Eye's and Ears will save your life.

Perception

 This one word is so important in running a corporation in Eve. It is the act of determining what is going on by watching and making a judgment on what you are seeing or hearing. This does not mean that you are right, and in some cases you will be dead wrong in what you have decided is happening. Depending on the situation, and the importance of the act you have observed, this could be detrimental to you, and your corporation.

  What do I mean by this? Everything boils down to how we as humans perceive our surroundings, and what could be dangerous to us, and our way of life. We all have a lack of trust that is there to protect us, and in Eve it is heightened due to what we have witnessed, and read about. What we do is always seen by others, maybe in the right light, but where there could be cause for alarm we will err on the side of caution, and hushed whispers that something is up, and needs to be watched carefully. These emotions are heightened when seen through the eyes of higher ranked people within your corporation, since they have more to lose, and a greater sense of responsibility to protect the Corporation and its members from harm.

  An example would be someone pushing for more roles within the corporation, they may just want to be a bigger part of what’s happening, but they could also want those roles to sabotage your corporation and steal its assets. It all comes down to the perception of the command structure of the corporation, and what they deem as suspicious behavior. The person wanting more roles could be innocent of any wrong thinking, or malicious plans, but in a game like Eve it doesn’t matter. Trust is earned slowly in most corporations, one’s that have been burned before and one’s that have seen or heard it happen to others.

  A good rule of thumb is to be up front with the members of your corporation, or your corporation CEO’s if you’re a leader of an alliance. If people know the intentions, and the base perceptions for common actions within your leadership, they are more apt to understand how things work in your command and what is considered poor form, or inappropriate actions that will cause undue scrutiny upon you or your corporation.

  As always a certain amount of transparency goes along way to helping new people to your corporation, or new corporations to your alliance adjust and understand the reasons behind your command style. Eve is a game of distrust, but in the end when that trust is earned and appreciated it becomes the kind of trust that will last. Most spies will try to gain your trust quickly, after all time is money, and they want your money and don’t want to spend years doing it. Be advised though, there are people out there that play that game, they will spend all the time in the world to get you to make them a director, you will think he’s your best friend, he has your back, and would never do anything to harm you or the corporation he so lovingly pledges himself to, so be careful, be vigilant, but above all else be aware that the more you play this game, the easier it will become to perceive when something is not quite right. 

2014 Expansions, My Wishlist.....

 I was thinking of what I would like to see in the coming expansions for EvE Online. This is just my wishlist and opinion on what that might look like.

Ruin – Summer Expansion 2014

1. System shake up / all three sectors

  The creation of several Solar / and nebula events that will persist in the game universe. Space is not meant to be static, and there should be areas of space that are harsher, or change up the effects that occur in them. You do this to some extent in WH space with the suns granting buffs or debuffs to your ships. Just as everyday life on earth, the sun does not shine everyday, we have different weather effects that can cause us to change our plans, and in some cases, make us run for cover. Every system should not be the same all the time. Expanding on the exploration aspect some of these events or occurrences should have to be scanned down, and then exploited or marked as dangerous areas. The possibility of starting out with a system or two in all four races areas, low, and 0.0 space could see changes occurring to space in 12 to 20 systems to begin with and expanding out from there to create swaths of systems that create a natural block that will alter how we play the game to adjust to these phenomena. For lack of a better name, there could be the use of the terms Badlands (no shields worked, even on POS’s), Briar Patch (loss of all communications, or cloaking ability), ship altering nebula (unable to target, loss of shields, inability to warp or use micro warp drives), photon, plasma or ion storms (storms that would last a finite time in a system that would disrupt any number of things), comets (visual), black holes ( being in proximity to one of these would crush your structure), meteor showers (visual), the list goes on.

2. New NPC Pirate faction

  A new Faction, not necessarily pirates, but a group of capsuleers that have broken off from the main stream. Calling themselves the Jovian Guard, they have set up shop in a 0.0 system close to low sec. This new faction wants to be left alone and to their own devises. Claiming a system as their own and fighting fiercely over it, defending it against anyone that enters it. The AI would be more advanced with this faction and they would set up gate camps, and you would also find they have mining barges in the belts that when attacked would call for help and have other ships arrive to fight off the attackers.

 This new faction would have claimed this system and have a TCU set up and defended. If left alone and free to do what they want, they will eventually expand to a random neighboring system and begin attacks against the inhabitants of the new system. This faction would be an expansion on the current ratting as you would need small fleets of ships to take them on.

3. Expansion on exploration

  To expand further on the exploration theme added anomalies would be added that could aid or be potentially damaging upon being found. These new anomalies would have to be scanned down, and then once pin pointed the capsuleer would have to figure out what these new sites did, and how they could either benefit themselves or others. The ability to sell this information is an option as it would take a very good scanner to find these different and amazing sites.

  Some ideas would be a pocket of null space that once you warped to it you found yourself in a section of space that had no stars and was completely black. You would have to work out that this section of space removed you from local, and any type of scan. This could also be compounded by trying to figure out its size, and not knowing how long this anomaly will last.

  You could also find a section of space that once you warped to it after scanning started to eat away at your shields, armor, or structure. This could be potentially dangerous to anyone who entered it.

4. More dust integration / new ships

 Add two new ships to Eve that would work with dust game play. I am not sure if this could be done, but it is an interesting idea. Based off the shuttle design of the four races we could develop new fighters that would not be warp capable but would be able to have atmospheric flight. These new fighters would be transported in a smaller carrier the size would be somewhere between a Battleship, and a carrier, and be capable of carrying up to 5 fighters into a district for air support from eve players into dust.  

5. A more robust contract system / diplomacy

 Add new contracts to the contract system to allow for diplomatic contracts that would span 1, 3, and 6 month periods. This new contracts could be used for renting, non aggression pacts, and Alliance/ Coalition dues. This could be expanded further as the need arises.

6. Fleet command revamp

  The Fleet command system would be limited to 50 ships per fleet, and the fleet commander could set a certain number of specific ships that would be allowed to join it. For example a certain number of logistic ships / bombers, etc. limiting the fleet size would make it more interesting as you would need more fleet commanders, and more coordination between fleets to accomplish your goals, instead of blobbing.

  The other idea was to set a mass limit on cyno’s, there is a mass limit to entering wormhole space, why not how many ships you can jump in on one cyno? This change would require that a new section on the fleet tab would have to be made showing the current mass of a fleet. The possibility is also there to add a new capital cyno as well that had a larger mass, but could only jump capital ships in.

  We could also add a new ship here, called a bridging ship. It would be designed as a fleet command ship that would allow a link to the cyno and jump the fleet.

7. Risk / reward build

  With the new system effects, and adding harshness to some sectors of space should also bring a better risk / reward design to those areas. If you wanted to brave the new effects and set up in those areas, the reward should be equal to its dangers. Adding these elements would also change how we would fight within these sectors, if we would fight, and where we would make a stand. The potential to use these new effects to our advantage, or against our enemy would be different.

8. Unknown elements that must be figured out

  Exploration should be just that, and some of the things that are found, or new effects with in the systems should have to be figured out, and not hand feed to us. The idea of finding strange new sections of space, and then having to figure out just what they do would add a interesting and fun element to the game.

9. Corporation revamp / recruitment / no more 3 man corps

  The Ability to recruit has always been tough, unless you’re a huge coalition or alliance. This causes the game to stagnate as there should always be newer alliances, and corporations that are on the rise, and pushing for their own piece of space. I am not asking for a free pass, or a way to stop them from recruiting. There needs to be a way to limit the small to non existent 1-5 man Corporations that are so abundant in the game. I understand that Eve is a sandbox, and you should play however you want to play. I am just stating it’s very hard right now to find a way to recruiting players.

10. New exploration skills / navigation skills

   The Idea that we could add new skills that would help with what we find out in these new areas would have to be handled in a different way. I can’t see these skills just going up on the market as soon as the expansion hits, as that would defeat the idea of going out there and finding out what’s there, and how it affects us.

  There are two ideas I have that would maybe work better, or at least until the winter expansion came out. The first is to seed certain ships found in these new areas with the skill books that would lead to the new skills. They could be rare drops with not more than a dozen or two (combined) dropping in the first month. These new skills would allow for better navigation, scanning, or engineering to alleviate some of the effects found in the new systems. It would be interesting if there was a way to copy these skill books for resale as well, but it would have to take a decent amount of time to copy them.

11. New exploration modules

  New modules could also be introduced in the same way as above. I have also thought it would be interesting if you could have systems that required two modules to be fitted to work, it would make for some interesting fits.

12. Industry as a major advantage to PvP alliances

   I have always found that not all Alliances, but some always neglect the industry side of things. The quote “PvP makes you deadly, but Industry keeps you that way” has always stuck in my head. I am not sure if it could be expanded on, but I know that CCP is trying to do this now, so it’s possible that this will be the case in the near future.

Frontiers – Winter Expansion 2014

  Frontiers will expand on the Summer Expansion, with the addition of more systems having effects that change the way we play the game. I look forward to what CCP is doing, and by all means am not knocking the direction it is headed. I would just like to see some more interactive space in the future.