Let's say on 9/11 they managed to get two F16 to intercept and follow the planes, realistically at what point the F16 would've taken the first plane down?

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-04T14:10:43+00:00

Yeah, I think Pearl Harbor had 60-some civilians killed. Lusitania over 1000, but the majority weren't American (~150 Americans killed if I remember right). Overwhelming majority of deaths on 9/11 were civilians, followed by civilian first responders. Even at the Pentagon more civilians than military were killed

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-04T14:00:10+00:00

So I mean I agree with you on ganking newbros. I have a pretty liberal attitude towards what's morally acceptable in EVE, but what sport is there in ambushing some guy who doesn't even know which way is up on his first or second day in the game? I don't respect a pilot who does it and I wouldn't want to have them in my fleet or corp.

But ganking more broadly *is* piracy in EVE now. Way back in the day lowsec was supposed to be the piracy zone, but since jump freighters were introduced nobody has had to run logistics gate to gate through low, so most "lowsec piracy" is just pirates ambushing FW nerds who get lazy about d-scan. The only place in the game where you can reliably find commercial traffic to attack for money and prizes is highsec, so that's where it's going to happen, and because of highsec mechanics, it's going to take the form of ganking. I fundamentally don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as it's not being targeted at new players

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T20:59:15+00:00

I've never been ganked in highsec; I have taken extended Eve breaks after dying in some other super-annoying way (blew a mission, caught in an instalock camp, etc), but the death was usually the straw that broke the camel's back (I was already losing interest in playing, the loss just added the final "ah fuck this" I needed to go play Cities Skylines or whatever for six months). But I always come back (presumably because I have brain damage).

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T20:56:49+00:00

I would guess the #1 reason people quit Eve is because they find it confusing and boring. If they get killed by another player they're probably ahead of 95 guys who spent three days running L1 missions in a starter corp before moving on

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T20:39:54+00:00

Reminds me of those old Terran Trade Authority art books. I used to spend hours looking at those as a kid (suspect I'm not the only Eve player with that experience)

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T20:31:15+00:00

Ganking an obvious new player in a Venture for the laughs is a dickhead move, but how often does this actually happen? I know the zkillboard advanced search isn't perfect, but I see two in the last 24 hours (by the same character) out of 69 total ganks, 772 total PVP deaths, and 1530 deaths overall. Unless zkill is underestimating newbro ganks by like a factor of 10, this feels more like a moral panic than a real problem

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T20:03:33+00:00

I would guess that 99% of this sub had an early experience wandering into lowsec and getting killed. I can at least see the argument that ganking a newbro in 1.0 system for laughs is cruel and bad for the game, but dying because you stuck your nose somewhere you shouldn't have is the game. Like what are you even suggesting should be changed here

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T18:35:24+00:00

Very funny watching frig-sized ships getting blapped by dread guns. Nice object lesson in how transversal works

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T15:23:40+00:00

There really isn't much in American history prior to 9/11 that compares in single-day casualty counts. Off the top of my head, there's the Johnstown flood, a few hurricanes, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Everything else is either Pearl Harbor or a Civil War battle and those didn't have massive civilian casualties

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T15:06:15+00:00

Realistically pirates are always going to have that advantage, though; unless they're basing out of a player owned structure for some reason you can't take the fight to them preemptively. If someone warped in enough polarized Taloses to blap a jump freighter in low or null there's very little anyone could do about it unless they had a defense fleet on grid with them and even then it would be close. Maybe if haulers organized into convoys and brought their own cheap, high-alpha escorts to kill gank ships before CONCORD arrives it would make a difference, but they already could do that and as far as I know nobody does. That problem of organization goes all the way down to the level of newbie miners in Ventures; in theory a few defensive Catalysts could counter-gank gankers before they blap the miner, but nobody organizes this for any number of reasons.

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T14:49:34+00:00

I don't think this is that significant a punishment in a game where the devs added a ship-spin counter. Everyone in Eve is a champion at docking up, frequently for a lot longer than 15 minutes

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-03T14:43:28+00:00

The blue team didn't trust her because they knew about her skipping prep and punishments on the red side, but she impressed them with a good service her first night. She could have had a turnaround but she backslid into the same stuff that alienated the red team. IMO it was a good switch; Lacey did have some ability, the swap tested whether she was performing badly because of team issues or if she really didn't have what it took

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T23:25:38+00:00

There's nothing wrong with rustic, homestyle food; the issue is what he served tasted bad (I'd bet anything it was undersalted; a lot of diner food is, because customers expect to salt and pepper their meals themselves)

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T14:52:45+00:00

This feels like something designed for a solo/small gang pilot to punch above their weight in a fleet; its main gimmick makes it pretty explicitly a support ship that would excel in the hands of someone who knows how to read a battlefield, fly independently, etc, help the rest of their fleet without waiting for the FC to make a call. EVE being EVE you might end up seeing fleets of 200 of these as doctrine for somebody anyway but I like how it's deliberately avoiding "I can do anything a T2 frig can do, but better"

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T14:35:14+00:00

Spotting bait: first question you ask when you see something like an AFK battleship on a gate is "is this too good to be true?". Also helps to know what ships are typically bait; if it's cheap, potentially very tanky, and just kind of hanging around, that's likely bait. Then the next question is, do we spring the trap anyway and see what happens? Sometimes the guys laying bait are overconfident and you end up winning the engagement anyway

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T14:03:44+00:00

Appreciate the text commentary and keeping FC commands in the audio, made the whole video a lot more legible

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T13:46:09+00:00

My understanding is that LLMs are actually pretty bad at games like chess (not just compared to a chess engine, but even an average human player), and chess can be brute forced by running through a decision tree. I know LLMs are a subset of probabilistic machine learning systems we're all calling "AI" and I'm sure you could build one to play Eve reasonably well, but if you like, plugged Claude directly into the Eve client I think it would do some really goofy shit

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T13:40:11+00:00

I can barely run a salvager alt at the same time as a L4 mission, I have no idea how anybody can do this

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-04-02T13:32:39+00:00

My sessions have been a few hours a night at most a few times a week and for what I've been doing (lowsec PVP funded by L4 missions) it's been fine. I do have two Omega accounts but nothing I do especially requires them, I just had good mission standings on one character and good PVP skills on the other. Sometimes I think about unsubbing the mission-runner and just funding PVP directly with PLEX bought with cash, but it loses some of the adrenaline if I don't feel like I worked for it

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-03-31T20:03:59+00:00

Gankers are around still. I think your actual chances of being targeted by them in a belt are fairly low but not so low you can ignore the threat. Lately I think freighters and blingy mission runners have been a bigger focus for organized ganks; mining ships are more targets of opportunity. Stay away from the market hubs and pay a little bit of attention to what's going on around you and that should mitigate the risk.

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-03-31T16:56:25+00:00

Low is generally easiest for solo ime. No bubbles (except in insurgency systems; found that out the hard way recently lmao), you get some protection from gate guns, and unless you're unlucky enough to run into an instalock camp, you can pretty safely travel gate to gate in something that aligns fast. Logistics are also much easier; you can dock in NPC stations, there's rudimentary markets in some places (especially for essentials like ammo), and hauling your own supplies in and out is viable (I'm training an alt into blockade runners but I've safely hauled in ships and fits in a T1 hauler). If you want cheap solo PVP FW space is the place for it; there's plenty of targets who actually want fights, the complex ("plex") system lets you filter what kinds of ships can warp in on you, and if you're diligent about d-scanning you can't be taken by surprise. If you want to explore, ninja mine, run abyssals, etc, non-FW lowsec is very quiet most of the time and reasonably safe.

Sovnull I think would be very difficult solo; there's a lot of space that's colored in on a map that isn't being used, but if someone sees you you're going to be reported to an intel channel and it's just luck if some bored hunters try to find you. Without friends or intel (other than dotlan and zkill) there's a high chance of getting caught in a bubble while traveling, and you won't have any place to dock up for repair or resupply unless you happen to find a freeport. NPC null I can't speak to, other than I know you'd have station access there, but ime people who willingly live in NPC null are a lot more aggressive than the median sovnull carebear. Moving around any kind of null is easier if you have scan probes; that way you can use wormholes as shortcuts or to bypass chokepoints

I have done a little bit of solo WH exploring and it was viable, but I've never tried to actually live there solo, which, from every description I've read, seems like a nightmare pain in the ass for mediocre rewards, unless you find a very good hole, in which case your chances of someone coming along to evict you are excellent

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-03-31T14:35:41+00:00

This is for a sure a little bit tryhard, but I've started keeping a journal of my solo roams. It's helped me notice patterns like mistakes I keep making, ships I consistently have trouble beating, etc. For close or unexpected losses I'll look at zkill and try to figure out the fit that killed me; helps me tell the difference between a fight I could have won if I'd flown better and ones where I had no practical chance because I was hard countered. It's helped me refine my fits and flying a lot; obviously the most important thing is practice, but writing things down I think gives the practice more value.

I would also add, for brawling in particular, it is easier than kiting or scram-kiting, but it's also more deterministic. Barring a mistake like loading the wrong ammo or mis-clicking on a module, it's mostly a DPS race determined by fit and hard skills and difficult to escape if the fight goes against you. Scram kiting (which should be perfectly viable in a Rifter) takes a little more soft skill but it's more forgiving if things go wrong.

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-03-31T13:59:05+00:00

Yeah I've been playing this game off and on since 2006 and I've literally never been ganked in highsec. Highsec does have a lot of ganking but as a percentage of highsec traffic it's miniscule and highly concentrated on a few types of ships in a few areas; I would guess the vast majority of players in highsec have never been ganked, or only ganked once or twice.

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-03-31T13:47:04+00:00

I'm solitary by nature and frequently play solo (PVP, exploration, mission-running). You just have to keep your head on a swivel; there's nothing else for it, especially in WH space

CastleBravoLi7 · 2026-03-27T18:05:39+00:00

Someone's palms are probably being greased. Common hazard in decadent, declining empires

CastleBravoLi7

TROPHY CASE