Greedy Goblin

Monday, July 23, 2012

The lossmail-M&S

The pathologic fear from loss reports couldn't stop puzzling me. I'm fully aware that kill and loss reports are like scoreboards in PvP and competitive people measure their skill according to them. It's fine. I wrote that I understand that people can't be rationals before they experienced their personal skill affecting their surroundings. A mindless robot can't turn a thinker overnight, he first have to learn to act independently. All actions need a measurement system that shows ones progress compared to the other people. Scoreboards in PvP games are fine and a good PvP-er has every reason to take pride from his good kill:death ratio. He can also expect that other PvP-ers value him after his results and he gain acceptance to more elite PvP-gangs.

However the above applies to ones own kill and death reports. The "lossmail-paranoia" has the strange characteristics: it focuses on the losses of other people. If one is competitive, he cares about his own scores. Actually if people around him are worse, he just feels better. Remember that the focus of the competitive people is local: the guy compares his car to his neighbors and not to the guy 3 cities away. I've seen this in WoW many times in form of "damage meter competitions" where one was proud of being high in his raid, even if his performance to global standards was poor. If he was way above the others, he started considering leaving his "scrub" guild and moving to a "more elite" one.

However in EVE this works backwards: many people want their group to have no loss reports, even to the sick point of self-destructing completely functional ships or losing a pilot with all his ships by kicking him rather than maybe losing one ship due to him undocking when neutrals are in local. This isn't competitive (or even sane) behavior at all.

To make it more weird, they often live in nullsec sov-holding alliances where personal kill and death reports are more or less meaningless. I mean in a small-gang engagement your personal skills make serious difference. In large fleet if you are targeted by 100 Maelstroms, you'll die in any subcap and your damage on any target is in the 1-2% range due to shooting the same targets as everyone else. The large-fleet engagement can only be evaluated at fleet level and not personal level. A alliance won, B lost. The number of kills and deaths say nearly nothing (besides atrocious fails) about the skill of an individual pilot.

Competitive people care about their own performance. Socials care about doing the "right" thing. Rationals care about the big picture. The ones crying about the loss reports of others are M&S. They do it because morons and slackers want to harvest "cool" status from the kill:death ratio of others. They don't think they should do anything to "be cool" and expect to get it by sitting under a corp/alliance logo, letting other people make this logo respected by having a good kill:death ratio. The loss of some other guy make them upset because other M&S will troll them because of it. Badmouthing is practically the only activity the M&S happily take part of. When other people kill some enemy, he goes to a chat and announce that "we pwn lol".

The easiest way to find useless idiots in your corp is asking "What would you feel and do if a corpmate would lose an expensive ship?". If the answer is...
  • "Troll the n00b!", "Post his loss on the corp forum for a good laugh!" you have a competitive PvP-er.
  • "I would be sad and try to comfort him and help replace his losses", you have a social, who slaves to fill the corp wallet and presses F1 when told
  • "I would link him some pages about proper fitting" or "Educate him", you have a rational who tries to solve the problem, make the group stronger
  • "I wud be upset cuz he make us look loosers": Kick the M&S back to highsec before he does more damage!
This leads us to the next point: "corp morale". Lot of people are scared of loss reports because they would decrease the "corp morale" and people would stop logging in. From the above we can see who would disappear: the M&S. You should lose them as they are useless. They might help you when you don't need help as you are winning on your own, but when things get rough, they will disappear! With proper marketing you can fool them for some time believing that things are fine and shiny, but sooner or later some troll will inform them that they are not. The idea that you can keep them motivated during some seriously hard period (or the idea that you won't have seriously hard periods) is ridiculous. An alliance filled with them can look bigger than it is, but think about -A-. A month ago everyone called them the cornerstone of a powerblock, equal to CFC-HB. They had the numbers. But at the moment some guys started kicking the wall because of boredom, to the surprise of all, the "fort" crumbled and the truth revealed: -A- doesn't have power to even put up some semi-decent resemblance of a fight. And in EVE kicking the wall for fun is a common activity. You can't reasonably hope that your fleet will never be tested in fire and the M&S-inflated numbers keep the enemies away. It's much better to have a smaller but useful fleet which allows you to find reasonable political measures: alliances, treaties, orderly evacuations. The sad fact is that the numbers fooled -A- leadership too, so they boldly entered the Nulli-TEST "goodfights" instead of telling Nulli to simply wait them out.

There is a direct damage caused by the "lossmail-M&S". They make uninformed, new, but not idiot players stay uninformed. The "don't lose ships" protocols (docking when neut comes, flying only crap, flying only in blop) make the player unable to learn anything or even recognize that he must learn. One must experiment and practice to be better. The pilot who lost 10 ships and learned from them will be much more valuable in a war than the one who docked every time he saw a neut.


Please don't mix "morale" with "motivation" which comes from one having a goal, a reason to fight. Sometimes one has to be reminded why he is there. Sometimes the goal is lost, rightfully making one unwilling to fight. However these are conscious thoughts. One then says "I no longer want to fight as the war is lost, let's evac and start over in FW", or even "I don't see this group winning. It's better to disband and the good ones move to a new home". However M&S says or does nothing like that. He just says "itz no fun" and doesn't log. The translation to human language is "its no longer providing me the positive feeling of being superior just because I sit below that logo".

One more thing: no wonder that the alliance that gained the most Sov in the recent war is the one that is happily fielding retreivers, laser rokhs and such things and openly states that "we don't care!". Having low M&S ratio does wonders.


Saturday morning report: 111.8B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Sunday morning report: 112.1B (2+0.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3+0.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0+0.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Monday morning report: 115.4B God bless the FW-bears! (2+0.5B spent on main accounts, 1.3+0.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0+0.5 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Liquidation report: I got rid of serious part of my item list, decreasing my trading hours below 2/day. This means both that I got above 800M/hour and that I now have 40B cash, tomorrow you'll see it will be put to good use.

25 comments:

Steel H. said...

Random stuff:

- kicking useless morons out of your corp is a good strategy. A better one is designing systems to work with and manage moronism. I'll let that one sink in for a sec. Be assured the CFC isn’t comprised of all expert PvPers, quite the opposite. If you ever join it, just wait until you are in a Boat fleet...
- bullet point 4 happens. No, the alliance won't kick the one that's complaining, they may kick the one that lost the expensive ships
- disregard for K/D ratios is a goon/CFC specific culture. There are other alliances (in 0.0/sov) where the forum signatures of pilots displays their K/D ratios...
- that TEST kitchen sink fleet, and the E24 article was an obvious troll. Often alliances (another mostly CFC cultural thing) will do comedy roams, slosh ops (people drunk on comms), ridiculous fits, "rainbow" lasers, battle badgers and so on - strictly for (wait for it) FUN! Such fleets always get murdered by any form of coherent opponent, and when then happens, it's hilarious! Rest assured that TEST does bring proper doctrine to any serious operations or roams, just like anyone else. Doctrinal discipline is one of the strong points of the entire CFC coalition, and it excels at this, particularly when you look at the size of the entire block.
- TEST got all their new space because that was that was the deal, that they would be awarded that space and become the "stewards of the south". And it was conquered because the entire CFC coalition plus PL slammed into the south. And they didn't conquer all that space in laser rokhs and battle badgers.
- your obsession-compulsion with goals is leaning heavy on my sanity. Now, I've been in null since I started EVE, saw pretty much all forms of PVP and took part in about 7 wars and campaigns and I can tell you, there is no "GOAL", ok? The goal is, to have fun playing an internet spaceship game, to hang out with internet bros, to own nerds, to indulge your psychopathic urges, to have the biggest e-peen, to screw someone else over, to smugpost on forums, to say "I was there". That's it. And forget about the one empire too - not gonna happen, at least not for now. The CFC are the only ones that have the cuture and organization to pull it off and maintain it, and Mittani has stated quite clearly that he does not want to conquer the galaxy, that empires that expand too rapidly collapse from within, and that "at the current level of EVE civilization, a block can control about half the galaxy".
- pretty much everything you wrote here about 0.0 is wrong

Anonymous said...

I don't argue that your analysis is irrational. However, if EVE is designed by and for the "good fight" crowd, then ignoring how killboards & lossmails are regarded is irrational.

What people should think and do does not matter; what they actually think and do is all that matters.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: it's only true if everyone thinks and does the same thing. However there are huge differences between the groups and these differences are tested in battle. The one who is wrong will be defeated.

Peter Petermann said...

I do have the firm believe that People who produce bad loss mails are bad for a corp.

Now the thing that you, in your post totally ignore is that different loss mails mean different things.

Obviously no one will complain about a random fleet loss with a fleet fit. There is simply no reason to complain.

"You make us look bad" when the lossmail:
- is in a fleet fight but not showing a proper fleet fit
- is showing a lol fit (wherever)
- is showing that you died outside of a fleet fight in a stupid way.


Now i think the fitting things i don't have to explain.
the "died outside of a fleet fight in a stupid way" - that's the one most people don't get.

If you for example lose a lot of ships in the corps ratting system, then its not only you being a moron, because you did not watch local - it also means you feeding hostiles, making 'em come more often to get the easy mail.

Now, after watching you going on about M & S for a while now, i have to wonder if you realize that writing about stuff you have *never* done is a pretty M & S move?

Anonymous said...

The only thing I'm unsure about is whether it's a good idea to kick the M&S. After all, warm bodies in EVE are much more useful than in WoW (where you are capped to 40 people). A bad rifter pilot might still be better than none at all.

Gevlon said...

@Peter: no doubt that bad fit or a bad practice (ignoring surroundings) are bad.

However the "avoid lossmails" protocols (dock when neut arrives, fly something cheap) don't solve the problem which is "bad player". It hides the problem. When the war comes and the player must undock, there will be troubles.

It's also funny that you - like the "experience trolls" - demand personal experience (No one shall talk about Mars since no one was there), but want to stop others from getting personal experience which can only be done by taking risks.

@Anonymous: no. A bad Rifter pilot is someone who will disappear when things turn bad and leeches on others when things are good. He decreases the quality of discussions, make mediocre players believe that they are great (since they compare themselves to crap)

Fade Toblack said...

Gevlon posted: However the "avoid lossmails" protocols (dock when neut arrives, fly something cheap) don't solve the problem which is "bad player". It hides the problem. When the war comes and the player must undock, there will be troubles.

----

Not true. Bad players aren't going to be in a key position in your fleet, and as such they're not going to be able to make a bad decision that tips the balance of the fight.

Even a bad player can apply DPS to the right target, or provide cannon fodder to give more time for your skilled players to do something that may win the battle.

There comes a point with any fight where tactics just don't matter any more, because one side has overwhelming numbers.

Anonymous said...

@gevlon: "However the "avoid lossmails" protocols (dock when neut arrives, fly something cheap) don't solve the problem which is "bad player". It hides the problem. When the war comes and the player must undock, there will be troubles."

just commenting on this: the "avoid lossmails" protocal is just "dock up until you can form a fleet to take on the bad guys" not "dock up and never engage", if an alliance always docks up when there are bad guys then they are asking to have their sov taken away. Our alliance always has a standing defence fleet in each region that people can join immediately there is a threat reported on the intel channels. the purpose of the "dock up you noob" stigma is not to avoid lossmails, it is to avoid UNNECESSARY lossmails. if someone wishes to try to solo the hostiles then by all means - don't dock up, so long as this does not interfere with the standing defence fleet's strategy.

Peter Petermann said...

no one sais "don't take a risk".
It's always about weighting what risk to take and what risk not to take.

If a hostile (read: non-friendly) is in local, and you are not prepared for a fight (which you usually are not when running PVE stuff) thats a Risk one should not take.

Docking is a bad idea when you have hostiles in local, since one of the roaming standards is to have your first Interdictor warp to station and bubble. However, getting safe is totally what you should do.

Flying cheap is not what i'd suggest. However, picking a ship in the right value range for its performance compared to the risk and the efficiency with that you are working is totally something one should do.

In war the most important thing for a (new) player is to know how to follow orders, and when to use the ability to make simple decisions.

20 Ships start locking you? congrats, you have just been called secondary, gtfo before you are primary OR call for reps, whatever fits the situation.

That is nothing you learn from hanging in a belt when hostiles are there, that's nothing you learn by having lolfits, and no one will be angry when you get that wrong.

In smaller scale fights positional movement, gang separation, tracking/damage mechanics, control mechanics etc. play a larger role. You don't learn those by going around solo either. When you are around solo you learn on thing: how fast you can die.

You learn stuff like that by studying and then applying what you read in real situations and only if you know what of it works in what ship against what ship from experience you have truly learned how to apply those skills. And then, and only then you are in a position where you can assess your risk and decide to run solo in a gang of a few. But usually you aren't losing that much ships at that time that someone will complain.

The main thing about PVP is to know the numbers, to know the options and to make the righ assessment about the situation - no matter if you are a small scale roamer or a big time FC.

You can't do that without learning to fly the ship first, but you don't learn by meaningless throwing away ISK. All people show if they do so is that they repeat the same mistakes all over.

Anonymous said...

"In smaller scale fights positional movement, gang separation, tracking/damage mechanics, control mechanics etc. play a larger role. You don't learn those by going around solo either. When you are around solo you learn on thing: how fast you can die."

these techniques are what makes solo pvp possible in the first place - going solo is the best way to internalize them.

Anonymous said...

What you call the "avoid lossmail protocol" is really just common sense. Ratting ships get utterly destroyed by any kind of competent ganker in 1v1 because they dictate the engagement and are actually fit for pvp.

There's nothing to learn by trying to pvp in a pve ship. If the engagement happens to be favorable, the ganker can just warp away because ratters don't fit tackle.

The way you learn how to pvp is by going out looking for pvp, either solo or in a fleet.

Gevlon said...

Most of the commenters are completely missing the point. The point isn't that losses are somewhat good. They are clearly bad.

The post is about ones response to the loss of another.

Anonymous said...

I've played a month of EVE to take a look at it, and I joined a random social corp with 300 active members, mainly in hopes to learn a few things. That did not happen, because after reading a few webpages I already knew more than 2/3's of their members. I was even accused of being a spy because I knew basic stuff.

They got wardecced by a 9-person pirate corp just a few days later, and what did they do? After one (rather successful) battle where only the highest ranked members of the corp where allowed, they all docked and logged off, and told the newbies that they are not allowed to leave the stations. Their plan was to literally wait until the aggressors became bored, despite having a numbers advantage of 30:1.

Hivemind said...

I’m not entirely sure I follow here Gevlon. You’re saying if someone loses a ratting ship because they didn’t dock or safe up their PvE ship when neutrals came in local, that’s fine because they’re learning (not sure what they’re learning though, unless it’s “Get docked/safe when neuts are in system”) but if someone listens to the advice of other players and gets safe whenever they see neuts in local and never loses a ship because of it, they’re being M&S. Do I really need to point out that PvE-fit ships used against NPCs who never neut and only do one or two types of damage in predictable amounts are never going to fare well against a dedicated PvP boat designed to take advantages of the weaknesses in a PvE fit? Especially if the PvPer attacks the PvE ship while their defences are already being stressed by the NPCs? Seriously, what is the player who’s lost 10 ships like that supposed to be learning?

By the same token, kicking someone who’s stupid enough to undock a vulnerable ship when neuts are in local is a bad idea (bear in mind most alliances would only care if it was a PvE ship or a PvP ship undocked in very unfavourable circumstances, like 5-1 advantage on the neuts side. Undocking a sensible PvP fit to fight a lone neut and losing isn’t likely to warrant complaints), but kicking players who complain about idiots making the alliance look like easy targets and attract hostiles to their space is a good idea. Why is one breed of idiot better off kept while another is better off kicked?

You’re openly dismissive that alliance morale matters at all because you “it only affects the M&S” (because it’s not a rational decision at all to look at an alliance that is losing a sov war and isn’t being any fun in the process and say “Maybe I’d be better off elsewhere”), yet EVE history is full of examples of alliances failing to keep their players encouraged and engaged, being unable to bring numbers to fights and losing their space. It’s quite telling that the alliances like Goonswarm and TEST are the ones that a) spend the most effort improving pilot morale and b) have the easiest time connecting with their pilots due to shared culture and they’re ones who currently hold the most space and the richest space in EVE. In the Goons’ case they’ve survived losing all their space several times and even being robbed and disbanded by their former leader. These are the alliances that work the hardest to use their M&S population and keep it happy and logging in, and they’re winning! You even point to the TEST shitcat fleet as an example ofwhat an alliance with low M&S can do. No. They lost that fight, because shockingly enough hull-tanked Laser Rokhs and battle-Retrievers are not effective fighting machines. They don’t care because they did it for a laugh to improve their alliance morale and keep those M&S logging in. They went on to win the war. Go figure.

As for the CFC/SoCo war in Delve… There’s always two sides to every story, and I had no part in that war so I don’t have any first hand intel, but from what I could see it started off with team Honeybadger coming in and using large blobs against smaller Nulli blobs, while Nulli were still at war with RA. In response to this Nulli and RA declared a truce and they along with -A- fought back and brought equal or even greater numbers than TEST/PL. In response to this the CFC en masse descended on Delve and brought about 2-3 times as many numbers to any fight. In the face of that level of opposition, SoCo stopped throwing fleets at the CFC for them to kill because the situation was no longer winnable. I don’t think anyone ever considered SoCo equal to CFC-HB in terms of power, and they definitely weren’t equal in numbers – at the height of their power Nulli had about 2.5k members, Red Alliance had 2k and -A- had about 4k. Compare to about 7k TEST and 1.2k PL plus 10-15k CFC allies.

Gevlon said...

@Hivemind: there are two problems here. One is the infamous "dock when neut comes". This leads to an AFK-cloaker acting as system wide playing-jammer. Most neuts are not after you. They are on their merry business. Other big part can be handled by d-scanning.

But the post is not about that. Let's assume that lossmail = bad player. I claim that anyone mind a bad, but otherwise not leeching player is an M&S. As fleet sizes are not capped, a simple bad player can contribute, at least in the iconic tackling Rifter.

Leaving a losing alliance is rational choice. However "losing" is defined as sov loss and not ship loss. Yes, you are right, moral loss is a danger to average alliances, but it's because they have surprisingly high M&S ratio, see tomorrows post.

M&S is an attitude, not an educational or IQ issue. You are completely incorrect about considering GSF/TEST full of M&S. I'm sure they have the lowest M&S ratio. "Immature" or even "plain dumb" doesn't warrant M&S. The janitor and the dustman are usually not intelligent people, yet they are productive members of the society, so is Drake#1231. The guy with PHD who refuses to find a job because anything below CEO is unacceptable to him so he keep living in his parents house daydreaming about getting some dream job is a leeching M&S.

Read: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/p/about-m.html

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon: From what I gather, it works somewhat like this:

Premises:
- The opposing faction consists in parts of what you would categorize as "M&S". This is a given, since while you certainly can try to keep your own group devoid of them, you will hardly be able to do so for the opposing group.
- These "M&S" are highly unstable in their log-on behavior. They only log on as long as they have they have the feeling of "owning" the enemy.
- "M&S" value themselves by irrational comparison with others.
- Even "M&S" have the capability of communicating with other members of their faction while they are not active (because they are "bored").
- "M&S" will gain a morality boost by devaluing the competition (elevating themselves by comparison).


Aim:
- Prevent the enemy "M&S" from gaining any sort of motivation.

Thought process #1:
- Dying in a gank by a PvP-fitted neut is a given if you are in your PvE fit - even if the ganker is a "M&S".
- Getting a successful gank on you will provide a morality boost to the opposing faction's "M&S" as they can post killmails of them "owning the enemy". That a trained gorilla could probably have won this kind of engagement does not occur to them as they are irrational.

Conclusion #1:
- A strict doctrine of "dock if there are neuts in system" is published. (As you also found a year ago in one of your posts, a doctrine of "dock if there are neuts in system if you do not know what you are doing" would not work.

Thought process #2:
- The only way to have your ship's fit exposed to the opposition is by dying.
- If one of your faction members is killed and their killmail displays an unorthodox ("lolfit") fit, the opposing "M&S" will gain a morality boost as they elevate themselves by "lol"ing about the fit. Did you ever consider that the name "lolfit" may have a deeper meaning? It's not "a laughable fit" - it's "a fit the enemy will laugh about".

Conclusion #2:
- Strongly discourage fits that do not fit doctrine for the purpose they are flown for (PvE fits in PvE, fleet doctrine in fleet battles, etc.)
- Do so by means of peer pressure. Ridicule members showing up on such killmails, thus making others shy away from non-doctrine fits.
- Alternatively, if your group still contains "M&S", remove the person showing up on the killmail. This will somewhat compensate for any "M&S" morality loss by providing a clear distinction between the kicked person ("he is bad lol") and the remainder of your group ("we r awesum lol").

Hope this clears the thought behind it up somewhat!

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: that clearly makes sense, but has high costs: your intelligent members are unable to undock if a random cloaking T1 frig shows up. Also it prevents players from getting proficiency in d-scan, counterdropping and above all thinking about their fit and understanding how it works (copying doctrine fleet can be performed by an ape).

The proper action is having a half-PvP fit that can reasonably protect itself until help comes, like the infamous Mining Rokh.

By making idiot-safe rules, you naturally open your alliance to M&S who will make other weird things.

While we could argue which effect is larger (the negative as you are boosting enemy morale, or the positive as you have less M&S), we have data: CFC-HB which doesn't do as you suggest won over alliances that do.

Hivemind said...

I've read the About M&S page before, but I re-read it anyway. As a suggestion, you might want to go back and re-write it to either add in EVE-specific examples or at least make it less WoW-specific.

As for what is there though, a lot of it is specific to goals, and begs the question what goals the CFC/HB players have. Have fun playing internet spaceships with their friends? Probably impossible to judge from an outside perspective, but they seem to be enjoying it. Have GFs? That's where the M&S starts creeping in. During the curbstomp phase of the Delve war I've run across reports of docked up Nulli fleets that had about 3 different CFC fleets ready to jump in system the moment they undocked. So they didn't undock and that apparently pissed off the CFC, given the amount of trolling and parody songs it generated. If GFs were the goal, that's slacker behaviour - according to you a slacker: "believes he is entitled for everything, simply on the basis of him being a human (him paying $15). He believes that others should make his rewards happen". In this case the CFC/HB pilots felt entitled to having fights with Nulli, with no effort to actually encourage those fights.

Aside from that example, I believe the majority of CFC and Test pilots have little to no idea how to fit ships effectively, how to make ISK individually or how to fly outside of a blob. They outsource all of that to the alliance and the minority who do know this come through for them - they're given doctrine-fit ships, their FCs handhold them through battles and do the strategic-level thinking for them, smaller groups of more skilled players handle things like logistics, capital ships, spying, scouting etc. Deprived of that support system, the average CFC grunt would be quickly reduced to helplessness. On the other hand, they exist and flourish in the one place that allows them to do so. Does that make them M&S because of how poorly they would do outside of the specific conditions of the CFC, or are they not because they only play the game within those conditions?

Hivemind said...

"Most neuts are not after you. They are on their merry business."

And what evidence is that based on exactly? For a neut to reach you in sov space he's usually had to travel out through lowsec and npc null first, or gone through a heavily camped gateway between highsec/nullsec. He's going to areas where he will be shot on sight, it's foolish to assume he's doing so for the hell of it. Most of the time they're out there for kills either themselves or via hotdrops, occasionally they're just spying on your space. When one shows up you can either be safe and assume they're hostile or assume they're not looking for fights, be wrong 7 times out of 10 and pay for it in ships.

"The proper action is having a half-PvP fit that can reasonably protect itself until help comes, like the infamous Mining Rokh."

Would that be the mining Rokh that I and several other commentors pointed out was far from invulnerable and a huge target? In general, you cannot mix PvP and PvE fittings and end up with something that isn't useless at both. PvE calls for active tanks - shield boosters or armor reppers, high resists aimed at the specific damage types the npcs throw out and cap stability running all of that, with the consequence that buffer is usually low. PvP calls for burst tanks, high buffer, all-round resists and no concern for cap stability. Above all things, a successful PvE fit is inherently vulnerable to energy neuts.

"CFC-HB which doesn't do as you suggest won over alliances that do."

Who said they don't do that? CFC-HB are one of the most doctrine-dependant groups in the game because it's what they train their members to fly in and doctrine fit ships are what their logistics people move out to staging systems and place on contracts. They'll only reimburse doctrine-fit losses and they'll mock the hell out of any of their members who die in a failfit. You can bet their null-bear members gtfo any time a neut shows up in system as well.

Vermis said...

I think loss mail paranoia comes from the fact that loss mails are completely public and it is a single server population. There is no "hiding" your loss no matter the reason or how private your engagement was.

While loss mails are fairly detailed in numbers, they lack any of the why or how of what occurred. You could have been saving orphans from a burning ship being attacked by a roaming band of pirates and all anyone will see (especially in aggregate reports) is that you died and lost isk.

Coupled with the fact that no one likes to lose anything and fear of persecution, loss mails are permanent public records of it. Your scarlet letter to carry around.

Steel H. said...

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/02/its-tough-old-world-out-there.html (http://www.rotekapelle.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=53607)

Anonymous said...

I am do not know those "dock rules" first hand, but from what I gather, it sounds like a simple 2 step process:

1. If you are not ready for a possible battle (PvE fit, no PvP interest, ...), dock up, because you will die without learning anything.

2. If you get killed because you ignored 1., you just showed that you cannot / are not willing to follow the corp's rules, therefore the kick.

Your argument, that you can learn something when you undock anyhow, ignores the fact, that there are usually plenty of better opportunities for learning PvP if you just ask your corp mates than letting yourself getting ganked.

Kristophr said...

Gevlon:

Part of Mitten's strength is using all of the people in his corp. Including the M&S.

To paraphrase Sun-Tzu: An inferior general only hires brave or competent soldiers. A superior general hires competent men and fools, brave men and cowards.

And finds ways to use all of them.

Pinky Feldman said...

For us, lossmails don't really matter even though we like to poke fun at one another when someone has a big loss. Losses happen, but regarding your example of players not gaining experience and hiding problems, the only thing that matters when someone takes a loss is whether or not they learned from it. To quote Bryan Havoc, "I don't mind people losing ships, however, if you lose a ship and don't learn from it we have a problem. If you hurl yourself off a cliff and are surprised when you hit the ground, there are issues."

Anonymous said...

You are absolutely right about the lossmails, and I think this could be extended to the killmails as well.

I've been in several corporations since I started EVE. Some of them included a few of the more well known pvp corp, and others have been pretty unknown.

The good corps really don't care about the lossmails they have. Usually the people who are at the top of the killboard are also topping the lossmail board. If someone were to lose pimped out milti-billion ship he would more likely be congratulated for it.

On the other hand the lesser corporations were struggling to have a handful of members with decent fits.

So how does our corp enforce the fleet doctrines and the like? We don't. The members are simply trusted to do it themselves and in fact they are encouraged to fly whatever they want.

It also interesting how we recruit. We don't have specific skill requirements and I think most people who apply are accepted. But we do have a questionnaire people have to fill out first, so I bet that effort filters out the majority of the recruits, who probably won't fit in anyway.