Greedy Goblin

Friday, November 15, 2013

No way I go to WH space

In the recent days, after I abandoned the failed ganking project, I was a bit lost. People do stupid stuff out of desperation. I almost done one: joining a WH corp that has been asking me to time to time again.

Actually they almost got me, probably liberating me from a Moros (either by their own hands, or by the hands of their enemies) and a Slave pod. The reason I finally bugged out was being totally lost waiting for the orders. I had no idea what will happen, what is the fleet comp, what will we do, how do we get there. Sure, opsec. But in null opsec only meant I didn't know where will the op take place and maybe who will be the hostiles. I always knew what will we do and how to do it. Here, nothing. So I quit before the op took place (if there was an op at all and not just a trap for my Moros).

However the above isn't the fault of that particular WH group (assuming they wasn't just after a Moros awox), but the WH mechanics itself. Even in the lawless nullsec, there is infrastructure. There are fixed gates, stations where your stuff is safe, sites you can farm, means to move to Empire space and so on. But above all, there is market and contract system, allowing both asynchronous and secure transactions.

In a WH you can only exchange items if you are online when the other guy and if you fully trust him. Hint: if you fully trust anyone in EVE, you are a scam victim. This means you have to do everything yourself, assuming you have your own tower. But unless it's your corp, you won't get rights to manage towers. So your life is practically waiting around for being commanded and hoping that your corpmates don't screw over you.

There were boring moments during ganking. It often felt just a dumb grind. But I was always, completely under my own control. I could change what I do, do it differently or in a different space or just dock up and leave the computer. Waiting around having no idea what will happen (especially with a moderately blinged Moros), was probably the worst experience I had during playing EVE. Pulling the plug, sending that "I'm out" mail was a liberating moment.

No way I go WH space, unless I can figure out how to cooperate with people using automated and secure methods, protocols, guides and so on instead of "sit tight and do as I say". Since CCP doesn't consider WH space a priority, it's clear that I can't hope for developer help. So now I'd say with 99.99% probability that I won't be in a wormhole in my EVE life.

Anyway, as the Rubicon expansion is so Highsec focused, I think I'm already in the right place. Just have to figure out how to get something out of it.


The more I think about, the less I want to join the recent nullsec conflict either. Not because I can't really identify with either the totally fragmented SoCo, nor N3 who couldn't tie their shoes without PL who did not even declared to be in this conflict. The real reason is the altruism from the position of a pilot. Imagine that I'm a BL pilot, flying hundreds of hours of combat and finally we win and beat out N3 from South. Now what? What did I won? I can rat in the new space, sure! But I could get ratting right after paying a small sum to join one of the dozen renter alliances. What does this war offer to the winners?

So I have to find a project that is:
  1. Profitable to the participants, even if we consider the cost of opportunities widely available to people.
  2. Allow the participants to co-operate via safe and standard methods instead of blindly trusting me or each other.
  3. Has some other impact in New Eden than making us stupidly rich. (trading would cover the first two)
The best I can think of is highsec POCO domination. I see now that my original idea has the flaw of being too individualist, people want to be in a real corp, even at the cost of efficiency. I simply has to accept that some level of competency must be sacrificed in order to satisfy the social needs of people. After all, I can just block talkative people. Anyone knows of a corporation forming for highsec POCOs?

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

In a WH you can only exchange items if you are online when the other guy and if you fully trust him.
Wow.. Really? We trade stuff at stations all the time using contracts. Good WH corps have near constant k-space access to do this in.

Hint: if you fully trust anyone in EVE, you are a scam victim.


I've trusted my w-space bros for years. with hundreds of billions of isk worth of assets and cash. Never been scammed.


This means you have to do everything yourself, assuming you have your own tower. But unless it's your corp, you won't get rights to manage towers. So your life is practically waiting around for being commanded and hoping that your corpmates don't screw over you.


The corp you are going to is obviously shit. POS rights are such that POS management control can be extended to individuals for a POS which you have a password to. Only unanchor rights and take rights from the fuel bin are typically withheld.

Find a better WH corp.

Von Keigai said...

1) You should be able to join an WH alliance as a one-man corp, if you want to be pay for fuel and be responsible for a POS. Then you can do whatever you want in your own POS. You will probably have to accept mild constraints on what you do, in particular "don't anchor a capital ship construction array". But that's about it.

2) You are correct that trust is paramount in wspace. No avoiding it. But it is not such a horrible thing. Trust goes hand in hand with friendship. Yes, I know, you don't care for friends, but most people do.

3) You can exchange stuff in wspace without being online at the same time. But this gets back to trust. I take PI goods from my guys all the time, and pay them. We have divisions set up for just that purpose. People also use cans of various sizes for this.

4) If you have no trust, then yes you are horribly exposed moving a Moros in a WH. Join them cheaply and fly with them for a week or three before you bring in the Moros. Of course they can still reverse-AWOX you whenever you do bring in the Moros, but the likelihood is less if they know you and like you. I would never expect a new recruit in my corp to bring bling in the WH at first. At minimum a few basic ships is all you need: a cloaky scout, a stealth bomber or two, and a PVE battleship. Total cost here is perhaps 300m ISK.

Gevlon said...

If the WH community is based on trust, I have no reason to go there even if I find a group I can trust with, because I'll have nothing to blog about.

I mean I can't write: "go and find friends who don't scam you" because that's a non-advice.

Even if I'd succeed as a player, I'd be useless as a blogger.

Finally, EVERY SINGLE wormhole eviction report contained the line "of course we knew all their moves as we had spies among their ranks". Yeah, trust definitely worked!

Anonymous said...

"If you fully trust anyone in Eve, you are a scam victim".

Crap. Only to the same extent as if you trust the wrong people anywhere you get screwed.

Are there people who would quite like to have an "OMG We scammed gevlon"? Of course, you don't think people read your blog for the advice now, do you?

You don't have to be friends with people to trust them...you cannot buy trust either though.
A little background checking and asking around goes a long way with trust.

As 1st Anon said, Stations exist..otherwise how on earth do they get their phat loot to market?

Just because you chose a crappy WH corp does not mean all WH corps are crappy, as you well know.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"If the WH community is based on trust, I have no reason to go there even if I find a group I can trust with, because I'll have nothing to blog about."
Honestly mate, this should be secondary, since most days it seems like you don't have anything to blog about and just make stuff up.
Trusting people doesn't necessarily make you a scam victim. Just like in real life you have to make the right decisions about who to trust, EVE is just a little more likely that you will get scammed. I have several people I happily trust with everything I own. But you can;t just randomly trust someone, you have to build up a relationship and become friends. It takes a long time to build up that trust.

"Finally, EVERY SINGLE wormhole eviction report contained the line "of course we knew all their moves as we had spies among their ranks". Yeah, trust definitely worked!"
Every big corp/alliance will have spies in there somewhere. They are usually some lowbie with no access to anything though, just watching comms. The only people that need to be cared about are high ranking spies, which most corps are smart enough to detect.

Anonymous said...

I have no reason to go there even if I find a group I can trust with, because I'll have nothing to blog about.

So you play eve to blog? rather than to have rich experiences? Great.

"of course we knew all their moves as we had spies among their ranks".

Oh really? Hardly ever happens. Scouts yes. Spies not so much. It has happened but it doesn't usually happen. Recruitment conditions are amongst the tightest in the game..the slightest hint of a spy and no questions are asked..people are thrown out and lose access to services.

Usually people who are "new" are cut out of services the moment anything starts going down.. and they are only included on a need to know basis.

Scouts happen. We have deep cover/long term scouts in just about every major entities system..permanently. and we're not unique in that regard.

WH corps/alliances are successful. They are paranoid, and successful. Are any security measures fool proof? of course not. But what we have works.

Furthermore, if an eviction is occuring on a farming/industrial/pve corp, then it usually is trivial to get spies in because those corps are the ones who are not ready to fight and don't "get" eve. If you join up with a PvP group you are going to have much less chance of eviction (unwritten rule about pvp entities not being the subject of eviction) and much less chance of spies.

How about you try something before you start crapping all over other people's play style? You don't know everything, so quit acting like you do.

Locust said...

"as the Rubicon expansion is so Highsec focused"

Did I miss something?

Warpspeed changes will impact low/null a lot more.
SMA dropping ships will impact low/null a lot more.
Siphons only impact low/null.
Nullified interceptors only impact null.
Deployable tractor beam is far more usefull in low/null as it is save to fly your Noctis in highsec.
Refitting in space (in general, not only T3) is far more usefull in null as there are thousands of stations where you could refit in highsec.
Deployable cynojammer only impact null.

POCOs beeing the only change affecting highsec I won't call Rubicon highsec focused.

For me, Rubicon is a milestone for solo-players.
Now you don't need to be in an alliance if you want to refit your exploration ship in player-null without docking rights, you don't need a corporation to harvest moongoo thanks to siphons, you don't need a dedicated salvage/loot alt, you don't need a dedicated combat pilot to run combat sites thanks to SoE cruiser,...

I'm really looking forward to see siphons for PI... POCO holder won't get taxes, PI guy won't get his PI goods... both would need to watch their planets once or twice a day instead of afk-wealth-increase :D

Oska Rus said...

W-space beaty for me is that you can live here on your own. No need for alliance blobs and stuff. You'll just buy some propper system setup shop and live hapilly ever after.

Income might be comparable to trading only when cap escallating but even in lower classes having your own turf of space feels good.

Acher said...

Come to Providence. It is the scrub region of null that everyone laughs about but comes for small size pvp.

We have NRDS rules - hated by most loved by Provis.
We have a ton of carebears that can show teeth.
We are never in "block" wars. Blocks come to us to train their junior FCs by welping fleets.
We are the null-sec trading heaven compared to other null-sec regions.
Last but not least - you will certainly have a lot of topics for different experience in eve as well as morons column.

Ra_Jackson said...

If they want you to come with a Moros at day 1, I'd be pretty sure they were planning to kill it. Wondering why you even considered bringing it in the first place. There are other roles that can be filled by more expendable ships.

Anonymous said...

You're taking the wrong perspective on wormhole life altogether, I think. From your reaction to a potential awox you showed that you cared somewhat about losing that moros, which means you should not have been considering taking it into wh space at all.

You say you can't trust people in wh space, then don't, trust is meaningless when a breach of trust does nothing. I prefer to consider everything I take into a wh lost, kind of extension of the "don't fly what can't afford to lose" rule to include caring about the loss.

In k-space you can keep assets safe in a station, free from prying eyes even if it's captured. In w-space you have the pos, which can be destroyed or stolen from.

Like Von Keigai said, cloaky scout, sb, bs, that's all you need and for someone like you wouldn't be too much of an instant loss. Sure the pos might get looted the instant you unload, but it's alsso very likely that you'll see a very large return, enough to consider taking in shinier things, t3s, dreads etc.

Von Keigai said...

One certainly can write about trust. That is in general, not Gevlon Goblin. Your choice is probably right for you. But for most people, trust -- how to build it and keep it, and what it does for you -- are major parts of life and major parts of EVE. You must find the game most of us are playing rather puzzling.

And yes, "go and find friends who don't scam you" is advice. Good advice, even. Not very specific, true. You can refine such advice, as I did in my point (4).

As for your "use" as a blogger, well, I like reading many bloggers who I do not use outside of very general information gathering about the game. But that is not why I read them. I am reading them because I enjoy their writing. One can enjoy writing based on style alone.

Finally, trust in leaders and trust in followers are different things. In every WH corp, the member must trust the leaders. The leaders can steal everything they have. The reverse is not true, if the leadership uses the tools available properly. And yes, spies are quite possible. What this means is if you want to run a corp and not get evicted you had better not base your security on information that everyone in the corp knows.

Gevlon said...

If WH methods work, why WHs have the lowest population among all zones? My guess: because the amount of trust needed limits it to real life friends (and scam victims)

@Locust: solo player = highsec player. Sure, he might goes other zones for a little bit of this and that, but he has to live in highsec.

@Acher: and does Providence has an effect on the story? Or all it offers are ISK and killmails. Both that I could get plenty in highsec.

@Anonymous: concerned about losing it stupidly is just common sense.

@Von Keigai: but if I must keep my corpmates in the blind, than did I teach them anything? Because it seems like me being some cult leader with a bunch of mindslaves around.

I want no mindslaves. I despise the person who says "I believe every word you say" as he has no thoughts of his own.

I want living discussions, exchange of opinions instead of zombies following some Führer (even if that's me)

Satori Okanata said...

"How about you try something before you start crapping all over other people's play style? You don't know everything, so quit acting like you do."

I disagree with you completely. Gevlon is not crapping on WH life. He is clearly stating that WH is not compatible with his play style.

Why some people feel so insulted when someone doesn't share his likings?

Anonymous said...

Disliking something before you even tried it is speaking from ignorance. I can harp on and on about how this or that fruit tastes disgusting, but until I've tried it for myself, I'm only parroting other people's opinions. Same for gevlon. How does he know he dislikes the wormhole life without having even tried to make a go of it?

The largest wormhole corps and alliances have hundreds of people. Scam victims don't stick around for long, and real life friendship networks aren't nearly so large, yet many have had steady membership numbers at those levels for years. Overall population counts may be low, but individual corp numbers aren't so different from those you can find in any other part of space.

Anonymous said...

If WH methods work, why WHs have the lowest population among all zones? My guess: because the amount of trust needed limits it to real life friends (and scam victims)

at least you admit this is a guess.

The reason for the low population is that WH space is hard work compared to any other space. You have to scan constantly to find chains to get your stuff to market. You can't really do anything without an alt or a friend having probes out looking for possible K-162s opening and people dropping in on you. You don't get the quality of life that goes with living out of a station...you have to live out of a POS.

Add to that the recruitment standards are insanely restrictive. WH pilots need to be cross trained and able to fly just about anything - they need to go through interviews and incredibly probing background checks.

And given most alliances only hold 1 or 2 systems, spots are limited in the best corps as they need to keep numbers low in order to make the huge amounts of money they are accustomed to so they can lose their shiny bling in a fight.

There are big alliances like NoHo. Most of them are not "real life friends" but rather in game friends which the group has flown with in one way or another for years. These groups hardly ever have problems with spies..and even if they do who cares? they have more than enough money to replace everything 10x over.

Anonymous said...

"solo player = highsec player" is not true. I'm not sure how many accounts you have, but I'm guessing you could easily solo in higher class wormhole systems. For me, this was boring, and I'm really glad I joined a WH corp, even though I didn't know them IRL.
As for trust, at the most basic level, having another human to help is a huge asset in WH space. You aren't just some guy in a blob.

There are many things you don't know about WH space. So yes it is going to feel like you're a little kid being ordered around without being told why. For example, since you are in a Moros you know how to do capital escalations right? Opsec, what to shoot, how to fit? Or should I order you to do things so you don't get my caps killed? I'm going to order you to do stuff the first time just to be sure, because WH space is just as dangerous for me as it is for you.
Do I need to tell you that we have sites and we are going to run them? Where to go? We are going to a site in a wormhole system to kill sleepers, and if you are in k-space you may not be able to get there. My advice would be to learn enough so you don't feel like a child (mindslave).

If you are just looking for something to write about, WH space would be a great place to step up your ganking. Plenty of carebears in shiny BSs. I would much rather read a blog where your victims could actually shoot back. Yes you can do it solo if need be.

Anonymous said...

"He is clearly stating that WH is not compatible with his play style."

he clearly has no frame of reference to come to this conclusion, having never tried it.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon: "No way I go WH space, unless I can figure out how to cooperate with people using automated and secure methods, protocols, guides and so on instead of "sit tight and do as I say". Since CCP doesn't consider WH space a priority, it's clear that I can't hope for developer help. So now I'd say with 99.99% probability that I won't be in a wormhole in my EVE life."

What does that mean? Is a LFR tool with friendly fire turned off what you want? How is WH space any different from when you joined TEST?

"Now what? What did I won?"

You can say that about absolutely any arbitrary objective, especially if you're to prove a point. For me many things are about not just the end, but the journey too. Inevitably you're going to die and be forgotten, even if you do something great that is forever remembered in universal conciousness eventually the universe is going to peter out so anything you do is pretty irrelevant so why do things solely to check the boxes in your quest log?