Hulkageddon Eternal: Defense Imperative

Yesterday the Mittani announced that Hulkageddon will last forever.  There had been rumors to this effect going for some time.  To me this represents nothing more or less than an attempt to drive the price of technetium as high as he can, not to mention reap a harvest of tears as bountiful as possible.

The response has been pretty hilarious to date.  People threatening to rage-quit, whining and bitching and moaning about how the metagame is messing with their game.  I’ve said it before, Mittens has said it very loudly recently, emergent content makes EvE unique.  Hulkageddon is one of the largest pieces of emergent content not just in EvE but likely in MMO gaming entirely.  This is a public, player created, player run, player driven event, where you are automatically paid a reward for “Killing Ten Rats” by a player entity.  

CCP is highly unlikely to nerf ganking and kill off this event.  How many games have a player-run quest system?  Seriously now.

They might nerf it a bit.  Catalysts are OP as hell with the guns they have.  Battleship level damage from a frigate is just a bit insane, however that alone wont kill Hulkageddon.  So let’s fight fire with fire.  Emergent content is the name of the game.  Hulkageddon isn’t new, neither is the counter:  Defending yourself.  Here’s a great way for a solo miner (with a hauler alt) to mine in peace as long as the Mittani keeps up the pressure:

[Rokh, Can't Stop the (mining) Rokh]

8x Miner II

3x Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
2x Large Shield Extender II
Survey Scanner II

2x Mining Laser Upgrade II
Mining Laser Upgrade I
Expanded Cargohold II
Co-Processor II

Large Cargohold Optimization I
Large Core Defense Field Extender I
Large Processor Overclocking Unit I

5x Warrior II

Pulls 935m3 of ore a cycle, cargo bay contains 916m3 of ore a cycle.  You actually have to pay attention.  Deal with it.  Stagger your lasers a little, enjoy the fact that anyone trying to alpha you needs to break 91,650 EHP with Caldari BS 5.  You can actually tank a little more AND get another mining laser upgrade, but that nerfs your cargo a bit.  With a hauler alt paying attention and a transfer can this ship will allow you to mine in safety at a rate of 15.59 m3 / second.  A well tanked hulk set for surviving?  With T2 crystals you get 23.92 m3 / second.  With T1 crystals you get 22.21 and with T1 lasers you get 20.50 m3/second.  Yes you lose out some productivity.  You also lose the vulnerability.

Now you have fought fire with fire.  You have met the enemies emergent content with your own, using a ship for unconventional purposes to gain yourself an advantage, yes a mining Rokh is something of an abomination, but if you are solo mining, especially in an NPC corp in highsec, what are people going to use on you?  15 or so catalysts?  More?  Harsh language?

EvE is an evolving game.  Players can evolve with it, adapt their playstyle to the circumstances, or be left behind.  If you’ve invested the time and effort to get a hulk surely you can invest time and effort to keep up with the curve, rather than just throwing a tantrum.

I’m using it every time I can

How Goodfights are Won

A while back, Paul Clavet of My Loot Your Tears post on the Cooper Colors and Ooda Loops.  One of the things that he doesn’t talk about much (because it just isn’t that important to a person on their own) is how long it takes for information to be fed along the loop.  For a person that tends to be nearly instantaneously, or close enough between people that it isn’t the main factor deciding the engagement.  Organizations are very different.

Let’s take two fleets, one travelling along to a POS they plan on finishing off, the other set up to trap them.  Both have similar fleet comps, and a workable plan for how they want to fight.  The travelling fleet is enforcing very harsh comms discipline, most members are muted, except for scouts, task leaders, and the FC.  The defending fleet has comms open but supposedly on “Battlecomms” with people told to STFU when they talk.

The Observe step now takes quite a bit longer.  The defending scout sees the fleet incoming (Observe) pops his D-scan, gets a snapshot of the incoming fleet and decides how to report it (Orient/Decide) then starts talking to the FC (Act) at which point the FC can *START* his OODA loop.  He assesses the enemy fleet composition compared to his own, (Observe/Orient) decides that it’s worth engaging and orders his bait into position (Decide/Act) the bait group has a bit of a head start, they probably heard the scout’s report and that let them realize what was coming so they can more or less skip straight to act.

The attacking fleet’s bait component (the portion reported by the scout) lands and engages the defender’s bait.  Defenders drop a cyno and bridge in reinforcements.  At this point comms are fairly calm, people are reporting the reinforcements but most folks are muted so comms, while elevated, are not overwhelmed.  The FC can still pass orders and drops his own cyno to bring in his own reinforcements.  The defender’s comms are overwhelmed nearly instantly with reports of ships coming in.  The communication channel breaks down and while the FC can still Observe, Orient, and Decide, he cannot Act as he has no means to let his will be known.  Even if he has a plan or counter to whatever has happened, he cannot communicate it, the attacking fleet is now inside the defender’s fleet’s loop, if not the actual FC’s.

Being inside someone’s OODA loop is lethal.  At this point there are so very few ways to change the equation so fundamentally that unless the attacking fleet makes a huge mistake, the defender likely has no control over the situation at all.  Only by a supreme effort to break the attacker’s loop can the defender regain an equal footing.  Think of trying to coordinate a “Combo Breaker” in a fighting game where you had to communicate the plan to a fleet of people and get them to do it right the first time.  Not easy.

The fastest way to win a fight is to break the other sides OODA loop.  Whether it’s having spais reporting everything from the other sides comms or even adding extraneous or simply wrong information  or attacking them in a way that they don’t predict in a place or time they don’t predict anything to generate surprise, shock, or confusion.  In real life this causes panic, in EvE you usually have to settle for confusion, either way you get the win.  Just remember, the more complicated your plan is, the more things you need to go right, the longer you make YOUR OODA loop, and the easier you make it for other people to get inside on you.

I’m using it every time I can

You Got Story in MY EvE

NPC story in EvE is rather limited.  The Role-Play community rather decries it and swarms all over live events every time they happen.  I am not a huge fan of role plying but I do pay some attention to the RP community.

Today my attention was called to a thread on the EvE online Forums.  The most common refrain was “Join nullsec wars and make your own storyline. That’s what makes Eve great for me. Players make history. Not devs and writers.”  and comments like it.  Here’s my problem with that; not everyone wants to drive their own story, not everyone can handle or enjoys the skulduggery, chest beating, and occasional infantile outbursts that happen in null.

I’ve been part of a major, successful alliance all of twice.  With Cult of War I took part in the great wars of nullsec, and found I enjoyed greatly the sense of community, the battles and even some of the reverses.  Sadly it ended badly, with COW being chased out of null in ignominy.  The loss of resources, opportunities, and friends was painful, but not very.

FWA was something else entirely.  The alliance literally flew apart in a mess of backstabbing and accusations.  All the opportunities, all the friendships, all the effort and all the hopes wrecked by other players.  As a CEO I had very little say in what happened, the rank and file had practically no say at all in what happened.

I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to go into that end of the pool.  Even highsec in EvE is a deeper, more dangerous pool than other MMOs.  We put sharks in the shallow end.  The deep end has monsters.  At the same time historically CCP has done a lot of storytelling from live events in highsec, to chronicles, to news events.  This gives interesting content to people who want to play the game, but don’t want to subject themselves to the whims of the “monsters” of EvE.

I may be am harsh towards the more bearish elements of EvE but frankly they play the game to, and bringing them in is one of the surest ways of having more PvP players and targets.  Eventually they will sharpen their teeth and claws and move on to bigger things, or at least find a way to make my ships cheaper.  However with the EvE story languishing, or being provided in what amounts to a single channel dominated by the Mittanis, Helicitis and their ilk.  This means that people who can’t see the point in EvE, or who might want to try but aren’t into the “hardcore pvp scene” don’t have an alternative that they can see.  We might know better as players, but what do people coming in see?  What opportunities are available to people who want to SEE the story, but might not was to really CONTRIBUTE to it?

CCP can look at it, and weight the positives and negatives.  They probably have.  In my experience the communities in MMORPGS scream bloody murder on the forums in the hierarchy of PvPers > “hardcore” PVErs > Regular PVErs > Market Goons > RPers.  This has almost nothing to do with how important that portion of the community is, how big it is, or the state of its issue of the moment.  PvP could be completely brilliant and PvP folks will whine and scream about something.  Market could be buried under a horde of bots and there will be whispers.  RP could languish without an update for years and the RP folks get ignored as they post in character on their own forums decrying the uncaring NPCs lack of interaction.

Empire needs to change in some fashion.  The actions taken by both the capsuleer players and the NPC leaders need to be seen.  The universe needs more awesome.  Most of EvE doesn’t care about the 412th battle of NOL.  They want to see what happened in Jita.  More players have been to Jita than NOL.  It shouldn’t take a lot of resources, heck the team working on it seems to have always had a handful of people.   CCP doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, they do need to push it once in a while though.

I’m using it every time I can

Anatomy of a Shitfit

Failfits might be one of the most entertaining things in EvE.  Who doesn’t like seeing someone’s godawful mess of a ship posted in its full glory on the internet for all to see?  Well, other than the maroon that lost it.  But what makes a shitfit so bad?  I am going to take a look at some common mistakes you see on fits that make them bad.  There are a few exceptions that I’ll talk about, but most of these are things you just DON’T DO!  But first:  Some Excellence from Faifeaggro.  Warning lyrics are totally NSFW, and totally appropriate.

Don’t Mix Guns

There actually used to be a website at Dontmixguns.com devoted to all the reasons this was bad.  Sadly it doesn’t exist anymore.  Don’t mix guns exists on several levels.  First off you never want to have guns of different ranges or size categories.  You don’t want cruiser and BS guns on your BS.  All BS guns.  Always.  Also DO NOT put long and short range guns on your ship.  You don’t want to use say Blasters and Railguns on the same ship.  Pick a range and build your ship around it.

To a lesser extent you want to have all your guns exactly the same type/meta level.  Ideally T2 of the biggest size.  Sometimes this doesn’t work.  I have a Mega fit that uses 6 T2 Neutron Blaster Cannons and 1 T2 Ion.  That is less than ideal, but (barely) acceptable.  The rule for meta-guns is similar.  Ideally you want all your guns in one group so you can be an F1 monkey.  If it ain’t possible 2.

One Tank to Rule them All

Pick one tank.  Don’t go for more than one.  Shields OR Armor, OR speed (OR hull.)  If you are shield tanking, put as much into the shield tank as you can.  Use your lows for damage mods, damage controls, PDS, or shield recharge mods.  Not for armor.  If you are armor tanking, use your mids for cap, speed, or weapon enhancements, not for shield mods.  Speed tanking requires a single-minded focus even on ships that can do it, yes you want to include some buffer but putting a bunch of speed mods on a ship then dropping a plate on it… no.

This doesn’t mean you forego a damage control on… well… just about anything.  Nor that you should skip a speed mod on a ship that needs it.  Just that you focus your resources.  Pick your best tank for the role of the ship and it’s fitting resources / bonuses and USE IT.

Fill ‘er up!

Lows and Mids are made to be filled.  Put something in there.  Ideally put something useful in there.  This is where your fitting skills come in handy.  Maxing out your electronics and the various upgrades skills allow you more CPU, as does engineering for PG.  This allows you to use more and better mods to upgrade your capabilities.  Mids and Lows.  Always filled.  Nothing missing.

Utility Highs might (MIGHT) go empty.  For example the Drake has 8 high slots, and only 7 launchers.  You don’t see a lot of people using that last high, it just isn’t necessary in a lot of fits.  Hurricanes tend to see all kinds of things in their 2 utility highs, as do Tempests, and Armageddons.  These slots often just aren’t that useful.  There is ALWAYS something useful to put in a mid or low slot.  Always.

Rig it!

Rigs are cheap.  Decide what role the ship will fill and rig it appropriately.  These slots are important.  They give your capabilities beyond what normally you could do.

Fit to Your Bonuses

Lasers I cool.  I like lasers.  Don’t put lasers on a Brutix.  Brutix gets a big bonus to Hybrid Damage.  Fit Hybrids.  Ideally Blasters.  Your bonuses are what sets one ship apart from another.  Check the description and find out what your ship receives for bonuses.

Decide on a Role, pick your Ship

Often a ship finds its way to death by being used because it’s “neat” rather than because it is the best ship for the mission.  Don’t say “I have a *ship name* what should I use it for.”  Instead say “I need a ship to do *role* what ship is best,” that way you pick the right ship.

Cap is Important.  Sometimes.

PvE ships should generally be cap stable.  PvP ships don’t worry about it as much.  In general fitting for cap stability in PvP is pretty futile.  PvE ships should use Cap Rechargers, CCC rigs, etc, PvP should rely on cap boosting, especially those that are highly cap dependent.

Don’t Forget Ammo!

Bring the right ammo.  All guns should be using the same ammo, and have both long and short range varieties available.  If you are going into a mission, make sure you bring the right damage type.  Oh and make sure it’s in your cargohold.  Nothing is worse than finding out you have what’s in your guns and that’s it.

This is just a few examples.  There’s plenty of ways to fit ships badly.  There are a few ways to help you fit ships well.  The first is to use a fitting program.  EvE Fitting Tool, EvE-HQ (my favorite) pyfa, I’m sure I’m leaving a few out.

Fly Dangerous.  Fit Well.

I’m using it every time I can

War Never Changes

It doesn’t.  CCP is releasing it’s next expansion, called Inferno.  One of the major prongs of the Inferno trident is changes to Wardecs.  A while back I talked about several major problems with wardecs, that there’s no real reason for one side to fight, neutrals were still free to join in and rep as much as they wanted, decshields, the interface was clunky as hell, bringing in friends was awkward, and there was no way for the defender to force the war to end early.

Things that got addressed:

1. Mercs
2. Interface
3. Decshields

Things that didn’t get addressed:

1. No reason to fight
2. Neutral RR
3. Defender can’t “win” and force the attackers to withdraw the dec by game mechanics

Now this expansion does a lot to address issues with wardecs, but they are pruning hedges while ignoring the elephant that crushes them.  There is literally no reason for a defender to do anything during a wardec.  If they have a POS at risk they might have to defend that, although if they are smart in how they set it up it should be a PITA to assault and very easy even for weak defenders to keep up.  A highsec-only corp without a POS can just dock up and rely on the higher wardec cost to end the war for them.

Neutral RR.  Crimewatch might affect this, but there’s still no real fix even in the pipe.  At best you can (possibly) confirm who the involved logi was in your lossmails.  People are still free to bring in tons of unaffiliated help with little warning to aid them.

Finally, and related to the first comment, defenders cannot simply “win” and make the wardec go away.  To use an example:  A mission running corporation gets wardecced by griefers.  They band together, come up with good tactics and manage to defeat the griefers in open battle several times, however the griefers leave the dec up hoping to pick off people who are trying to sneak in a mission on their own.  Having some sort of “Domination” bar, where one side or the other can force terms upon the other needs to exist.  Also:  More fun for spies if you get particularly juicy terms.

Oh and individual targets can still skip out on the war.  I want to be able to wardec assholes!  Not wardec a corp and watch the D-bag I really want to hit skip out.

I’m using it every time I can

Well That’s Different

So CCP has put in a module that will change blob warfare, and I think opens the door to a concept I think is LONG overdue.  From today’s Dev Blog

MagSheath Target Breaker I - Mid slot. A module that has a chance of breaking the lock of ships targeting you, the chance increases the more ships target you at one time. Also breaks your locks. Reduces scan resolution significantly as a downside. Only one can be fitted at a time and the can not be fitted to capital ships.

Well then…. that should change things a tiny bit.  Blobbing people with tons of cheap ships suddenly gets less effective.  Smaller fleets of more capable ships with better pilots become preferable to huge blobs in some circumstances.  What circumstances those are depend a lot on how widespread the module is, and the hard numbers on exactly how easily it breaks locks as numbers go up.

First thought – 20-30 close range gank ships can use this module to really go to town on large blobs.

Second thought – Logis will HATE this.  Soon as someone pops that mod they had better broadcast for reps because there’s no discrimination between friendly locks and hostile locks.

What’s going to make a big difference is how common the module is.  At first it will command a princely sum, how long that lasts depends a lot on how common the BPC drops.  I won’t go in to how bizarre it is to not have BPOs for this item, but having it as a drop for a while might be fun.  I might even run a few profession sites.  Or not.  If this ship shows up only on the specialists, like Arazus, Rapiers, (or Lachs and Huggy bears) then it won’t affect much in the game, if it shows up on Drakes and other line-of-battle ships, expect some shifts in the fundamental nature of fleet composition.

If it’s only on small ships then you will get “Hit Squads” of small, skills players flying faster ships to go in and assassinate people against whom the massed firepower of the fleet may not be effective anymore.  This actually sounds really cool, not sure how well it would play out in real life.

If it shows up on every shitfit drake in a 400 man fleet… well the other guy might go with a smaller fleet equally heavily supported with these modules and try to carve apart the larger fleet using their own numbers against them.   Also might make escaping ganks easier in PvE ships.  Heck might be a fun module for PvE ships in general if it works against rats.  At the very least provides a somewhat reliable GTFO button.

No matter what this module ends up doing it signals a clear sign that CCP is pushing back against the Blob.  I’m glad to see it, but I think it brings another problem into focus.  Discriminating between “Friendly” and “Hostile” locks.

In modern aviation and even in ground combat vehicles transmit their location and information to friendly units and commanders through transponders of one sort or another.  This potentially reduces or eliminates friendly fire and allows friendly assets to support each other without making the enemy’s job easier.  In EvE if you want to assist your buddy with reps or such you have to lock him.  There is no difference between locking your buddy in one of the (currently outdated) RRBS gangs and locking onto a hostile.  The same mechanics applied for friendly or hostile targets.  This is… well… unusual.  If I was designing a system in an environment where the safety of my ship was likely to depend on friendlies being able to target me, I’d include something in the transponder code to “boost” my signature to people in fleet, allowing them to lock faster.  Additionally targets locked that are friendly should show on a separate bar stacked below or to the side of the normal one, depending on orientation.  The “selected target” should NEVER jump bars.  This would allow ships that use both offensive and defensive modules (carriers, Domis, bad scimitar fits, RRBS if they ever come back into fashion) to quit whoring in on their buddies KMs, and encourage supporting modules in fleets that could benefit from them.

I’m using it every time I can

Hulkageddon Math

Assumptions:

1. Average Hulk Destroyed During Hulkageddon:  334.8 Million Isk
2. Average Covetor Destroyed During Hulkageddon:  51.6 Million Isk
3. Mining in a Covetor makes 10 million / hour
4. Mining in a Hulk makes 12 million / hour
5. 2.48% of active pilots are in Hulks and all Hulks are undocked and active (Q4 2010 QEN, someone get me new numbers!)
6. 30k pilots are active on average around the clock
7. EvE-Kill’s Hulkageddon killboard is fundamentally accurate.

Get ready for Maths.  Mining in a Covetor for 24 hours is worth 240 Million – (% chance of losing your ship) * (Value of your ship).  For a Hulk it’s 288 Million -(% chance of losing your ship) * (Value of your ship).  Let’s plug in the known numbers.

• 240-x%(51.6) for a Covetor
• 288-x%(334.8) for a Hulk

744 Hulks are flying around the clock according to my assumptions.  432 Have been killed in the 15 days since Hulkageddon started.  That means that each day 28.8 Hulks have died.  That’s 3.87% plug in the numbers (assuming the rate is the same) and you get

• 238 million isk / day for the Covetor
• 275 million isk / mining day for the Hulk

Now these numbers aren’t terribly accurate, the amount made per hour is probably fairly close to what a smart miner can make with his pride and joy, and the difference in rate certainly is accurate, but the big problem is the number of ships undocked.  Let’s assume that the isk/hour is right as is the rate differential.  Now we figure out the break even point.  I’ll save you the formulas and tell you I came up with 15.5% So if 15.5% of mining ships died during the course of their mining day a Covetor would be worth the same as a Hulk.

Remember where I assumed every single Hulk was mining actively if it was logged on?  Let’s drop that assumption.  Let’s say only 1/3 of online Hulks are mining.  The others are AFK, hiding, spinning, whatever.  11.6% have died.  Doing Math again:

• Covetor yields 234 million isk/mining day
• Hulk yields 249 million isk / mining day

Conclusions:  Mining in a Hulk during Hulkageddon is still a profitable venture overall compared to mining in a Covetor.  Gankers haven’t done enough damage to make mining in a Hulk unprofitable.  In order to create a situation where a Hulk undocking to mine loses money on average compared to a covetor, the odds of killing it have to be 15.55% of all hulks killed.  To make it worth 0 isk to undock, something over 90% of Hulks undocking would have to be killed at some point in their day.

I’m using it every time I can

Repercussions

John Turbefield ‏ @CCP_Diagoras

Compared to the 7 day average before Escalation, the last 7 days have seen a 45.53% decrease in average m3 of ore mined within high sec.

Well then… Clearly Hulkageddon has hit some people hard.  Very, Very hard.  While even with over 4000 kills as part of Hulkageddon I don’t think it’s even a tithe of total miners, the number staying docked up and playing Hello Kitty Online has cut deeply into the amount of ore mined.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem.  Drone regions and other “Mining with Guns” options have traditionally provided the bulk of most ores necessary for the unquenchable appetite of the EvE Economy.  This has of course resulted in a MASSIVE price increase in base Tech 1 ships since the end of April.  Like the Armageddon

Wait…

Well how about the Megathron?

Huh…

Well, all right.  Surely the EBBIL DRAEK won’t screw up the theory.

You know what, FUCK you guys.

Ok, so that isn’t killing us.  I suspect there is a good deal of minerals in most manufacturers supply bins, keeping them insulated from even more shocks.  All the speculation and changes and price spikes have likely taught them to be more proactive about keeping a good source on hand.  Prices might inflate later but I think this drop has more to do with a falloff after the crazy inflation earlier this year than anything else.

Mineral prices are simply FLAT for low ends.  Trit is even going down.  Still it seems to me that past a certain point Hulkageddon is counter-productive.  It is certainly fun, and I think to an extent it really does add to the flavor of the game.  However I was wondering if it has a price and if it can be taken too far.  At some point down the line the mineral prices are going to get bumped.  This may hurt the people shooting, certainly far more than losing a few catalysts or other gank ships.  Then there’s things like this:

Bagehi ‏ @bagehi

@HelicityBoson Rhyan Starcannon > well i just lost my mining ship, only got it today only been playing again 6 days… #LOL

I wondered how the event was affecting guys like this.  Utter nooblets.  The guy is in a corp, and might have even heard of Hulkageddon but… what a welcome to EvE.  I actually took a bit of time to talk to the guy about it.  He had a pretty cool attitude about the whole thing I was glad to find.  While he didn’t appreciate being a target he wasn’t out of his mine pissed about it either.   This neatly reinforces one belief I’ve long had about EvE.  People who will play the game for a while really will put up with its crap.  Part of being something awesome means sometimes “awesome” happens to you in the form of winning an egg.  Yes people have likely quit over it, yes it’s a matter of people shooting folks doing something most of the shooters literally wouldn’t be caught dead doing.  I don’t think the consequences will be THAT serious in the long-term.

Fly dangerous.

I’m using it every time I can

Recruiting With Guns

Helicity Boson had a great comment on the TEST newbro story today.

I love newbies, I’ve just adopted one I caught streaming a mining op the other day. I tripled his wallet and am monitoring his inevitable fall from miner to scumbag pirate. Which is totally not going to be my fault.

This is the best kind of recruiting, whether for EvE Online in general, or your own PvP group.  Recruiting is something I am not very good at.  I rarely find people who are interested in joining Fancy Hats through forums, or ads, or even the blog.  I DO find people by shooting at them.  It seems counter-intuitive, but it works rather well.  By pewing someone you force them to react to other players intruding into their game.  They can react in one of several ways, and a clever person learns from their reaction.

1. Lose their shit publicly.  Funny, entertaining.  Pretty useless.
2. Be silent.  Smart.  Low risk play.
3. Engages their aggressor in conversation in an effort to learn more about what happened.

I fucking LOVE #3.  Despite how much of a hard-ass I am here, I love seeing new players attempt to overcome hardship and find a way to get ahead in EvE.  EvE is a hard game, and I’m not going to go out of my way to change a playstyle I’ve invested a lot of time in to making fun and effective for someone who hasn’t put in the time and effort to get better.  I will give credit to people who fight back successfully and to people who get blowed up I will give them considerable help and advice if they communicate intelligently with me.

Eventually Bad Things will happen to each and every single EvE player.  Whether it is a prized ship being destroyed, losing a mint on a market investment, a hauler full of goods being ganked, or being betrayed and stolen from by “trusted” corp-mates, EvE is a game that seems to turn heavily on tragedy.  You can’t really control that other than by limiting your exposure.  You CAN control your reaction.  I am going to go WAY out on a limb and guess that this guy talked to Helicity like a reasonable adult who had merely lost a ship in a game, probably laughed about it and displayed the maturity and intelligence that marks a good EvE player.  Helicity most likely responded to it by encouraging him with advice, isk, and probably an invite to a pub room where he could learn more, and find people to push him even futher down the road to “ebbil piwat!” He might turn into the next Helicity Boson, driving content for THOUSANDS of people in EvE, inspiring mayhem and shenanigans across New Eden.  That wouldn’t have happened without A: the nooblets reaction, and B: Helicity taking interest in the guy.

How do I know that this works?  THIS led to me chatting things up with Th3rm, a couple months later, after hanging around in the Sons of 0din chat room (they are probably recruiting and Rico Minali is a great guy) I joined them, and Cult of War.  This led to me having a BLAST in nullsec, including taking over for a guy named Mukkbarovian when he kept getting primaried off the field, and calling targets for 3 or 4 glorious minutes in a furious (losing) battle in J2-PZ6.  Had I lost my shit about the loss, getting warp scrammed by a Proteus at nearly 35 kilometers and hacked down, there is no way I’d have been invited to join the party later.  I would have denied myself the chance to have a LOT of fun and take place in something amazing.  The fault would have been mine.  I laughed about it with Th3rm, earned money for another ship, and Th3rm recognized my attitude and my eagerness to learn and brought me along, until I finally took the plunge.  THAT is recruiting.  THAT is responding maturely to adversity and giving yourself opportunity.

Fly Dangerous.  Score Kills.  If you get killed, don’t lose your shit.  Learn and have fun, it’s pixels in a game.

I’m using it every time I can

Safety is Your Responsibility

EvE Online does not assume that anywhere is “Safe” merely “Safer.”  People will be punished for their actions in highsec, and in lowsec, but you will not be saved.  You are vulnerable to rats everywhere outside a station.  Your ship is your responsibility.

You have to take the game environment into account when you plan your activities.  This is no different from every other game out there.  Mario doesn’t let you walk through goombas and koopas.  Tetris doesn’t let you build modern-art masterpieces (for long) WoW doesn’t let you kill Deathwing in a naked level 1 toon.

There are ways to prepare yourself for situations in EvE.  If you are running a mission against Sansha, tank EM/Therm.  Going into a Wormhole?  Watch your direction scanner.  Moving stuff to null?  Make sure your contact is legit.  Mining during the most heavily advertised player-driven anti-miner event?  TAKE REASONABLE PRECAUTIONS.  Bounce between safespots in your belt if it’s big enough.  Mine in a tanked ship to give yourself a chance to survive a poorly planned gank.  Watch D-Scan for tornadoes, catalysts and thrashers.  Look for ships cloaking or decloaking in your belt.  If someone scans your ship, leave.  Bring friends with remote reps.  I’ve had a gank prevented by an orca with RR bots and mods.  I’ve heard of a few others.  It won’t save you from a big gank squad but it gives you a chance against a small one.

None of this is really earth-shattering stuff.  The Earth-Shattering bit?  Being AFK in space isn’t safe.  This guy posted This bit of fried gold.  This ship has a tank of 10,749 EHP with max skills.  You can fill the cargohold in 839 seconds.  Almost 14 minutes.  To get his cargohold that big he sacrificed more than 2k EHP, not that it would have helped him in a 0.5 against 2 catalysts.  Of course to mine plag all he needed to be in was a 0.7 system.  Not a 0.5 like he was in.  Now he might have actually been online seeing as he had 4 different ores in his hold.  Still this is a fit designed for going AFK for 10-12 minutes, coming back, warping off and back, and repeating this while jamming out to some My Little Pwny.

That is not safe behavior in EvE.  This isn’t safe behavior anywhere.  Going AFK while doing PvE in virtually any game will result in death.  Expecting EvE to be THAT different is sad and misinformed.  The dangers are different, sometimes less, sometimes more.  AFK is still bad.  Not paying attention is bad.  Not being suspicious is bad.  One of my favorite rules of EvE is “Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you”  Catalysts popping up on Dscan?  Align out, Covops ship gets uncloaked in your belt?  Align out, catalyst warps into your belt?  GTFO son.  It’s a lot easier if you are pre-aligned.

I’m using it every time I can