Continuing input into: The True Bounty Project

General consensus seems to be that The True Bounty Project is an idea that could be made to work....

With some tweaks.

Apparently the numbers that were rolling around in MY head, were too low, generally speaking, to draw the attention of most mercenaries. As such, it was suggested that I put together a few basic bounty packages as guidelines. Obviously, the higher the bounty, the greater the interest. Part of the fun/idea for True Bounty is that a bounty makes you wanted, not just by a specifically hired assassin, but by people who are just willing to do the deed when they see you somewhere they can catch you. A war-dec attack is awesome and all, but it's nothing compared to knowing that a billion isk is sitting on your head for anyone who can catch you in a ship of any real value. A bil, can be split amongst an awful lot of disposable Thrashers and their pilots... Even High-Sec becomes a risk if the value is high enough.

Trust, being the commodity that it is in the great world of EVE, was also an important topic. It was suggested that a third-party, trusted service be used to secure the funds for my third-party project. I have to admit, it seems a bit convoluted. *Grin* But at the same time, I can see the reason behind it. I'm a bit of a nobody, and I can't expect folk to trust me with the kind of money necessary to turn a Merc's head without having been in business for a while to establish a reputation for trustworthiness.

At the same time, I desire to build up the sort of reputation that would be necessary to avoid the unnecessary complication (and the unnecessary divulging of client information) that comes with utilizing a fourth party service (cos that's really what it would be!).

Looking into precedent, I see that people trying to break into the Third Party business usually need to provide some form of incentive to begin their efforts, and that sort of thing makes sense to me, as well.

The pricing thing and standard packages just makes sense. I'll be adjusting that accordingly.

The fourth party service on the other hand is less sure in my mind. I will be giving it some thought, and I'd appreciate some input! Anyone got any ideas on good incentives to get the program up and running, and start building a reputation for honesty? -I- know I'm honest, and that no-one will walk away anything but fairly dealt with, but there's a lot of jerks in EVE.

Until then, Fly Straight (though as was pointed out to me earlier today, angular velocity, or lack thereof, is a killer)

The True Bounty Project

So, perhaps vengeance has laid seeds in my heart. Perhaps it has spawned off this crazy idea that I think could be a lot of fun, for me and for others. Or perhaps I'm doing something that's been done before.

But, with our booting from Wormhole space and our subsequent happy go lucky time in High-Sec, I've been looking for a new project to take on, something interesting to keep things fresh and exciting.

So I've come up with "The True Bounty Project". No, it's not a plan to petition for a new candy-bar, though I think peanuts and coconut would be way better than almonds... Just saying.

No, what it is, is a project for a new resource for capsuleers to use in their travels. A way for aggrieved parties to find redress for their unhappiness without resorting to tears, war decs, or using the fatally flawed in-game bounty system.

Relative new capsuleer suicide-ganked for kicks? True Bounty.
Hulkaggedon caught you unawares? True Bounty.
POS Destroyed while you were away for the weekend....... True Bounty.

It has plenty of applications, but I'll leave that for you to read about and comment on.

Discussion welcome! Flaming, not so much, but hey, bring it on!

Fly Straight, they'll never expect it!

P.S. If you want to chat about this in-game, feel free to join channel: True Bounty

Big Changes, in Little Slice of Heaven...

So, as anyone who actually read anything on this blog (all 20 of you guys, you rock!) will tell you, the ramblings of Minuit Soleil sort of dropped off into static a while back.

I still logged in, now and then, ran a few sleeper sites with the P2AS crew, checked on the latest gossip over in ORDR, ran fuel, sold sleeper stuff. The usual, enough to keep the accounts open and keep plex on hand.

About a month and a bit ago, all that changed. Katt and I took a weekend off from EVE, didn't log in from Thursday till Monday, and when we did, I discovered a distinct lack of a POS bubble.

That's right, ship-wreck fans, POS Gone.

Had a nice gloating EVE-Mail from the folks that destroyed our tower over the weekend, sitting out the reinforcement timer and all that schnazz, waiting in Katt's inbox.

So, what's a crew to do when everything goes pear-shaped?

Get the most valuable stuff, stored in your offline Orca, the heck back to High-Sec!

So, after pointing this out via EVE-Mail to our antagonists, and being certain to leave a few scanning alts spattered around J162010 for later fun, P2AS pulled out of Wormhole space and returned to Empire.

It was a surprisingly invigorating move, and in ways I have to thank the POS-Bashing boys for knocking us off our rear ends and back into the game. (Not that we won't be thinking of using those alts anyway....)

I've dropped IT and ORDR, which "reformed" (read: Disbanded) into a "super-corp" (read: I dunno... whatever the heck that was supposed to mean) and have joined up with P2AS for the near future.

If you have taken the time to read this ramble, and have any suggestions on where to go from here, I'd love to hear them! We're taking steps to get back into the game, and are enjoying ourselves, but I don't like to be without goals...

Expect more soon, and Fly Straight, they'll never expect it!

Conditions of Victory

So, today the pilots of Per Ardua Ad Sol scored a mighty victory, assisted by none other than yours truly.

Now admittedly, there's no killmails to be had, but there's also no loss-mail. I guess it really depends on your definition of 'a mighty victory'... You decide.

Today a wormhole opened into Our Slice of Heaven from a suddenly neighbouring class 4+ wormhole. (I didn't stop to check the readings on the other side, but the wormhole indicated at least a C4). Within that wormhole was a branch of the Shadow of xXDEATHXx alliance. They decided to pop in and start running some of our sites.

Understandably I was a little intrigued to see 7 Moa's and a Bestower on my directional scanner when I logged in, and perhaps just the slightest bit amused when dropping combat probes cleared the system in about 25 seconds flat. Give the boys over there in xXDEATHXx credit, they were paying attention and they scrambled their butts out of there when the free gas harvesting time was over.

So while I looted their wrecks, others of the corp scanned the system down properly, identified their entrance and planted a scout.

Not really feeling like doing much, I AFKed for some time and came back to check on things a few hours later.

Seems xXDEATHXx had gotten bored sitting in their own system, and decided to come over and do a few sites.

That's all well and good, but I really wanted to run some of those sites in the next day or so...

What to do, what to do.

So that was when I decided on setting the Conditions of Victory. Against a group of remote-repping (with drones) Drakes and with relatively minimal numbers available on my side, and the knowledge of their numbers back in THEIR wormhole, I decided to see if we couldn't convince them to keep it quick by ripping their wormhole a bit of a new one with a few battleships.

Racquel and Leilani went to work in Scorpion and Dominix respectively, but as they arrived on-gate, an Onyx appeared beside the wormhole. "Oh crap" was pretty much the sentiment all around.

Ducking through, the Shadows converged from all over the wormhole, eventually sporting a fleet of 9 people on Our Slice of Heaven's side of the wormhole, including the Onyx. One drake dropped through and managed to decloak Leilani and she was forced to jump back through. As we're anticipating a HICtor bubble and much pain, Leilani ramped up the warp drive, and to our surprise, noted the Onyx had jumped through!

Racquel quickly scrambled to jump back through to our side, even as Leilani evaded tackles and warped out from under the 8-man gang of battlecruisers (one of them MIGHT have been an Anathema instead, reports vary).

Racquel then joined Leilani in attempting to warp, while the Onyx was still stuck on the "Thirty Second Timer of Doom" that we all know and love. She too managed to slip the tackles on her and warp off to the safety of our POS.

With the damage done, the wormhole starting to look a little ragged, I sat patiently on the wormhole and watched from cloaked safety as they milled about... As they warped back to their own space... As they came back with cloaker ships (sorry, homefield advantage wins in the intelligence business) and left again, and as they finally decided they wanted to play with someone else and popped the wormhole with a few visits of an Armageddon.

So, my Conditions of Victory were met, and the 4 of us that took the time to work on it effectively drove off at least a 9 man fleet.

Oh, and I got to go loot our combat site and salvage their wrecks. Only about 40 million ISK worth of profit, but hey, at least I didn't have to waste any missiles on it. ;)

Fly Straight! Even you Shadow boys! You were organized and you rallied FAST to every change of situation, it was impressive to see you in action, but I'm glad it turned out how it did.

Making The Game: Billing

I know, what a boring topic... Only one with potential, I think...

I'm not entirely sure why this topic came to me as I was sitting down at the breakfast table to study the scriptures. (Yes, I'm religious.) But I put it on the mental backburner to write about during the day today, and the more I think about it, the more this seems like an important tool that is missing in EVE.

Sure, we can enter into hand-written contracts, kept track of in an Excel sheet somewhere on our desktops back in meatspace, and try and remember to double-check our corporation finances tabs on a regular basis to see who has paid their monthly dues, whether that is as a renter, or for 'protection' from pirates, or whatever. But would it really be that hard to build it in?

Imagine the possibilities if not only could you create contractual bills, where individuals required to pay their bill would get reminders in the notifications tab just like when they need to pay for an NPC controlled office or headquarters, but you could set up consequences?

I'll give you an example. Or two.

Sovereignty:
Ok, I'll admit, I used the S word because it gets people to read what I'm saying... *Grin* But, that aside, this really does touch on Sovereignty in an important way.

Sovereignty costs. Nowadays it costs more than it used to, and from what I understand, some folk find it harder than others to raise the capital on an alliance level to pay for all the toys they want their systems to have. But, Minuit, you ask, how can billing and consequences help us to pay for our toys? Well, I'll tell you, dear reader.

If your corporation, or alliance, is anything like mine, you get access to certain tabs of your corporate hangers based upon your skillset, the amount of trust you've earned and your needs. Well, imagine that, instead of taxing folk for their bounties/missions and hoping that none of your corp-mates earn their money through silly things like: Wormholes, Trade, Invention, Production, Mining, or any other untaxable method, why not drop that Corp-tax down to 0% and institute a corp-wide bill. Every member pays X-Million a month for the priviledge of access to Corp/Alliance resources. Anyone in arears will be visible as 'unpaid' to the corporation leadership and can be removed if they don't address the matter in a timely fashion. Suddenly, you go from 'herding cats' to get people to donate towards paying for that Jump Bridge network, to automated smoothness.

Standings:
This one has a wide array of applications, from Renters to Non-Aggression Pacts to Pirate 'Protection' rackets. Put quite simply, you pay, or your standings change.

Seems straight-forward enough to me. Pay your bill on time or lose Blue status. Pay your bill on time or have your Neutral status dropped to Red. Whichever function suits you best, you really ought to pay your bill if you don't want that carefully negotiated deal to go sour all of a sudden.

In conclusion, I believe that adding in a Billing system would be a huge asset to corporation and alliance management, would provide an effective solution to Sovereignty issues of raising capital, and also provide any number of other options in true sandbox style that the players of EVE would rally around excitedly.

What do YOU think about introducing Billing?

Can YOU think of any different uses for such a system?

Fly Straight, and post comments! ;)