Monday, April 29, 2013

An Ice Storm is Brewing...


or~  Hey, I Didn’t Call It a Cataclysm…

Tur’s Seventh Rule of W-space POSes Have several months of fuel ON-HAND, or suffer the consequences.

The above rule is a new addition to “Tur’s Rules for W-Space POSes”. The reason is, for those as dunt know… There is NO ICE in holes, Period, Ever… and as one of the necessary components of ALL POS fuels is some form of Ice Products, based on race. All of the other required products can be made in Anoikis… all of them.

Production Schema for Amarr POS Fuel

In the following chart, courtesy of Grismar’s EVE Wiki, you can see the current available Ice Resources and how they refine out today.


In the case of our POS, a Large Minmatar, we need the Ice Product Hydrogen Isotopes produced from the Ice Resources, Glacial Mass or Smooth Glacial Mass. Without Hydrogen Isotopes we cannot make fuel. From this it is obvious that Ice Products are a bottleneck for true Wormhole Independence. We who live in Anoikis are ‘dependant’ on one product found ONLY in Empire space… making this one product a crucial resource without which, we die. Why do I say we ‘die’? Because without fuel, the POS shields go down and without the shields our POS and all it contains is just a fat ripe target in space…

This situation is shared by all those who have POSes in New Eden except… we are not “IN” New Eden are we? While you can camp a gate in Empire, be it a fleet in Hi and Lo or a bubblefield and a fleet in Null you cannot destroy or close a ‘gate’. This is not the same in Anoikis… in W-space a dedicated and knowledgeable force can mass close your wormholes (IE your ‘gates’) in and out of your system and cut you OFF from all of the rest of EvE, and one does not need a fleet for this.

When we decide to mass close our holes, in the C6 we live in, it takes just 4 ships… one Scanner, one Battleship, one Orca and one Moros and once found the actual closing takes less than one to two minutes. I have watched this many times now. Just last night we had a new sig pop in Bastion while I was running scout on our static. I was sitting cloaked off of the static with probes out, I had removed all current sigs & anoms so any new sigs/anoms would instantly show up on scan. I had one pop while I had inbound haulers several hops out carrying, of all things, POS fuels…

I called out “Sig on scan.” which put the Op on hold, and immediately scanned the sig down. It was a new Unknown, which means wormhole, and I got it quickly to 100%, BMed, pulled probes and warped to 20km… and nothing was there. Whoever had opened that hole by landing on the other side, had popped in, not liked what they saw and immediately mass closed the hole before I could even get it scanned down… Now the described 4 ship mass closing Is specific to C5 and C6, for lower class holes there are other minimum needed mass closing comps, but they exist and there are people, like us, who are very good at using them.

The point being, if you can control a wormhole system’s holes, all you have to do is siege them until their fuel runs out…  You don’t even have to kill their POCOs or interdict their PI haulers… without Ice Prods, in time, every POS in any W-space system will run out of fuel and go offline, period.

When SYJ camped HBHI in our old C3 my biggest worry was Hole Control. We did not have the people or the resources to effectively fight back and we did not have the ISK to afford those who could. We did the only thing we could, we played the Boring Game. We logged on to get them excited, but tried, for the most part, to give them no ‘real’ targets. I was sure they wanted our carrier on their killboard and we did bring it out of the forcefield once to take down the bubbles they had put up as bait, but when we did that we had seen that many of the guys who had been tagged as inside our hole were getting kills in Empire, which means they had gotten bored and left.

They did come back after we were able to bring down most of the bubbles and get the carrier back in the POS… then, of course, they got a few kills on us when we went back to try and finish the last one, but nothing worrisome. Our biggest problem was, and they didn’t know this, we only had like 10 or 15 days of fuel… and there was NO WAY we were gonna get any haulers in, they had full hole control of our system. We were screwed but good and all it would take was time.

That was why we offered ransom. We might have been able to bore them out, mebbe they would have left or mebbe they would have decided to pick up the pace and try to take down our POS. I wasn’t ‘sure’ that would happen as the majority play in our TZ so we had a chance to fight back and a manned heavily armed POS can be deadly effective, but, you never know and we simply did not have the time to waste.

Without Ice Resources IN THE HOLE, a dedicated siege can work against any wormhole system. If we did have Ice Resources in hole then with enough planets even if you lose your POCOs you could still do PI, if yer willing to play off your main time, or get a friend from another TZ to get an alt in then he could mine Ice for you and as long as your POS could be effectively defended you could still make your own fuel… in other words, you would have a fighting chance… but not the way things stand now.

So, with this in mind let’s look at the coming Odyssey changes to…

Ice Harvesting (bolds, underlines, etc. mine)

“…the mechanics around ice harvesting have not created a dynamic or interesting feature until now. New Eden currently enjoys a massive oversupply of ice, which stifles competition and emergent gameplay…”

“At current levels of ice product usage, all of the ice needed for the entire game could be provided by only four ice belts (one of each ice type).”

“We at CCP want ice harvesting to be a lucrative activity that encourages players to relocate and compete for a piece of the pie. However we also must be careful not to cause the price of isotopes to rise beyond the means of “most Starbase operators.”

“…current static (and massive) ice belts spread throughout space will be removed from the game, and replaced by a series of Ore Anomalies…”

“…belts will respawn in exactly the same system four hours after they are completed...”

“ The amount of ice found in these sites will be tuned to ensure that ‘most, but not all, of the ice needs of the New Eden cluster can be provided by high security belts.”

“…the maximum supply of ice from highsec (assuming that each belt is mined out completely five times a day) would provide approximately 80% of the game's ice needs…”

According to CCP, “…highsec will still be a large exporter of ice products, being able to generate eight times the volume of isotopes used by highsec control towers.”

There will be a 50% reduction in Ice Harvester cycle times, but that does not affect the total available ice, just how fast you can mine it. The new Ice Anomalies will basically spawn in the same systems as before with some changes in Amarr, Ammatar and Khanid space.

“…these changes are designed to make ice harvesting a valuable activity that players will engage in both cooperative and competitive gameplay…” I read this to mean; in order to increase Player Interaction… and then, thankfully, CCP ends with…

We will be watching the results of these changes on the EVE market and on player activity very closely following release, and we may make tweaks to the respawn rate or ice composition of the new sites as needed in order to ensure a balanced feature that’ provides for the ice product needs’ of the game.”

There is an In Depth Dev Blog that covers the systems the new Ice Anoms will, and will not, be spawning in. Basically, in Amarr, Ammatar and the Khanid Kingdom, systems that had belts with ‘Clear Ice’, the ice needed for Amarr POS Fuel, are being reduced… somewhat significantly. I do not know the total of systems in these factions but there will only be 24 left after Odyssey hits the hard drive nearest you. All systems in the rest of Empire will not be changed except for the change from static belts to respawning Ice Anoms.

OK… so my concerns are obviously how this will affect W-space. As I have pointed out, we are dependent on Ice Products from outside of Anoikis and those supplies are going to come under contention now… plus, CCP makes it clear this will be a new Conflict Driver due to Hisec being able to provide most, but not all’ of New Eden's Ice needs. While Hisec will be able to generate eight times the volume of isotopes used by highsec control towers’ that is Hisec ONLY towers… Lo and Null have many POSes but both also have NPC Stations and Player owned Outposts… Wormhole Space does not. We are totally dependent on POSes. Without them there is no possibility of a permanent colonization in Anoikis…

Additionally I am very concerned by the quote about how they “must be careful not to price of isotopes to rise beyond the means of “most Starbase operators.” This is worrisome as my little corp, HBHI, has no desire to grow too much larger, as a corp, than we are now. And there are many who feel like we do. I would hate to see the day when a small corp won’t be able to ‘afford’ to make their own ‘Odyssey’ into wormhole space the way we in HBHI did. I do NOT ever want to see POS fueling work as a limiting factor on small corps in Anoikis… I hope the new CSM8, Chitsa Jason, James Argent especially, and Ripard Teg will help CCP to keep a sharp eye on this… we who live on the other side of the sky live in a precarious balance… tip things one way or the other too much and the effects can domino and kill the only truly totally emergent space in EvE.

Wormhole Space was never meant to be colonized… yet we, the players of EvE have done just that. CCP never thought anyone would accept dealing with the realities of living out of a POS permanently… and yet, we have done just that. I like the changes coming in Odyssey in so far, but I am a wormholer… and wormholes are just fine as they are right now and CCP has stated they feel the same way. CCP has also stated they are looking to add gameplay elements for all playstyles, Coalition; Alliance; corps: large, med and small, and solo play. If they mean it then I hope they won’t allow decisions made in the drive to create more Player Interaction to end up barring small & med sized corps from being able to live in W-space.

For those who might respond, “But you wormholers make so much ISK no matter how high the cost of Ice you will always be able to afford it.” A large Minmatar POS costs (well, did before the speculation started) approx 500mISK per month to fuel. And yes, we can make that much pretty easily especially in C4 and up holes… but like all things the amount of ISK one can make in holes will not increase just because the costs do. For a small corp inna C1, 2 or even a C3, it would not take all that much of an increase to make it just a grind to make the ISK to buy the fuel to keep the POS up so we can grind the sites to make the ISK to buy the fuel to keep the POS up so we can grind the sites to… you get it, right?

If an Ice Storm is brewing… CCP & CSM8 need to be careful it doesn’t sweep through Anoikis like the Bhola cyclone and decimate the one place in EvE where living in virtual space comes the closest to reality.


Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Eighth New Eden Empyrean Lobby

Not a biggie, most if not all of you have already heard this by now but, JIC... Here is YOUR Eighth Council of Stellar Management, CSM8...


Nine of the Fourteen I voted for won seats and the Omni-Sec, Blogger "Whole Game" Candidate, Ripard Teg, received the most votes overall.

Ripard Teg and the Nullsec block lead candidate Mynna will be your 2 Permanent Seat Representatives.

And I am thrilled that the smallest population of EvE players, us weird Anoikis (IE Wormhole) dwellers, somehow put TWO Reps, Chitsa Jason and James Argent on the council! Woot! Woot!

I very am pleased to see Mike Azariah finally land a seat. I have known Mike for most of my time in EvE and feel he really deserves this plus he will be THE Hisec Rep and, as the bulk of EvE's players are in Hisec and CCP has verified that half the playerbase plays some form of 'solo' gameplay, Hisec deserves a good rep.

Ali Aras is a win as a Rep in my book as she is in a great position to represent the New Players of EvE... at least until this time next year...  =]

Magala Solaris of RvB is a great addition to the council. I have an alt in Blue Rep and I know first hand, as many thousands of players do, that RvB is a great organization with a truly interesting take on EvE.

Trebor Deahdoow is back for another year and he is in a great position. As a multiple past CSMer he will be a fantastic and deeply helpful bridge between this group of CSM noobs and CPP. His prior experience, his connections in CCP and ingame will prove invaluable to the rest of the CSM, Trebor is going to find himself in a very key position I believe.

I will admit to filling out my ballot with Korvin (solo & small group) and Malcanis (moderate?) based almost solely on endorsements from players I respect. I don't know much about them personally but as I got 9 out of the 14 I wanted I am well pleased on a personal level with the New CSM8.

Who did I miss on? Nathan Jameson (W-space), Cipreh (W-space), Ayeson (W-space) [we got 2 out of 5 I am thrilled!], Psychotic Monk (Hisec Greifer) [would have been very interesting as a rep] and Riverini (Nullsec/EVE News 24).

Congratulations and Best of Luck to you all! Listen to us and communicate with us and do us proud.

"Ripard Teg for CSM8 Chair!!!"


Fly safe and see you in the sky... =/|)=

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Team A Losses: Nothing to Display Here...


or~ The Classic Wormhole Hotdrop.

The night started kinda quiet for me. Buncha guys on COMMS but nothing much going on. I was just getting ready to run my PI for the night when Pell says he has a guy wants us to help him take down 2 Orcas and some mining barges inna C2 he found… huh. As the guys discuss the possibility that it might be, in the immortal words of Admiral Akbar…


I’m messing around trying to decide if I want to join up because Pell is telling us it’s in a C2… 14 hops thru Empire from our current pipe AND we have to hurry cause our static is EOL (End Of Life)… so I’m waffling trying to decide if I want to leave the hole again. The last time I did I got sorta trapped in Hisec for a few weeks and I din’t like it and dunt really wanna get trapped there again for a while.

My PI is running well, I’m seeing something like 300 to maybe 500mISK a month steady there AND I have been able to sell quite a bit of it in the hole every now and again which is very sweet as that cuts the hauling out to Hi and waiting for it to sell on the market… I only do quick sells if the price is 5 or sometimes under 10% of the current lowest sell price, if not I put it up competitively and wait.

But, Pell has an infectious way about him as an FC and Alliance Leader… I was in my Cloaky Loki and finally the lure of being in on Orca kills, which I had never had, and the fact that I recently got paid for several site runs and ‘The Japanese Job’ (the 2 Towers we took down some few weeks ago, post: "I am Become Death...") so my wallet can now ‘afford’ a Loki replacement decided me and I asked if a Cloaky Loki was OK, was told it’s fine, Cloaky Kitchen Sink Fleet was the order of the day so I got a warpin to the Static and on the way a ‘Dictor was requested, I offered my ‘Sword and was told go get it, but be quick!

I landed, BM’ed the static, warped back and reshipped (with a small sigh of relief as I can much more easily afford to replace my Light Interdictor than a Loki TBH…) and headed back out. We staged on the static, finally Pell asked, “…last call to join up… any takers?” on getting no reply he ordered, “Everybody, jump the static.” we jumped ran the pipe and then ran the 14 hops to the lowsec the C2 was in.

On arrival we had 13 in fleet… 6 Cloaky Lokis, 1 Cloaky Legion, 1 Manticore and our non-allied scout inna cloaky Tengu and the non-cloakies… 1 Sleipnir, 1 Legion, 1 Purifier and me in my Broadsword. All the cloakies jumped the hole. The Mining Op was in Dscan range of the hole, so on command they all broke jump cloak and recloaked as fast as possible. Then they scouted out a 200km high pounce over the Op. There were 2 Orcas, 2 Hulks, 2 Mackinaws and a Tengu… and not a one reacted at all to a FLEET of 9 cloaky ships (1) jumping their hisec static and (B) being visible on DScan for several seconds as they broke and recloaked…  idiots.

The non-cloakies were ordered to warp in and sit on the Lowsec side of the entrance hole... still no reaction so they did not have scouts on either side of the hole and they were not really watching DScan. Finally, when everyone was in place, the FC ordered the Cloaky Fleet, “Uncloak and warp down.” He called primaries and secondaires then called in everyone outside the hole to “Jump, Jump, warp to Pell, warp to Pell.” We all jumped and warped in as quickly as possible. As we were doing this we listened as both Hulks and Macks went down and their PODs escaped, the Tengu was tackled and was fighting back as we landed.


The guys were calling out “Get the bubble UP!” “Get the bubble UP!” as I was landing. I called out, “Bubble going up.” as I spammed the Warp Disruption button… once I landed and bubbled up I targeted everything not ‘us’, both Orca’s and the Tengu and joined my 425mm AC IIs DPS to the focused fire of the fleet. As each of the remaining, and now seriously trapped, ships went down their PODs were trapped in the warp bubble and all three died as well… We looted the wrecks for the highest value loot, popped the wrecks and warped back to the hole and out.

We all felt really good as this was as close to text book execution of a small gang wormhole hot drop as you will ever see. And the defenders lost for one reason and one only… they had not maintained “Situational Awareness”. They should have had the Tengu cloaked and sittin ON the hole to give early warning at the first sign of ‘blue-fire’ or if he saw a ship jump in. ‘Blue-fire’ is the term used in holes when a wormhole preflashes as a ship jumps, similar to ‘Gate-fire’ or ‘gate activation’ in Empire. They should have mass closed ALL the holes into their hole and then had probes out to watch for new Sigs.

They were mining into the Orcas, they had 6 targets on the field and 2, the Orcas, were HVTs (High Value Targets), and only one uncloaked defender. They were most likely actively mining but just relaxed and chatting it up on comms… whatever they were doing it was NOT the way you mine in Anoikis space… not if you want to survive.

I have called “Mining in Holes” the “Deadliest Job in EvE”… And actually it doesn’t have to be, as long as you keep your head on a swivel, your eyes on DScan, and practice proper Hole Control. I actually bought a Retriever from an ally recently for mining in our C6. I now spend some time mining there whenever things are slow to support Mab in his Industry Projects… and I worry less in Bastion than I ever did in any hole I have ever lived in.

This is because we have our Alliance, 17 corps in there, so there are always many guys in the hole, some permanent some transient but always there are experienced wormholers, Situationally Aware and constantly, out of sheer habit, keeping tabs on the sky and the holes currently open in the homehole. So far in my time in Bastion EVERYTIME an unusually named ship or any probes appear on scan several people immediately ask “Who’s ship/probes/etc.?” until we all know what is going on and either a warning is given or one of us gets trolled for not warning in advance or for his crappy ship name etc., etc.

So when I am out there in the truly deadliest space accessible from New Eden… sitting dead still, my mind going numb to the drone of the mining lazors, waiting for my Retrievers immense ore hold to fill, I too spam DScan, keep my head on a swivel and keep an ear on comms, but I know I am not alone… that my corpmates and allies are out there with their eyes on the skies too… I will never end up like the guys we killed last night… and they could have avoided it too.

Oh and JIC anyone wants to jump up and down screaming “YOU GANKED THEM!!” “YOU GANKED MINERS!!” “YOU GANKED MINERS!!” and “You’re no better than James315 and Die Neue Ordnung!“ Keep in mind this was Anoikis... Wormhole Space... this aint Empire baby... and it aint Lowsec... it aint even Nullsec... this is -1.0 Space and that equals NEGATIVE SEC... says so right on the label.


In Empire you have CONCORD and an expectation of at the very least immediate retribution for a criminal act... In Lowsec you have a lessened degree of CONCORD response, but it is still there... In Nullsec you have the highest possible safety available in or out of New Eden as enforced by the Forces of the Big Blue Cokkring... But there are NO GANKS in Anoikis because there cannot be be ANY expectation of ANY level of safely in Wormholes. These were guys running a Hisec style Mining Op in Anoikis... and they paid for thier ignorance in spades.

My biggest dissapointment of the whole night was... I din’t FRAPS the whole thing... crap.  =\

Battle Report

Team B Losses:
2 Orcas
2 Hulks
2 Mackinaws
1 Tengu
3 PODs                 
6,068,371,847 bISK

Team A Losses:
Nothing to display here…    =]


Fly Safe and you don’t wanna see us in your Sky  =/|)=


Wednesday, April 17, 2013

BB46: The New Frontier...


or~ Blog Banter 46: Wagon Train to the Stars…

"EVE Online is a unique piece of science fiction that is ‘participatory’." - CCP Seagull, December 2012
EVE Online is heading into its Second Decade with renewed vigor and a new development strategy. At the CSM Summit in December, Executive Producer CCP Unifex and Development Director CCP Seagull explained how future development and expansions will be broader in scope than recent "collections of features" stating that CCP "want to create something more inspirational, that players aspire to play."

With the return of Live Events such as the Battle for Caldari Prime, clearly the prime fiction of EVE is back in favor as part of this new thematic approach to expansions. However, EVE's story is very much a tale of two playstyles, with an entirely player-driven narrative unfolding daily in parallel to the reinvigorated backstory. Often, they do not mix well.

How can these two disparate elements be united or at least comfortably co-exist in a single sandbox universe?

Banter On.

=========================================

In a nutshell my answer to this month’s Burning Question is… that the issue is not ‘can’ New Eden’s backstory or ‘lore’ co-exist with the ongoing player driven ‘emergent’ content, but how to create situations, stories, events that allow them to blend together.

The main issue as I see it is for CCP to avoid having a preset, or predetermined ending to any particular event. EvE players being what they are will in many if not most cases (and in ALL cases re Goons) work against any predetermined outcomes. See the Battle for Caldari Prime as an example. The Goons main after-action whine was they had the ‘Shigeru’ repped and holding, they could have ‘saved’ it until CCP stepped in and in godlike transcendence ‘interfered’ with the emergent outcome. So, for the Goons, this was just one more example of how CCP is screwing with the ‘sandbox ideal’.

In this case the “Shigeru” (the Caldari Titan) was fated to fall (CCP predetermined outcome), IMHO because CCP needed (had decided) that this was a Golden Opportunity to show off the tie-in between EvE & DUST… I mean, you can’t get much bigger than half a Titan crashing to the ground… from low orbit… in the middle of an Epic DUST Faction War Ground Battle… due to an Epic EvE Faction War Space Battle. The “Lore” has been expanded… Caldari Primes is freed from the Shadow of The Titan… the planet now has Burning Craters you can see from space… and CCP got a larger than life EvE/DUST trailer out of it.

The whole ‘predetermined’ and Goons ‘CCP was interfering’ issue is just that Goons will always, ALWAYS, take sides against CCP or against ANY preset, predetermined outcome, ending or whatever because… Goons first Loyalty is to Goons and their second is to Chaos. Always remember the Goon Creed, “We don’t want to ruin The Game, we want to ruin YOUR game.” which means ALL of the rest of us. Meanwhile ‘the rest of us’ who were there, especially the Fac War RP players, seemed to get very into the spirit of the whole thing or just have a lot of fun with what was basically a Hisec/Dreads Allowed/Kitchen Sink FFA.

So how could CCP blend the Ongoing Lore with Emergent Content? Well, future ‘events’ in New Eden will have to adhere to a few rules, they must:
(1) take place within the current Lore and not break past Lore;
(2) be crafted in such a way that the ending is not predetermined, can be ‘emergent’ and become official Lore (without breaking older Lore);
(3) keep in mind how EvE players LOVE to ‘game the game’ and will ALWAYS do the unexpected.

To work with we have the Faction Wars… Caldari v Gallente & Amarr v Minmatar, we have Sansha’s Incursions into the Empires, the mystery of the EVE Gate and the deeper mystery of Jove Space just to name a few. Now these are all accessible from Empire or Known Space. And in Anoikis or Wormhole Space we have the deepest mysteries of the Sleepers and the almost mythical Talocan. Now that EVE & DUST are readying for full link up all of the Empire War Settings have even greater possibilities. And Space Exploration is one of the oldest staples of SciFi… truly unlimited possibilities.

In Empire we have War…
Tibus Heth is a whack job and so is Sansha Koveki… either of them can be used to kick off live events the outcome of which could be determined by Emergent Gamplay. Similar to the downing of the Caldari Titan only without the foregone conclusion and the need for CCP to step in and assure things happen as scripted…

And we have Exploration…
Opening Jove Space is something all players want as every time we open the starmap we can see ‘em… they’re right frakkin over there… but we can’t get to em. Like ripe fruit hangin from a tree in the next field but we can’t climb the fence. Our mouths water for the sweet fruit and our trigger fingers itch for the fights that will win us that golden nectar… but…

What about outside of New Eden? What about the rest of the Galaxy…?
What if it was something as simple as a new type of wormhole starts opening into a new, unexplored star cluster, and few of these new wormholes are awe inspiringly large phenomena and seem to have no mass limits and they never close… They are determined to be Stable and so they do not have to be scanned down and CONCORD puts them ‘on the map’…

The systems in this new region only appear on the starmap as they are explored… and these systems are all connected by ages old Talocan Gates that CONCORD is able to bring back online as each system is opened allowing us to explore this new region gate by gate. But… to open the system we must first fight for it… because for the first time we encounter Sleepers in normal space… but they are camping the gates and actively defending these systems. We would have to overcome them and drive them from each system by taking their stations. But these are different from New Eden’s stations. Here you do not win by attacking the structure; you win by destroying the defenses... and then, by boarding and taking the station, on foot.

Once the Fleets of Sleepers and the station guns, missiles and Ewar towers are destroyed the station itself becomes open to Boarding Parties of DUSTERS… Outside it’s the guns, missiles and fleets that are hard to beat… (not some unbearable and time killing structure bash) but Inside it’s the Sleepers, Sleeper Drones and automated interior defenses that have to be eradicated hand to hand in order to ‘take’ each station in a system. And while the DUSTERS are hard at it inside, we are hard pressed Outside keeping the Sleepers reinforcements from reaching the station and repping their defenses. Only once the last Sleeper is dead inside the last station will the Sleepers reinforcements retreat from a system allowing CONCORD to begin work on any gates leading out... This is also how EvE/DUST corps can wrest control of stations from each other and exploit the new riches to be found here…

And, as we explore deeper and into higher (class?) systems we begin to see recent signs of a race long believed to be extinct… might we even meet, and fight… the Talocan themselves? with the tantalizing possibilities inherent in Talocan salvage and tech… maybe even a new meta, T4? We would find and explore new planets, moons and asteroid belts with the possibility of never before discovered minerals and ores…

The New Frontier would not be Hisec… nor Lowsec nor Nullsec not even Negsec. CONCORD would move in with us as we explored and they would build a presence in the Frontier but their role here would be different as this is a different kinda space. With CONCORD working so far from Empire they would be more a roving law enforcement like the old west Marshalls than a permanent presence in any given system. One day a system would have a CONCORD fleet, or a squad, or a maybe just a 2 ship patrol docked up and response times and tactics would equal 1.0 Hisec… the next day they have moved on and now that systems security is the same as Nullsec… or Lowsec… or Negsec… you never KNOW until someone breaks the law and CONCORD undocks, or doesn’t...

And we discover that no one can ‘claim Sov’, not us nor the Empires or Factions. You can fight for and hold individual stations, but not the systems… The Talocan gates work similar to wormholes with differing mass limits for different systems. The richest systems allow capitols but the poorer ones don’t… and CONCORD cannot get ‘local’ up and running, it seems the Talocan gate network doesn’t support that…

The Lore of this New Frontier would be written totally by us… Travel to and from the Frontier would be possible by the few new Stable Wormholes and normal random holes would begin connecting from both Empire and Anoikis to this New Frontier also…

Obviously I am interested in seeing a variant of the rules of W-space applied to a large new region of K-space with an ever changing security status for each system that is not ‘listed’ anywhere. Where taking and holding something requires you fight for it and be ready to defend it because it is worth fighting for (and FUN too!). A new region in EvE where the small gangs not massive fleets rule… but for everyone… not just us lucky few who live on the other side of the sky.  =]


Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

========================================
"Blog Banters" are brought to you by the good folks at...

“The brainchild of the Blogfather, Crazy Kinux, blog banters are single subjects discussed across the EVE blogging community. It encourages the sharing of ideas and cross-pollination of readership. All in all a healthy thing for a community.“