Intermittent Absences

Well, in case everyone hasn't noticed, I have been on a bit of a hiatus. No not because I have finally lost the drive to play eve, or am any less involved in logging in the minute my characters have less than 24 hours of training time left and I get an alert about it on my phone.

No, instead I have been hobbled and crippled by changing tasks at work, deadlines at work and at home, as well as the cruelest of masters, work travel.

The skies are lightening in the future, so after a week long vacation coming this Wednesday to next, I hope to be back to my blog writing ways.

In the mean-time, I recommend that everyone heads out and endorses CSM candidates (using a supported browser like Firefox or IE since Chrome isn't working). Throw your support behind someone that will hopefully be active after becoming part of the CSM and represent your point of view while filtering out all the rest of the bad idea's out there.

This is the link to the CSM process page.

This is the link directly to the candidates. Make sure you log in and endorse, at least per account!

When I return I will finish up the errata of the corp security posts I have up, as well as hopefully finish the revised Vagabond guide that I have been working on as well as anything else that comes up.

SCL wrap up

This weekend saw the first (mostly) player run Eve Online tournament, the first month of the SCL. I did a little coverage on this event as it started up on Saturday, but honestly I wasn't expecting such a quality event.

Sure the commentators weren't 100% every time, but then I don't expect them to be. Yes, there were delays, both on the stream, the 7 second UI delay for one, or cutting to the repetitive ads before commentators finished talking, a by-product of clicking the "advert" button without accounting for the lag. Here's a tip for the SCL guys, three seconds of dead time allows all commentary to finish around the worth, but you press that "start adverts" button and that happens instantly. Sorry side tracked by the small things...

Yes there were scheduling delays in the macro sense, ie the hour long delay the start of the second day along with matches being delayed while things were worked out.

All that crap, forgotten. The quality of the event not only showed that the idea of competitive play in Eve is possible, it works great. Let me cover the winning formula.

1. Great teams of competitors. Pulling from the best in Eve, I'm sure there are other great competitors out there, but the ones that were present were showing off the skill of flying in a match as well as the meta surrounding practicing, fits and counter fits.
2. Knowledgeable staff, in both the Eve knowledgeable sense, but also technically savvy, experienced in streaming, experienced with the tourney.
3. Huge, amazing, stunning support from CCP Fozzie (more on this later).
4. Solid backing, in this case done by Eve-Bet, Monocle Madness and Somer Blink.
5. Good prize pool, contributed by the above sponsors for the players
6. Great in-event competitions for the watchers, both in the Eve chat channels, the SCL stream chat and other venues, like the Monocle Madness in game chat, and probably others, I'm sure the eve bet channel and the Somer channels were just as active as the MM channel.
7. Interim music - Even the music was good. Sure it wasn't exactly what I would have chosen to pass the time, as I was trying to solo pvp during the breaks, but still good stuff. Thanks to Pretty Lights for the music!
8. Three match format, forcing more than just a single win to determine the course of the tourney. Adds to the enjoyment, even adds to the drama. Reduces the chances of a miraculous finish like the Thorax rush, or the Rote Kapelle win against PL, but I think the trade off is worth it.

If you missed any of the action the replays are all parsed out, and up for review on twitch here.

My favorite matches :

• The marathon of matches for Insurance Fraud, Match 11 round 1 through Match 12 round 3. Some crazy back and forth matches there, just amazing that IF was able to come back after matches of that calibre again and again. Impressive stamina.
• Just about all of the Exodunks. matches - Match 3 Match 6 Match 7 Match 13 and Match 14
• Matches by Warlords were just an effort in dominance. Very impressive.

Congrats to Warlords of the Deep, winners of month 1 of the SCL! exciting to the last drop.

Now here are a few things I would suggest to make the event better in March.

1. More commentators. By the final matches the few that were available were burnt out, hoarse, and emotionally drained. They did great, but more "talent" in the pool would only help the situation.
2. More resources behind the scenes. Both for the AMAZING CCP Fozzie who not only worked a weekend without pay, BUT ALSO worked the event through the night, while sick (uphill both ways, naked, while in a white out blizzard). No shit, this guy is amazing. I know he reads this blog occasionally, Fozzie, you seriously blow my mind with this kind of work. Even if nobody else realizes it your dedication to events like this is why Eve and esports will only get better. Thank you! If you didn't know, you are my favorite Dev, SORRY PUNK!
3. Player resources behind the scene for SCL, in the form of guys on Twitter, taking over when the matches end to update the site and do some number crunching, update the site in more real-time.
4. Better community interaction. By better I just mean more-of. More interviews, more fansite/blog previews of the teams. Getting community buy in on the teams is super important, but unfortunately it isn's something that a small 300 word blurb about each team can do. I'm talking about a web-page for each team, dedicated coverage, interviews of key members, or strong performers.
5. Choosing a match MVP, especially for the finals, and single this person out for an after-match interview over skype, or perhaps a little after match gift, of isk or PLEX? Who knows, but individual acknowledgement is always good. And it doesn't have to be the team Captains every time, but they'd be a good start!
6. More post-match review. Including the tipping point and strategies used. Especially when people show up with non-standard fits that people not in-the-know can understand what those fits could have been useful for.
7. Mid-month review of the previous month's action. Like a one to two hour show detailing the action of the previous month, having the talking-heads, as it were, speak to the tactics and strategies used and ships used. Talk about the winning team and the tournament in general.

All in all, an amazing first showing, so much better than I was expecting. So much good PvP, great bets (even if I lost all my iskies). Bacchanalian posted up a great summary on the Eve forums from his perspective, that is well worth the read as well, and can be found here...

Great show guys. I look forward to next month! I will post dates and times as soon as I know them.

Syndicate CL!

I've seen some chatter about this, but not nearly enough! Even a dev focus blog isn't enough!

Last year a few Syndicate residents took up the challenge of setting up and organizing the "Syndicate Regional Alliance Tournament." A non-CCP sponsored event. This year the same people and some newcomers have taken it to the next level and are launching the first ever Syndicate Competitive League(SCL).

With some Dev support the matches are going to take place on Sisi or Buckingham, the test servers and hopefully also in relatively safe Jove space, outside of the prying forces of regular nullsec. This is pretty critical to any time someone tries to do something like this because the intent to meddle will always be present. With the matches properly isolated ala the AT tourneys it should be good fun, even if it's not on TQ directly.

In any case, the tourney is sponsored by various Eve groups, including notorious establishments like Monocle Madness, Somer Blink, and Eve bet. Monocle madness and Eve bet are both doing per match bets as well as other bets, ie stream going down, etc.

Anyways, back to the SCL, their website is very well put together. It's over here -> http://www.syndicatecl.com/index.php

It's setup with information about the teams, the schedule, the rules, and all the other information.

But most importantly, since it starts in just under a half an hour;

Here are the live stream links

Streaming through their website.

On twitch tv.

Corp Security - Part 4 - Post-spai recovery

Eve Online Corporation Security

Part 4

Post-spai post theft recovery

So you've been hit. Despite of or maybe because of your preparations or lack of, your corp has been struck by a corp thief, or has a spai(or more than one), and damage has been done. This post isn't going to be very much ABOUT security, more about how the reaction to the threat or actions of the thief matters.

How much damage, or rather how much the damage is allowed to spread is largely defined by the leadership or leading members of the corp.

One might ask - "Well, how is that possible, they just got away with "X" stuff, or isk, or intel, or ships!"

This is Eve, if every corp gave up after their first theft, there would never be any corp that lasted beyond the 35 person stage of development. FYI "studies" show that most corps will be hit with their first thief between 30-50 users. When the corp is small enough that leadership positions are still easily available, but big enough that strange activities usually get overlooked, and big enough to provide the isk and assets looked for in most thefts.

So in short, almost every corp, despite the precautions taken, WILL BE ROBBED. Sorry, now you can't say, "But LOGAN! I did everything you suggested in your articles and we still got robbed/ganked/spys!!!" It's my obligatory get out of jail free card.

With that said, the reaction of a corp as a whole and most specifically the corp leaders will determine the future course for that corp. Be that straight into the ground OR full recovery. First, a few things must be acknowledged after a theft.

• You were robbed, it happened and they got away with : Whatever. (this is a prompt to go figure out what exactly they got away with)
• Admit if mistakes were made. IE ships traded to one player and lots of trust placed in just one person, everyone has a price. Apologize, but don't overly apologize every time it comes up.
• Do the corp's level best - even if it means having no isk or assets left for the corp - to replace member losses. Happy members stay with the corp and will rebuild it. Keeping the corp assets up won't.
• Identify the cuprit if possible. If not possible, scale back all member access to the base essentials.

Understand the joining a corp and leaving a corp mechanics. Now I can't say that these will forever be true... but here is some of the stuff I know.

If a corp member has any roles, even if you want to kick them for being a dirty rotten thief, it will still take 24 hours before you can force them to leave the corp, and only IF they dock up and let you kick them out. I'm not sure on the in-space mechanic for kicking people out of a corp anymore, but this used to hold true, the member could stay in space and you could not kick him from corp. Sometimes a petition could be used by nice GM's to remove the offending member even in space.

While the thief remains in corp, Corp chat is pretty much useless, so setting up a new channel and explicitly allowing your corp to join that channel while explicitly blocking that individual (blocks take priority over allows) is the way to go. Alternatively you can setup a new channel and directly invite people in the mean time. Send out a corp mail identifying the thief, labeling them as potentially dangerous.

One common tactic is to corp theft and then jump in a combat ship and locate other corp members on the map, travelling to and killing them if at all possible. Re-iterate this risk to your corp members. If you see him join local, dock or fight.

The 24 hour period can be a good time to get them "back" if at all possible, but it usually isn't. That's not to say you don't want to try, but often times a thief will take your stuff, end up in space and then at their lesure dock up and leave the corp or be kicked.

Once the thief has left the corp;

• get full API keys, once again, 'account,' not character, from everyone in the corp. This is a matter of course, members who are suddenly unwilling to share their keys or are slow in doing so I would consider suspect.
• Look at the API's and try to find links between the thief and any current members. Thief's often become more sloppy once they enter the corp, leaving ties between their other alts and themselves in the corp. Scrutinize members who engaged in direct trades with the thief, contracts with them. I said scrutinize, not kick. Explain to them that leadership is worried about more losses of assets.
• If the thief is blatantly identified, ie they start shooting stuff, make sure his name is advertised and his roles stripped. Send out a corp mail, warn the alliance  do all the smart things you should be doing, don't expect someone else to do them or have already done them.

Be aware that you'll never quite feel safe again. Well, let's be honest, if you ever thought the corp was "safe" in the first place you have problems. The corp should never be considered "safe" because even if you had one thief attack, that doesn't mean that there isn't another one already in your corp waiting for his chance to make a break for it.

Importantly, as a leadership team;

• Don't give up and walk away
• Don't 'witch hunt' but as a leader you have to accept that it happened and move on.
• Take your lump and learn from it. Figure out if the action was avoidable, or unavoidable. Place safeguards on the corp.
• Follow up with members who lost assets, pay them back, reward loyalty in the corp.
• maintain vigilance, corp theifs strike, they only really win when their theft causes a storm that brings down the corp behind them.

Corp Security - Part 1 - Risks without Security
Corp Security - Part 2 - Interviewing and API
Corp Security - Part 3 - The early days (months)

Corp Security - Addendum - Errata   (coming soon)