Just curious

[MahrinSkel]

Dunno if you noticed, but Firmus Ixion (the alliance I've been in for over a year) recently completed our first outpost.  Avernus, the head diplomat for FIX quoted in that article and the CEO of my corp, has just been elected the new Chairman for FIX.  One of the things that FIX is considering is an outpost building boom, but there's a little problem: Not enough miners to make it worth it.  I've run the numbers, and every belt of Bistot, Crokite, or Gneiss is worth about 7-10 billion isk a week, if it's stripped every respawn, and there are a lot of those belts around our little corner of Querious.

I understand you guys were part of -V- for a while, and left because they wanted too much money.  And I don't know if you're aware, but there are several alliances allowing "renters", with terms that vary greatly but are generally in the range of hundreds of millions per month or week.  I'm wondering what we could do to make such an arrangement attractive to draw some miners out to 0.0.

Here's a little background:

1) The area in question is in central Querious, just inside the 3-FKCZ gateway to Empire space (no more than 4 jumps from that system).  The nearest Empire station system is Badivefi (2 jumps from 0.0).  The Agil and Ipref systems are a few jumps away and are the nearest well stocked market.  Jita is 21 jumps from Badi.

2) You'd be limited to only a few systems, possibly only one.  These would be good systems however, with high-bounty rats and good ores (no worse than Gneiss as the best in system).  There's a fixed 10/10 complex in the area, but you probably wouldn't be able to use it.  Not sure about the dynamic complexes and encounters.

3) You'd have docking rights at only a few stations, that of the system(s?) you had mining rights in and the central market station of FIX.

4) You'd probably have to join a shell alliance made up of other renters with the same access you had.

5) You wouldn't be required to participate in defense of the area, but it would not be discouraged, either. Safety would not be guaranteed, it's 0.0 and death is always waiting.  But you would have access to an Intel cross-alliance channel that would usually give you warning of hostiles if you watched it.

6) No POS's.

Given those assumptions, what would make such conditions attractive?  What would be a deal-breaker?  If not for F13, then for other corps in a similar position?

--Dave

[Rhonstet]

The main concern for most corps isthe security issue.  People who stay out of 0.0 do it invariably for reasons of personal security, rather than personal politics.  And obviously, most people running empire corps usually lack the level of firepower, skill, and organization that a 0.0 corp has. 

I'd suggest that a lot of empire corps might not have the organization to take advantage of a hundred million per week.  One reason a lot of corps don't move into 0.0 space is because they can't afford the time investment such a move entails.

I think your alliance, or at least whoever wants to entertain the idea of bringing in additional money from outside help, should treat miners as contractors hired for a service (mining) rather than as tenants.  Pay a miner a percentage of what he mines for you, or an hourly salary, in exchange for your leadership, security, and hauling services.  The miner earns cash directly, which has a lot of appeal to someone who spends most of their time in empire space.  Your corporation gets the ore you need for construction and recoups the salaries from selling the ore and ratting. 

[Morat20]

I'd probably be willing to throw together a mining alt, dedicate some time to make him marginally useful as a miner (or a hauler alt), but someone else is going to have to stake at least some of his gear -- he'ld be arriving via shuttle and my main isn't rich by any means.

But I think the contract arrangement is better. Provide security to get me there, a place to dock my ship -- and once I paid you back for whatever gear or skills you provided, some modest percentage of what I'm mining for you. You'd certainly get more miners down there if you ensured they arrived, and offered them cover from the belt rats. Even more if you offered to give them a little something for themselves (or their mains) in return for a few hours of astroid fucking.

[Yoru]

I'd certainly investigate the contract and situation.

The reason F13corp's ventures in 0.0 have failed in the past are due to a number of factors, particularly (a) poor choice of alliances and (b) poor fit between F13ers and the other members of the alliances. Our first venture collapsed within two weeks due to the alliance we joined almost instantly losing their region; the second venture took a few months, but we joined a hardcore PVP alliance that expected people to PVP and only PVP, getting their materials, ships, equipment and money _somehow_, but not on their time (probably by selling GTCs, in retrospect). This led to missed expectations on both sides (we got very little support/protection, their space was extremely porous to piracy and enemies, their expectations for PVP participation were missed), so when they decided to impose a tax that was, from our perspective, backbreaking, we left.

From F13corp's perspective, I think the issues you'll find are:
* Not particularly capital-intensive; while some of the members are rich mission runners, most of those hardcore enough to amass enormous fortunes have gone to greener pastures.
* Moderate participation rates. Only about half of F13corp can be termed 'active' (logged in in the last two weeks) and probably half of those remaining are casual players - people playing for 5 hours a week average or less. 0.0 is infeasible for casuals for a number of reasons. I'll get into that later.
* Broad 'focus'. We're something of a catchall corp for F13 people; this means we have carebears, mission runners, privateers, miners, industrialists and newbies all tossed together. The privateers and higher-level miners would probably enjoy your offer; the others, not so much, particularly as it might make empire life harder.

As a somewhat casual player myself, the issues I'd be looking at are, in no particular order:

* Direct upkeep costs - how much are you charging straight off? Is it a percentage of my take and therefore participation based? This is good for my schedule, since if I don't log in for two weeks, I don't owe jack. Is it a monthly fee? This is bad, because there can be month-long stretches of time where I only log in for an hour total the whole month.
* Indirect upkeep costs - Refining taxes, market prices, difficulty of moving goods, ease of replacing lost items, transport length between empire and home, average security of the empire-home pipe.
* Direct requirements - Minimum output requirements, minimum participation (time) requirements, PVP/security contribution requirements (time or money).
* Intangibles - general stability of the region, region politics (is FIX still a BOB vassal?), piracy levels of the empire pipe and mining region, apparent idiocy of leadership (e.g. minimum ore levels to be left in rocks when mining).
* Startup cost - my purse is almost empty right now.

[addryc]

I think this would be an interesting goal for the Corp if we had enough interest - I personally am up for it if others are am will work on my mining skills if this is something we're going to do.

Oh - I also share Yoru's concerns - startup and upkeep costs could be an issue

[dwindlehop]

From my perspective, F13's adventures in 0.0 made a lot of folks quit the game. Yes, we had access to high value belts. But there's not much game in the belts, just the same handful of PvE encounters over and over. The PvP game we had access to consisted of getting blown up by pirates and reds, camping gates, and running guard duty for POS spamming. Without appealing PvE or PvP options, the game wasn't fun for people, so they left.

The only way I could see this renter situation working out is if FIX agreed to buy all gneiss, crokite, and bistot ore. The prices would be pre-negotiated as part of the contract and would be guaranteed. The renter corp would agree to sell all ore they mined to FIX in return for access. That way, the "price" of access is purely a function of how much the miners play.

A deal breaker for a corp like that is a high fixed recurring fee. They do not extract any of the fun high-level game with the money they earn: no POSes, no outposts, no empire-building for them. At best, you could expect them to stick around long enough to earn out some internal goal they had in mind before they leave.

The real deal breaker for a corp like that is you can't make the proposition fun. Without political goals, the corp is grinding away, no matter how much money they're making. Figure out how to make it fun for the renter corp.

[Endie]

Figure out how to make it fun for the renter corp.

QFT.  I have an alt I made for industrial/production stuff with 8million SP, but I've never done anything except make some ammo because I've yet to see a point.  But, if it was fun and profitable in some way, I'd happily wander down to 0.0 space and plink for a while every month just for a change of pace.

I imagine I fit into Yoru's categorisation as a mission-runner, although hardly one of his "rich mission runners", since everything I have wouldn't add up to much more than 500 mill.  In other words, I like to log on a few times a week, run Guristas Extravaganza and log out.  If I could dock my miner down in 0.0 space and mine once a week, perhaps, as suggested, having to sell at an agreed price to the owners, then that might tempt me.  Since I'm not autistic, however, I'm probably never going to be a great miner.

The BoB question might matter too, though.  I'd be loath to imagine myself contributing to the continued existence of such concentrated asshattery.

[Slayerik]

Is the pipe to 0.0 well contained by FiX? I know in my current corp we run into some issues with heavy camps and such on the main pipe. If well controlled by your alliance, then it seems like a pretty optimal spot being that close to empire. It can be a double edged sword however, with gank squads and what not sticking to more travelled routes near empire borders.

Without POS access, mining life gets difficult. Is a miner supposed to jump a few times to go to a station to accomplish this? This adds even more risk to the risk/reward and time invested. Im not sure how to make something like this more attractive.

 

Its a tough call.

[Yegolev]

As one of the high-level miners that Yoru mentioned, I'll just give my perspective.

I am pretty casual right now due to a hectic RL schedule.  Any rent based on ISK-per-real-time is going to penalize me; sure, I can mine 4000m³ of ice every seven minutes, but I might not log in and "get to work" for very long.  This problem is exactly why my wallet is still in the red after buying this Mackinaw.  I can now fly a Hulk but I can't afford one simply because I am not devoting the time to it.  Neither can I afford to replace my Mack at this time... so there you go.

I would love to come into 0.0 and do some mining, but I don't see agreeable terms.  I have virutally no combat skills, player or pilot, so I'd need some protection; at least someone to drop by and clear the belt every now and then when I am run out of it; even better would be FiX keeping the hostile players to a minimum, but we live in difficult times and I can read a chat channel.  I also need to not be tied to a punchclock, which is what happens when I have to pay rent.  I have no problem paying a percentage, but the assumption that I will play a certain amount of time per week will just get us all into trouble.  There is also the what-if scenario of losing the Mackinaw.  I am not opposed to discussion in any way, but I think my requirements are higher than what almost any alliance or 0.0 corp might agree to.

Edit: about the pipe, I'd expect to be able to unload my minerals to local corporations rather than haul my own goods to Jita, and I'd like to do so at 0.0 prices.  So, while I don't care one bit about the pipe, I would also be that guy selling mins to the locals as I saw fit.  If I want to sell commodities in Jita, I can do that right now with stuff from Aakari.

[MahrinSkel]

To answer a few of the questions:

a) What financial terms to put on it is one of the questions we're trying to answer.  One school of thought is simply not charging rents at all, make all of our money from Refinery taxes.  No paperwork, no issues of what happens when the CEO goes on vacation for 3 weeks and nobody else can access the corp wallet, nobody having to play tax collector.  The downside of that would be a bloating of the rolls with a lot of inactive players and corps, and easy infiltration by hostiles.

b) Nobody would be following along behind you to see if you were meeting quotas.  FIX is heavily into a self-direction thing, nobody is going to be telling renter corps what their goals should be, we don't even do much of that with the member corps.  Like most of Eve, what goals you're working towards would be your business, the access to high-value belts would be only a means.

c) One of the things we're looking at is how to grow FIX.  We'd like to have a natural advancement ladder for corps from renters through full membership, for those that wanted to follow it.

d) PvP participation would not be required from resident corps.  It would be encouraged, and would probably be a requirement for anyone wanting to move up to full FIX member status.

e) Nobody can guarantee security in 0.0, FIX would take territorial security as a primary goal, but you could expect periods when there would be little or no security from raiders (for example, when FIX deployed to eastern Catch against IAC, hostiles had basically free rein in Querious and very little mining or ratting got done during peak playtimes).  Although the 3-F gateway is occasionally hostile, at least 90% of the time you could autopilot a T1 indy through it unescorted (I haul billions through it every week, have only lost a cargo there once).

f) You'd also have access to the market.  One of our current goals is strengthening the market in Querious, my own little piece of that is putting out buy orders for various things.  There's a good market for minerals, and you can sell almost all cruiser/BS grade loot.  Availability of modules and ships is a little spottier, but much better than most 0.0 regions (better than most ISS stations, frankly).

g) Querious has unique geometry.  It's on the border with Empire, with two connections to it.  One of those, the "A2 pipe", is no-man's land, it's on the short path to Delve, Period Basis, and Paragon Soul, and has a poor true security status so the ores and rat bounties are comparatively crappy.  FIX didn't claim it pre-CODA, and although claimed by BOB now it's still just a highway of little inherent value.  The other, the 3-F gateway, is the shortest path to central and southern Querious, but nowhere else, and is rarely transited by random hostiles or neutrals just for the sake of travel, which simplifies the security issue.  This area is unusual, you have "true low-sec" systems with high-value ores and rats only 2 to 4 jumps from Empire.  The other side of the gate in Efa is a 0.4 system, not absolutely ideal but high enough it cannot be bubbled.

h) FIX does not have official territorial claims on the Eve Alliance map, but the LI-BA0 constellation (which includes 3-F as well as several nearby systems) is the first phase of the "FIX Exclusion Zone", where FIX has total soveregnty in all but name. The two neighbouring constellations are later phases of that same environment, and what we're thinking we'll need outsiders to fully exploit.

i) The relationship between FIX and BOB is...complicated.  As the article mentions, they were the ones who blew up our first egg, and we had a long and messy war with them back when they first moved into Delve.  We're currently somewhere between a client state and a independant buffer, with the relationship moving towards the latter.  The one thing that underlies all of this is a mutual trust and respect between BOB and FIX.

j) Since the plan calls on making the vast majority of revenue from refinery taxes, placing refineries within one jump of or in the same system with all the high-value belts is part and parcel of that.  No POS placement stems from the need to ensure that all refining takes place in the outposts (and therefore gets taxed) as well as to ensure that hostile forces cannot infiltrate a corp into the program, place and fortify a POS, and use that as a base for a territorial challenge.

--Dave

[Morat20]

I'm still down in cruisers, so I'm not sure I could offer much. However, I'll bear that in mind for later -- every once in awhile I fit my Vex for mining and have some fun, and a mining barge is on my list of "one days".

[Raging Turtle]

I don't have much to add to this thread right now but I'd just thought I'd mention that I'm following it very closely - I would LOVE to get my ship builder set up in 0.0.  As for my combat guy, I'm rather unsure in the direction I want to take him.

[WayAbvPar]

I think that sounds like a very fair deal, and one that might just align well with our corporate goals/play style.

[Furiously]

Taxes are really the best way, sure there will be the occasional person who mines for 4 weeks then takes all the raw ore with them.

I would think for a lot of F13'ers it would be a great way to mine and manufacture. I know I am a bit interested.

[Endie]

Yep, my interest is piqued...

[Viin]

We (F13) would certainly be interested if we were allowed to do more than mine. I understand that FIX would want to keep the complexes to themselves, but what about ratting?

If we could rat, mine, and participate in PvP when desired without killing us in fees and taxes we would be very much interested.

Feel free to contact me in game if you want to go over particulars. (Irek Dabry)

[hal]

Just saying. At this moment I am subscribed ( Hal Not Mushi) and if the corp chooses to do this i will fall into rank. That statement kinda assumes they will let me back into corp. but they haven't been real picky in the past. That said I do not have a mining battleship, and may not have the funds to get 1 at this moment. But that is a solaveable problem as well.

[Yoru]

It sounds sufficiently interesting and accommodating for my tastes, especially if it's all taxes.

The devil is in the details, of course, but it's largely things that can't be readily predicted, such as ease of transition and future political stability.

I certainly wouldn't mind trying my hand at filling in little gaps in the market's supply and trying to get back on my feet that way. Beats the shit out of snoring my way through missions.

Naturally, I'll wait to see what the rest of the corp does and how the situation develops.

[Raging Turtle]

What facilities would the outpost(s) we'd have access to have?  Refinery, Factory, Labs, etc?

[Endie]

If we could rat, mine, and participate in PvP when desired without killing us in fees and taxes we would be very much interested.

Oh, and we want a new football, and a bicycle, and some trainers sneakers, and a PS3.  And a puppy.

[Viin]

.. And a puppy.

Yes, please!

Heh, I'm not asking for full access to Q - just being able to rat in a couple of systems (preferably the same ones we are mining in, yah?) would be nice. Mining 100% of the time you are online isn't exactly a good way to remain interested in the game.  :-D

[Yoru]

I dunno. Even in the future you have to queue up for a week to get a PS3. That might be asking too much.