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Splinted Questions

On mornings, much like this one, I will curl up at my desk and sip tea as my mind crawls towards clarity. During those muzzy times when morning strangles my thoughts, I often give myself simple tasks. A lot of TCS work gets done during these times. The maintenance takes time and energy but it is not particularly complex.

I pull of Eve Mentat, I roll through what has fulfilled, I buy it and ship it to Rens. Once my items hit Rens I pick them up in my own hauler. I then lug them to Teon. From there, I transfer them into my jump freighter, make sure I am fueled, and wait.

I log on my account that will handle the cynos. She has a stock of rookie ships, cynos, and a stack of liquid ozone beside her. She has learned Cyno to IV so she does not need cargohold expanders. If local is calm, she makes a fleet with the jump freighter pilot, warps to a tactical, warps to the cyno spot and pops the cyno.

The jump freighter jumps in, docks, and unloads. If I am moving a large volume of items, the jump freighter jumps back to high sec and picks up a second load. Due to the size of Teonusude, it takes a bit to warp across it. This gives me time to recover from the slow slide out of warp onto the gate that I expect to fail every time it happens, abandoning me to die. I then pick up my items and hop back out to the cyno. Before the warp speed nerf I could make three trips on one cyno. Now I can make two.

If I have other things to do I will have to make multiple stops. I have a personality quirk that makes me feel wasteful to self destruct cynos. So, I sit through the ten minute cycles. A singular run can easily consume about thirty minutes of time with just the jumping around.

Now, I lay out all of this because it is my very regular morning logistics run on my days off of work. It is not a complex task but it takes number of steps and a certain amount of preplanning. If I don't do these things nothing happens. It is neither hard nor easy. It simply is done or nothing happens.

Do I have an entitled right to stock Bosena in the method that I detailed above? The steps detailed above work with my available time and available assets. If any step were removed, I'd have to replace it with something else. But, how many steps would have to be removed before Bosena crumbled?

Yesterday, I was reading over something at the request of someone, that asked about the ease of logistics with jump freighters. I asked them, "Do you do a lot of logistics?" And I asked that question because my concept of logistics has changed greatly over the last two years. It has changed so much that I do not know if I can clearly see the problem or if I am blinded by the methods I use to keep what I do up and running.

Do I have a right to run a low sec market like Bosena? If my jump freighter were taken from me today and I had to go back to freighter jumping or building to get assets in, would I? If the calls to nerf jump freighters because they are 'easy mode' and '100% safe' happened, would I still stock Bosena? And then, does my ability to stock Bosena matter enough to be part of the argument?

I am often told, "Risk, Sugar. I can't easily kill your jump freighter unless you make gross errors. That means your logistics are to easy and should be much harder. With greater chances to kill you and take all of your stuff plus destroy the ship that you make your lively hood off of everything will be more balanced and more better."

An argument I often make is, "If you take it away will people continue to do it?" I was told that the microwarp drive + cloak trip makes moving ships through low sec to easy. "It must be nerfed. It is too easy. They pass through gate camps with zero risk. They have to make mistakes to be caught and therefore it is too easy."

Like the logistics of a jump freighter, if you remove it, will it continue to happen? If you took away my ability to jump things would I still spend a large amount of my game time building a market for the low sec region to use? Would it be worth my time? Am I such an incredible, caring person that I would sink billions into losing ships constantly or alarm clock myself to move a freighter in the deadest part of the regions timezone to move things to the station for the convenience of other people? I am sure that I could find other ways to make ISK myself if it was about the ISK.

Or would I do something else? Or would I continue to fight for what I believe in? And if I fight for what I believe in does that not mean I am attempting to demonstrate its importance and value? If I did something else, would that mean things were out of whack in the first place? Would it mean that low sec should not have markets and it is the broken logistics of jump freighters that makes it happen. Would it mean that the game would be better without large markets supported by jump freighters and they would live off of what I moved by the Viator or Occator full instead?

What do we lose? What do we gain? The problem is so opaque to me right now. I worry that I am too deep in my world view of what logistics takes me as an individual to accomplish. I know what I need to do to make what I do work. I have a enormous amount of belief in the good of what I accomplish with the tools that I have. Yet, those views are what mold my perceptions and reactions. But then, things are not just about me, are they?


  1. Frankly people that are annoyed by the mwd cloak trick just need to suck less.

    The ship is still on grid for 10-12 seconds and it' s completely viable to decloak somebody with a ceptor in that timespan if you were paying attention when it appeared on grid before it cloaked.

    1. Heck, one don't even need ceptors, any light ship with MWD can do it, just sit still mwd running, double click to approach on overview, and you're likely to get them.

  2. invariably, the people who want mwd/cloak and JFs nerfed are people who don't do their own logistics. They think everyone should be a target all the time. Ignoring the fact that, at some point, someone, somewhere has to do all the work that makes their fun possible.

    1. Well if we did not have it would they even be in the area? That is what I often ask. Is removing it worth not having them there to make the potential mistake?

  3. in the case of mwd+cloak trick there is already a better alternative, blockade runners.

    1. Blockade runners have a barrier of entry that a hauler + cloak + mwd does not.

      I don't want to say, "You have a blockade runner you can train into if you want to do these things" because I feel it is exclusive to those who want to be raw, fresh, and out in the world trying things.

  4. Having moved billions of m3 around over the years via (jump) freighters, carriers, blockade runners, and rorquals... Those who think logistics are easy have never had the pleasure of a seizure when a carrier suddenly decides it's going to jump directly into a station's structure and goes flying off at 4km/s in a random direction with hostiles present in system.

    Some things in this game should be easy in order to support the things that are harder. Simpler mechanics often lead to complex interplay between them. Those who prepare better than the people who hunt them should be pretty much safe barring accidents. Some of the hunters just want luck to decide everything and not have to do any planning to find their prey. Lazy wolves should not catch the fastest deer unless it trips, falls, and breaks it's leg ten feet from safety....

    -Serinas Setzuni

    1. Blockade Runners are deer, JFs are teleporting whales... Freighters are beached whales... And your so-called hunters aren't wolves, they're hyenas, scavengers preying on the young and weak.

    2. Nice try at trying to muddy up the metaphor. Though maybe I should start thinking of lazy wolves as hyena's... Since they are known to cry the loudest when they are starving...

    3. As someone who occasionally reads books and views documentaries about animals, I should point out predators mostly go after the young and weak anyway. Because they would probably starve if they were dumb enough to always attack the strongest members of a herd.

      So just so you know, MoxNix, your analogy didn't work.

  5. I'm one of the ones who thinks jump freighters should be nerfed.

    No it's not because I don't do my own logistics, it's because of the power projection issues which includes moving massive amounts of freight around quickly.

    If CCP really wants to encourage more local industry and that "bottom up" economy everyone keeps talking about then removing the ability to quickly teleport very large cargo ships around would go a long ways towards those objectives.

    /me sits back and wait's for Sugar's comments section to go berserk.

    1. The unknown question becomes, would they in an area such as low sec where we have access to high sec. Would it really encourage anything like what I've tried to create or would we go back to shopping in Teon and jumping stuff in because it is easier, faster, and safer.

    2. Well you might not agree, but AFAIC Bosena is really just an appendage of the market in Teon.

      Or another way of putting it would be to say, being just 1 jump away they're pretty much the same market.

    3. IOW, if the manufacturing is on Teon, or even Gulfonadi/Gelfiven, the logistics would be pretty simple.

    4. So yeah, what I've done why I did it and why I work for it doesn't matter at all to you in your view of markets and players equipping themselves. Understandable. I don't agree or feel the same way, but that is what opinions are.

    5. I think I understand your motivations pretty well but one thing I always wondered about was why you chose Bosena in the first place.

      If I wanted to create a low sec market for mostly altruistic purposes I'd put it far away from any high sec hubs.

      Why did you chose a system only a single jump away from the largest high sec hub in the region rather than one deeper in low?

    6. Traffic. It and Atlar are two of the nexus hubs that the members of the region use. There was once a market here used by locals and I rebuilt that. It was about people not going to high sec anymore. It had nothing to do with Teon being a jump away. Teon is high sec.

    7. There have been many times in my null career where I wished what I needed was somewhere else or one jump closer or not in that 'forsaken cloaky camped to hell system' :P I'm sure those who feel a certain loathing towards highsec appreciate not having to try to jump over the security wall to get their stuff.

      Also, by your analogy, Teon is an apendage of Bosena, not the other way around. It just never impressed me as much as Bosena whenever a wormhole connected me to the region.

  6. There is a third option besides alarm clocking for dead times to jump your freighter. This is the option that the latest patch was about: industry. You can haul the compressed ores in a Covops hauler or a 8 warp strength Deep Space transport and have someone build locally.

    Currently low and null sec live on Jita. Your market at Bosena makes the local lowsec more amicable, but still, everything you sell was built in highsec. If highsec would disappear, the rest of EVE would starve. CCP seeks to encourage players to build outside of highsec.

    Why don't you look for a builder partner on your blog who would move to Bosena and build for you?

    1. Because I'd need more than a partner. I'd need someone with a huge cache of already ready stuff or I'd have to invest in building an industrial empire from the ground up.

      I actually have other things that I want and need to do with my time. At some point I have to reach compromise. If running Bosena as I currently run it does not contain enough value I am probably done. I love my project but it is a project and not my entire reason for playing Eve Online.

      I have other things I want to do with my game time than create an industrial empire to fuel one station in one low sec region for people who may or may not want my services. It may make me a selfish and terrible person but fact of the matter is that people are not beating down my, or anyone elses door, to do these projects as productive and fruitful as they may be.

      I think you've experienced that on your own.

  7. If I may wax philosophic for a moment . . .


    “Too deep?” Not necessarily. I’m hard pressed to think of a better way to begin an examination of a question other than thoughtful meditation of one’s own, lived experience. Where one sits isn’t the whole story, but it’s an important part of the whole story.

    Years back, when I’d just finished demolishing an assigned reading argument in a class paper (and I demolished the shit out of that argument, I tell you what), my professor responded with one of the most aggravatingly helpful comments I’ve ever received, “Sometimes it better to pause and listen, really listen.” I could have taken great umbrage at being told to shut up and initially I did but that professor was nothing if not inclusive. Eventually it seeped in that she also meant I should listen, really listen to my own self as well as others. I struggle to live up to her advice. I always will.

    Never discount one’s own location. It’s difficult to listen when you can’t locate your ears.

  8. Sugar if supplying a market in Bosena makes you ISK and you are happy doing it then do it. Eve is after all a game... Now if I could just get my wife to play the game as well as you I'd have the perfect marriage!!! Keep writing...

    1. Eve is a game. Isn't it funny how the game part is quickly eclipsed by so many other things?

      I do enjoy it but what will make me not? And why do I enjoy it as well?

  9. Your jump freighter is at least a 6B isk ship with no combat capability; your goal when flying in it is specifically to NOT put it at risk. The folks wanting greater chances to kill you are doing PvP; they're incentivized to put their ship at risk to get kills. If the risks were appropriately balanced, for every time you lost your jump freighter, it would be reasonable to expect them to lose 12B to 18B worth of ships in PvP, assuming you all flew your ships with equal skill. Just ask the folks how long it took them to lose 12B to 18B worth of ships in PvP; doubt for most its less time then you've spent playing the game.

    Besides, killing a jump freighter isn't all that hard. Just gank on its trip to high sec. While not a great reward, the efficiency is pretty good. Its definitely not no risk logistics.


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