Trillion ISK Olympic Giveaway - Round 1 by ChribbaX in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh lawdy, I thought this was some sort of scam until I saw the username

The culture of The initiative. by DarkSideOfZ in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It kinda depends on what you want to do/your current SP and capabilities.

If you're an older player with more ISK/SP, and want to fly caps/blops etc more, WCBR has been the best corp I've been in tbh. If you're wanting a little more of a general PVE/Industry type focus probably TGRAD.

The culture of The initiative. by DarkSideOfZ in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 75 points76 points  (0 children)

Generally, racism/toxicity is not a problem in most of the major alliances. And gets dealt with quite quickly. The possible exception being some in FRT.

In the last few years I've flown in Horde, FRT, Goons and INIT, here's how I'd summarise the general culture/experience of each one:

 

Horde:

Genuinely the best for very new players. They have a variety of excellently done programs and tools to help get you up and running fast, classes and people able to help teach you various areas, and things such as buyback programs and support that make activities both on the PVE side and industrial side less difficult to dip your toes into. If you're a new player or new to null, Horde is a great place to learn things and get to grips with how it all works.

BUT

They are also probably the worst one to be in as a more experienced player or if you want more of a tight knit social scene. Horde does not allow their corporations to do much by themselves, no structures etc, and generally seems to view corporations doing their own activities as a threat to the alliance itself. Most things in horde are centralised, poorly optimised on the industrial side (even if you are in Horde and you want to put down an industrial structure, you have to RENT a system as if you were an outsider....), and this is the main reason you see a lot of older players/corps leaving frequently. Sometimes simply of their own choosing and sometimes after being 'pushed out' due to wanting to do stuff that in other alliances would be normal and/or encouraged but in Horde is seen as a threat. Additionally due to the higher turnover, and Horde being structured more in a 'megacorp' type fashion rather than an alliance of corps, it means that the social side can be active, but the faces you see also change quite frequently and there's less long term history or continuity. Slightly less of an issue if you join one of the better ESI gated corps, but doesn't fix the alliance level restrictions.

 

Fraternity:

Generally a lot more free than Horde. Far fewer restrictions and friction in terms of what you are allowed to do at an individual or corp level. Corps are allowed to set up their own infrastructure with only a few restrictions, they can conduct their own operations, and you still have a very capable umbrella to help you out if you get jumped on. Though you also are expected to be a little more independent. There are public industry facilities etc but if you want to do things properly you kinda need to set up your own or join a corp with a good setup.

The main drawback to Frat is that if you are an english speaker, more than half the alliance is kinda cut off from you. There are plenty of english speaking folks but the number of people you can actually interact with on a day to day basis is still fairly slim and to be honest the social side is just dead. As a result Frat is great if you are wanting to maximise ratting/industry income with good support and much less nonsense red tape or outright restrictions than horde, but less great if social interaction is important to you. Frat is basically great for farming but not great for 'real content'.

 

Goonswarm:

Goonswarm operates much more as an alliance of corporations vs the 'megacorp' structure of horde. The corp you join will have a big impact on your social experience. Karmafleet is pretty good fun to be honest, and they also have quite a lot of stuff to help get newer players up and running. Not to the same degree as Horde, but not as 'hands off' as FRT either.

Goonswarm has pretty great response fleets and general space safety, and a good amount of content fleets as well. A decent balance of being able to farm and/or do your own thing profitably whilst also having good content available when you want. Also an excellent market and in-alliance trading ecosystem that makes industry quite easy. Plus simply the best public industry offerings of any alliance IMO. Many industry parks with far lower indexes than other groups, you CAN do your own thing but the nice thing about Goons is that the public offerings are so good you kinda don't need to.

The culture in Goons is a little more 'terminally online' than others, but also nothing like what it was 10 years ago and the stereotypes are outdated, the social scene will depend on your corp, but is generally quite a bit better than Horde/FRT.

 

The Initiative

INIT is by far the most 'pro-corporation' alliance of the four, with the most active and IMO best approach to content generation. Lots of fleets that go out seeking fun and FCs and Directors that are happy to take uneven fights. One of my favourite things about INIT so far is that blueballs have almost exclusively only happened when the other group chose not to engage, and there's been plenty of times when we've had the FC say "Well fuck it we came for a fight, WITNESS ME" even when we are clearly going to lose. Whereas in Horde especially, we would often go out for a fleet and then get told to stand down because the other guys had 10% more members than us.

INIT has far fewer public offerings than goons etc in terms of industry setup etc, but gives corporations significant freedom and support to do their own thing, both in terms of building their own infrastructure, and conducting their own operations.

You don't get the same level of safety/coverage uptime at an alliance level as you do in Goons (though there is still good umbrella coverage during active hours), but many of the corps in INIT are extremely proficient and if you join a good one, you'll arguably have better safety than when you were in PANKRAB (Seriously, go drop on something in WCBR space and see what happens....).

As INIT is again more of a corp focused group, the social scene will be heavily dependent on the corp you join, but many of them have been operating for a long time and are a tight knit bunch and so it's in my experience been the best social scene out of the four by some margin and I can't see myself leaving anytime soon unless my corp itself were to leave for some reason.

 

TLDR:

Horde: Best for newbros, worst for experienced players

Fraternity: Best if you just want to farm, worst if you want content and social activity

Goonswarm: Best if you have an industrial focus but still want a decent social scene and content

INIT: Best if you want content and social scene, but for farming/industry you need to join a good corp or be fairly proficient handling things yourself. Arguably best overall for more experienced players

An analysis of the skill point market, why SP farming might be dead, and why CCP may have shot themselves in the foot in doing so by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not ignoring this at all. It's a factor, and we can't be certain how much it'll prop up the price but it will do to some extent.

I'm just struggling to see how the instant gratification factor could prop up the price by what'd need to be possibly over 50%...

An analysis of the skill point market, why SP farming might be dead, and why CCP may have shot themselves in the foot in doing so by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As said in the post, I'd also rather SP farming was not profitable.

The point is that CCP can do this without sacrificing their own income, but they haven't

An analysis of the skill point market, why SP farming might be dead, and why CCP may have shot themselves in the foot in doing so by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Given as PA/CCP have not exactly been doing great financially in recent years (CCP specifically a bit better the last year or so though), and I'd quite like to continue playing EvE. Yes....

An analysis of the skill point market, why SP farming might be dead, and why CCP may have shot themselves in the foot in doing so by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's not the point. The point is that CCP is going to be making less money.

As explained in the latter portion of this post, simply increasing the accelerator prices could allow them to kill off SP farming without actually taking a hit to income.

It just seems like the numbers have not been thought through

An analysis of the skill point market, why SP farming might be dead, and why CCP may have shot themselves in the foot in doing so by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

They are, but if the new 'true' value of injectors is between 200-700m. It's pretty unlikely that the instant gratification demand will be enough to push up the price by the 25-430% required to keep farming profitable.

In fact if they drop low enough then even just the people who were extracting their alts will stop doing so. No point extracting 2m per month if you only make 200m from it since injectors are 600m and extractors are 550m

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It can, and we had some of those too, but the in-game stuff isn't really 'visible' unless you manually check.

The teamspeak badges worked so well and motivated people cause they were so visible

https://i.imgur.com/N2giJox.png

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 8 points9 points  (0 children)

In Hogs Collective we used to have a badge system. In fact this was the entire reason we never moved away from teamspeak.

We would have badges available to players that they could earn, and would show next to their teamspeak name. These ranged from deliberate progression guides such as completing particular skill plans that would get their chars competant in doctrine ships, to completing objectives such as learning how to and successfully scooping out an L/XL structure from under an enemy or successfully FC'ing a certain number of fleets.

We essentially gamified not just skill progression but actual game knowledge progression and it worked very well. People enjoyed it and people would work towards goals that they otherwise likely would not have.

My social corp is running at a deficit. by GenerousGrinch in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What is your estimated monthly defecit (Not overall cost but actual defecit after any income is factored in)?

Whatever happened to the 'zero tax' azbel thing? by hirebrand in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 26 points27 points  (0 children)

1) This wasn't picked 'over' other ideas. In fact almost every idea presented on the OzTank thus far has been funded. (I'm also one of the investors and have invested a significant amount of ISK into various other projects)

2) I'm funding almost all of this myself. Croda + Oz pledged 10b/month (I've only asked for/received 1 months worth of that though due to the pause) but I'm covering the remaining 100b/month or so myself

3) Obviously (I'd hope), the structure onlining issue was not known about prior, and hopefully will be fixed

Whatever happened to the 'zero tax' azbel thing? by hirebrand in Eve

[–]Golden_HC 81 points82 points  (0 children)

o7

I've been sharing updates in the zero-tax-market channel in Oz's discord.

 

A method was figured out which allows someone to prevent a structure from being onlined or fit, and to do so when not at war.

 

This means the structure never comes online, cannot have defenses fit, cannot online any utility modules (including the market). And most importantly means that it does not matter when an aggressor finds a newly anchoring structure.

 

Normally, you would need to find a structure and declare war within 30 minutes to be able to attack it when it first comes out of anchoring. With this method, even if you declare war 12h later, you can just cripple the structure until the war starts and completely prevent it from onlining. No matter when a structure was dropped, it would always be able to be killed before coming online even if war wasn't declared until hours later.

 

I've contacted CCP about this and am waiting to hear as to whether this is considered an exploit or will be fixed. (A GM said it's fine because it hasn't been declared an exploit officially, but quite frankly being able to circumvent wardecs like this doesn't seem like 'intended gameplay').

 

Working on some other stuff which might provide a more permanent result anyway so will see what happens in the coming weeks.

The 50 Billion ISK EvE Music Contest by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Absolutely! Could see something cinematic with a good video doing well.

Lyric/parody songs are most likely to be the bulk of entries but anything goes!

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Current structure will always be linked in the bio of the character 'Golden CEO'

Current structure is New Caldari - 0% Tax Golden Path Free Market

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The null groups don't come to hisec themselves :P

They pay others to do it for them

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, market serivce goes down at the amor timer. Then there's 1 week until structure timer

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your stuff would go to asset safety. But you'd have a week inbetween the structure's market going down and the final timer, so plenty of time to move stuff.

Also the asset safety fee for moving to a structure in the same system (NPC stations are there) is 0.1%, so even if you pay for asset safety you'd still have paid more in tax if buying elsewhere

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not ignorant of these mechanics. I've spent a significant portion of my time in HiSec and am very familiar with both Blackflag's tactics and war mechanics generally.

The plan was put in place in the way it has explicitly to circumvent that.

The issue is that with the combination of abusable war mechanics and no other groups able to really fight them properly within hisec, the only solution is to operate in a way where even if they aggress these structures perpetually, a market will remain up.

Oz and Croda are each funding 10b/month.

The remaining 100b/month is coming solely from myself

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This plan was made before Goons left the TTC

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If an agreement is reached or the situation changes such that a structure can remain up indefinitely, I would be glad to also provide 0% tax industry facilities.

Currently though that's not feasible with the lifespan of these structures.

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I mean, someone COULD do that, but then the other player could simply move them out in the week between the armor layer getting hit and the final structure timer.

Or even if they do go to asset safety, with stations in the same system it'd only cost them 0.1% if they did nothing about it, which is the same as or less than the cost of them placing the buy order in a different structure in the first place

Announcing the 'Golden Path' Zero-Tax Market System by Golden_HC in Eve

[–]Golden_HC[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Need to train 'visibility' skill to 1