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

Playing with Numbers

So I looked at Hulkageddon’s little post on EvE-kill.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=17199

The efficiency is just a laugher.  We all knew it would be but it still puts a smile on my face.  Pushing over 90% is rough.  98.2?  wow.  There were some actual surprises.

1. People fly skiffs?  I guess.  If they were in high sec I’d be… well… even more depressed by carebears than I already am.
2. Macks are the safest target.  99.55% efficiency means they aren’t defending themselves and they are getting killed easily.  Of course they tend to be in 0.7 and below and are much weaker than hulks.
3. Someone lost a 1.4 BILLION isk pod to a hulk.  Of course This is just… too good not to share.  YOU LOST YOUR POD TO A HULK GUY!  Also the comment on this from “Worthless Gamer” is priceless.  Ganks are for fun not l33t pvp guy.
4. Orcas are a challenge.  It takes a lot of ships to get them down.  Now some have been killed in interesting ways, looks like a POS and a couple covops tagged one…
5. The tech 1 ships are not being hunted with nearly the passion of the exhumers.  Still surprised to see procurers out there…
6. The leaderboard claims 2221 kills, eve-kill claims 1013… supposedly they come from the same source.  Not sure what the discrepancy is about but it’s pretty big and bears comment.

No matter what Hulkageddon has been a big success for Fancy Hats.  We’ve got a huge stack of booty, more than enough for everyone who has participated to make a profit off the enterprise, in addition we’ve had a lot of fun.  EvE is a game where you have to manufacture your fun just like you have to manufacture or buy everything else.  Having an event like this where we can have fun, kill things and even make a little isk if you do it right, is just awesome.

In fact I suspect we will be doing it at other times just for lulz.  It’s the kind of small social activity that doesn’t require you to hunt endlessly for targets.  Even now with Hulkageddon in full swing there’s Hulks and Macks sitting in belts afk. Now you will never get an epic battle out of it, but you might get a laugh, some good tears, and a free orca.  Of course it will just be a sidelight from the other fun opportunity that seems to have fallen on our doorstep…

I’m using it every time I can

Planning For the Win

NOT planning FTW.

Planning is frequently the difference between winning and losing.  The side that plans better generally wins.  The side with worse planning can usually only win if the side with better planning executes poorly.  I am a fairly compulsive planner in EvE.  I am a firm believer that improvised responses work best when planned in minute detail well in advance complete with contingency and backup plans.

As a result my Hulkageddon shooting has been a bit spotty.  Our success rate on strikes we took the time to set up correctly has been 100%.  Our whiff rate on the other strikes has been pretty brutal.  As such I’ve more or less gone to conducing well planned, rehearsed strikes where we can get an assured kill.  To me, the steps for this in Hulkageddon are:

Good Warp-In – Absolutely critical when your sec status starts dropping.

Known Target Info – Allows you to efficiently allocate resources (catalysts) to the target.

Coordination of Firepower – Getting enough dps on the target in time to make the kill.  It can be a tight window.  Sometimes very tight depending on the system.

I like to guarantee kills.  I don’t want to use 1 Catalyst when I have guys in fleet who can’t solo.  I know that 3/4 of the time you should succeed, especially in 0.5/0.6, but I’ve got guys without the skills to do it, so I’ll send them with one of the highly skilled players to guarantee the kill.  If I see a tanked ship I’ll go after it even harder, with 3 or more.  Does it waste hulls and sec status?  Sure.  I’d rather post the kills than lose ships needlessly.  Again I’m conservative.  I want to take everything into account.  I’m losing a ship no matter what.  I want to get as many kills as possible even if I lose more ships.

Usually how it plays out, our cloaky scout pokes around in the belts and finds something decent.  He then stalks it, checking for shield effects.  If he doesn’t see any he may or may not decloak for a quick passive targeter scan.  He gets in close and lets us know when to warp, depending on how alert the target is we will be positioned near an orca near the belt.  Grab the catalysts, warp to the scout, hijinks ensue.  Time permitting we will all bump the Hulk/Mack around a bit and then shred it to make sure everyone is on the target.  If they start moving it pinches things and we will usually open up within 4km.

Fly dangerous, score kills.

Also how do they find crewmen for Catalysts these days?

I'm using it every time I can

 

 

An Abbreviated Day 2

With my new and not so improved final project, and sec starting to weaken my striking power I’ve had to shorten my day 2 of Hulkageddon.  Currently I’m #4 on the Hulkageddon leaderboard, with Poetic and Shootin’ Star of Fancy Hats also ranked, #4 on solo kills with Poetic at #10, #2 in Amarr space, with Poetic and Star at #4 and #5 and generally having a blast.  Loot Gods have been generous, and salvage has as well.  Quite a satisfying event to date.  Some observations / tips:

Shoot the target in a belt, dock at a nearby station, undock in a noob ship.  Clears the belt of CONCORD.

Scan everything in the belt if your scout is scanning everything.  Might tip off targets.  Might show you that the Orca sitting there is loaded down with shield transfers.  Cost us a whiff that one did.

Miners are generally pretty ignorant.  There’s been some flat out DUMB killmails we’ve gotten.  For example:  http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13220561 is not how you tank a Mack.  They were on, but I didn’t see his shields go up much in the time it took me to shred that ship.

http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13223410 and http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13214583

If you are gonna use any kind of EWAR, use ECM.  If they are as close as blaster catalysts will get (possibly inside your hull) damps and TDs won’t help you much.

http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13223924 8000 EHP with all skills at 5.  More likely around 7500.  Not a good way to protect a 300 million isk ships amigo.

http://tfhc.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13224928 Not bad.  Too bad he was sitting there not moving 4 minutes after another gank, especially when CONCORD had already left the belt.  In his defense he tried to warp off.  I was just 4km away and closing fast when he did.

Happy Hulkageddon Games!

I'm using it every time I can

Stupidity

Hulkageddon is HERE!

Hulkageddon is barely three hours old.  With three pilots shooting Fancy Hats has 5 kills.  Pickings have been fairly slim, with generally only botters available.  However, something happened that bears more telling.  Our scout spots two Orcas and one hulk in a belt.  Slightly unusual.  Not two Hulks and one Orca.  Two Orcas and one Hulk.  Warping in to investigate he is decloaked by an orca on his warpin spot.  Happens.  He moves off, cloaks, gathers his nerves.  Notices that one Orca is unpiloted.  As he reports this the other Orca pilot poops out a hulk, hops into it and leaves it abandoned.  I scramble off to buy a blackbird.  Fitting to jam the hell out of the hulks to break any locks we position two alts who can fly orcas in the neighborhood.  We all warp in and the alts start spamming dock.  They immediately end up on board as I finish landing.  Well… that was interesting.

For those unfamiliar with the mechanics, a ship that is locked up can only be reboarded by the “owner” who abandoned it.  Bad Hulk pilots occasionally use an Orca as a jetcan.  Ejecting their mining ship, hopping in it and LOCKING THE ORCA to protect it.  Of course they can be jammed, or bumped out of range, but no one would do that would they?  So because these morons weren’t paying attention, Fancy Hats is 1.5 billion richer, friends have cheap rigged ships, and we have tons of loot and salvage.  No good tears though.

By leaving them untargeted they basically hung up a “Steal me” sign.  Which was pretty hilarious for us, I’ll see if the FRAPS is any good.  For now, I’ll report on some other goings on on Day 1.

Killed 3 Macks in 1 Ice belt in the course of 30 minutes.  People just not paying attention I guess.

Smashed 1 Hulk not paying attention in a 0.5 system.  Another one right after we stole his Orca.  Finally got three Macks at once in an ice belt.  That was probably the best of them.  Wrapping up the night with 12 kills and some sloppy whiffs, it’s a scratch crew.  We’ll get ’em sorted.

People continue to not pay attention.  Even with all the warnings, some even in-game and from CCP, ignorance is RAMPANT.  Not only are people mining in nearly completely untanked ships during Hulkageddon, some are upping the ante by mining using methods that expose them to considerable additional danger.  While it resulted in hilarity today (I think I pulled something laughing over the Orca double-steal) it’s amazingly frustrating that there’s EvE players who are this ignorant.

I'm using it every time I can

Single Player EvE

Mature Theme Park MMOs start out as largely single-player games where you level through content as fast as you can to the cap, then at the level cap it suddenly turns into a Multiplayer-only experience.  EvE doesn’t force you into this track.  You can join (and possibly even find) productive multiplayer experiences from your first day in EvE.  On the other hand some folks sit in their NPC corps or 1-man tax shelters from the day they start until they give up on the game.

I couldn’t begin to imagine the proportion of these categories among active players, and I doubt they’d make up a major portion of the game, but I also don’t doubt for a second that they make up a bigger portion of the game than new players brought in per month.  This is significant because these people’s contributions to the larger community are practically nonexistent.  They may as well be playing X3.

Events like Hulkageddon shake this tree.  They involve people (admittedly unwillingly) in the larger spectrum of EvE.   Some of them don’t like it, and they leave.  Some of them don’t like it and rage about it on the forums and inspire the more foolish devs to make stupid changes.  Some of them find out that they could have prevented it and it drives their first willing step into the larger EvE community.  Now I’m not naive enough to think that this drives Helicity to do the event, let alone The Mittani, but I also remember when I was a whiny, entitled miner, thinking that EvE owed me a safe and secure space to make my space monies and should otherwise leave me the hell alone.  That attitude is great for X.  It’s bad for EvE.

I'm using it every time I can

Throwing Our (Fancy) Hats Into the Ring

As Poetic Stanziel pointed out yesterday, Fancy Hats is joining in the fray of Hulkageddon.  While I am nowhere NEAR as talented with any artistic tool as Poetic is, I spent a little time coming up with a logo and slogan for us.

Not as great as some of the others out there, but simple and to the point.  Feel free to cut out the text at the bottom and replace it with your own!