Playing EVE Online takes a dedication and resilience found in few other video games.

In a world of Battle Royale style, quick turnover games designed for short attention spans, EVE requires a depth of focus unmatched except by few other games, like Dwarf Fortress, which scares even me.

When it connects, the pull of EVE on a player is strong as they see the opportunity to do things in the games that satisfy their dopamine itch. The exact itch that is scratched is kind of dependent on what a person’s Bartle type is, but invariably the aspiration to a specific goal is motivational.

Some desire the player versus player aspects and killmarks, others exploration of the vast universe, and some simply enjoy mastering the complexity of building ships and citadels. The point is, they aspire to achieving something in the game that only EVE can provide.

Humans aspire to all kinds of things. One aspiration that people have is mastering our physical environment, like climbing mountains.

Once the pinnacle of human endurance, climbing the highest mountain on Earth has been reduced to spending a lot of money and being accompanied by people that can reduce your burden.

Yes, it’s physically demanding and dangerous, but the biggest challenge is not now the mountaineering skills, it’s having enough money to pay the fees, equipment, travel, and sherpa costs to follow the well-worn path with repeatable methods.

Just as humans have conquered Everest, players have conquered EVE.

This analogy has been shared between the CSM and CCP and I have personally discussed it with Hilmar Pétursson, the CEO of CCP.

Tasks that first seemed monumental, like building a Titan or placing a Keepstar have gone from being celebrated group moments to mundane rites of passage. The game developers realized this and wanted to create a change that made these kind of achievements more special.

However, instead of creating new peaks to climb or deeper depths to dive, they simply made it more expensive.

The equivalent would be increasing the cost for climbing Everest from ~US$100,000 to almost half a million dollars. The climb itself wouldn’t change, just the price. The wealthy would still be able to participate, but many others would simply find it impossible to summit. No way to reach their aspirations.

In EVE we find ourselves in a similar situation. Older, wealthier players find themselves without much to aspire to these days. Having titans & supers, parked in a variety of Keepstars, is checked off on the to-do list. Arena combat has been gamified to the point by experienced players that the winners list is a painfully similar set of names. Every system is documented, mapped, screenshotted. Every mission has a recommended fitting and a walkthrough.

Newer players arriving see the potential of the game and get hooked. But meeting their aspirations has a much harder route to traverse. The in-game costs are simply much higher requiring more ‘grinding’ than ever before. All the time, watching other players who came before them casually joking about items that seem unachievable in the games current state.

We see demand for skill injectors growing as a cycle of earning ISK to pay for injectors to enable better ISK earning to buy more injectors become commonplace as some feel continually left behind.

EVE is facing a strange problem. Experienced players, having conquered the game, literally having nothing more to reach for, slowly drifting away from the EVE looking for something new to release that dopamine. New players, conversely, facing the daunting task of trying to carve out a place in New Eden, being surrounded by older players who can outcompete them in every arena, making their progress in the game even more difficult.

The learning curve of EVE is notoriously steep and continues to keep getting steeper. The attempts to somehow restrain and push older players are having an order of magnitude more powerful effect on newer players, laboring under the HTFU changes that have come into play more recently. At the same time, the older players, rather than being constrained, are finding more ways to exploit changes to become increasingly powerful and wealthy.

This is an exceedingly difficult game design problem to solve. There are no simple tweaks or adjustments that will result in a game alluring to players new and old. The harsh reality is that complex problems require complex solutions.

Not keeping the idea of player aspirations and goals at the forefront of a vision for EVE would be a mistake. While minor tweaks to ships and the environment are welcome improvements, they are no substitute for a set of new goals for players to sink their teeth into.

Players drive the stories in EVE. While CCP may create opportunities for new goals and achievements, it is the players that determine the paths to them. The methods developed by the player hive mind are often surprising to the developers, who might have had different expectations.

Hilmar once said “We want to be the janitors, we want to be making sure the lights are on and everything is operational…”

Yet, recently we see a strange dissonance in the game design focused more on constraints to force player action rather than opening up new opportunities for exploration and achievement. Significant changes to the games like Pochven & new stargates are promoted as player driven, but clearly the changes were fait accompli, regardless of the players actions. Disillusionment when the facade of agency was revealed was disheartening, especially to those that participated intensely.

Players create almost everything in EVE, from the ships and citadels to the drama and propaganda to the headline creating battles and wars. But the players cannot create new aspirations in EVE. New mountains to climb and depths to plumb are needed, yet we see minor adjustments to what equipment to use on the same worn paths instead.

Currently, EVE Online is like a giant cruise liner, full of passengers. The crew is constantly adjusting the menu and evening entertainment to keep people happy. But the ship has no destination and no one knows where it is heading. At some point, the captain must explain where they are taking everyone.

I previously wrote about How Tech 2 things get built, and one of the questions I received was about how the T2 blueprints were made.

Here is an explanation of how T2 blueprint are created. We’ll go step by step through the basic invention process. As EVE Online is a exceedingly complex game, there are many variations and exceptions to the basic process of invention that won’t get into here.

The basic process: use a blueprint copy, which is made from a blueprint original, to invent a Tech 2 blueprint.

To do this you will need several things; skills, blueprints, datacores, a place to invent, and maybe some decryptors.

Skills: There are a few basic skills like Science and Mechanics that you need, but there are 20+ Science skills that are needed to do invention. They aren’t cheap, the basic NPC price for the skills is 15 million ISK, but you can often find them cheaper, especially some the skillbooks that drop from exploration. In the end, you will need them all, and in most cases trained up to level 3.

Blueprints: Invention is based on blueprint copies, usually referred to as ‘BPCs’. You can buy BPCs off of contracts or make BPCs from Blueprint Originals (BPOs).

Most BPOs are bought off the NPC market can range widely in price. A Adaptive Invulnerability Field I BPO is 750,000 ISK, while a Keepstar BPO is 700,000,000,000 ISK. Generally, the bigger and more powerful an item, the higher the BPO cost.

Making a BPC from a BPO is fairly straightforward, and only requires minimal skills and a little time. Like most things in EVE, there are skills and implants and other factors that speed up the process, but we won’t dive into that here.

It’s important to note that only attribute of the BPC that matters is the number of runs, which reflects the number of invention runs that the BPC can be used for. The other attributes (ME & TE) don’t matter.

Datacores: Datacores are items that mainly drop from exploration sites, can be purchased from loyalty point stores, and are generally available on the market. There are 20+ types of datacore and each invention will require two different types of datacores. The types needed for the inventions, varies with the end item. For example, a Warp Scrambler II requires Graviton Physics and Electromagnetic Physics, but a 150mm Railgun II requires Plasma Physics and Quantum Physics. In short, you’ll need them all.

Place to invent: Invention require Research services in an location. While Invention can be done in NPC stations, there is significant bonuses to doing it in engineering citadels, like Raitaru dedicated to research purposes.

Decryptors: The one optional part of invention are decryptors. Decryptors are found in exploration sites and are used to improve the outcome of the invention process in various ways. They aren’t required, but in some cases they are exceedingly useful.

Yes, it takes some investment in skill points and ISK to get started on T2 invention. No way around this.

That was a wall of text. Let’s get to some pictures.

This is a very simple invention of a module BPC into a T2 version.

Inputs on the left, the BPC from the sorted list below, results on the right.

The results area shows us a few critical things.

% Success Probability: This is important if you have a limited number of BPCs or the BPC itself is expensive. Or if you are in a hurry to get the T2 BPCs and want a lower chance of failure. This random roll can be extremely frustrating.

Runs: All T2 BPCs have a limited number of runs. Runs are the number of times a BPC will allow you to build an item.

ME/TE (Material Efficiency/Time Efficiency): The higher the ME of the BPC, the lower the amount of materials needed to build an item. The impact of ME can be significant when material costs are high and you want your production cost to be low. The higher the TE of the BPC, the faster the item will be built. As time is money, this is often a concern for profit focused industrialists.

After you start an invention, all you can do is wait and hope for the best. The Random Number Fairy controls all fate in EVE and industry is no different.

OK, let’s tackle the only real choice in invention, decryptors.

Decryptors raise or lower sever factors: the chance of success, the final ME, the final TE, and the number of runs.

Many industrialists swear by the Parity Decryptor for everything. I use several types of decryptors, depending on the situation. This is just my opinion on how to use them, others might vociferously disagree.

Parity Decryptor: The parity decryptor is especially great for ships and other inventions that have a low number of runs by default. Without a decryptor, inventing a T2 ship results in only 1 run which isn’t great. A parity decryptor adds 3 runs to any successful run AND improves the ME and TE.

Process Decryptor: The process decryptor is good for invention of items with high material costs where material efficiency (ME) matters. A process decryptor can give you ME5, which is the highest you can get on a T2 BPC. I tend to use these on expensive builds like Black Ops Battleships, Marauders, and some of the Capital Ship modules. Process decryptors are fairly cheap in comparison to others, so the the increase in material savings can increase profits even in lesser value items where base invention results in enough runs for your purposes.

Attainment Decryptor: Attainment decryptors are more of a special case when you really, really want the invention to complete. With a +80% to success, this really helps, but the -1 ME does need to be taken into account.

Optimized Attainment Decryptor: When you absolutely need the invention to succeed, you want the Optimized Attainment Decryptor. It’s the most expensive decryptor because of the +90% success bonus and overall boost to most attributes. Because of it’s cost, I rarely use it. And, it doesn’t guarantee success…

Storytime: Back when Rodiva and Zarmazd (T1 & T2 Triglavian logistics ships) were released, I wanted to build one of the first ones. I paid an exorbitant cost for the Rodiva BPCs and failed the invention 3 times before success. In each case I used the Optimized Attainment Decryptor. At the time, the cost of the Rodiva BPCs was over 250 million each, so the final Zarmazd ended up costing me around a billion ISK.

I do use the other blueprints on occasion, such as the lower cost Symmetry Decryptor when I want a few more runs and a little more ME from a medium cost item.

Often, it makes sense to not use a decryptor at all. For lower cost T2 modules, it can be difficult to use decryptors and remain profitable. You can simply set up multiple inventions runs, make an offering to Bob and hope the Random Number fairy is kind.

That’s it. That’s how T2 blueprints are invented. Pretty much every T2 item in the game is the result of an industrialist painstakingly taking the time to invent the BPC.

If you want to build T2 items and don’t want to go through this, you can buy your blueprints off of contracts. You might pay a little more, but most things are available.

There are many exceptions and side cases I didn’t get into, so if you have questions, my contact info is at dunkdinkle.com. Or simply chat with indyfolk in your group, I’m sure they would be happy to share their ideas and methods.

Lastly, next time you wonder why the cost of a T2 item is so high, please remember what it takes to create them.

Here is an explanation of how T2 items are created. We’ll go step by step through the byzantine process.

As an example, we’ll look at building components for a Falcon, a Tech 2 Recon ship. A key ingredient for the Falcon are Titanium Diborite Armor Plates, one of many components needed.

Here is the basic flow that I will go through, step by step.

The first step is mining a moon, done at an Athanor or Tatara. This is the hard work. Miners are at risk in space and the work is time consuming.

The second step is reprocessing, sometimes known as refining.

Once the moon ore is brought to a citadel (usually rigged for efficiency bonuses) it is reprocessed into the moon materials, commonly known as ‘moon goo’. The various types of moon ore provide 20 different types of moon materials.

Once the moon materials are refined, they are moved to a citadel, typically an Athanor or Tatara. This is where the reactions take place.

It is important to note that moon ore and the resulting materials are regionally available. Basically, various regions in EVE have more of some moon ores and less of another. In some lucky areas, you can have enough variety of moons that you can locally source all the moon materials, but most have to import from other regions or Jita to be able to build.

The third step is reacting moon materials into Intermediate Materials. There are 21 types of Intermediate Materials.

The reaction uses the moon materials (goo), some fuel blocks, and a specific formula. Formulas are similar to blueprints, but copies can’t be made. You need a formula for each reaction you want to do, so many industrialists have multiple formulas for each reaction.

Different formulas also require different types of fuel blocks, which is driven by different type of ice asteroids (which provide isotopes), again leading to the need to source a variety of isotopes from outside the local area.

Since you can’t research formulas, the amount of materials needed is hard set in the formula, but you can get bonuses from the structure and it’s rigs to reduce the amount of input materials needed and the time to run the reactions.

Various combinations of the 20 moon materials are used to make the 21 different types of Intermediate Materials.

The fourth step is reacting the Intermediate Materials into Composite Materials. Various combinations of the 20 Intermediate Materials are used to make the 15 different types of Composite Materials.

At this point, the reactions are complete and the Composite Materials are moved to a manufacturing facility to be made into Construction Components.

The fifth step is using blueprints to build the 34 different types of Construction Components, often known as ‘T2 materials’, from the 15 different types of Composite Materials.

The sixth step is finally building the T2 ship or module itself. The 34 different types of Construction Components are used to build the hundreds of different T2 ships and modules use everywhere in New Eden. Every T2 item in the game starts out as moon ore and goes through all these steps to finally be made into a usable item.

A Falcon requires 7 different types of T2 Construction Components, a little Planetary interaction material, some Morphite, some R.A.M. (Robotic Assembly Modules), and the Tech 1 version of the item.

Also, a T2 blueprint is needed, which has to be ‘invented’ but that is another whole article on it’s own.

Remember that an industrialist is always trying to make and track these hundreds of materials to be able to make what is needed. Some start at ore and do every step. Others simply buy the T2 materials and just do the final step. What most industrialists have in common is lots of spreadsheets and applications to plan and track what to buy, what to make, and what is profitable.

The scope of this kind of work is why many industrialists often are using multiple characters and prefer to work in an indy corp, so they can share materials via corporate hangars. Without corporate hangars, indyfolk make a LOT of contract between their characters.

Consider that every Tech 2 item in the game is built painstakingly like this. From the ubiquitous Damage Control II to a Marauder, indyfolk in New Eden are putting in effort so you can complain about why prices are so high…

I hope this provides a brief look into the basics of Tech 2 production for those not involved.

The voting for the 14th Council of Stellar Management (CSM) has begun. This short post is to explain how you actually vote in the election.

Voting starts here: https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/vote/

Voting is on a per account basis, so you will need to log into your EVE account to vote. This is a little work, as you do have two factor authentication, don’t you?

Once you are logged in, you simply drag the name you want to a slot. At first, it looks like there are only 3 spots, but there are actually ten spots to fill out.

Ranking is of huge importance in the election, so the order is important. Whomever you put in the #1 slot is a big deal.

With 44 candidates in the race, search makes it simple to enter a name and see it pop to the top for easy drag into position.

Once you’ve filled out the ballot, you hit submit and you’ve done your duty to the star cluster. You get a vote for each account, so if you have multiple accounts, you log in with your other accounts. Thankfully, the vote page maintains your voting order, making it much simpler to vote on multiple accounts.

If you don’t know who to vote for, you can see all the candidates at: https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidates/

Hopefully this helps if you haven’t voted before.

I happen to be running in this election and if you want to know know more about me, please visit: https://dunkdinkle.com/

Thank you & please vote Dunk Dinkle #1 on your ballot. 7o

As a warning, here are the various afflictions I have encountered in my travels. Beware and try to avoid them!

Armor Battleship Disease (ABD)

ABD is a condition where the pilot begins to believe in the use of a specific ship type, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Symptoms:

• Use of phrases like, “I can tank all those guys!”, “Wait till my DPS lands on grid, I’ll show them…”, and “This thing is a beast…”
• Repeated mentions of ship fittings, EHP, and DPS as if talking about a loved one.

End state:

• Many expensive ship losses, usually preceded by a plaintive cry of “any reps on grid???”

Creeping Bittervetism

The pleasure centers of the brain are destroyed and the pilot can no longer find joy in New Eden.

Symptoms:

• Pilot has not been undocked in more than a month.
• Use of the term “shit fit” or the phrase “deserved to die”.
• Memory damage, where the pilot recalls a golden age of EVE that never existed and demands a return to the imaginary past.

End state:

• Endlessly refreshing the /r/Eve tab and ‘splaining across numerous Discord servers at all hours of the day or night.

Kitey Flight Syndrome

A condition where pilots are constantly using propulsion modules to run away from ship battles.

Symptoms:

• Use of phrases like: “Why can’t I get a good fight?”, “lol, newbs”, and “git gud”
• Severe neck pain from always looking backwards

End state:

• Many inevitable burnt out modules and rage quit when caught.

Naughton Comm’s Ear

The pilot’s auditory feed becomes corrupted and cannot connect with fleet communication systems. Named after Captain Naughton Comm, who lost several capital ships due to this affliction.

Symptoms:

• Unexpected demands in Alliance text channels for immediate support with little or no warning.
• Extreme emotionality over the loss of ships.
• Temporary restoration of fleet communication ability solely for the purpose of angry outbursts toward uninvolved alliance members.

End state:

• Pilot avoids contact with other corporation members for a bit, returning after a time in a depressive emotional state.

Spodbrain

The brain of the pilot becomes locked in a unbreakable loop of desire for more and more mining ships.

Symptoms:

• Continuous, delusional discussion of more ships, “These two rorqs will pay for another two and then, I’ll get up to multi boxing six, and then I can build …”
• Lack of desire for fleet combat and sexual relations with RL partner.
• Elevated heart rate and adrenaline release when hearing the words “neutrals inbound” or “new wormhole”.

End state:

• Tears

Anomaly Ticksiosis

Pilots become obsessed with hunting pirates based on the Concord bounties paid, regardless of their actual need for ISK, consuming vast amounts of time and greatly increasing spending on ships and modules.

Symptoms:

• Unreasonable hatred of the color red.
• Unnatural obsession with deadspace modules and continuous discussion of them, “Well, with the X-Types in the lows and the Estamel’s in the highs, this thing could…”

End state:

• Very expensive killmails and vociferous complaining about “local not working right”.

First, there is no one right way to do industry. Everyone is different and likes to see information in different ways. This is just what I do.

I am “vertically integrated”, meaning I can take asteroid & moon ore and reprocess and react them all the way up to T2 construction components. This is quite profitable, but also time consuming and complex. If you are just starting to do industry, it’s probably not what you want to begin with. Most industrialist are simply looking for what components are needed to complete a build.

So let’s pretend I get asked to build a Vargur. First, I look at my blueprints. Luckily, I have one already.

I bring it up in the industry window.

I don’t have everything I need. Building this ships uses up a lot of components. The interface has way to see what you are missing and copy that to clipboard, but don’t use that a lot.

My next step is https://lazy-blacksmith.space/blueprint/ (used to be https://khon.space/blueprint/ )

From the manufacturing page, I can set the construction variables. Here I set the structure type I will use for the build and the ME level of the blueprint. All of this allows a correct calculation of the materials needed for the build.

You can see the Base Quantity vs Adjusted Quantity. This is the benefit of engineering structures and blueprints with material efficiency.

Once the info about the structure and BPC is entered, I look at the Material Summary tab. Here I can see the actual amount of materials needed to build the item.

At the top is a button that copies the list to my clipboard.

Next, I open jEveAssets. If you aren’t using jEveAssets, you should be. It’s an amazing program that does far more than list your assets. I find it invaluable. All hail GoldenGnu!

First, I open the Stockpile tab. I use the Stockpiles function to check if I have the materials I need for a build.

The materials needed are in my clipboard, so I use the Import function and Paste from Clipboard option. I select the ISK per Hour choice to parse the import. Not sure why that one works, but it does.

jEveAssets asks for a name and what location to look at materials. Here I’m naming it Build Vargur ME5, so I remember what it is in the future, and set it to look at my build system, GE-8JV only and ignore stuff I have elsewhere. You can adjust this to count at any combination of locations. Sometimes you want to check Jita or Amarr as well if you are buying stuff you need and want to do an overall count and check before hauling stuff.

Now I can open the stockpile and see what I need. Since I keep a good stock of T2 construction parts I see I’m not in too bad a shape in terms of building materials. I need the base Tempest T1 battleship, a little bit more of Deflection Shield Emitter and Electrolytic Capacitor Unit, and a more significant amount of Fernite Carbide Composite Armor Plates.

But I need to be exact to know what I need.

Happily jEveAssets make it very easy to know exactly what I need via the Shopping List.

Now I have a copyable list of just what’s needed for the build. I can track this in Excel/Google sheets if it’s complex or simply put these components into build or buy them off the market.

The Shopping List is even more powerful for building multiple things. Often I have multiple customers that want different things and I want a unified build/buy list. Here I pretend that I want to build a Vargur, an Athanor, and a Basilisk.

And here I get exactly what I need, a list of what I need including volume and rough ISK cost. Fantastic when you are building a lot of stuff.

Lastly, I make sure to use a spreadsheet to track what I am building, for who, when they asked, and the state of the build. Sometimes I need to build the T1 versions first or can only build so many without more BPCs or other situations. It’s important to me to help write down where I am in the production process so I can remember what I was doing after a day of work or other RL activity.

My example is with a Tech 2 ship, but the basic process works for anything you want to build. Even if you are making T1 items and need only the basic minerals, this method can provide you with a shopping list.

Again, this is just my way of doing things. Others write complex Python scripts to do calculations. Some like to build larger comprehensive spreadsheets that do in one place what I am doing spread out between sites & applications. While I keep large stockpiles of materials, others practice “just in time” methods and only acquire the specific things they need for each build.

The way that makes sense to you is the right way for you to do industry.

If you have more questions, you can find my contact info here: http://dunkdinkle.com/

CCP was just bought by Pearl Abyss and it’s because the VC investors want their money out. It’s as simple as that.

When many companies start, they need cash to build until they generate revenue. Venture capitalists give startups money in return for partial ownership (stock) in the company. The VC get their money back in three ways; 1) the company goes public and the VC stock can be sold on the market, 2) the company gets bought and the VC is paid out in cash or stock in the acquiring company, or 3) the company gets enough cash to buy out the investors and remain private.

As companies grow, they often need more and more money and reach out to investors for additional money, this is called a funding round. Again, more stock of the company is given to investors in trade for the cash.

CCP has been running for 20 years and has multiple rounds of financing. All those investors want a return on their investment. CCP doesn’t meet the criteria to go public and doesn’t have money to buy out the investors, so they had two options; grow big and keep investors happy the their investment is growing in value more than cash can or sell themselves.

They tried to grow big, but ended up have to sell.

Remember EVE Valkyrie and the VR stuff? Yes? That was CCP’s hope for a stoppage time goal.

When the demo of VR space dogfighting was released, it created a huge wave of interest from the public and other VR companies. CCP raised a round of funding to pay for the VR development. The investors were hoping that the VR game would blow up huge and they’d have their own Fortnite style cash cow.

CCP dumped the money into development, partnered with hardware VR vendors, and made a huge marketing push. The game was fun. But the market for VR games just isn’t there. There was a huge effort at EVE Vegas to promote Valkyrie and stoke a media fire or garner some sort of market justification for continued spending.

However, the sales and adoption metrics were abysmal. In the view of the board of directors and investors the investment in VR was a waste and non-profitable, so CCP was told to kill Valkyrie and cut costs.

Right after EVE Vegas, the hammer fell. Layoffs, facility closing, drama, all the bad things.

Down to their last option, sale, CCP had to show that they were a profitable company, worthy of acquisition. CCP had to push hard to get to profitability without additional investment. You may have noticed the increase in SKINs and sales on other direct revenue products.

The investors wanted their money and a dance began. CCP, wanting to keep EVE a good place for their staff and players, and the investors who wanted their goddamn money and wanted the best price, regardless of what happened to EVE Online afterwards.

That brings us today.

Pearl Abyss now owns CCP and EVE Online. Pearl Abyss is accountable to their own board of directors and investors, who also want their goddamn money. It’s in Pearl Abyss’s best interest to keep EVE Online generating cash to paid down the debt incurred when buying CCP. But have no doubt, they will want CCP to make more money.

The majority shareholder in Pearl Abyss appears to be their founder, a game designer and gamer. How that makes a difference to EVE Online’s path remains to be seen.

For CCP, the immediate stress of the investors breathing down their neck is gone. There is a short breather before they have to deal with the new bosses, who will inevitably bring some changes to increase CCP’s profitability.

What happens next, no one fucking knows, despite the /r/Eve memes.

Take deep breath, relax, wear socks, and sell me some Crystalline Isogen-10.

EVE Online is a game far more than complex than spreadsheets and a space battle simulator. EVE is a game of narrative and personal relationships. Rarely do pilots ‘alarm clock’ for events because a spreadsheet says to; they log in to support their friends and comrades-in-arms. They are motivated by playing a role in helping their cause be successful.

Failure to motivate pilots is the death of groups in EVE. It has been seen repeatedly. Break the enemy morale and you win the war. Failure in this area is the source of the oft-discussed ‘failscades’ that can occur.

The first time this really hit home was when I went to my first large player gathering, EVE Vegas. Until then, the other groups were near mythical in status, powerful and unapproachable. When I arrived, I soon realized that they were all turbo-geeks, like myself, and we had much in common. I’m a bit extroverted, so I started reaching out to all kinds of pilots, friends and foes, to meet the people behind the ships and shitposts.

It’s a amazing EVE family we have, from coders to soldiers, lawyers to truck drivers, builders to lobbyists, and corporate execs to retirees. There are people behind those icons on the screen.

I’ve chatted with players from almost every group. I’ve partied with friend and foe. Swag I made is in the hands of players of every coalition. I’ve even cooked ribs for a gathering of enemy pilots that happened to be in my town.

It took some big losses in game for me to put it all in perspective. I have been with Brave since the beginning and have been through our ups and downs, and downs, over time. The first big hit was Brave being pushed out of Catch by Pandemic Legion. Previously, Brave had been on top of the world, astounding numbers of pilots, huge potential, and universe changing perspective on the game. I watched it get squandered with a poor leadership and an unmanaged narrative that gave pilots little reason to stick with Brave when the chips were down. I have to take some of the blame for this as well.

At the time, I was posting various morale posts to help encourage people. Every group need to keep motivated when the tide is against them and I did what I thought best.

At one point, I posted something so full of shit, that it got rightly called out and the narrative turned against me. I reached out to a bunch of outsiders to get their perspective and learned that yes, my morale posting was full of shit and doing more harm than good. Overdoing a morale post can have the opposite effect and make things worse. A tough lesson to learn, but worth learning.

Posting can be broken down into two basic flavors, smug and salt. Smug is the flavor of running an extra victory lap around the losers. It’s continuous dumping on the side that’s already on the ropes. It’s relentless mockery in all the community spaces. Salt is the flavor of complaining that things aren’t fair. It’s blaming everything but themselves for the failure. It’s not taking responsibility for the loss.

As in cooking, a little goes a long way, and lot spoils the broth.

Smugging and salt are normal reactions to conflict. To be honest, after being on the losing side of things for five years, it was mighty tasty for me to be able to doomsday a Pandemic Legion titan, and watch it disappear.

I have to admit that that I also enjoy good meme farming and EVE players create some great stuff. Some of it is literal laugh out loud stuff that makes Mrs. Dinkle roll her eyes at me and shut the door to the office where I play.

Much of what we are seeing today is too much smug & salt. Sure, it might taste great in the moment, but like eating a lot of super spicy food, you can have some real pain later due to the after effects. Grudges can last a long time and come back in ways unexpected.

When the attacks get personal, it’s bad for EVE.

Elise Randolph and Doomchinchilla have both frustrated me in the game on multiple occasions. Frustrated enough to turn off the computer and go sit on my patio pondering why I play. But in person, I like hanging out with them and chatting.

Keep it in the game, don’t make it personal, and remember to much smug or salt ruins the broth.

Stay Classy. Have Fun. Be Brave.