No, it's not another business report, my income is 1.2B/day (8B/week) and no one cares about that. It's a report on solo ganking. On Jan 27, 4 weeks ago I started solo ganking Code-violating, AFK-ing, untanked mining barges. I've been busy since then, and in the last 4 weeks I did not fleet up with anyone, so all my kills are solo. Look at the butchers bill:
It's not easy to put this number into context because everyone and his mother has 1000+/month kills, 50B+ ISK damage done and 99.99% efficiency due to the way the killboard calculates these: you get full value for every kill you took part in. If you were in a noobship in Asakai you could easily get 700B kills. However this error is smaller for corporations and even smaller (though non-zero) for alliances. If 10 corpies kill a ship, each of them get the full value, but the corp gets only one value, not 10x. Of course if members of two corps kill something, both corps get the kill, so even corp kills are overestimated. However as we move to larger and larger entities, the error decreases. So let's compare this 12B/week solo kills to the largest sov-holder alliance: TEST. Their killboard has weekly results:
OK, TEST is known to be bad at EVE, let's look at the oh-so-elite NCdot:
The Pandemic Legion killboard is weird enough to stop me from getting ISK destroyed data, but their stats show about 1.5x more kills for the various corps than EVE-Kill.net (some kills are not uploaded to the public board). So I went to EVE-Kill and found:
Let's look at small-gang elite alliances, like Rote Kapelle (where Jester plays):
No, the purpose of these hilarious numbers are not to make these alliances look like clowns. I made it to expose the huge inbalance between highsec and nullsec. A small corp of me and 19 of my clones could outperform the largest sov-holder alliance both in ISK generation and kills. How? Because I'm in highsec, where the money is. Money means "farms and fields": the "peasants" who generate the income to nullsec are not in nullsec but in highsec. Nullsec alliance members can't compete with me because the farmers of their enemies are not in nullsec. A TEST roam can't kill FA miners, highsec gankers can. Since the miners, ratters and missioners are barely present in nullsec, null is nearly empty, PvP-ers find no one one to kill.
On the top of the huge income potential, highsec also provides anonymity. Some people might be tempted to say "the members of these alliances with joke stats could defeat me 1v1 and could end my highsec massacre with a few seboed Tornados", but they are wrong. They could only camp Botslayer Goblin, my 2 months old pilot into a station while I can easily continue somewhere else on an unnamed alt. You can't do the same in nullsec because your friends would shoot your unnamed alt, not knowing it's you. Losing ships to friends is bad enough, but imagine the consequences if you shoot a wrong neutral Falcon!
Without huge nerfs to highsec income to force at least the nullsec people to live in nullsec instead of farming in AFK Retrievers on the other screen, nullsec remains the wasteland it is today, lacking both decent income and targets to kill. If you want something bigger in nullsec than idiotic frig/T1 cruiser roams, vote for highsec nerfing candidates for the next CSM. Until CCP fixes this, leave that empty wasteland and come where the money and the targets are: highsec. There are enough untanked barges and 10+B, zero buffer missioning battleships for everyone!
Beside voting, the nulseccers could do more: hold a "strike" when they refuse to kill each other in nullsec, instead they come and gank in highsec. Not in the wasteful "Burn Jita" style, but smartly, with solo-duo catalysts farming miners in 0.5-0.7 and dropping Taloses on scanned down missioners. This can be done profitably and can be upheld eternally, until CCP finally fixes the nullsec economy and makes it profitable to live there. Alternatively they could hold a capital mining op where the capitals and supers of various alliances are peacefully mining as a protest against the messed up EVE economy. The end goal is to have significantly higher ISK/hour in nullsec, therefore creating targets there. As long as a highsec ganker has higher ISK destroyed than an average Pandemic Legion member, the high-null balancing is not acceptable.
- Jan 27: 20 kills, 4890M
- Jan 28: 11 kills, 1137M
- Jan 29: 22 kills, 1457M
- Feb 1: 9 kills, 352M
- Feb 2: 19 kills, 738M
- Feb 3: 24 kills, 2268M
- Feb 5: 14 kills, 2907M
- Feb 6: 16 kills, 1706M
- Feb 7: 26 kills, 1692M
- Feb 8: 7 kills, 477M
- Feb 9: 42 kills, 2770M
- Feb 10: 27 kills, 1415M
- Feb 11: 15 kills, 1288M
- Feb 12: 18 kills, 960M
- Feb 13: 36 kills, 3960M
- Feb 14: 26 kills, 1538M
- Feb 15: 19 kills, 1720M
- Feb 16: 29 kills, 1926M
- Feb 17: 54 kills, 3755M
- Feb 18: 23 kills, 2254M
- Feb 19: 34 kills, 1944M
- Feb 20: 25 kills, 1803M
- Feb 21: 15 kills, 759M
- Feb 22: 37 kills, 2706M
- Feb 23: 39 kills, 1663M
- 81 kills, 8.57B
- 129 kills, 11.82B
- 170 kills, 12.81B
- 227 kills, 14.88B
It's not easy to put this number into context because everyone and his mother has 1000+/month kills, 50B+ ISK damage done and 99.99% efficiency due to the way the killboard calculates these: you get full value for every kill you took part in. If you were in a noobship in Asakai you could easily get 700B kills. However this error is smaller for corporations and even smaller (though non-zero) for alliances. If 10 corpies kill a ship, each of them get the full value, but the corp gets only one value, not 10x. Of course if members of two corps kill something, both corps get the kill, so even corp kills are overestimated. However as we move to larger and larger entities, the error decreases. So let's compare this 12B/week solo kills to the largest sov-holder alliance: TEST. Their killboard has weekly results:
- Week 7: 3334 Ships killed (242.18B ISK)
- Week 6: 3543 Ships killed (229.4B ISK)
- Week 5: 3628 Ships killed (283.49B ISK)
- Week 4: 3968 Ships killed (647.6B ISK) Asakai week
- Week 3: 3360 Ships killed (316.44B ISK)
- Week 2: 3780 Ships killed (220.96B ISK)
- Week 1: 3434 Ships killed (278.94B ISK)
- Week 52: 3157 Ships killed (176.82B ISK) 2012 week 52 of course
- Week 51: 2604 Ships killed (180.56B ISK)
- Week 50: 3041 Ships killed (233.7B ISK)
- Week 49: 2274 Ships killed (240.64B ISK)
- Week 48: 1468 Ships killed (101.94B ISK)
- Week 47: 1673 Ships killed (123.79B ISK)
- Week 46: 2558 Ships killed (137.34B ISK)
- Week 45: 2751 Ships killed (187.82B ISK)
OK, TEST is known to be bad at EVE, let's look at the oh-so-elite NCdot:
- Feb (on 20th): 3928 Ships killed (535.02B ISK)
- Jan: 9004 Ships killed (1444.49B ISK)
- Dec: 6326 Ships killed (544.55B ISK)
- Nov: 5059 Ships killed (676.51B ISK)
The Pandemic Legion killboard is weird enough to stop me from getting ISK destroyed data, but their stats show about 1.5x more kills for the various corps than EVE-Kill.net (some kills are not uploaded to the public board). So I went to EVE-Kill and found:
- Feb (on 20th): 4310 Ships killed (476.13B ISK)
- Jan: 8446 Ships killed (1697.61B ISK)
- Dec: 5186 Ships killed (800.19B ISK)
- Nov: 2891 Ships killed (454.22B ISK)
Let's look at small-gang elite alliances, like Rote Kapelle (where Jester plays):
- Week 7: 227 Ships killed (12.44B ISK)
- Week 6: 275 Ships killed (18.83B ISK)
- Week 5: 180 Ships killed (19.27B ISK)
- Week 4: 318 Ships killed (22.41B ISK)
- Week 3: 222 Ships killed (33.34B ISK)
- Week 2: 208 Ships killed (9.23B ISK)
- Week 1: 452 Ships killed (22.06B ISK)
- Week 52: 196 Ships killed (14.96B ISK)
- Week 51: 320 Ships killed (35.8B ISK)
- Week 50: 309 Ships killed (37.08B ISK)
- Week 49: 405 Ships killed (50.48B ISK)
- Week 48: 243 Ships killed (20.5B ISK)
- Week 47: 188 Ships killed (22.47B ISK)
- Week 46: 198 Ships killed (16.43B ISK)
- Week 45: 189 Ships killed (21.5B ISK)
No, the purpose of these hilarious numbers are not to make these alliances look like clowns. I made it to expose the huge inbalance between highsec and nullsec. A small corp of me and 19 of my clones could outperform the largest sov-holder alliance both in ISK generation and kills. How? Because I'm in highsec, where the money is. Money means "farms and fields": the "peasants" who generate the income to nullsec are not in nullsec but in highsec. Nullsec alliance members can't compete with me because the farmers of their enemies are not in nullsec. A TEST roam can't kill FA miners, highsec gankers can. Since the miners, ratters and missioners are barely present in nullsec, null is nearly empty, PvP-ers find no one one to kill.
On the top of the huge income potential, highsec also provides anonymity. Some people might be tempted to say "the members of these alliances with joke stats could defeat me 1v1 and could end my highsec massacre with a few seboed Tornados", but they are wrong. They could only camp Botslayer Goblin, my 2 months old pilot into a station while I can easily continue somewhere else on an unnamed alt. You can't do the same in nullsec because your friends would shoot your unnamed alt, not knowing it's you. Losing ships to friends is bad enough, but imagine the consequences if you shoot a wrong neutral Falcon!
Without huge nerfs to highsec income to force at least the nullsec people to live in nullsec instead of farming in AFK Retrievers on the other screen, nullsec remains the wasteland it is today, lacking both decent income and targets to kill. If you want something bigger in nullsec than idiotic frig/T1 cruiser roams, vote for highsec nerfing candidates for the next CSM. Until CCP fixes this, leave that empty wasteland and come where the money and the targets are: highsec. There are enough untanked barges and 10+B, zero buffer missioning battleships for everyone!
Beside voting, the nulseccers could do more: hold a "strike" when they refuse to kill each other in nullsec, instead they come and gank in highsec. Not in the wasteful "Burn Jita" style, but smartly, with solo-duo catalysts farming miners in 0.5-0.7 and dropping Taloses on scanned down missioners. This can be done profitably and can be upheld eternally, until CCP finally fixes the nullsec economy and makes it profitable to live there. Alternatively they could hold a capital mining op where the capitals and supers of various alliances are peacefully mining as a protest against the messed up EVE economy. The end goal is to have significantly higher ISK/hour in nullsec, therefore creating targets there. As long as a highsec ganker has higher ISK destroyed than an average Pandemic Legion member, the high-null balancing is not acceptable.
18 comments:
Should you succeed, high-sec will be neither "high" nor "sec".
It is a significant game balance disruption. Regardless of how the devs are handling it, the game design is obviously built around having a relatively safe high-sec zone.
Which means that, once you reach large enough impact at some point, CCP will need to intervene.
Would CCP be inclined to intervene on behalf of AFK-mining players? Do they openly support AFK mining in their game design philosophy?
Does any past history of CCP interventions provide any clue as to what scale of disruption you need to cause for it to happen?
Can you expect to achieve your goal of rooting out all the AFK-botters before this intervention happens?
I do want CCP to intervene by decreasing the income in highsec. If the ratters/missioners/miners leave highsec, the gankers will follow since it's always easier to gank without concord than with.
I thought one of the New Orders main complaints was that mining ships were boost to such a level they could not be ganked. Clearly your results show this to be false.
These mining ships which you so easily gank in highsec are the same ships you expect people to use in lowsec. Are they really fit to use anywhere other than highsec?
The trouble is that trade and industry thrive in a stable environment I would argue that the reason nearly all trade takes place in highsec not because of the level of income but because the environment is relatively stable with which to do trade. The greatest way to decrease income in highsec would be to move the trade hubs into lowsec. Compared to the trade hubs everything else is small change.
@Bobbins: you can't move trade hubs to low/null since they are not developer creations. Jita 4-4 isn't different from any other station, players choose to use it. Removing it would be annoying but people would relocate fast.
The low/null safety is different from high. In highsec you tank your ship to live long enough until Concord arrives. In low/null you dock/safe up if hostile shows up or use the combat ships of alts/blues to catch hostiles.
There is so much wrong in this post. Let me make a list.
1. (ISK calculations) - what do you want to show us here? That hisec ships are usually more shiny? Well, everyone knows that and it's pretty understandable.
2. (nerfing hisec) - that's a big mistake shortsighted players make (yes, James is also one of them). There are a lot of players in hisec that will not move to low/null. We call them carebears and they are an important part of Eve. Why? Because they bring a LOT of $$$ to CCP and that comes back to us as new game improvements/events. Nerfing hisec will just make them quit and move to a new game in which they will carebear. CPP talked about this some time ago, so nerfing hisec is out of the question. Instead, low and null must be buffed a lot. True carebears will still stay in hi, but low and null will get more blood.
3. "idiotic frig/T1 cruiser roams" - we all know you don't really understand PvP, so please don't make such statements. Frig roams are one of the most exciting things you can do in Eve. In fact, I can think of solo frig PvP as the only thing more fun. No matter how much more juicy targets you bring in, those "idiotic frig/T1 cruiser roams" will still continue because of fun factor/adrenaline rush they give.
4. "vote for highsec nerfing candidates for the next CSM" - and that would be a vote wasted. Because of point 2, CCP will most likely ignore those CSM members' input. Ripard Teg made a valid point explaining this to people. You cannot nerf hisec and buff everything else. You just need to do encourage people to take the risk because of increased profit or leave them be where they are. Take the profit away and they'll just say "screw it" and then everyone looses.
5. "leave that empty wasteland and come where the money and the targets are: highsec" - that call will only be answered by gankers. And ganking has nothing to do with real PvP.
6. "but smartly, with solo-duo catalysts farming miners in 0.5-0.7 and dropping Taloses on scanned down missioners" - and loose a crapton of players. Bearing point 2 in mind, that would likely trigger the opposite response - CCP will somehow make hisec safer to keep players from unsubing (faster Concord or such). And it's something really boring for someone who actively fights with other players.
@Anonymous: you wrote lot of things, showing complete failure of understand of the post. I've proven now without doubt that highsec is extremely overpowered and someone going either after ISK or kills should be in highsec.
At this point CCP can go two ways: nerf highsec, lose some players and gain others who like the competitive play or abandon low/null and replace all developer resources to make highsec a more interesting carebearing place.
A player who is now in low/null is either mistaken or a loller who just want to fool around.
@Gevlon
'you can't move trade hubs to low/null since they are not developer creations.'
You can however create circumstances that would move the trade hubs to lowsec/nullsec quite easily by using taxes. This would also nerf highsec mining (which I know is a theme) as it would make it more expensive to sell/buy the ore in highsec. Allowing nullsec to competitive price (tax) its trade services would generate revenue for the alliance and effectively make them able to undercut the highsec.
'The low/null safety is different from high' - which gives rise to the question are the ships balanced for highsec or lowsec. Docking up as a game mechanic seems a pretty poor one as does using combat ships to catch really cheap ships who are capable of blowing up billions of isk in ships very fast.
@Bobbins: increasing highsec tax, or rather broker fee is a great idea, since in null broker fee is alliance income. It would move at least null trading to null. Currently if a TESTie sells a blood raider LP item to another TESTie, it probably happens in Jita instead of K6.
In null, catching cheap destroyers/frigs is a viable tactic since the attacker can't dock/place clone to hostile zone. A Pizza guy podded in his frig in Period Basis can't care less about his empty pod and M frig, but he surely cares about being 30 jumps away from where he wanted to be.
"I've proven now without doubt that highsec is extremely overpowered and someone going either after ISK or kills should be in highsec."
Except that you haven't. I have no real experience with lowsec except passing through so I can't comment there, but if a player wants to make ISK mining then the ores in nullsec are a lot easier to mine (larger asteroids - less time switching targets) and more valuable than they are in hisec. If a player wants to make ISK shooting red crosses then anomalies are better ISK/time than L4 missions, with occasional bonus payoffs in faction loot from escalations as well.
The counter argument usually raised here is that that kind of ISK making is frequently disrupted and works out as less ISK/time once time spent docked up or in a POS as enemies camp the system is factored in. In my experience, while that is certainly hypothetically possible the reality is that there are plenty of systems in nullsec that are deep enough in that such disruptions are very rare exceptions rather than the norm; theoretical ISK/hour from running high level anomalies or picking clean gravimetric sites is very close to actual ISK/hour received.
As for kills, many people have pointed out plenty of times before that there is more motivating most PvPers than simple kill efficiency or total ISK value destroyed. That might be some personal requirement for fights to be a challenge or it may just be that they aren't interested in the repetitive gameplay of warp in, blap unresponsive target, warp off and wait out GCC, over and over. Whatever the case, there is a reason ganking as a playstyle only attracts a niche audience compared to things like Faction Warfare or nullsec Sov Wars. It provides what some people are looking for, but by itself it's not going to make everyone who wants to PvP happy.
Frankly your complaints that hisec is "overpowered", along with those from James 315 and the rest of the New Order, seem to boil down to complaining that people are able to find a satisfactory gameplay experience without leaving hisec and demanding that this be changed. As James himself frequently says, EVE is a sandbox and players should not be demanding that other players' playstyles be drastically changed just to improve their own gameplay.
"I've proven now without doubt that highsec is extremely overpowered and someone going either after ISK or kills should be in highsec."
You showed that high-sec is a good place to pad your kill board stats. That's it. You didn't show it's the best. For example, you did not falsify (the possibility) that the averages of the alliances contain far superior opportunities which get cancelled out by worse places or dumb members.
Regardless, some other data from your numbers (weekly data):
Gevlon: 12B ISK / 152 kills = 79M ISK/kill
TEST: 240B ISK / 2972 kills = 81M ISK/kill
NCdot: 202B ISK / 1533 kills = 132M ISK/kill
PL: 324B ISK / 1971 kills = 164M ISK/kill
Rote: 23.8 BISK / 262 kills = 91M ISK/kill
Your ISK/kill isn't best. For that, leave high sec and join NCdot or Pandemic Legion. So your killboard stats only show you got more kills, either by
1) spending more time than the average member of those alliances and/or
2) your method has a better kill/hour resp. ISK destroyed/hour ratio than those.
You didn't show which.
"At this point CCP can go two ways: nerf highsec"
You mean for gankers? If anything, you showed that it's too easy for gankers to get kills and (from your earler post) to earn ISK this way.
Just because you fight a crusade against high-sec doesn't mean your post did strengthen your point.
"A player who is now in low/null is either mistaken or a loller who just want to fool around."
Or simply hasn't KB padding as primary goal (many care about KB stats, that doesn't mean they would do everything for them). It may be "fun" for you to spend 4 hours a day* in average with ganking high-sec miners. For most PvP-ers it would be probably as boring as mining ore.
*Please correct me if wrong... I assumed 2 chars with 15min GCC, that's 8 kills/hour and you doing 227 kills last week.
"I've proven now without doubt that highsec is extremely overpowered and someone going either after ISK or kills should be in highsec."
What is wrong with this is that the majority of players that love PVP are not going for ISK or kills in and of themselves. They are going for the rush of combat and the adrenaline that comes from putting high risk assets at risk.
RvB is an example of a group that does it through low cost ships and Rooks and Kings is an example of a group doing the same thing with expensive assets.
Raw kills and ISK value means a lot to few people that really love the game for itself.
@Hivemind: you don't factor two "times" into nullsec mining/missioning. One is AFK time: in nullsec if you mine 1 hour, you must sit at the computer watching lasers/local for an hour (unless bot). In highsec you start lasers, an hour later dock.
The second time in nullsec is PvP time. I mean you are often asked by your corp/alliance to join fleets/roams that you can't spend doing anomalies/gravs.
@Gevlon
Yes, there is a different playstyle for people in nullsec. That playstyle is not going to be attractive to all players. This doesn't change the fact that that playstyle offers greater rewards than hisec does. I'd actually argue that safe AFK mining in Null is possible as a group effort; get a team of players in a fleet, have them take turns as squad leader and lookout while the others are AFK. If neutrals appear the squad leader warps the squad (or wing/fleet) to a safe POS. It's not quite as AFK as hisec (since one player always needs to be paying attention) but then more effort should be needed for the higher reward. And unlike hisec where the most valuable rocks are usually small, a player can go AFK mining the most valuable asteroids and come back to a full cargohold and more rock to mine.
As for PvP time, there are plenty of rental-only alliances that are not expected to PvP; members need to pay fees, but even with those the increased ISK making opportunities offer greater potential income. There are also social megacorporations like Goonswarm and Dreddit where PvP participation is encouraged but not mandatory.
I think the correct procedure is to introduce some sort of friction on wealth transfer from one gameplay style to another.
There are games which do well with separate PVP and no-PVP realms or shards - this is ferocious friction, in that one realm or shard cannot influence the other in any way.
If for example, 80% of goods transferred from highsec to nullsec vanished, including bank transfers, then there would be some friction, but not total isolation. (You could tax both directions if you like; it doesn't make much difference because with or without taxation, not much wealth moves from nullsec to highsec.)
Alternatively, the goods transferred might not vanish, but there could be large amounts of expensive materials required for operating a highsec->nullsec gate. Or you could frame it as a tax, or as a license fee, or a bribe to someone. The point is that we can introduce friction into economies, and despite free trade being efficient (in the real world and in the game), we don't actually want efficient fictional economies, we want FUN fictional economies - which often means inefficient.
Out of curiosity, how many SP are you doing this with?
Oh, and related question. How did you do compared to the Order in the same period?
@Jester: At this moment the ganker char has 3.7M, when I started it I had half of it.
About my own alliance: the problem is that most Knights are not in the New Order corp. Among those who are in it, I provided 28% of the kills in the test period.
Not a fair comparison tbh. You shoot targets that neither run, hide nor can defend themselves, whilst the PVP alliances you mention have to contend with all those factors.
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