Greedy Goblin

Monday, September 9, 2013

i haz authority

Imagine that the Alliance Tournament winning PL team would go to a lowsec roam. But instead of killing people they meet, they would just write to local "We are the best PvP team in the game, don't bother fighting, just self destruct, we go AFK".

No doubt that they would go home as new clones, despite they officially are the best PvP team of EVE. Yet, every single victim they meet would try to run or fight back. They would have to claim every kill the hard way, no one would just give them a free pass, no matter how much they earned it.

The problem that was finally solved by the above example was haunting me since some "veterans" were trash-talking on TEST forums. They did not offer any kind of argument, they simply stated that they are right because of their history. TEST (was) being a newbie-friendly alliance, there was always someone who did not know who are the "right people" and replied to them as they were just trolls.

Well, the truth is that they were just trolls. You have to prove your idea every single time it's challenged. Of course you can just link some older post or evidence, but you can't take the position "I have authority, I'm right because I say so", especially if you are right.

People will always need evidence for your claims and will alway challenge you. While this is annoying, it's a good thing, the only way of progress. One day one of them will be right and his different idea will be better than yours. Of course 99% of the challengers are just ignorant. But the "I'm right, period" position either silences this good idea or forces its bearer to become your enemy. It's dumb to make enemies among smart people.

Of course talking from the position of authority is convenient. Most people who disagree with you are spamming the same nonsense you've heard. But if you can't be bothered to teach, why do you say anything? Just mind your own business and leave the dumb ones be!

By the way this is why I finally chose to start my own ganking corp. Previously I just published my results and hoped that things will change after people learn it. They didn't. Many others wrote things too, after all I didn't invent Procurers. Most people still fly untanked, badly chosen ships and ignored whatever was written on this topic. They dismissed all the data as "tldr lol". We have to prove them wrong objectively every single day. It's a hard and long work, but it will make difference.


The first daily anti-tear is a very tanked ret. I start to see these and Macks with no mining upgrades in lows. They mine less than Procurers/Skiffs, but being AFK is very important:

Then we can see how the local chat turns on those who feel entitled to mining in an untanked barge in 0.5:


The moron of the week thought that the best answer of ganking is being a "white knight". He was wrong. Another one figured out a good name to his ship:

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

the economic argument for flying an untanked retriever or mack is one that you insist on overlooking.

A retriever takes 2 hours to replace. So, if I get ganked EVERY 2½ hours, I am still not making a loss. The chances of me actually getting ganked every day are small enough as it is, even AFK mining in your vicinity, or New Orders, or during hulkageddon.

A Mack is a slightly more pricey calculation, but still, the % of miners who lose a mack (not the no. of macks lost) is small enough to make the risk:reward worthwhile,

And I am pleased that, as an asocial (One who doesn't need social contact or validation), you have finally got validation from small people :)

maxim said...

@Anon
This argument only applies to hardcore miners, who can afford to throw time at the game.
Most people only get to mine for a few hours at peak time. Losing these hours is actually quite harmful to their progress.

@Gevlon
Actually i'm beginning to wonder how much different exactly is it going to make.

Suppose a large amount of miners begin to fly in tanked ships. What are the outcomes?

the immediate results are:
- more demand for tanky fits and ships
- less demand for mine-y fits and ships, amplified by less mine-y ships dying
- less quick but more stable progress for miners

What are the long-term results though? The only one that really comes to my head is that hi-sec ganker life is going to get way harder, so in a way you are shooting yourself in the foot there.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: you ignore opportunity cost. A Procurer mines 90% as much as a ret and practically never dies. So if you get ganked once ever 25!!! hours of mining, you are better off with procurers and the above is only true if you have no implants (if you have, you lose them with ganks). However in a procurer you can safely use mining implants increasing procurer yield.

@Maxim: the whole project was started to end griefing, so making the life of highsec gankers harder is the very goal!

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon

You're forgetting that the procurer has 2x smaller ore hold. That makes solo miners mine about 2x less ore than the retriever. Also most miners never get ganked in their entire career, so there is no reason for them to use procurers, if they are smart enough. Only the stupid and weak get ganked.

Lucas Kell said...

For yield, income and potential income.
I tend to run my high sec miners in macks/retrievers when they are solo, and in covetors/hulks with on grid orca support and fleet bat when I'm running the group. My miners have never been ganked. They've made countless billions.
Running a procurer does reduce your volume considerably. When comparing against a mack, you have to consider the additional trips to dock and unload. Against both, you have to consider the raw yield difference as well as the fact that with high sec mining, it's better to split lasers to reduce how often you finish an asteroid and get a partial load. Especially when semi-afk, you can often mine a whole cycle only to get a 10% pull because you haven't checked the roid. A covetor/hulk splitting to 3 rocks reduces the impact of this.
I would generally recommend miners fit for max yield, then mine in areas that gankers frequent less. There are several hundred systems that are prime mining areas where gankers are rare. I'd also add known gankers as red contacts, and move should any character not in my group get within 5km. Following this, you'll pull more yield, and rarely get ganked.

As for the impact of your corp, consider the numbers. You've scored a generous average of 35 kills per day. You've also killed 2/3 pods per miner kill, which means your "# of characters killed" is inflated as you get 2 kills for the 1 gank. This means the number of individual character ganks you get is ~21 per day. Consider how many miners are in high sec at any one time and you are impacting 21 of those per day. In order to have the lasting impact you want to achieve, you will need to hit considerably more than that. With 21 per day, I'd be surprised if you even made a lasting regional difference.

Sugar Kyle said...

I won't even enter into the teaching them by banking.

I'm not sure you are taking into account how many people start playing and start mining. You were in Teon yesterday. That system is regularly visited by gankers as are its neighbors. We have long discussions in local.

Your goal is your goal. However, mission runners dip into low sec in shiny ships every day. People bring their very skilled battleship's in to do that mission. The systems have high traffic of the outlaw type yet they cannot resist completing their mission.

Why don't they learn? The same person has been killed two and three times as they try to finish a mission.

I don't see how you are going to make a game sweeping change. Small, personal ones here and there? Sure. Same goes for us and the people that I mail. Some rage out. Some learn. Most never respond. You have already seen this.

But one day your work will not be done and you walk away from a fully enlightened high sec where only tanked procs roam the belt.

Sgtbinary said...

@Lucas Think about it as a start to a fire. Just because his corporation might make a regional impact directly, people will start to talk. The Talk will escalate and pass around to different regions. As it spreads, attitudes will change. As attitudes change, the way people operate will change. Already thanks to the New Order I personally am very jumpy and paranoid, even in my procurer. If a non-Mining ship comes onto grid, I will move belts (or dock up) if I am alone. Even if I am in High Sec. (I might be too jumpy, but **shrug**) Also look at who all will read Gevlon's blog. People will change their behavior based on his findings and recommendations. Especially if they are in Low Sec. It only takes one Match to start a forest fire.

Von Keigai said...

I mined for hours last night in a Retriever. I was exploring in nullsec on my main, and I prefer volume to tank. Nobody ganked me, even though I was the low-hanging fruit in my anom for half the time. Then a few more retrievers showed up. I mined for hours and no gank of anyone.

You have repeatedly ignored it when people have argued that mining in a Retriever is the rational thing to do, so long as gankers are not around. Your yield is in effect higher due to not losing time running back and forth to station. And, of course, it is considerably more AFKable. Or semi-AFKable: I mine on screen #2 while I explore lowsec or nullsec on screen #1. This often means I ignore the miner (and am sitting there doing nothing with a full hold), because I am doing something more important. Losing a minute or two of ice is less important than watching local while hacking a can.

Lucas Kell said...

@Sgtbinary
I've played EVE long enough to know that 21 ships a day is not going to have any long term impact. To have even a regional impact, you need to do considerably more than that.
New Order has the benefit of being specific to certain regions, and having existed for years. Those particular regions they frequent know about them, but outside them, half the miners you speak to have never even heard of them. Even the people that have heard of them only know about them for the religious talk they spam.
It actually takes more than one match to start a forest fire unless you have an extremely well placed match with the perfect environment for fire to spread. Randomly flicking a match at a couple of trees is unlikely to yield the results you would expect.
High sec miners pull in billions of isk. By avoiding high gank locations, they can continue to mine uncontested most of the time. You have to think that there are thousands of miners in high sec belts at any one time. You really think killing 21 of them per day in a single region is going to have any impact? It might affect that region while Gevlon is there, but as soon as he moves on, the yield miners will return. Its less like a forest fire and more like trying to wipe the water off of a windscreen with a tiny sponge. Sure, wherever the sponge is the water disappears, but take away the sponge, and the water returns.
Eventually though, Gevlon will realise it's futile to try to maintain this goal, and he'll give up and move on to something else. He's dedicated, I'll give him that. Every waking moment since like 22/08 he's been spending ganking. I'd be well and truly bored by now, I can usually only do a few days of ganking before it bores me.

Anonymous said...

@Sgtbinary

You are being overoptimistic. The New Order isn't as powerful as you think (and as James makes other think). They got much attention, thanks to J315 social skills, which Gevlon lacks. But they did not change miners' habits. The proof is themselves - if miners found NO to be a real enemy, NO would die because no miner would be gankable. Yet, they still gank in the same systems and post the same tears. Smart miners know how to avoid bing ganked. Stupid miners get ganked all the time and never learn. And by being smart I don't mean using a Procurer, because it's as much gankable as any other barge barge. Gankers' fuel are tears, not isk. If they want to gank, they will gank, whether it's a retty or a procurer or a fully-tanked orca. That's another thing Gevlon doesn't understand - people can be doing the same thing he does, but for different reasons and don't give a *** for isk or kb. Being smart means being able to fly yield-fit retty and not get killed.
And there's another thing. Do you see if anyone, outside this blog, actively talks about Gevlon in a positive way? I have yet to see such person. That includes miners he ganks. He won't make an impact on the game. His methods are suboptimal. And even if they were, his scale is too low. But even if he had the skills and the means, he won't change Eve, because he introduces nothing new. Ganking was there years before him. Tanking to avoid ganking was known before him. Avoiding gankers was utilized before him. Therefore, he has neither the skills, nor the scale, nor the objective to change Eve. He failed already. We just have to wait for his posts how he did that, but that's totally not his fault (duh!), because the miners refuse to learn or something defensive like that. Only newbies can believe in him. And they stop being newbies the moment, they meet a really experienced player to teach them (as in E-UNI nowdays). And then they see how futile and illogical this pseudo-crusade is.

Saito said...

Gevlon is dead on right about opportunity cost. It doesn't matter if you can replace that retriever every 2-3 hours. It's also the lost income that could have been made flying properly in the same amount of time. In that sense the 2/3 hour Retriever suddenly costs you upwards of 6-10 hours depending on output.

And if you are just assuming the loss of barges as a cost of doing business, why wouldn't you tank the things properly?

I love this project. I may even start training up a ganker of my own. I don't think I have the time to reach 5B/month and join the corp, but I would love the idea of affiliating with this movement. Gevlon, any possible plans to go blue with like-minded groups, and possibly join up for fleet ganking? As has been mentioned before, the restrictions of your corp may make it unworkable for many of us, but we may still want to help in a limited fashion.

Perhaps you could use a steady supply of discounted Catalysts? :)

Lucas Kell said...

"Gevlon is dead on right about opportunity cost. It doesn't matter if you can replace that retriever every 2-3 hours. It's also the lost income that could have been made flying properly in the same amount of time. In that sense the 2/3 hour Retriever suddenly costs you upwards of 6-10 hours depending on output."
Except if you consider how often you get ganked if you just dont go near ganker areas.
I've NEVER been ganked in high sec. Consider that. Billions of isk with no ganks.
If you make 1b isk with a procurer, but with a Covetor could make 1.1b isk in the same time, between ganks, you are better off simply getting ganked.
Opportunity cost works both ways, that's what you seem to ignore. If you buy a Procurer, then don't see any gankers in your area for a month, you could have just as easily flown a Covetor and gained extra profit.

Anonymous said...

"Gevlon is dead on right about opportunity cost. It doesn't matter if you can replace that retriever every 2-3 hours. It's also the lost income that could have been made flying properly in the same amount of time. In that sense the 2/3 hour Retriever suddenly costs you upwards of 6-10 hours depending on output.
"

the lost income in a procurer vs a retriever must also be figured in, via the reduced yield and extra trips to the station. That is a guaranteed difference. The chances of getting ganked are tiny in comparison

maxim said...

The more i think of this setup, the more problems it has.

The core problem is that it is only barely sustainable profit-wise and has a stated goal of outright destroying it's own profit source.

The only ones who would be interested in supporting these are the ones who genuinely have fun ganking in high-sec.

In order to make a lasting impression on the Eve community, you need to have at least one full region constantly covered by ganks for a consistent period of time. That's a scan and a gank in every system of the region every 10-20 minutes.

Since there are about a hundred systems per region (some have way more, some have less), and warping and scanning takes ±2-3 min, you need about 8-9 pilots on the job at any given time. That's just the scouting job. Then there need to be people in actual Catalysts on standby ready to go out and prod miner buttocks. That's 1-2 more pilots.

In practice, you'll need either about 40 absolutely hardcore dudes, playing close to 8 hours a day every day, constantly looking for miners and suiciding on them. In practice we are looking at pretty much 8 times more regular players (playing 1 hour instead of 8) on an erratic schedule. These players will need to come from different timezones and will need to be managed by executive staff of as little as 10-20 people as well.

So we are looking at a 350 member corp to make untanked miners leave a single region.

These 350 people will need to routinely do a somewhat low-fun job that doesn't even earn any significant amount of cash. This setup will need way more than just "restrictions" to get going :/. NWO had James' vision and social acumen. What do you have?

And that's not even touching the notions of training and ISK logistics. You have dodged them so far by putting your corp restrictions in the way which only lets in the people who are ready to participate both skill-wise and income-wise. But i don't see how these recruitment policies are going to attracts hundreds of players :/

So yeah, having tons of doubts now.

Anonymous said...

Re "People will always need evidence for your claims and will alway challenge you"

One has authority if people think you have authority as well as if you can phyically enforce your will.

If the local crime boss tells you "if you testify I will kill you and your family", then most don't ask for proof. same for much of the "authority" (influence) of your boss, spouse, president of the US, etc. PL certainly has enough authority that smart corps do not idly wardec them.