Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Catalyst ganking guide

The solo ganker

People usually gank in fleets. The New Order runs 5-10 men fleets, Goons on their highsec visits run 50+ fleets. These fleets are highly successful, but very inefficient. The larger the fleet, the more waiting for everyone to get ready. I've seen the 50-men Goon fleets undocking twice an hour. Even if they hit a 800M Orca and it's 800M pod, that's mere 3.2B ISK damage caused every hour. A solo ganker can act on his own, waiting for nobody. I could safely keep 3.5 ganks/hour. Even if most targets are just 40M Retrievers with 60M average pods, the same 50 people can gank 17.5B/hour. That's almost the cost of a supercarrier.

The fleet makes large noise. You need to be seriously dumb to stay in the way of the Goons. Therefore the fleet often can't find worthy targets and hit lesser ones that they overkill. A solo ganker is largely ignored and can relocate easily, he can always find targets.

The solo ganger is not bound to appointments. You have half an hour in launch time? You can carry our two ganks solo, which is impossible in fleet, unless you are extremely lucky: one is just up where you are.

Solo gankers can always form a fleet because each of them are ready to lead it. Those who fly in fleets are bound to a Fleet Commander. The fall of TEST alliance shown that numbers mean nothing without experts and leaders. The solo ganker is an expert, and the leader of himself. Stepping up from solo ganker to the commander of a Freighter-ganking fleet is just counting down on fleet chat and using "warp fleet to" instead of "warp to". Everything else is the same. On the top of that, you can have a very small fleet on your own: dual gank!Here you can see what damage and two catalysts can do:


Finally the solo ganker has a philosophical value: his success is his and cannot be attributed to "having friends". Socials believe that the power is in "friends" and objects don't matter. Killing him solo (without friends) is the ultimate proof that it's bullshit, he needs to get knowledge about fittings and ships (objects) instead of trying to get people to protect him.

So my corp will be the place for solo gankers and this guide teach you to solo gank miners with Catalysts. Ganking with Catas is DPS gank, therefore you need time to carry out your act. It practically locks you out of 0.8+ systems (these are the playground of alpha-ganking Tornadoes).

Ganking Catalyst and pilot

A Catalyst pilot needs about 2 months of training for the skills to fly a 700+ DPS Catalyst. These are the needed Intellect primary skills:
  • Hull upgrades 4 (Armor)
  • Mechanics 4 (Armor)
  • Propulsion jamming 2 (Electronic Systems)
  • Capacitor management 3 (Engineering)
  • Capacitor systems operation 3 (Engineering)
  • CPU management 5 (Engineering)
  • Powergrid management 5 (Engineering)
  • Thermodynamics 4 (Engineering)
  • Acceleration control 3 (Navigation)
  • Afterburner 3 (Navigation)
  • Evasive maneuvering 4 (Navigation)
  • Navigation 4 (Navigation)
  • Warp drive operation 3 (Navigation)
  • Cybernetics 3 (Neural Enhancement)
  • Hybrid weapon rigging 4 (Rigging)
  • Jury rigging 3 (Rigging)
  • Science 4 (Science)
  • Shield management 2 (Shields)
  • Magnetometric sensor compensation 3 (Targeting)
  • Long range targeting 3 (Targeting)
  • Signature analysis 4 (Targeting)
  • Target management 3 (Targeting)
Perception primary skills:
  • Advanced weapon upgrades 4 (Engineering)
  • Weapon upgrades 5 (Engineering)
  • Controlled bursts 3 (Gunnery)
  • Gunnery 5 (Gunnery)
  • Motion prediction 4 (Gunnery)
  • Rapid firing 5 (Gunnery)
  • Sharpshooter 4 (Gunnery)
  • Small blaster specialization 4 (Gunnery)
  • Small hybrid turret 5 (Gunnery)
  • Surgical strike 5 (Gunnery)
  • Trajectory analysis 4 (Gunnery)
  • Spaceship command 4 (Spaceship command)
  • Gallente frigate 3 (Spaceship command)
  • Gallente destroyer 4 (Spaceship command)
While there are more Intellect-skills, they aren't trained high, so if you use a new pilot, I'd suggest to remap to Int/mem, start with Cybernetics, plug in +3 learning implants and learn all skills, then remap Perc/Will and start learning those skills. If you want to gank faster, map to Int 5, Perc 9 at start and learn skills as you need them. You can go gank after 3 or 4 days having 300-350 DPS. If you use Cerebral Accelerator booster, you can learn fast and gank early with its +20% damage.

The ganky ship is the Catalyst. There are 4 relevant fittings:
[Catalyst, Biggun]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Prototype Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution Script

Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S

Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]
This is the largest DPS Catalyst, 673 overheated DPS with the skills above. Costs 9-10M ISK. You can't fit it without implants, see them below. It can pod untanked Retrievers, Hulks and Covetors, kill but not pod untanked Mackinaws or badly tanked Hulks, Rets, Covs in 0.6. In 0.5 it can pod badly tanked Hulks, Rets, Covs, untanked Macks, kill badly tanked Macks. Everything without DCII is "badly tanked", these barges and exhumers doesn't have enough shield HP to save them, even with resistors. If you can fit T2 guns but don't have the CPU to fit it, do not mix with metas. Mix with Light Electron Blaster IIs, just don't forget to manually load ammo into the Electron(s) in the station fitting screen.

[Catalyst, Anode]
Gauss Field Balancer
Gauss Field Balancer
Gauss Field Balancer

Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Prototype Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution Script

Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Anode Light Neutron Particle Cannon I, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]

This is the same ship, except using Meta3 guns. Meta4 costs more than T2, don't use it. 537 overheated DPS. Costs about 3M. It can pod untanked Retrievers, Hulks and Covetors, kill but not pod untanked Mackinaws or badly tanked Hulks, Rets, Covs in 0.5. Should not gank in 0.6.

The third fit is the same as the first except it replaces scram with a meta afterburner. It is to catch orbiting ships.

The fourth fit replaces a magstab with a DCII module. It doubles the EHP of the Catalyst, it's used when there are dumb "white knights" are in the belt who never heard of ECM.

In the first times you'll lose pods due to silly mistakes. After you stopped making them, you can upgrade your pod, but don't go crazy, you'll still lose it now and then. You should use Genolution set fitting implants, WU-1003 fitting implant, SH-603 (maybe 605) and RF-903 gunnery implants. These allow the first ship to be fit and increase its DPS to 730.

Scouting

Since faction police chases your ganker after your security status dropped below -5, you can't just peek around with it hoping to find something. Your ganker must land on top of the target. To do it, you need a scout pilot on a different account, so you can be online at the same time and in fleet.

There are two scouting methods for two ships. Both have pros and cons. The first is using a procurer mining barge:
[Procurer, Scout]
Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

10MN Afterburner II
Ship Scanner II
Passive Targeter II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Ice Harvester II
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Hobgoblin II x2
Hornet EC-300 x3
This ship simply approaches the miner and starts mining 4-500 m from it. The ganker can warp to it and that's it. Pros:
  • Doesn't need skilled pilot.
  • Procurer is cheap, if your pod is cheap too, you don't have to care for it.
  • Easy to manage.
  • Your dead catalyst and the corpse can be instantly looted.
  • Can mine some side income while scouting
  • Spreads the example of using Procurers
It has one problem, but it's a big one, "white knights" who want to protect the miners from "evil", will figure out who is your scout alt and the Procurer will give out exactly where you'll gank. Their response can range from convoing the target to placing instalocking ships or ECM on the belt.

The other scouting method uses a cloaky T3. Fit it with MWD, Ship scanner, Passive targeter and tank. Have passive tank too, you might get decloaked while alt-tabbed and can't turn on active tank. With this ship you don't go near the miner. You warp in the belt, scan the target and if found good, you place yourself "behind it" 10-30km. I mean, your ganker will arrive from a station, gate or celestial. Place yourself in a way that the target is between you and the celestial. Cloak up. This way the "white knights" can't find you. They might arrive in the belt, find it empty and leave. You can check them via Dscan. The ganker will warp 10-30 km from you, directly on top of the target. Pros:
  • Safe from "white knights": what they can't see they can't gank.
  • Faster due to its MWD. If the procurer arrives 30km from the target, that's 2 minutes of slowboating.
  • Can fit probe scanner and scanning subsystem to find targets another way.
  • Can fit salvager to get intact armor plates from exhumers.
The problems are its pricetag and the learning time to sit in it. Also, you need some practice with that "get behind it". You will also fail ganks because of warp to zero.

Your scout should also be an Orca pilot who can carry ships and fittings after your ganker.

The actual scouting needs you to find the miner first. He is in an ore/ice anomaly or a belt. You can find him with Dscan or ship probe scan. For Dscan scouting, you need an overview that shows belts, mining barges and Exhumers. You can see targets within 14.4 AU. Decrease ranges and when the belt disappears together with a barge, he is in that belt. You can also decrease the angle of the scan and look at a specific belt or anomaly to see who is inside. I don't cover probe scan, the internet is all over it since Odessey.

However I do outline a combined method for very fast target finding. Using Dscan you can easily determine which belt cluster the target is. However one planet can have several belts or several planets can be in close proximity. Set your Dscan distance to 300 million km. That's about 2 AU. Verify that the target is within this distance. Launch probes in pinpoint formation, centered on your ship, 2 AU scan range. You shall get perfect location in one scan, you can warp to it instantly.

One scanning tip: if you are in an ice belt system with no ice belt, you can scan down AFK barges who were at the old ice field and were left there floating.

After you arrived on grid with the possible target, look around. Are there ECM ships, logies or instalocking Tornadoes on grid? If not, get within 50km and activate passive targeter before anything is locked. It starts to flash. Then lock the target and you see the passive targeter icon on it. After you have a lock with the passive targeter, he can't see you locking him while you scan him. Activate ship scanner and you see a list of modules. Many scans needed to see all modules. The point is to determine the tank of the target. After you gathered the module list, put it into EFT and determine if you can kill it. Create a damage profile for Antimatter/Void ammo and calculate its EHP against it. Divide it with your DPS and you see how many second you need to kill it. You have 25 in 0.5, 20 in 0.6 and 16 in 0.7. If you want to kill the pod, you need 3 more seconds. If you determined that the target is worthy of gank, approach with Procurer or get behind it with T3

After the gank, loot your catalyst wreck, scoop the corpse of the target and salvage the wreck of the target and your catalyst wreck.

The gank

  1. Your scout provides the warpin and gives the name in fleet chat.
  2. You add him as terrible contact, so he is red on the overview.
  3. Check your fittings and undock.
  4. If there are ships on the undock, warp to an insta-undock bookmark
  5. Group guns, load ammo, load script, start the sensor booster, pre-overheat guns.
  6. Warp to the position provided by your scout.
  7. Start locking the target
  8. If the target is out of 2200 m, approach, using the "keep at range 1000m" button. Concord timer starts when you start shooting, but faction police timer will start when you land. Don't approach too much. If it's out of 4km, and you have no AB, just warp out.
  9. When within 2200m, open fire and activate the warp scrambler
  10. Switch to a pod overview that has only pods and celestials on it.
  11. When the target pops, start locking the pod and pre-activate guns.
  12. When your ship is destroyed, instantly warp to a celestial and not to a gate or station. You can't jump with weapons timer.
  13. Warp to the instant-dock bookmark of the station, set the station to destination and activate autopilot. It will instantly dock after you arrive to your bookmark.
Important notes:
  • Set your safety red
  • Do not gank with ECM ships or Tornadoes on the belt
  • Have insta undock and dock bookmarks for every system you gank in. Make your own, don't ask from others unless you want to land on smarbombing battleships or instalocking Tornadoes.
  • Have your fittings saved so you can instantly fit.
  • Have 120 ammo in your saved fittings, that is enough for a 0.5 gank.
  • Have a stockpile of ships and fittings with you. Your other account pilot should be flying an Orca and carry it for you.
  • Watch your capacitor while ganking. If it instantly changes with "capsule ejected" red text, you are dead and should warp out instantly.
  • You can take gates between your base and the target, but you are easy mark for anyone sitting on the gate. Move your stuff with and Orca, travel in the pod.
  • Set your "auto-target back" to 0 ships. You don't want to shoot belt rats.
  • Do not Alt-tab away while you are flying in a pod with GCC. Be ready to instantly change course if something went wrong.
  • The Notifications and Logs window gives detailed combat log. If you see "grazes" and "glances off", you were either too far, or moved too fast transversally
  • Check your warning icons on the top. If you see limited engagement, check who shot you. It can be the drones of the target, but if other players were on it, you have "white knights"! Watch out for them, be ready to move away, switch to stealthy scout or fit DCII to your Catalyst.
  • Before ganking in a system, prepare Concord: shoot a customs office in a noobship or gank a smaller target, like a Retriever in 0.5 (you have 5 seconds less without Concord). After you have GCC, you can jump around in nearby systems, dock, get your noobship and undock. Since you have GCC, Concord will spawn and shoot you. You can't warp or dock in the noobship, but you can in the pod.
  • If you are catched by a "white knight" on a gate, on a station undock (mistake, use instawarp) or on your instawarp location, do not try to fight him, you just split your attention and lose your pod. Select a celestial and prepare to save your pod.
I'm a newbie, how to start? Put your scout in a Procurer in an empty belt and initiate Duel with him. Do everything as outlined above and "gank" one or two cycles on your scout. Then warp out with your ship and dock. You can practice infinitely as you have no GCC, you are not yet a criminal and you lose nothing. You need the practice. The difference between a successful gank and losing your pod is 1-2 seconds waiting or warping to the wrong spot. While the task isn't complicated, you need to execute it perfectly which needs muscle memory. You will fail several times, so did I and everyone else.

Until you get to T2 Catalyst, you are practically locked to 0.5, hunting Retrievers for 6 weeks. Check the maps at the bottom of this post, there are lot of 0.5 hunting grounds, especially in Genesis, Kador and Lonetrek. And it's not at all dull and uneventful: these Retrievers sometimes hold 1B+ pods. The ave average pod value is 83M. Add the 47M barge value and the average newbie kill is 130M for a 5M meta-fit Catalyst. Of course there is the easy way that Miniluv walks: you can gank Orcas on day 1 in a fleet of 50, but then you'll never be able to do anything on your own and you'll be spending your time waiting for the other guys to get ready.

Looting

The destroyed criminal Catalyst is free for all loot, so your scout can safely take its contents. He should as it recovers half the fitting, practically halving the cost of the gank. Salvaging is free too, you should salvage especially the T2 Exhumers.

Looting the ganked miner is optional. The average loot of a T2 mining ship is 5-6M, so covers your losses. Some ships have much better loot. Please note that as you can gank 3-3.5/hour, the loot income is somewhere around 15-20M/hour which isn't great. It should only be taken constantly if you are only ganking and this is your only income source. It will not pay for your PLEX, you have to subscribe the game if you only gank, but don't need to convert PLEX-es for ISK after the initial two for the Orca. It's somewhat ironic that the ganked miners can pay for your Catalyst.

Occasional looting can be done by the scout: bookmark the wreck, dock up, get in your looting cruiser which has strong shield tank and warp stabilizers in lows (Moa is great), warp back to the wreck, set your safety yellow, loot and dock up. Set your safety back to green. After that you need to wait out the 15 minutes timer. The reloging is a waste of time and should only be done if the target dropped some deadspace or faction module, named mining upgrade or other 20M+ loot.

To loot regularly, you need a looter pilot, who should not be on the same account as your scout. She can share the account with the ganker, third account is better. She can fly a looting cruiser. Warp to the scout, loot and warp out.

If the target had lot of ore or had ore containers, you can loot that too by jettisoning your own can and moving the ore into your can. The act is stealing but after that the loot will be yours, so your scout can loot it with his Orca without becoming a thief.

Printable maps

These are created from Dotlan, usually cover a region, but not exactly. Their limits are the natural ganking borders: lowsec and 0.8+ systems. They omit the systems we don't care for and let you just look at your desk and know where to continue. They all belong to continuous highsec, you can travel between them safely in an Orca. The first one is an overview showing the regions and how can you travel in highsec:




























22 comments:

Lucas Kell said...

So much butthurt at miniluv... What did they do to piss you off this much?

Anyway...
I know you like being solo, and think that working alongside anyoen else is a pointless waste of time, but a lot of us like the social aspect of the game. I'd be bored as hell ganking solo, to the point that I almost never do it. Unless someone has annoyed me specifically, I don;t bother. What I enjoy is being in a fleet, having a laugh and a joke and going on a few ganks.
Being in a fleet also leaves you less restricted. We often gank tanked ships in 0.7 with both concord and ECM on grid. Oftentimes miners will spawn multiple concord waves and get their alts to repair them, and chuck a couple of ECM ships and drones on grid. For you, this would mean no gank. For us, it means a funnier gank with a more rage filled response. A miner that is actively seeking to not get ganked is ALWAYS funnier than a random.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good guide for the solo ganker, but if you are setting up a corp to coordinate this, you should consider coordinating fleets (btw it really isn't as simple as just warping fleet to target). We coordinate ganks to do things you couldn't do solo. As an example, last week I took a group of guys, then set up and executed a triple gank. 3 targets in one belts, all simultaneously ganked and podded. This is to combat the fact that when a miner sees a gank, they run away and you lose other potential targets. By striking all targets at the same time, you eliminate their ability to run.

maxim said...

@Lucas Kell
You completely misunderstand the point.

If you gank someone with a fleet, you can't then write him a letter about how he could have prevented this gank by being better fitted.

Remember, the stated purpose of this exercise is not enjoying malicious glee, or even trying to manipulate market supply of goods for profit.

@Gevlon
Suppose you succeed in assembling a corp of efficient solo-gankers.
I realise that's a big supposition, but still...
What kind of corporate identity do you want these solo-gankers to have?
What kind of group activities will reinforce that corporate identity?

Gevlon said...

The gankers share the vision of the dumb should be destroyed and individual success should be celebrated instead of turning into a nameless drone in a fleet.

Lucas Kell said...

But you are going to be restricted on who you can gank. A Single tanked target with ECM support is going to also be protecting untanked miners. Anyone that put multiple waves of concord into a belt is also going to be able to go untanked. Higher sec space will also be possible with no tank. All this will do is push the untanked miners to cluster in safer areas.

By coordinating attacks and picking multiple untanked targets, you can reach a wider audience. By selecting only targets you wish to educate, you eliminate the worry of not being able to tell then why they were targeted. Honestly though from the way you have spoken to the miners you've already hit, you don't seem too worried about educating anyone. You quite clearly state its their own fault for being such a juicy KB padding target.

Then if we look at your corp requirements, you want only people who have achieved solo kills of 3b+/month and only people who are not also getting kills in groups. You will kick anyone that tries to have fun or get involved socially with others in the corp (beside advice and fits) and you, and you want all bios and public communications to your specifications. Basically, you want a group of autonomous bot versions of you. So there's no benefit to the solo ganker joining you or following your rules. Essentially this post is the entirety of what you have to give, so joining your corp has absolutely no incentives. Joining your corp will simply restrict a solo ganker to only targets of your choice, whereas if they stay independent, they can venture into low sec or WH space and have all the fun they want alongside ganking.

In short, if I am a solo ganker capable of achieving 3b/month solo, what could you possibly offer me? Joining miniluv gets me all the ship replacement and coordination tools I need, an environment where there's a lot of fun and frequent high value targets as well as being free to solo gank to my hearts content. Joining you gets me this post, and a whole bunch of your rules to follow.

Gevlon said...

If miners learn to use ECM ships or move to 0.8+, I'm happy for them.

The corp rules ban only lowsec and nullsec kills, members are encouraged to form fleets to gank whales together.

All groups have restrictions and offer exactly their restrictions: that other members are restricted from harming you.

While he can't chat socially here, he also doesn't have to suffer the dumb jokes of others.

While he can't wander off with his corp pilot to nullsec for some "fun", he won't find himself beaten on the killboard by someone who had a noobship with civilian guns in a titan kill.

While he can't just tag along in fleets but must learn to solo gank, everyone else in a fleet will has the same level of competence, so he doesn't have to worry that a fleet fizzles because some idiot came with a T1 cata, got his safety on green, forgot to overheat, hit the wrong target or find some hilarious way to fail. Everyone in his fleet will have at least 3B solo gank experience, they will very unlikely fail on the Orca.

Anonymous said...

You propose this as solo-ganking, but the guide says to use a scout on another account. What if you only have one account?

Gevlon said...

> What if you only have one account?
Stop being poor!

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"The corp rules ban only lowsec and nullsec kills, members are encouraged to form fleets to gank whales together."
And wormhole kills.

"While he can't chat socially here, he also doesn't have to suffer the dumb jokes of others."
Most people join corporations (which are groups of other people) to be in a group with other people. Your rules prevent any of your members forming relationships which is pretty much the best thing that corporations offer. When people get to know each other, they help each other out more and together, people get better. Again, your corp will just be full of versions of you controlled by other people. I'm sure I've read this corp plan before with you idea of booting people for chatting. I'd be surprised if you got more than 10 individual players in your corp, and most of them will get booted for inactivity after a month.

"While he can't wander off with his corp pilot to nullsec for some "fun", he won't find himself beaten on the killboard by someone who had a noobship with civilian guns in a titan kill."
And killboards matter since when?
I think you'll find the group of people who compete for killboard stats is lower than you'd think. Killboards are good to help measure how much people are contributing, but are not exactly the best design for any sort of league tables. Anyway, I thought your whole idea was to educate people? Surely your killboard means absolutely nothing, so it shouldn't matter to you what people do. Unless of course this whole venture is actually a way for you to build a corp with a large killboard, and nothing to do with helping stupid miners...

"While he can't just tag along in fleets but must learn to solo gank, everyone else in a fleet will has the same level of competence, so he doesn't have to worry that a fleet fizzles because some idiot came with a T1 cata, got his safety on green, forgot to overheat, hit the wrong target or find some hilarious way to fail. Everyone in his fleet will have at least 3B solo gank experience, they will very unlikely fail on the Orca."
I 100% guarantee that at some point you will still get some idiot messing up and ruining a gank. Especially since you don't have comms, so coordination is going to be a lot trickier. I know you think you just warp the fleet to the orca, and it's instant win from there, but that's simply not the case. Various out of game skills as well as in game skills have all sort of effects on the effectiveness of each pilot, which an FC would be in charge of being aware of and tackling.

Gevlon said...

You have no idea how many people are annoyed by bad jokes, porn links and "once when i was high as a kite lol" stories. You know that I have a channel "Goblinworks" for more than a year for trading discussions. It has lively discussions exactly because it's not trashed up by idiots and their "social chat".

Killboards measure contribution. That's all. The problem is that the killboard gives full kill value for every killer in a blob kill, so unless you dig into the details you can't see who is contributing and who is just roaming with a blob in a noobship.

The New Order did not use comms and the problems were never coordination issues but individual competency issues. Remember, I was with the New Order for a few month until I realized it's not going anywhere.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"You have no idea how many people are annoyed by bad jokes, porn links and "once when i was high as a kite lol" stories. You know that I have a channel "Goblinworks" for more than a year for trading discussions. It has lively discussions exactly because it's not trashed up by idiots and their "social chat"."
I'm fully aware that some people don't like porn links, racist jokes and people talking about drugs. But that kind of behavior should be a minority and should be quickly stamped out when it does occur if you don't want that. But your rules basically outlaw anyone having any sort of fun. The amount of times in my corp we've been doing something together, be it mining or PvP or just floating around in space, and we're just generally having a chat and a laugh and a genuine good time is uncountable. Being in a fleet with Uncle SUAS from Goons singing down comms while on a major OP is another example. The whole reason for people to be in a corp together is for people with similar interests to get to know each other. Without that, you might as well just all be solo players.

"Killboards measure contribution. That's all. The problem is that the killboard gives full kill value for every killer in a blob kill, so unless you dig into the details you can't see who is contributing and who is just roaming with a blob in a noobship."
Sure, and that's why a lot of people don't go by killboards. You want an automated way to measure each of your corp members and so to get that you are going to force them to not be allowed to venture outside your chosen parameters. That doesn't leave them a lot of room to have fun, and since EVE is a game and not a career, that's the aim of the majority of players. You can in fact use the killbaords API, or your individual members EVE APIs to pull and sort information yourself. You could then play with the data in whatever ways you wanted to.

The problem with the new order is it is designed specifically to recruit asshats. So the fact that it fills up with asshats is not a surprise. Without comms, your coordination will suffer and as a result so will your efficiency as a group.

By the way, should you take down an orca, and it's got some nice bling on it, what rules are you going to put in place for loot. Is it simply a first come first serve kind of deal? I can imagine arguments erupting from that.

Falasha of Pasha said...

Interesting material. I will wait with interest to see if many sucessful solo gankers how up where I mine. The 'new world order' had almost zero impact. I'm one of those 'socials' that you dislike. For 'lolz' I fitted up a cruiser and chased a "knight" of the new world order around for a few days so she could not gank anybody while my buddies and alt mined in peace. Best of luck with this but I have serious doubt that it will amount to anything

Zax said...

So, what does a guy who can already get 5b/month solo ganking in highsec, gain from being in your corp, apart from having that stuck in his corp history of course.

I am fairly sure if someone is already getting 5b+ in highsec ganks/month, they do not need fit advice. So, if it is not what they get from you, what are you getting from them, aside from the obvious.

The player who could possibly learn from you (the new player) is however, too poor, as they do not have a second account for solo ganking...although, "solo" meaning "me + my alt fleet" a new concept.

The channel being frequented because people value the trade chat is the same logic as "no one would read my blog if it was not good".

Bing Bangboom said...

I know its human nature to think that when you are not looking at something it ceases to exist. But to dismiss the New Order as "not going anywhere" because it didn't go where you wanted it to overlooks the fact that we are still the premier highsec ganking organization.

This month, so far, we recorded 1730 kills in the CODE. alliance alone, exceeding the 1727 we achieved during Feb 2013, the month of your great solo push. Most kills are done solo or with one or two other pilots. The total isk destroyed for 2013 has passed 1 trillion.

Just like the Goon interdiction uses ganking for a specific purpose and your new corp has a specific reason for ganking, the New Order, at its core, is an effort to restore risk to highsec. Ganking and bumping are tools in this effort. Just like with your new idea, the ganking isn't the point, its a way of getting our message heard.

The New Order of Highsec didn't turn into what you wanted it to be. That doesn't mean we haven't had success in moving things the way we wanted them to go. To be honest, I see your new effort as concentrating on a tiny portion of the The Code, specifically the part which encourages the miners to actively participate in the game by tanking and staying at keyboard. I think Lucas Kell has hit on the weakness of your idea along with the reason you fell out with us...

There is no fun in what you want. Eve is supposed to be fun. The arrival of an Agent in a system brings the game to life even if it brings a few miners to death. And The Code ties us together. I can't imagine doing all this just for a killboard.

Lighten up.

Highsec is worth fighting for.

Bing Bangboom
Agent of the New Order of Highsec
Belligerent Undesirable

Anonymous said...

here we go again; "fun" is a point of view.

MMOs are the jackpot for the gaming industry. you no longer have to make specific gameplay titles to be successful as a company. NO, just toss any aspect into a box call it MMO and you are done.
chat, mail, legion/corp/guild ... and 99% will buy your stuff.

One of the gamer types:
Set solo goals in any type of game rather than to have to drag down others or to wait on others.
that's why they solo group content or zergsurf in pvp and don't answer whisper or grp invites (even if they miss out technically on stuff, like gw2).

again this is their fun.

I don't know if Goblin has fun. This blog is dedicated to M&S and he still posts so my best guess is that he has fun.


ontopic:
Solo gank ... you need two accounts or better three.
it's like the "skilled" clerics in aion that dual box with chanter to get max speed and DP buffs on encounter.

you need one account for scout, warp in and wreck looter/salvager
another account for orca to supply catas?
and the gank account

it's not solo it's just a way arround ... like 3 box in any other mmo.

2 plex for orca
3 plex for 3 accounts on skill timers for about 90 days
2 plex investment for titan pilot training per pilot

I don't get it. sounds like huge investment for a newb it's more than the 2 plex orca.
to point them to you "trading post for newbs" will blow another 60 days of skill training to theirs skillque.

whatever you think this is .. it's not solo-able .. or newb-able

It's maybe for the good .. M&S will not learn, never will and nothing will change .. its just one of the very litte methods to get destructable personal with the M&S crowd.

Anonymous said...

"The Notifications and Logs window gives detailed combat log. If you see "grazes" and "glances off", you were either too far, or moved too fast transversally"

It's still possible to get glancing or grazing blows even at perfect tracking, though unlikely.

See: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Turret_Damage#The_random_damage_distribution

Lucas Kell said...

@Anon
"Set solo goals in any type of game rather than to have to drag down others or to wait on others.
that's why they solo group content or zergsurf in pvp and don't answer whisper or grp invites (even if they miss out technically on stuff, like gw2)."
That's fine, and it's kinda my point. Those people are the ones GEvlon is targeting for his corp, but they are very unlikely to join his corp. They find their fun in being solo. Why would they join a group where they have to follow all of his rules, just to do what they want to do anyway? The only reason they would is for the social aspect,which is disallowed. So they have no reason to join.

How people find their fun is beside the point, but people generally play games to have fun in whatever way they do, be that mining, trading, ganking, whatever. But most people don;t find fun in being bossed around with ultra strict rules which provide them no benefit.

Tithian said...

Assuming there are people in the corp with only one account, do the corp rules allow for 1 person to act as a scout for other people (for a fee, of course)?

Or does it have to be "solo-gank", all the way?

I could definitely see someone getting his industrial character to do some mining himself while also providing warp-ins to gankers to clear the competition from the belt.

Anonymous said...

So, a ganker, a scout, maybe a looter... But you forgot the most important thing! A talker.

See, someone has to talk to the victim and explain what happened. Isn't education the goal? And while you are talking, you aren't banking so it's not efficient ;)

The amount of thought you've given this is impressive but you have to give education more priority, otherwise you will fail to accomplish your primary goal.

Unknown said...

I still don't understand what benefits you get from being in the corp. If you don't do things together, and have no reimbursement, why be in the same corp. I mean if I am a solo ganker why join your corp? For me it seems it will hold you back a little bit as you will be instantly recognized as a ganker when you enter system. Why not just create a channel where you can talk and share intel instead of joining the corp?

Gevlon said...

@Chris K: the scout should NOT be in the corp or it could be wardecced and killed. It should be in the NPC corp.

Anonymous said...

@Lucas Kell: Nobody stops you from having a well skilled main in a corp and logging him on for some fleet action with fleet doctrines, waiting for fleet formation, waiting on a titan and whatnot. I actually doubt that anyone would go -10 sec on his main just for the sake of educating miners how to fit their ship.
This is more like: skill your other char on that account for a few weeks, log into it when your main corp is slow, light up some miners and have some fun while at it.
It's so easy to play Eve multiple ways at once, having three chars per account and several jump clones.

Anonymous said...

Gev, any chance you could post an updated training list of skills with the Odyssey 1.1 skill name changes?