"Is local broken?"

Had you asked me this not to long ago, and I would have emphatically answered, "Yes, without a doubt, local is broken." I guess time changes all things....

Drackarn made a post I largely agree with, but more focused to lowsec/FW... this will be more about NPC null and sov Null where we do most of our roaming as opposed to Lowsec.

So the question remains to be answered, "IS the local channel broken?"

The easiest answer is also the most vague, that being, "Yes in some circumstances." or better put, "It has issues, and it's not perfect, but calling it outright broken, is overstating the problem."

Currently the "LOCAL" channel works the same in lowsec, null and highsec. WH space is the only place where Local is any different, and that's because it is put into "delayed" mode where you only show up in local if you speak in it.... And possibly only if another person is in your local to see it, I suppose you would appear on local to yourself even if nobody else was present.

So in Null and Lowsec I'd say that Local is used for intel rather than communication. By intel I mean the ability of a scout or soloer to jump into the system and at a glance, be able to tell if there even is anyone else in the system with them? It's not as if Local also gives their locations, so the scout or the solo pilot still have to try to locate a target, mainly done by flying around hitting on d-scan.

In Highsec intel is used for communications in some systems, and trade in others. Smack talk, or even friendly banter, depending on the situation. Now Highsec local CAN also be used as an intel channel, but it takes a lot more agressive settings of blues and reds, or perhaps just looking for WT's and non-WT's.

Competing issues with local as an 'intel tool' in Nullsec -

It seems like both sides, the defender (in this case that would be anyone already in the system, either looking to stay safe, or looking to find a fight), as well as the agressor (person jumping into the new system) have equal uses for Local. Neither really gains a disproportionate advantage.... but only on the surface.

Defender advantage : This advantage could and maybe should be classified as the "home field" advantage. It extends either way, that is, with or without current Local. It might even be justified to have this advantage built in, as there should be some kind of home field advantage that extends beyond just owning sov.

• WITHOUT LOCAL : Roaming gangs and soloers would have to do a in-depth scan to find targets, making scan probes, t3's etc essential to be able to provide the scan for targets as well as the ability to kill the things they find. Roamers would be hard pressed to roam as far if they had to do a deep scan in every system to determine if a target was even there. Jump in, drop probes, search for ships, scan down all the ships in POS's in space, try to find the ship in a belt or in a plex, warp to plex, kill, or move on if no targets are found would make for a long roam even if it was just for two or five systems. Even then a good, smart ratter will keep an eye on d-scan, much like in a WH and see those nasty probes out there. Sure, the stupid will still be killed, but that's just the 'near side' intel. I say near side intel, because seriously, what major alliance doesn't have forward scouts in their pipes, or friends reporting intel to them anymore? The answer is, none. Those would be the far side intel gatherers. Even solo roamers get reported with ship-type, location and possible destinations when they are just a few jumps into sov space. Even without local, cov ops on gates or ships in offgrid safes near gates will keep the smart ratter alive without issue, yes these scouts will have to be more actively monitored, but it's far from impossible, especially if roamers will have to drop probes in each system. 
• WITH LOCAL: When a new person jumps into Local, they have being more than ample time, in most situations, to avoid contact by either warping to a safe, a POS or a station or simply cloaking. This is especially important because botting programs can easily pickup the state change of someone entering local and then run immediately for the hills, making botting even more safe than it already is.

Agressors remain at a disadvantage either way Local goes.

• WITHOUT LOCAL: it will be tough to tell if there are targets even present. Even with the star map tools, like avg pilots in space and active, or even docked and active pilots, the reports given would not be enough to find reliable activity. False positives are often given by gangs moving through the area or clumps of players ratting, with the scouts watching for encroaching agressors on the inbound gates. Players would have to spend time in every system scanning, or at least in major systems scanning for targets, both giving away their presence and making finding a target that much more difficult if their probes show up on scan.
• WITH LOCAL: you can see if there are people in system, but still no idea where they are (at least not without further scouting, spais or other intel tools), but at least you can determine if they are present, making roaming faster and easier at some levels. But like I said above you also immediately give away that you are in system, allowing players to dock/safe up in some manner to avoid you/your fleet.

Impacts of a loss of Local to differing fleet types :

• Sov. non-roaming, structure shooting fleets - Near no impact, as the fight at a POS, or IHUB or sov structure is static, as is the fight at a gate. Ships are jumping into the fight at a more or less static location. IE planet 10 moon 3, or warping directly to the TCU/IHUB under siege. Or going to the gate where the enemy fleet is jumping in. This may be a gross over simplification of sov fleet tactics, but let's face it, sov fights will be next to unchanged if Local was removed, or put to delayed mode. Maybe less smack if it was removed (+1 for removal ;) )
• Sov roaming fleets - let's call these fleets of sizes 35+. Honestly these fleets can support having 1/2 dedicated scanners working in tandem as scouts, and honestly are rarely just looking for the solo ratter, though they wouldn't pass one up, they are looking for competition on their level. Gate to gate warping and d-scan would still suit most of their needs. Either scouts would be detected, or the fleet they are looking to fight would be scouted or revealed. Roaming would be effected, and slowed down, but not hugely so.
• less than 35 person fleets in Nullsec (NPC/Sov) - Roaming would be significantly slowed down and fights would all but disappear as it would be hard to find people to fight. If local was removed then these fleets would have to near-rely on the star-maps "Active people in space" ability to hunt down similarly sized targets and things to kill. Finding a target once they arrived would take much more time and effort and overall slow the already slow "pace" of the combat game in Eve way down. Granted a lot of fights in 0.0 take place on gates, but it's more finding a similar sized fleet will become more difficult without local. Not to mention that larger alliances will be more able to exploit their huge numbers to trap a roaming fleet between response fleets if local isn't around for the back scouts to keep an eye out for the backside of the fleet. Yes, I realized that everything is counter-able and that fleets should employ intel gatherers just like defenders, I am just mentioning that it is much more difficult for the agressor fleet to maintain intel on many hostile fleets vs their one.
• Bait fleets - Would just in general become horribly overpowered if local was removed. After all you could bait a small fleet into attacking your bait and the the first time they would know something was wrong was when the majority of your fleet suddenly appeared on d-scan.

Some of the possible solutions thus far follow...

New Intel measures - 

• Sov anchor-able structures that "scan" for new people in local. So not only does the defender get the advantage of a network of scanning alts, but then ALSO gets the advantage of having a structure that can give it more intel, and that intel would only be supplied to the person or team launching that structure.... horribly unfair to roaming gangs and really doesn't help unless it provides the same information as local, ie green, blue, red, etc. If it does all that, then what's the point of even getting rid of local in the first place?
• Some kind of module or deployable that could be deployed by either side, Once again, why force a whole new required module or item just to go roaming. Every FC will have to wonder, okay who has the primary scanner-thing, who has the secondary. Then you can't scout without one. And once again, if it provides the same information as Local, when why get rid of local at all?
• Deployable "beacon" like scanner... same as above, but shows up in everyone's overview. Once again this slants towards the Defender. IE you are plexing and see one of those things show up in local, instantly you know someone is either hunting you or looking for hostiles. A quick check in the intel channel and you find out one way or another, instant disappearing act if hostile. Agressors will still have to run scan probes to find their targets in most cases unless they get lucky and find people on gates, or are in search of a fleet fight. Dropped scanners would be a good item to have fleet fights on though... Drop the beacon, wait for response, if any is coming, otherwise pack up and move on. Gives a static place to fight/defend and then the agressors have something to defend, some skin in the game as it were to keep them on the field to attempt to keep the beacons alive. Beacons would have to cost a decent amount of money though, enough so that keeping them alive would matter.
• "Special" probes of some kind. I have seen this repeated over and over again, but requiring probes is just like requiring anchor-able structures, only maybe worse. It forces people into either a non-DPS ship or an alt into the same, forces slower progress, encourages bigger fleets to cover the extra utility.
• Delayed Local - Already in use in WH space, why not in K-Space. Of all the options this seems like the front runner, not to mention the most repeated option. But the bottom line is as follows. Defenders get the same advantages with delayed local that they get with removing local all-together, and agressors get none of the marginal advantages that keeping Local gives them. Even with a 10 minute delay, or a 5 minute one like Drackarn mentions in his post, that would mean the scout would have to sit in system for 5 minutes to see if there is even a fight to be had? That's as bad as having to scan each and every system.

One thing I haven't addressed, and that's the fact that a lot of 0.0 "fights" take place on gates. One fleet jumping into the other... In these cases "traditional" scouting would still find some/most of these fights, IE your scout jumps into their fleet and scouts them, or the reverse. If local is removed then backup can just be 15 AU away, safely out of scan range, but close enough to reach the fight in the opening volleys, making a bait fleet even more viable than in the current meta, and they are already very viable. Support could arrive in just 25 seconds vice the main fleet being one jump back and closer to 45 seconds to a minute away from support. Lots can happen in that difference of time.

TL;DR, I agree with Drackarn, well for the most part. I don't think Local as it is is "perfect" but in the current game, I don't see a real effective, solution to make it perfect by any definition. I would rather effort was put into other area's of the game than attempting to fix something that has been working (for some level of "working") for years.

This only focuses on the "obvious" intel you can gain from first glance at local, to say nothing of all the intel that can be gathered by show-info and out of game searches of players names. That slants the intel side of Local from one extreme to the other, where one is able to determine if their target is an old or new player, get information on their usual ships, setups, even fleet comps if you know where to look.

BB 43 : The 2012 Heroes of New Eden

At the turn of the year in meatspace, award season starts to spin up. Across the general media, folk are encouraged to look to their peers and recognise excellence and inspiration from the previous year. For the past two years I have attempted to do the same for EVE by distributing imaginary Free Boot Awards to an eclectic assortment of community luminaries. This year I thought it might be nice to expand the concept. 

For Blog Banter 43 I would like to invite every participant to nominate their peers for whatever awards you think they deserve. Let's celebrate the best and the worst of us, the funniest or the most bizarre, the most heroic of the most tragic of the past year. They could be corpmates, adversaries, bloggers, podcasters, developers, journalists or inanimate objects. Go nuts.

Man, what a task. Go nuts is right. Now originally I was going to try and do some out of the box awards, most with my tongue planted full in my cheek, Rixx Javix style, but then thinking about it I realized that I was having a very tough time identifying the blogs that I thought deserved mention, but that were not getting enough mention.

At first I was thinking Ripard could do with a well earned "Poasts too much Title."

Or perhaps Shalee for her heroic efforts to post a bog daily over the month of November, but then having RL and then Eve corp stuff and then back to RL issues de-rail her quest. I still wish her the best.

Or perhaps some of the lesser known blogs out there that I follow that would benefit in some small way from a mention on this blog.

In the end though, it wasn't that I couldn't find people to publicize, or a lack of what I consider 'good' content, it was that there was no way I could narrow that all down to just a few blogs. Like I always say, there's nothing worse than getting a "participation medal" just so I can mention your name.

All I can do for this popularity contest of a blog banter is just say that there are tons of blogs that do different things for me. In the end, all I can say is that (almost) everyone involved is a valuable asset that can't be measured by some title or award I could bestow.

Anyways the one award I will give out is the tightest Dev at CCP. For all values of tight.

TIGHT!

CCP Fozzie is the winnar! My favorite CCPer though, honorable mentions to CCP Punkturis, CCP Bro and CCP Falcon (follow them on twitter)....

So in this popularity contest I will take the uninspired vote of "everyone wins!"

Gevlon's changing post...

Well looks like even he knew he was wrong, but was just too proud to admit it. Today I wake up to another new set of comments on yesterday's post (thank you) and then went to read my morning Eve info dump and noticed the quick mention of Gevlon changing his post from yesterday. Well I just had to go take a look, I mean after all, I'm sure it was just minor changes....

So, his changes.... let's take a look.... Hmmmm, a mostly new paragraph close to the top with actual numbers replacing his fo-statistical analysis the had at the bottom of yesterday's post. Honestly I am surprised he didn't break them further down into percentages.... what else?

He removed a few graphs that didn't really show anything. And added a few more lines to his analysis on the graph I pointed out yesterday... but just to make it clear that the reason WH players have a higher average loss isn't because they have more expensive ships. OH NO! It's because they get caught in their bling PvE ships and get ganked more often! Of course, how could I have been so dumb?!

I mean other than that whole "High isk losses are always PvE" losses mechanic that he has thrown in there, that isn't, hmmmm, whats the word.... true.

So let's quickly delve into why WH losses are on average more expensive. Where I fly, I tend to do a lot of small gang warfare, but not really on the same "level" as WH small gang warfare, where you need to make every module, every single percent count because WH's limit the mass you can bring through. In WH space it actually does make sense to pimp as much as possible.

This turns a usually 2 bil isk Bhaalgorn into easily a 7 bil isk Bhaalgorn because those extra few percent more cap drain or percent more resists can, and do, more often turn the tide of a small gang battle. Gevlon likely doesn't understand this because he's never been in a small fight where those kind of percents matter. His eyes are so focused on Nullsec fights that he may not yet comprehend that there is a whole other level of fighting going on out there that he is not aware of.

So then spread that across the most used hulls in WH space, Tech 3 strategic cruisers, whose hulls and subsystems alone usually cost 500m isk, unfit, then you quickly get above the 1 bil isk mark on these ships with all that extra bling packed int here, be that bling for PvP or PvE for that matter. In short WH ships are more expensive because by FUNCTION they need to be more capable. Hopefully that's not hard logic to follow.

The other funny assumption that is still left in Gev's article....? That all of highsec is more dangerous than WH space, you know, because living in backward ass Amarr highsec, with 2 other people in local, at MAX is scarier than say, any WH system. When a "level of dangerousness" scale implies that the above is true and then is claimed to be fact. Well let's just say that doesn't hold up too well..

Also, lest I not forget, here were some great points made in my comments yesterday -

Azual ( of the blog The Altruist )  - "Jita sees about 6x the number of kills per 24 hours as Rancer (a notoriously permacamped lowsec pipe system), but you're far far more likely to get killed in Rancer than in Jita. It would make much more sense to analyse kills per resident or kills per jump, at which point I expect WH space would rank much more highly."

Anonymous - "I would like to see people like Gilgalaad or some of the folks in the Eve Uni trade chat to publish their knowledge about the market in a blog.

The knowledge itself is largely available, those guys give it for free, however a blog is a much more accessible way to learn about it."

I too would like to see more blogs about trading since I find that stuff pretty good reading. I did some station trading, what seems like ages ago now, but mostly meta 4 module trading, and made a huge profit while never leaving Jita 4-4. Lazy in my old age I suppose.

There were tons of other good comments, but mostly about how shitty Gevlon is as a source of information for things other than Market trading, and wishes that more people would take up that mantle. Even one great comment from the Gevvie himself. But I'll let you go read that off the article if you haven't seen it already!

A response to Gevlon's poor analysis.

@Gevlon post here. I know I shouldn't even respond as he has always shown a none too bright attitude towards how eve works and I could find fault in near every post he makes, but this one just stands out....

Here's the real baseline of the issue. Gevlon spent so much time trying to come up with data to support his position that he failed to actually interpret the data he was given. He disregarded or failed to notice data that did not support his notions, and then formed fallacious assumptions around those numbers.

To recap, he says...

"WH people are both extremely rich and that WH space is extremely dangerous. I used regional statistics from killboards to prove that WH ship losses aren't that expensive. They claimed that because they go to PvP in null (because they are so awesome that no one attacks them in their WHs). So I went to look for more data."

I ask you, to look at the "Average loss value MISK" graph again. The statement he is trying to disprove is, in short, "WH pilots, on average, pvp in more expensive ships and more dangerous area's."

First - Do WH pilots fly in "more expensive ships?" Yes, using his own graph, in every loss category, both in few losses and lots of losses, "WH people" aka Dark Blue, lead the curve. That alone, ALONE, is enough proof that indeed, WH people do fly and lose more expensive ships, on average than any other "Area," as defined by Gevlon.

Second part ("Dangerous area") - this is where it gets tricky, how do you define danger? Isn't this just a judgement call? WH people will say that WH space is pretty dangerous because of the lack of Local, or any wide ranging, local based intel networks found in low/high/null that can warn of approaching hostile fleets/gankers (by way of setting standings, or seeing criminal flags, long before they are a threat.

Now for WH space there is another wrinkle, it's the only true part of the game where fighting the PvE content is the only means for existence. Now what do I mean by that, I mean that in order for it to make sense to live in WH space, you must either be actively doing PvE or at least devote some of your time to PvE to make a living out in WH space using traditional methods.

Lowsec, Nullsec and Highsec are not limited in this manner. Lowsec does have FW plexes, or other PvE items, similar to those available, but much less profitable than, the plexes out in Nullsec, but you can still use PI and stations to evade, change or modify the combat. Nullsec has moon mining, reactions, drug, cap and supercap production just to name a few things that do not require active in-space participation. Highsec I shouldn't even have to cover because station trading alone is so profitable.

Meanwhile WH space stands alone with the massive majority of it's ISK making ability coming from sites that need to be run and thus can be scanned down and pounced. This is such an important distinction because it goes to lending towards a much more risk based, high danger atmosphere to gain the benifits of living in WH space than anywhere else in the game.

Then, Gevlon tries to pass off the majority of expensive losses by semi-to low activity pilots as "PvE" losses, or ganks. Now while I don't at all agree with this idea, except in the case of highsec, let's look at things through "his" lens. Expensive "PvE" losses actually help prove that WH space is more dangerous than the average other area in the game.

Why is that? Well simple it's as simple as my above point about use of the content and also risk-aversion. Rarely will a Eve player just jump in their most expensive ships, and fly around in high-risk situations. With the possible exceptions of the super-rich. But really we are trying to focus in on the "average player" of each demographic.

I will say that the average Nullsec resident does not fly their pimped out ratting/botting ships unless they have the means to ensure it's safety. In WH space there is no real way be "safe" as one is in nullsec. Anyone with a probe or an anom scanner can jump in on their ships. Yet WH players continue to field and lose expensive ships, even though it is more dangerous.

If that is not your definition of 'danger,' Then maybe you lay more weight to the number analysis of Gevlon, however those numbers are flawed and easily refuted when looked at by a few simple factors.

For instance, Gevlon does not factor in the all important data about the 'opportunity of loss.' In WH space with it's MUCH lower population density, proved using both CCP's stats and the Gevlon stats, reposting a graph from Gevlon,

Clearly, the number of people living in WH is the smallest of all the "area's" people choose to call home, by both the CCP and Gevlon killboard based metrics. Gevlon attempts to provide some kind of "ratio" but this ratio value is completely useless. Like comparing apples and oranges.

Gevlon takes his ratio by using his 9.2% of the polled PvP losses are "WH" based pilots, and then he compares that to the supposed total population of WH space (5.5%). It's because it's a bad ratio... Look...

The problem with the ratio is, Gevlon is taking a full sum value (a percent value that adds up to 100%) and comparing it to ANOTHER DIFFERENT full sum value and coming up with a ratio. CCP based their population values not on PvP activity but where players spent the majority of their time. Gevlon is just looking at PvP values, comparing the two values does not reveal the % of pvpers or a ratio of PvPers to non-pvpers. The ratio is the difference between his PvP fed values and the values that CCP provided. Not his assumed idea that it shows the ratio of active pvpers in a group of players. That's value is just total statistical nonsense.

Back to my point... the importance of the 'opportunity of loss.' If you only have a relatively small number of inhabitants, that makes both fighting and losing ships more rare. Now THIS is where Gevlon goes COMPLETELY off the rails. He breaks down WH space into C1-C6, but then leaves Null, High and lowsec combined. Either he did this because the data when combined, ie C1+C2+C3+C4+C5+C6 didn't support his theory, or because he was just lazy. Now because I don't have his exact figures all I can do it make a guess.

If you add up the values for the different classes of WH and provide a combined WH stacked graph, it would show the true value of all WH systems, and that value would be much higher than either Null OR highsec, second only to Lowsec... But like I said that is just a guess.

Let's not fail to point ou here that by his own graph Nullsec has a lower 'value' than Highsec. Sure it's damning when a C6 doesn't live up to highsec but then Gevlon glosses over the fact that Nullsec also doesn't have as high a value. Also that's a simple explanation  Highsec has more people than either Nullsec or WH space, in fact more than both combined. This gives a much higher sample size than either AND much more opportunity for loss.

One last thing, Gevlon bases the majority of his assertions on the idea that in short "a player with a high isk loss but low losses per year is essentially a PvE player." This completely disregards the "casual" eve player like myself and many others. I'd be lucky to get 45 FIGHTS in a year I'd say, let alone 45 losses.

Using myself as an example... While not a very active player, I am certainly NOT a PvE player. One of my losses easily pushes me over the 50m mark in a year. Now I am not exactly a huge loss player, IE when I die in stuff it's rarely all that expensive, but still I lost a carrier this year, that was a 2 bil isk loss or so, Plus other assorted losses, and now according to Gevlon, I am either an "outlier" despite the fact that I know of many other players just like me, or a victim of being ganked doing PvE. Seems a rather stark contrast.

To remove the true PvE gank losses, Gevlon should have called high isk losses with high damage NPC values, indicating plexing or belt ratting, as PvE losses. And then taken steps to exclude those results from his findings, I'm sure the appropriate SQL command could easily do this... This would quickly provide a more accurate and stronger overall graph. I'd imagine with those results stripped out than Gev's assumptions would not be so easily passed off as fact.

So, in short, the statistical analysis offered by Gevlon is flawed, incomplete and uses flawed logic in an attempt to "proof" his conclusions.