill up a war chest hoping that members will act against their personal interest and defend the alliance on their own costs. They clearly didn't. When the enemy were strong, they did not undock or did not log in, while CFC-HB happily waste fleets in uncertain battles. The pilots did not lose anything on this as they are fully reimbursed.
If you choose to be a powerblock, you must have a budget to fund the common goal: defending your land and capturing more.
Friday morning report: 147.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)
8 comments:
“For this reason the block where the governing body has more control over the resources (not pilots) will win the war, regardless the amount of total resources or pilots.”
Why is this, exactly, and what examples have you got to support it? You go on to talk about CFC/HB vs SoCo but that was a very blatant case where the amount of resources, pilots in particular, was the tipping point; SoCo’s finances had little to do with the fact that they were being outnumbered 3 to 1 and there were far more players in the opposing blocks (note that it was blocks plural that were fighting them) than in their own block. If they could have had 100% attendance then possibly they could have countered the forces that showed up, but then if their enemies could also call on 100% attendance they’d have been even more outnumbered.
Having total control of a very few resources is inferior to having partial control of a very large amount, because it still allows you to call on a greater total amount of resources, and having any amount of resources is useless without pilots to utilise them; more members aren’t an automatic win, but when you can bring 3 times as many members in reasonable combat ships (and yes, basic PvP drakes count as reasonable combat ships) than your enemies then you have a huge advantage.
“In simpler words, the wealth of the pilots is irrelevant, the wealth of the alliance matters.”
The alliance wealth can override pilot wealth if it’s large enough, certainly, but as long as pilots are willing to spend their personal isk on ships to use for alliance operations (which some will always do because fleet actions are what they enjoy and they’re willing to subsidise their fun) then that ISK can be viewed as alliance wealth. Your beloved Navy Apocs were funded by their pilots rather than their alliance, for example, while alliances like -A- are built around a core of players who actively enjoy fleet PvP and are willing to PvE or sell PLEX in order to partially fund it from their own wallets.
“1T/month seems huge income, but if we divide it by 20K pilots, we get lousy 50M. The members of SoCo and DotBro could clearly overcome this disadvantage by farming a few hours every month.”
If we assume 100mil ISK/hour (probably not achievable by every alliance member, but let’s go with that anyway) then that 1t/month equates to 10,000 man hours of labour. That’s 416 days worth of work, every month. That is a big advantage, and more than that it effectively handicaps their enemies - sure they can work harder to catch up, but if the alliances with that headstart put in the same amount of effort then they remain well in the lead.
“However what SoCo did is not a choice, it's a mistake. They choose to be a powerblock and they did not fill up a war chest hoping that members will act against their personal interest and defend the alliance on their own costs.”
And you know this how? SoCo alliances rent systems (AAA Citizens is one of the largest alliances in the game, even) to make ISK and all have corp taxes, both of which fund the alliance wallet and pay for ship replacements and sov. That doesn’t give them the economic clout to hold out or win against a much larger coalition which has far greater income, though.
“When the enemy were strong, they did not undock or did not log in, while CFC-HB happily waste fleets in uncertain battles.”
They engaged the enemy when the fights were winnable. Delve 3 started out as HB attacking Nulli (overwhelming odds and resources in HB favour) then escalated when the rest of SoCo came to their aid and outnumbered HB forces, then escalated again when the entire CFC joined in, once again bringing overwhelming numbers and resources. SoCo refused to undock when their enemies had 3 fleets to their one with replacement ships for any losses they could inflict coming in near-instantly via jumpbridges. Under those conditions, what could they have achieved if they had undocked?
You mix the result with the cause. CFC/HB didn't get those numbers from thin air. There are 400K players in this game, CFC/HB is mere 5-10% (figures uncertain), so there was large recruitment pool for any opponent. They fail to get numbers because their offer is "come, bring your ship and risk it for us".
CFC/HB have numbers because their offer is "come, fly with us, and have fun for free".
In the current NC. war, there are often "battles" that end as total fleet annihilation for CFC, like this: http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=14529947
These "battles" keep CFC pilots entertained and logged in while waiting for some serious deployment. This is what SoCo could have achieved if they'd undock against outnumbering enemies.
The reason why CFC is capable of doing so is reimbursement, keeping the pilots free of losses.
The alliance fund was first, the numbers came after.
You do realise that SoCo alliances have ship replacement programs as well, right? I know -A- only offers partial reimbursement for strat cruisers (alliance replaces raw hull, corps/members must replace subsystems/fittings) but as far as I'm aware they have full reimbursement for t1/t2 hulls. Their offer is also "fly with us for free".
CFC/HB have numbers because they have ties to large out-of-game communities to recruit from and they're very public organisations with no/low SP and experience requirements so they also attract lots of new players who only know them from EVE.
You might notice the numbers fielded for that battle you linked; the CFC actually had a notable numbers advantage vs NC. and that could have turned into a victory (losing relatively even fights is the downside to taking lots of players with low SP and no experience who have no personal investment in not dying). This is very different from the situation with SoCo vs CFC/HB in which there was a massive numbers disparity.
During Delve 3 SoCo forces engaged CFC/HB fleets whenever it was reasonable to do so - their members didn't refuse to fight because they weren't willing to lose ships (which, again, were largely covered by replacement programs) they just refused to undock and die pointlessly. They even up-engaged vs larger enemy fleets when they had sufficient tactical advantage to do so; ships to counter drake blobs, enemies fighting under cyno jammers etc, but when the CFC/HB forces had so many people that there wasn't anything they could achieve, why should they undock just to pad CFC/HB killboards?
"The alliance fund was first, the numbers came after."
Not really; the large out-of-game community leveraged to large numbers in EVE from the word go. Goonswarm certainly started out with no alliance level funds and members supplying their own rifters, ammo and fittings. From what little I know of TEST origins they were much the same. The other alliances that make up CFC/HB have grown about as organically as any other EVE alliance, which means they started off being funded by members PvEing for ISK before they had any sov to leverage for renters or moongoo. There was no pot of ISK around which these alliances formed and attracted pilots.
"These "battles" keep CFC pilots entertained and logged in while waiting for some serious deployment. This is what SoCo could have achieved if they'd undock against outnumbering enemies."
SoCos pilot would not have found such losses entertaining in the way TEST pilots did even if the alliance had reimbursed them fully.
different cultures.
For some, exploding is always a loss. It may be a premeditated loss or a chosen loss but it is still a loss. A reimbursement program will not make them feel that it was less of a loss.
For some, exploding is described as fun. Blowing up ships is found to be amusing. Suicide fleets are enjoyable.
Like types flock together and form cultures and develop different PvP styles. It’s not just the ISK loss of the ship. It is the pilot’s feelings of the situation they have been placed into. They may feel that today they are going to lose their ship to further a goal and be fine with that. Or they may feel that their fleet commander is wasting them.
Ask someone about inty pilots who don’t do their job because they don’t want to die. They know that their job is important but they also know the chances of escape are so finite as to not be there. For some, that builds up and they grow tired of it.
Some logistics pilots burn out because they are a ghost force and there is not a place to prove what they did.
Exploding feels too much like failure for some. In a game, played for enjoyment, eventually, one can tire of the constant loss. This is where moral comes in.
Many of the wars in Eve have ended way before the ISK ran out because of moral.
The tragedy of commons is actually much more relevant when talking about cartels. For a good example of this look for Kwark uK's post about controlling the contract market. You can see a similar thing with FW lp and how it has completely broken down into a 'race for jita'. Screwing over everyone for temporary personal gain happens all the time in eve.
"Clearly not SoCo or DotBros has such funds but CFC and HB."
-I literally have no idea how you can possibly remain this close-minded and ignorant about the finances. If you are going to be so narrow-minded about this, at least acknowledge that moon mining is but a small part of an alliance's income.
-PS AAA and Solar don't have all the tech moons that CFC has, yet they are still rolling in isk, due to huge Renting programs.
-NC. had tech and renters, two renting alliances in fact.
"...but if we divide it by 20K pilots, we get lousy 50M."
-Not all are active, and many are alts
-They are not a socialist coalition, nor are they supporting you S&M guys
"...an alliance that wishes to defeat another must have higher alliance level income."
-No
-Actually make that a hell no
-ISK does not equate to wins.
-You can have all the isk in the game, but if your guys are terrible at pvp, you will still loose.
-Its a false comparison
-PL fielded Malice's and Bhaalgorn's in their AT match against Rote. BUT HOW! ISK does not give you wins, it merely is a sort of force multiplier.
"Obviously the above assumes that "defeating the enemy" or "capturing sov" is an individually accepted aim of the members. If it's not, such alliance will be destroyed in a minute as the members quit it instead of paying the tax."
-They do it for the good fights and for the fun
"LAST PARAGRAPH"
-You have not been playing eve long
-AAA is one of the last old alliances of the game. Red alliance is like them, but they have shriviled up. AAA has lived by Stain since they became an alliance, stop thinking that the only isk that a person or group can hold is the steady income that they make.
-Isk reserves dont hold out forever, but AAA can afford to welp supercap fleets and still be healthy.
"If you choose to be a powerblock, you must have a budget to fund the common goal: defending your land and capturing more."
-AAA has a large isk reserve, so does NC. and other alliances. Contrary to your belief, i dont think any major sov alliance is anywhere near bankruptcy.
-Many alliances only hold space for the isk, they dont care if they loose it.
-As much as i hate to say it, if AAA lost all their space, not much would change, they would most likely get it back later on.
I, like you, tend to think and attempt to evaluate stuff that happens in-game. However, unlike you, appear to understand some of the shit that actually happens. You go off on all of these tangent about how fucked up Highsec, Lowsec, Nullsec, Plex, Carebears and taxes are, but i don't think you have a very good understanding of any of it. I feel like propaganda has taken a hold of whatever logic you may have possessed.
You:
-Ignore large portions of Alliance Income
-Fail to understand why many people play the game
-Ignore the entire premise of alliances renting space
-Ignore the fact that some alliances hold space only to rent it, and dont care if they loose it.
-Make gross assumptions
-Fail to see that not everything is surface level
-Continue to make the false comparison of Personal income vs alliance income
-Fail to properly understand any aspect of the game other than trading
-"Attempt" to dissect aspects and analyze how bad alliances are based on flawed logic and propaganda.
I suggest that you make an alt or two and actually experience other areas of eve or atleast gain insight into them, before you try to hyper-analyze
Your posts and analyses are so infuriating, that i save them to read before i go on long runs or work out.
I started a blog myself last year. I stopped it because i neither cared nor had the time, your self-derogation and general obliviousness might actually motivate me to rant through my "blog" instead of this terrible comment box.
PS the Comment Moderation does not improve my view of you at all
"The tragedy of commons can only be prevented by regulation or privatization."
There is another solution, made popular in the Hollywood move A Beautiful Mind, presumably by mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr.
In this alternate solution, each individual recognizes that he/she is part of the whole group of users, and weights his decision making process accordingly. For example, in a group of 10, an individual might give his personal interests 90% weight and give the interests of the group 10% weight.
This solution is, of course, not feasible in most situations, because it requires an uncommon level of maturity from the users of the commons.
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