The 'Axis of Evil' vs 'The Mouth and Friends' part 1

Ok so the title is a little tongue in cheek but basically this is Failed Diplomacy, Forsaken Asylum, Public Enemy, Stratagem and The Marmite Collective vs Absolute Defiance. Now you may be thinking whoa Noragen you mean to tell me that over half the serious High-Sec Mercs and Failed are picking on the new guys to the party? To be blunt Yes. Yes we are. but the question isn't are we being unfair it is why we are being unfair.

So some time ago I wrote about my fellow Merc and content provider Saeger1737 declaring a war on the most known brand in High-Sec mercs The Marmite Collective on behalf of The Pursuit Of Happiness. Well this ended with himself and a few other established POH members as well as the whole of the Deadly Fingertips corp leaving the alliance. But if all those late nights playing Secret of Mana taught me anything it was this

Well I returned to Marmite after a sabbatical to Null-Sec and began to ask some questions and get a feel for the lay of the land once again. I discovered the surprising satisfaction of Ship-toasting on the C&P Forums and then began to see a pattern I knew I could take advantage of. Every time Tora Bushido would make a post Saeger and friends would Smack talk it. Every time Saeger would talk the opposite would also occur. Joining the Marmite side of the Ship-toasting I decided to be a little more pushy to the idea of a war and Pushed just a little harder with some chosen posts in some chosen places and Saegers lads were also apparently biting at the bit for the same. We all wanted it but it would take something special to get it going.

In comes Devil's Warriors alliance returned from inactivity and back in action. Saeger in giving them a friendly bump wrote 'Devils at the ready and always a bargain, hire devils today and keep the marmots away'. Well didn't this give us just what we needed and the Ship-Toasting began for real. Space honor insults flew and those of us who wanted the war fueled the fire and before long it was blazing on 3 different forum threads. Eventually the first accepted assistance offer was by a corp accepting Absolute Defiance against Marmite. But an assistance offer was not what Tora had been planning while his willing minions fueled the flames he had been in contact with everybody Saegers posturing had annoyed and as one the Hammer was brought down with no less the 5 Wardecs in 24 hours Directly against AD so that there was no way out. AD retreated to Dodixie mostly and holed up there waiting for the tide of mercs to come. Hell Daring the Tide of mercs to come. And it was so.

47 characters from 'The Axis of Evil' Descended upon Dodixie against 38 guys from AD and neutral friends. Local was quite neutral about the affair with few players doing more then looting wrecks. With the nature of this battle there was no good existing method of a kill report so we tallied up the figures and they are TAE LOST 3 Battleships totaling up to 3.1bil ISK. AD and friends LOST 12 Battleships, 6 Cruisers, 1 Battlecruiser, 1 Rookie Ship and 1...POD... yup they lost a pod to a T3/BS fleet... Totaling up to 4bil ISK. Not the most expensive battleship fits. Perhaps if they had of risked some decent fit ships they may have killed more instead of that demoralizing curb stomping they received.

If there is ever another decent fight I'll blog it but so far without serious support they won't leave the undock even when a few of us take frigates out and offer small T1 frigate fights for lols.

The Return to Lemons

Some time ago I handed Lemons (My old C2 home J164417) over to a corp of eager new and returning players who had solid interest in PvP and displayed great promise. Their enthusiasm had me sell them the hole and POCO's at the proper rate I wanted. That is to say I gave them the lot in exchange for the promise they would honor the hole by giving the good fight. Lemons deserves that much.

Well an AWOX and a vanishing CEO later and the corp fell apart and possession went to a Corp that were NOT honoring Lemons. They were the Beariest Bears that ever dared to Bear. It was far from acceptable and I began to arrange a time for another eviction in our old home with the remnants of our once proud WH corp. The call was put out and probably 1/4 of the old crew agreed to come along with many new friends. It was looking like it would be a fun week. We penciled in a date 6 weeks from then. However a Spai in the hole informed me they had vanished without a trace the next week.


Well at least we didn't have to kill a tower. A few days later I log into a flurry of mails about a new Corp moving into Lemons. Was bound to happen the PI was amazing and the C3/HS Statics are to kill for. Well they were a Null-Sec refugee from Skeleton Crew by the name of flying tigers. They seemed fairly PvP orientated so I held off on the introduction of the welcome wagon to let them settle in for a bit. I monitored their Killboard and realized they were either the unluckiest POCO bashers ever or they didn't roll their statics before bashing a POCO. They lost 3 lots of POCO bashing ships in as many days. Well I didn't want the POCO's back myself and gave no dams about them being lost so I kinda formed up the idea of taking my old original partner in crime in Lemons (the last surviving original besides myself) Robert Dalentis to go dunk the Bashers on the last POCO timer as a kinda 'Welcome to Lemons'.

We worked out this op would work out to be 5-6 days away since they were killing 1-2 POCO's a day. I woke up and checked the Boards to see 3 dead POCO's and logged on my scout. The remaining 4 were also in RF mode. I looked the kill details up and got quite the shock. They Had killed my old tower I left behind WITH A DREAD. Well having killed one of every dread in Low-Class except a Nag I couldn't very well let that go. I tried to Ad-Hoc an opp but I just couldn't get numbers for it in time so I asked some of the guys to ask friends to come along and help. I managed to get Rob to bring some Lzr Hawks lads for a dread kill but then somebody on my coms started eluding to SSC coming. Well my Lzr Hawks friend went dark on me and I knew that a full on 3 way was a very likely occurance but I didn't want to pass up this chance to go after the dread so we proceeded with the plan and setup for it. Our Pro SSC fleet member assured us they wouldn't shoot us and said not to shoot them.

With no real contact with SSC and a few blunders later a SSC dictor bubbled the dread and it all kicked off. We warped into the bubble and I gave the order to keep 40-50KM range and not to engage SSC. Sadly somewhere between our go between and the average line member the message wast relayed and as we were burning out we were long pointed and started to get lit up. I said warp off if you need to but try to tag the dread tho whore on it and sicked my own drone upon it in my Gila. I loaded up TS to see my Lzr Hawks contact was still there listening and suddenly chimed in with I'm 2 jumps out and would appreciate if you could drag it out for a little longer. The DPS was not our fleets tho and I couldn't help him with this. As the dread went into low structure I said get ready to warp to the fleet and I aligned out. At the last second I was tackled again and heated my MWD to make good my escape among calls that people were being agressed again (so much for a friendly SSC fleet :D).

The fleet made up of Marmite, DBD, and some other randoms bugged the hell out and as we landed on the High-Sec hole I noticed a large spike in the High-Secs local on one of my other screens. It was Lzr Hawks. However they were too late to force a brawl with SSC and with similar numbers on a High-Sec hole they withdrew having missed out on blood by a mere 30-45 seconds. High-Sec hole brawls suck and nobody really wanted to engage in one. After further investigation it turned out they heard about a blunder that caused the Dread to POS up and went home only to turn around as it was tackled 5 mins later.

All in all it was a dunking of an abomination and its heathen supporters before our Lord Bob and was dealt with. I contacted the CEO of the corp via mail RP'ing that whole line a little while lending advise about Low-Class dreads are like a giant bulls-eye. After a few good chats we have parted ways. That is until the next time we return to Lemons...

The Few Against the Many Pt1 (Renters vs Catch)

There is one thing in Eve Online that has inspired me to keep on playing more than anything else and that is the idea of the few against the many. I have never enjoyed the game more then when I am out manned, out gunned and out shipped but have a small dedicated group at my back and we out fly our opponents to either victory or at least a very heroic defeat. This series of posts is dedicated to that ideal and has some stories I've either been assisting others in their struggle against overwhelming odds or have led the struggle against such odds myself.

Renters vs Catch
So since my last post I have moved out into Null-Sec in search for the 'Good Fights' I was promised abounded in it. It was heavily suggested in the comments section of the EN24 copy of this post that Catch was the place to get these fights. So I found some old friends living a few jumps away from Catch and moved in with them in Renter Land (Impass) for a while and started forming up fleets to go and find us some good fights.

My idea was a simple one. Fast moving ships capable of damage projection at range to eliminate as many of our opponents as possible before we got overwhelmed. I thought we could expect maybe 3v1 odds in our opponents favor and made strategies accordingly. How wrong I was. If I formed up a 5 man fleet I could expect no less then a 30-40 man fleet coming after us. After our first few 'Heroic Defeats' I changed up the plan a little. We were no longer trying to claim the field with our few brave renter brothers that dared to venture into the heart of the evil Hero Coalition stronghold. Instead our goal was maximum damage with minimal losses. We affected this time and again with RLM Caracals until Brave simply stopped forming up or worse still hugged their gates and stations and wouldn't risk trying to hero tackle a single one of us with frigates or interdictors and instead went home and docked up ignoring us.

Well this was no fun so we went looking for a smaller group then brave and found Sugar. These guys were living in a system 1 jump out of our original route and often formed up mere 2v1 odds for us. After a week of bringing our tired old RLM Caracals and dunking frigates all day long we decided to mix it up a bit and brought out my tried and tested Tristan. This gave us an opportunity to bring a different sort of fight to these valiant pilots willing to go out with 2v1 or less odds in their favor.

On our first frigate only roam to Sugar we wound up with 7 Tristans fielded against a mere 12 of Sugar's finest. Our match up was on the station since they were tired of chasing us I guess. We dove in the second one of their number agressed us initiating a timer. We were outnumbered and up against 3 logistics ships, 6 cruisers, 2 frigates and 1 destroyer. seeing that they brought all armor logistics and had 1 shield cruiser on field after picking off the frigates and destroyer first and ordering my fleet mates to bounce out as needed we targeted the RLM Caracal they were fielding. After what seemed like an eternity (but the recording shows was only 15 seconds) it finally died. We were unable to kill another ship due to logistics keeping them up just long enough for everybody to dock. This was by far our best fight in Catch and was never to be matched again. Each subsequent fight consisted of our enemy fielding no less then 1 Logi Ship per frigate we fielded (we never got more then 5 Tristans again either). The idea of 'Good Fights' in Null-Sec began to dry up for us. We changed back to our kiting tactics and have been very successful with them but have never found an opponent in all of catch willing to match us 1 for 1.

However all is not lost for Null-Sec as the really good fights came from the Russians of Stain. Hats off to these lads for bringing manageable numbers too our door and giving us some really good fights.

Proposed Changes to Wars and High/Low-Sec (mostly high)

Disclaimer: This isn't my usual fun story so if you don't want to read a fairly lengthy Blog about current mechanics in High-Sec (and lowsec) then stop here. The ideas here are a mixture of thoughts I've had watching the Null-Sec changes and some great ideas that came up here and there between 5-6 pages of trash on the eve-o forums. I was able to assemble and tweak and add to these thanks to the fine community of C&P forum who gave more solid input in 3-4 pages the this topic has seen on any one thread.

TLDR

Issues with Wars
Reasons for Fighting
People who want no part
Corporations
Current structures
Costs

Reasons for Fighting
At Present a defensive corp that has not structures under threat has no real reason to fight back against an agressing corp other then for the hell of fighting back. While it is quite rewarding to do so a lot of people feel it is near impossible to win and as such turn away from it.  The problem lies in lack of incentive to try anyways when there is such a focus on going to Low/Null-Sec for PvP.

An aggressive corp has no way to prod a defensive corp to fight them other then to deny them High/Low-Sec. This is something that is heavily biased in the defenders favor and it should be. However short of the defender having a desire to fight or a structure reinforced they can simply drop and re-roll corp or ride out the dec in a NPC corp with no ill effect and I feel this gives no meaning behind wars.

People who want no part
People who want no part in wars and simply want to gain ISK for (whatever you spend it on when ships aren't blowing up) have as much a part in this game as others but should not receive the same rewards as others willing to put it all on the line to continue to gain reward in a hazardous enviroment. This is a huge imbalance in the RISK/REWARD system and needs to be fixed.

Corporations
Corporations in High/Low-Sec (mostly high) lack a real sense of meaning. There is little benefit other then to utilize POS structures or access Corp Hangers. At present I see very little reason a Corp agressed by unwanted wardecs would stick around. There is simply not enough benefit for staying in your Corp to justify the risk unless again you want the fights.

Current structures
POS's smaller then a Large can easily be taken down by a handful of people if they are being used for industry. But for the most part are ignored because of the time it takes to do so. They only reason to try it is to provoke a fight or it looks particularly tasty. Large towers are the devil and should only be killed when somebody is paying good ISK to kill it. Or if you have a serious grudge then it could also be worth it.

POCO's are not enough incentive for most corps to even investigate they are losing their structures unless again they are looking for a fight. They simply do not represent a sizable enough income to be worth defending most of the time in High-Sec. With a few exceptions that can be quite lucrative

Costs
The Costs of wars at present isn't really an issue. Increasing them will see even bigger High-Sec Merc Alliances then current to share the costs. Decreasing them will see more wars. The cost of corp creation however is broken. It costs less then I would be willing to pay at a trade-hub for a frigate skill book. I think it should cost at least 50 mil to start a corp. This figure is achievable by a group of friends starting out in no time and for anybody else its pocket change however you wouldn't be willing to disband your corp so quickly for this cost.


Proposal 1
Constellation/Corporation Structures
ConstStructs
There would be ONE of these in every single High/Low-Sec Constellation. It's function would be to boost current output of ISK, LP and mining yields by 15%(Figures may need adjusting) throughout the whole of the Constellation as well as have a minor tax cut to station trading. I also think that they could be used to display who has control of the area like sov but to a lesser degree (capsuleers taking over from the empires). To take it would require a Wardec (or in Low-Sec yellow safeties same as shooting a person) and the use of the entosis link. It would only be vulnerable during the 4 hour window set by the Corp/Alliance that owns it and would enter RF for 48 hours giving the defenders time to plan and react. If it is RF'd with the war having less then 48 hours to go the war is extended a further 48 hours after one side takes control of it (after it comes out of RF). If neither side takes it or it continues to be RF'd by either party before the war expires then the war could theoretically go forever (mutual wars). Similar indexes would be applied for activity in the Constellation to make it take longer to take the Structure. A Corp/Alliance could only hold ONE of these making enough for smaller corps to have (and fight over) their own while making the most valuable Constellations a real source of conflict between the powers I could see arising from this.

CorpStructs
These Would be a much lesser version of the Constellation version and would need to be anchored at a moon. A corp could Purchase/Build one and it would provide a lesser bonus of 5% yeilds and the same station trading tax cut except both would only be effective System wide instead of constellation wide. Should a Corp take a Constellation structure the Corp version would be rendered inert. A Corp could only hold ONE of these at any given time. They could be unachored and re anchored as needed with an appropriate cooldown. They could not be taken down in times of war or on the warm up period. If the corp were to be disbanded the structure would unanchor and be claimable by any interested party or vanish on the next downtime (or several later or never). A wardec would be needed to destroy this and it would be vulnerable during the 4 hour window to the entosis link just like the 'ConstStruct' and have all the same mechanics. However should it be taken on the RF timer by the aggressor instead of the aggressor claiming the structure and benefits it would simply blow up. Cost I think costs of building one of these should be roughly 300mil isk as a ball park figure and will be subject to change

Proposal 2
Carebears Bane
A structure so Devious that it Leeches ISK, LP, and even ORE/GAS straight out of the Bears hands and into a POS/other structure it is attached to. It would have a giant storage bay and require a largish chunk of cpu/pg of the POS. It would store the ISK and LP in the form of tokens like the ESS's of Null-Sec. Taking down these could be big business and owning them even bigger business. Several could be placed in a system and the amount 'stolen' would be spread across all the structures thus creating competition on the highly populated systems. I am open to ideas on how to stop a stupidly large group from curb stomping everybody that wants one of these in High-Sec as I can see a large NS bloc anchoring these in every popular system and stomping all competition that could ever be provided. It would be fun trying tho :D

Proposal 3
Corp Changes
I propose 3 types of corporations in the game instead of the current 2.
NPC - starting corps with heavy taxes (20%?) applied to Bounties/Mission Rewards/LP gains/Ore/Gas Yeilds to characters older then a certain age (30 days?)

Social Corps (SC) - Intermediate Corp that is invulnerable to Wardecs but can NOT own a structure. Capped at 20 people. Smaller Concord imposed tax (10%?) for the benefit of not being wardecced, Creation cost of 50 Mil ISK. Can be upgraded to a PC for 200 mil isk

Player Corporation (PC) - PC's will be the standard corp as is now and will have no Concord imposed tax. PC's will require a minimum number of 10 characters to function and if this number slips below 10 then there will be a 72 hour warning issued to rectify this problem. If not all structures will unachor/be forfeit. The corp will then default to a social corp and drop from any alliance it is a part of. This will eliminate the one man corps owning structures and make the biggest baddest things in high-sec a group activity. To be fair 10 people is 4 accounts utilizing alts with 2 to spare.

Leaving a PC while at war or with the 24 hour warm up active will result in the inability to join another Corp for a period of 1 week.

Proposal 4
Wardec changes
Wardecs would be able to be assisted on BOTH sides. This means that a corp could chose which side of the war to join should the be so inclined and the corp they are assisting accepts the help. A fee for assisting a war would be incurred by the Corp offering assistance that would rise/fall with the corp size they are assisting against. Wardecs would be limited to 5 offensive wars at any given time whether assisting or initiating. Unlimited defensive wardecs would be acceptable however the ISK cost for assisting would still be incurred by the corp offering the assistance so random assistance would need to be thought about carefully as it will cost ISK.

Half the ISK goes to the victor. Huzzah. So if you are on the defensive and cost 50 mil to wardec but KEEP your structure/objective you get the 25mil isk. meh. If you cost 500mil ISK to wardec and the aggressor asks for 2 of his friends to assist him it would cost 1.5bil total in dec fees of which 750 mil goes to the victor. While this isn't a great deal of ISK to make from a war it may be enough to cover the cost of the hulls lost in the battle for the structure.

Should the Corp/Alliance Executor Corp have no ConstStruct or a CorpStruct a temporary unbonused version would appear in their home system in dead space and be warp-able to like an anomaly. This would have the same mechanics as the previously mentioned structures but would have to have been set at corp creation time or altered by the CEO/Director of the Corp/Executor Corp

I also feel wars should get much more expensive if any of the changes to affect the number of wars are put in place. The ISK sink must Flow


Obviously not every idea in here is going to inspire every person but I feel there are quite a few solid ideas collected and presented here and would welcome all constructive feedback. Again thanks to all those who contributed to these thoughts and made suggestions to help refine them.