I wrote that according to the killboard statistics, Goonwaffe members are fleetbears, ratting outside of stratops while inner (and most probably outer) pets are PvP-ers, running small-gang ops when not fighting main battles. This isn't by mistake, the Goon leadership enforce pets to have PvP culture by strict performance measurements, while allows carebearing for pure blood Goons. In result, Goonwaffe has serious income from ratting, PI and other taxes, while pet corps are impoverished and depend financially on top-down income sources like moons and renters who are controlled by the Goon leadership.
When I mentioned this article on the forum, Mynnna instantly appeared, commenting "The problem with your theory is that ratting taxes only make us 100b a month." At first 100B/month isn't "just", if we compare it to other nullsec income sources. The peak of the "unbeatable" Tech Empire was 2T/month. For the whole CFC, 40K pilots it's 50M/pilot/month. 100B for 4K Goonwaffe is half of that, 25M/pilot/month. And he didn't say anything about POCO taxes (the nullsec ones), broker fees in VFK and such. So it's not a bad income by nullsec standards (of course it's laughable for highsec traders).
However we shouldn't believe the master bee market manipulator, but use tools at our disposal to determine the truth. The easiest tool is Dotlan. It has nice toplists for various statistics, including NPC kills in the last 24 hours. Look at this screenshot (made on 2014.02.06), with added logo of the Sov-holder of the system:
Dotlan also have longer term statistics, for 2014 and 2013:
Deklein got to the top 10 NPC kills region in August 2013. Since then their percentage of total nullsec NPC kills just grows:
We also have a pretty accurate way to determine the Goon income from carebearing. There is an obvious opportunity cost of having GSF ratting space: GSF renter space! I mean they could just rent it out trough Greater Western co-prosperity sphere. Their rental rules give the price calculation method, and dotlan gives all needed system info for GSF sov space: truesec, stations, belts, ice belts. I imported the dotlan table to Excel, put the price formula in and got 900B/month rent income without even counting dead-end systems premiums. According to their rental database, 23% of their systems are available, due to renter rotation (Lemmings have a dozen ex-renters wardecced due to automatically inheriting the wars).
So GSF could get about 700B/month rent if they turn into a "pure PvP" alliance that stages near the war front and doesn't do PvE on main chars, since they could rent their current Sov out. Of course no need to go black and white, they could simply move the Sov of a few dozen systems to the renters. Why don't they? The only reason is that the two incomes are currently near the optimum, I mean by renting out a system they gain as much rent as they lose on ratting and other taxes. Which means very nice 700B/month tax income. Of course not all GSF is Goonwaffe, so some of this tax goes to other corps, but not much, since they were forced to purge their carebears. This income is in the magnitude of the top-down sources which is distributed among pets to keep them dependent.
There is another approximation method: the NPC bounties are approximately a 50T/month ISK faucet. They were 32T two years ago when Diagoras tweeted it and they are the main ISK faucet. As PLEX price is more or less the indicator of ISK wealth, we can safely assume 1.5x growth. In highsec and lowsec bounties are low, as mission LP is the main income. So let's guess the nullsec NPC bounties 35T/month. As we seen that Goons are killing 10% of nullsec NPCs, they get 3.5T/month bounties. With 15% tax, the alliance makes 525B/month just from ratting taxes. If we add refine fees, broker fees, POCO taxes, we get the same 6-700B.
This is what Goons wanted to cover up by yelling "pubbie carebear" to everyone who isn't them. They didn't want pets and enemies to know that their power lies in carebearing. Without clear example of a successful nullsec carebear alliance, the others kept believing in "pure PvP", therefore both their pets and enemies remained weak. I've long told that power comes not from "skillz" or "morale" or even "numbers", but from ISK. After B-R, no one can doubt it. Before that, you kept believing in that social nonsense, while Goons ran their empire just as I suggested (they did it first of course): lot of carebears, who only fleet up for stratops and ignore the pointless lolPvP of fishing fleets, roams, camps.
Now the rest of nullsec have two choices: one is sticking to the "PvP" ethos and being beaten into NPC space or pethood. The other is carebearing harder than Goons by opening their alliances to fleetbears. If you don't want to spend the rest of EVE in Empire or as a Goon pet, make sure your alliance leadership sees this article. Link it in your corp forum and such, let it be known who are the biggest carebears of EVE.
PS: considering how much hate the Goons spew on "carebears", while them being the biggest carebears of EVE, maybe this Wikipedia article worth reading.
When I mentioned this article on the forum, Mynnna instantly appeared, commenting "The problem with your theory is that ratting taxes only make us 100b a month." At first 100B/month isn't "just", if we compare it to other nullsec income sources. The peak of the "unbeatable" Tech Empire was 2T/month. For the whole CFC, 40K pilots it's 50M/pilot/month. 100B for 4K Goonwaffe is half of that, 25M/pilot/month. And he didn't say anything about POCO taxes (the nullsec ones), broker fees in VFK and such. So it's not a bad income by nullsec standards (of course it's laughable for highsec traders).
However we shouldn't believe the master bee market manipulator, but use tools at our disposal to determine the truth. The easiest tool is Dotlan. It has nice toplists for various statistics, including NPC kills in the last 24 hours. Look at this screenshot (made on 2014.02.06), with added logo of the Sov-holder of the system:
Dotlan also have longer term statistics, for 2014 and 2013:
Deklein got to the top 10 NPC kills region in August 2013. Since then their percentage of total nullsec NPC kills just grows:
We also have a pretty accurate way to determine the Goon income from carebearing. There is an obvious opportunity cost of having GSF ratting space: GSF renter space! I mean they could just rent it out trough Greater Western co-prosperity sphere. Their rental rules give the price calculation method, and dotlan gives all needed system info for GSF sov space: truesec, stations, belts, ice belts. I imported the dotlan table to Excel, put the price formula in and got 900B/month rent income without even counting dead-end systems premiums. According to their rental database, 23% of their systems are available, due to renter rotation (Lemmings have a dozen ex-renters wardecced due to automatically inheriting the wars).
So GSF could get about 700B/month rent if they turn into a "pure PvP" alliance that stages near the war front and doesn't do PvE on main chars, since they could rent their current Sov out. Of course no need to go black and white, they could simply move the Sov of a few dozen systems to the renters. Why don't they? The only reason is that the two incomes are currently near the optimum, I mean by renting out a system they gain as much rent as they lose on ratting and other taxes. Which means very nice 700B/month tax income. Of course not all GSF is Goonwaffe, so some of this tax goes to other corps, but not much, since they were forced to purge their carebears. This income is in the magnitude of the top-down sources which is distributed among pets to keep them dependent.
There is another approximation method: the NPC bounties are approximately a 50T/month ISK faucet. They were 32T two years ago when Diagoras tweeted it and they are the main ISK faucet. As PLEX price is more or less the indicator of ISK wealth, we can safely assume 1.5x growth. In highsec and lowsec bounties are low, as mission LP is the main income. So let's guess the nullsec NPC bounties 35T/month. As we seen that Goons are killing 10% of nullsec NPCs, they get 3.5T/month bounties. With 15% tax, the alliance makes 525B/month just from ratting taxes. If we add refine fees, broker fees, POCO taxes, we get the same 6-700B.
This is what Goons wanted to cover up by yelling "pubbie carebear" to everyone who isn't them. They didn't want pets and enemies to know that their power lies in carebearing. Without clear example of a successful nullsec carebear alliance, the others kept believing in "pure PvP", therefore both their pets and enemies remained weak. I've long told that power comes not from "skillz" or "morale" or even "numbers", but from ISK. After B-R, no one can doubt it. Before that, you kept believing in that social nonsense, while Goons ran their empire just as I suggested (they did it first of course): lot of carebears, who only fleet up for stratops and ignore the pointless lolPvP of fishing fleets, roams, camps.
Now the rest of nullsec have two choices: one is sticking to the "PvP" ethos and being beaten into NPC space or pethood. The other is carebearing harder than Goons by opening their alliances to fleetbears. If you don't want to spend the rest of EVE in Empire or as a Goon pet, make sure your alliance leadership sees this article. Link it in your corp forum and such, let it be known who are the biggest carebears of EVE.
PS: considering how much hate the Goons spew on "carebears", while them being the biggest carebears of EVE, maybe this Wikipedia article worth reading.
35 comments:
I just wanted to comment on your "power comes from isk". That is not true. It's a pretty naive simplification. As a counter argument I give you - you have isk but you have absolutely no power. You cannot control space, you cannot enforce any rules on players, you cannot win any wars.
I'm just winning a highsec war against Goons with hilarious results.
Sure, ISK on a wallet is no power. But ISK used well is. On the other hand one with everything but no ISK is nothing.
You winning in hisec is, putting it lightly, debatable. I do not wish to engage in it here, I'll just post my personal opinion (and I live in hisec, for the record): you are being used by the party you think is your ally and you are not winning anything, only providing a source of laughter for goons. I know you feel different about it, so I can only remind your new order days. You truly believed in James and posted a lot of "proof" he is indeed the savior of hisec. And we remember how it went down. Take a moment to analyze if you're repeating the same mistake.
I didn't think it could happen but it has. This post is actually built on even more assumptions that the rest. I mean you are assuming all ratting in goon space is goons, you approximate potential rental income for the rest of CFC space, then assume that to be indicative of ratting bounties. You assume the game wide income from ratting bounties (considering the changes made to rats and bounties, a straight approximation is impossible.
You even go so far as to assume that plex prices are indicative of ratting income, which clearly they aren't. Surely as an economist you know that supply and demand is what drives prices, and the demand for plex has increased with the addition of plex sinks.
Now the real question is, do I believe goons rat more than other people? Sure I do. They have over twice the member count of any other alliance, and ratting is pretty much the best way to make isk in null. I'd be surprised if they weren't killing more rats than anyone else. There would be no point in paying sov bills if you could not make the income back from the space to hold it, and certainly no point for the individual if the individual could not increase their own personal wealth from it. Ratting accomplishes both.
Then you mention again the purge, which you seem to think was just goons saying "boot all ratters". It wasn't bud, we had some pretty serious behavioural issues that needed well and truly sorting. when you have a home defense fleet forming to protect your own alliances asset and there's 300 in alliance yet only 30 people turning up, it's a pretty clear indication that all is not well. The people purged from SMA were not all the ratters and industrialists, it was a purge of all the asshats that would be off ratting during critical CTAs.
Now in all honesty, your problem is you don't understand the people you are talking about, nor have access to statistics that give you ways to properly analyse them. All you have is this bottled up rage and a desperate need find a way to get people on your side about it. So you take the few statistics you have, chuck on 90% assumptions and throw that around like anyone is going to care.
Tell me this. What is the outcome you are aiming for?
@Lucas: you saw the kill/death distribution. Goonwaffe don't fleet up for home defense fleets, inner pets do. Also, check the current NPCs killed in last 24 hours map on Deklein and your own space. You'll see some difference. Much larger difference than your sizes.
What outcome I want: for all alliances to realize that the power lies in "carebearing" and they must start valuing carebears or they'll end up in NPC space in no time.
thats not true. take a look at provi block carebears.
carebearing is good for personal wallet and to make people stick to your ally/region. but it will not defend your space.
Ally wealth will give you SRP and will contribute to a steady PvP participation.
Thats what provi is missing. They can pay some shit from personal wallets etc. but ones it starts draining, they will retreat.
Their SRP is just very limited.
@Gevlon
"you saw the kill/death distribution. Goonwaffe don't fleet up for home defense fleets, inner pets do. Also, check the current NPCs killed in last 24 hours map on Deklein and your own space. You'll see some difference. Much larger difference than your sizes."
Except your kill death ratio was skewed by bad analytics, and trust me, I know a thing or two about data analysis. And so they rat? Who doesn't? Can you confirm all of the ratting in Deklein is goons?
"What outcome I want: for all alliances to realize that the power lies in "carebearing" and they must start valuing carebears or they'll end up in NPC space in no time."
But it doesn't. One source of ISK is carebearing. That's all. Nullbears need to be able to both carebear and show up for ops. It's no good trying to run an alliance if all your members are too busy shooting red crosses to protect stations.
"What outcome I want: for all alliances to realize that the power lies in "carebearing" and they must start valuing carebears or they'll end up in NPC space in no time."
Well - the alternative is to get very good at running a rental empire (as the income is roughly similar) and just PVP all the time - the example here would be PL.
There is a problem with renters: they can be taken easily with AFK cloakers or better offers. Your own carebears are yours unless you lose them with bad leadership.
Aren't you confusing Goonwaffe with GSF here? It's well known that Deklein has the most ratting, but it's open for all of GSF and some allies. Also, Goonwaffe has formal sovereignty, but they also pay SRP for all GSF corps, and other expenses.
And even if GSF were the only ones ratting in Deklein, which they aren't, they are the biggest alliance, so how can this be surprising?
Lastly, as you've shown, GSF show up for stratops. No corp or alliance have been purged for not showing up to frigate roams
"Your own carebears are yours unless you lose them with bad leadership."
So leadership is important then. Carebearing being just a form of income, with there being many others that are also viable.it's obvious ISK is important, bu the source of that isk isn't. What's more important though is good leadership and good strategic planning.
@Lucas Kell
Not all sources of ISK are equal, as easy to acquire by real life effort needed or have the same risk/reward.
Lucas Kell is really grasping at straws these days... "Assumptions"? "Flawed analysis"? Please point out these flaws instead of just postulating their existence. The evidence seems pretty damning to me so far.
Actually, the burden of proof is on Gevlon. He is the one making claims which are based on many assumptions, some of which Lucas has already pointed out. No "evidence" has been posted, only data that can be analysed many different ways. Gevlon chose the one that has the highest number of assumptions, which is basically the opposite of Occams Razor
What is a carebear? Someone who is unwilling to fight. Ratting a lot a carebear does not make.
LR
@Guerdon
"Not all sources of ISK are equal, as easy to acquire by real life effort needed or have the same risk/reward."
I never said they were, I simply said there are many that are viable. Carebearing isn't the cornerstone of an alliance, this has been proven time and again.
@Concerned Minmatar
"Lucas Kell is really grasping at straws these days... "Assumptions"? "Flawed analysis"? Please point out these flaws instead of just postulating their existence. The evidence seems pretty damning to me so far."
Well most of the flaws in the analysis are the assumptions, of which there are many. Look at the data he has got. He has unreliable data scraped from dotlan. Even dotlan themselves have explained why they are not accurate. This is because they are pulled from the EVE API, which only shows the last hours data, so to get historic data they have to pull it every hour. Meaning any downtime of either EVE API or the dotlan scraper adds a gap, as does any difference between the cache time and the scrape time.
From that, he's only got the data of approximately how many npcs are killed in any given region. It does not state how much they are worth or who killed them, so he is assuming they are all killed by goons and assuming their value (which can vary wildly between sec status, military index level and individual anom type).
Really, I should not need to explain to you why the statistics pulled from dotlan are not enough to make the conclusion presented here. Common sense should tell you that.
Lemmings joined As an ally against 7-2s war Dec against whomever it is the boys deced. While I am sure the ally thing is open on the other side.... What is this as part of Lemmings goal of taking down Goonswarm in HS?
Joining in on a low sec corps dec is an action reminiscent of the entire Jita station camper persona that had been placed against Marmite. Sure, there is the hope that my boys will go to Jita and undock and be killed but is that what Lemmings is? Another generalist high sec war Dec corp?
I know you do not directly run Lemmings but I did think that the results Were more goal oriented.
I really don't understand what you're trying to do, Gevlon.
Rally EVE against Goons? 1/3 of EVE already hates them, 1/3 admires them, 1/3 doesn't care. Whatever they think of them, no-one at the moment is able to beat them in all-out war, because they're the best at that. That's not gonna change because say, PL suddenly starts pvp-ing less and ratting more.
Also, all this data mining effort to prove that:
Goons aren't leet pvp-ers? They've kinda always said that of themselves.
Solo pvp-ers and coalitions alike need ISK (thus some sort of carebeary activity) to buy pvp ships? That's kinda evident from the tutorials.
Lastly, if you wanna how Goons manage to be the most powerful EVE entity, leave the number crunching and learn it from Mittani himself. The man has a big enough ego to have enjoyed explaining his tactics and strategies numerous times.
In other words, stop trying so hard Gevlon. You're a smart individualist that will never 'win' a true social sandbox like EVE.
@Sugar: I asked about it at the management and they had no idea why the war.
If I have to guess, one of the directors misclicked. I asked them very explicitly to be careful in the future.
If you check Lemmings wars, it's all against CFC, Greater Western and inherited wars from former Greater Western corps.
@Anonymous: Goons tell nothing but lies. They grew trough lies and deception. You have to figure out everything by yourself.
@Sugar: I asked about it at the management and they had no idea why the war.
If I have to guess, one of the directors misclicked. I asked them very explicitly to be careful in the future.
If you check Lemmings wars, it's all against CFC, Greater Western and inherited wars from former Greater Western corps.
@Anonymous: Goons tell nothing but lies. They grew trough lies and deception. You have to figure out everything by yourself.
"I asked about it at the management and they had no idea why the war.
If I have to guess, one of the directors misclicked. I asked them very explicitly to be careful in the future.
If you check Lemmings wars, it's all against CFC, Greater Western and inherited wars from former Greater Western corps."
Or they thought "hey, free wardec" and didn't care who they were hitting, since all they do is camp stations or go on lowsec roams. When they do kill a war target, it's blind luck that they were even there to be honest.
In all seriousness with no troll intended, you really should take a closer look at what you are paying for. It really just looks like you are paying Marmite to run their training alliance so it doesn't hurt their stats.
"Goons tell nothing but lies. They grew trough lies and deception. You have to figure out everything by yourself."
Actually, you'd be surprised. Goons are and always have been pretty open about things as far as alliances go. And they grew through good leadership, superior tactics, effective diplomacy and meta gaming.
reading all this, what comes to my mind is smith's thing about the division of labour.
Wait what? You endorse Sugar Kyle and the next day the lemmings are at war with her corp?! That is... Breathtaking. I'm not accusing you of doing this, but you should consider sabotage as an explanation, what are the odds?
LR
I love how Goons and others try to defend themselves here. ISK is a critical tool to weilding power. Without solid income you cannot win wars or defend yourself effectively. You are reduced to Guerrilla warfare at best.
Goon leadership knows this and it gaurds its ISK production by misinformation to prevent concentrated efforts by their enemies to disrupt their income stream. After all, effective economic warfare can defeat your enemy without sending a single soldier to the line.
But clearly Gevlon is getting under the skins of Goon if they have to come to this blog to defend themselves. EVE News24 and the forums just must not be good enough. So I would take their attention of you, Gevlon, as a sign you are getting to them.
@Anonymous: until Sugar wrote, even I didn't know that it's her corp. I'm sure whoever "misclicked" didn't know either.
Maybe you just inherited the war against her corp when one of the many new corps joined the alliance.
@Gevlon
" I asked about it at the management and they had no idea why the war.
If I have to guess, one of the directors misclicked."
The management misclicks wars? Are they such complete amateurs? That's a bit of a lame official justification to say the least.
@Lucas Kell
"It really just looks like you are paying Marmite to run their training alliance so it doesn't hurt their stats."
Yes, it's already stated in Lemmings alliance description: * This alliance is supported by The Marmite Collective. They will recruit from this alliance when they have free spots (max 300).
Marmite profits from this war more than just from paid wardecs obviously. That being said, do the gatecamping marmite members really require "training"? :)
It was not taken as a declaration of ill intent by Gevlon. Whenever a corp declares war randoms will pile on. That is expected.
Lemmings, as I understand it, have a focused goal. That goal hasn't looked like 'hope a low sec PvP corp derps into high sec for more tsrgets'.
I know that Gevlon is paying its bills and it was set up under his goals. That is why I found the deviation interesting when I looked at the latest notification.
You do realize Sugars corp is a lowsec pirate organization, right? There's nothing remotely "breathtaking" about it. If they ever decide to you know, go to lowsec away from their highsec station undocks, they will be giving 7-2 exactly what they want, more PvP.
@Sugar: I'm not blind. I know that Marmite is using Lemmings as an academy alliance. I don't have problem with that unless it conflicts with the goal we agreed on.
It is possible that one of the directors told "hey a wardec, let's jump on it for more targets". I made it very clear to them that if they want my money, they must stick war targets to CFC.
What NULL regions need is a roaming entity that attacks moon production facilities and POCO's.
CCP isk sink at it's finest.
No worries from me.
@Gevlon
"I know that Marmite is using Lemmings as an academy alliance. I don't have problem with that unless it conflicts with the goal we agreed on."
Surely it does conflict though. They spend most of their time camping gates, stations and flying through lowsec. They aren't shooting goons half the time, they are shooting suspects or FW players. They focus on soft targets and avoid anything remotely resembling a threat so they can pad out their KB the Marmite way.
You are paying them to have a war on goons, and they are taking that as "Marmite business as usual". Even if you consider this training for a later war, what training is being given by the goal of "sit on a gate, talk about weed and how high we all are, and post meme pictures in fleet"? You say you have alts in the corp, well go on the fleets. Verify what they are actually doing first hand.
@Anonymous
>What NULL regions need is a roaming entity that attacks moon production facilities and POCO's.
This used to be Pandemic Legion.
It is fairly easy to get a bunch of "killmail ISK" on ANY nullsec alliance by wardeccing them and just waiting for stupid ppl to get caught alone in highsec.
You are fighting RvB and for that part you have your merit. But GSF is not really engaging, let alone the CFC. I can tell you they actually do not care. I'm in a "pet" alliance and honestly your blog is the only news I have of your self-proclaimed victory. There is 0 posts on internal forum in my alliance for the Lemmings. The GSF forums might at a couple posts, tops.
Now I only trust the Goons as much as the next person, and mittani is a born spin doctor, but I do know actions do not lie.
GSF is not even trying to fight you back. They do not care. If they happen to get bored with bashing Immensia, they *might* give your wardec a minutes attention. But I doubt any nullsec toon will want to roam highsec and play eternal station games. Its one of the reasons they left to nullsec.
I honestly dislike highsec wardeccers, way more than I ever disliked Goons. They are blatantly on sided and as soon as the victim organizes and fights back the agressor runs for stations and only engages with overwhelming advantage, not by strategic positioning but just waiting for the correct timezone or for the oposing fleet to stand down.
Its gerrilla warfare, and in gerrilla you allways inflict 100x more damage than you take, and yet you rarelly make any strategic progress with it.
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