Idle thoughts on a busy night...
A request for blue status can often be met with a ridiculous price tag. It is understandable from a corporation that does not have blues, a regular thing in low security space. But, that type of price tag is often extended to everything. Some of it is the mixture of not wanting to deal with people. The high price tag causes them to not bother with you.
But often, it is a real number. A number that is rather high when one looks at what the person would be making if the deal was made. Is it just our nature to ask for the sky? 100 million for a ransom. A billion for blue status. Five hundred million for a POS to not be shot.
It is easier not to deal with blues and treaties and having peoples assets cluttering up space. But, in a world where we did that, where groups made ISK by interaction with people beyond the results of turret fire, what are good prices for things? Prices that an industrial corp could tolerate and thrive? For ignoring a POS? What are good ransom amounts or will no price ever top the value of a kill? For all of those that try to buy PvP corps help and receive a silly price, is there a price or is there none?
“What are good ransom amounts or will no price ever top the value of a kill?”
ReplyDeleteStunningly, this one question gets at how things in Eve are often valued better than anything else I’ve come across. If I may elaborate . . . ‘What price will ever top the value of a profit producing swindle topped off with a kill?’
One wonderfully infuriating thing Eve does is force players to choose who they are going to be honorable with since there are few game mechanisms enforcing compliance. It’s rather different than real life in relatively civilized, law abiding countries. The different nature of virtual Eve enables looking at things from strikingly different angles.
Returning to the ransom question with elaboration, considering whether to pay a ransom becomes not so much forlorn hope of extracting from a sticky situation (you’re already cooked), but rather a test to see if your ransomer can be trusted.
Ransoms in Eve aren’t exactly agreements; rather they are bits of information purchased at a price. If you want that information you may well consider paying ransom. If you don’t want the information, paying ransom offers little value.
I used to think about this before I tried to write down all the backend support needed for a pure mercenary corp several years ago and the cost associated. Then I stopped pondering it because the simple answer is, no, there is not a price tag in isk that makes sense for all involved.
ReplyDeleteYou're better off bartering with logistics and support services than Isk. You're also normally better organized on that type of stuff than them. Never underestimate the power of being able to hand people a spreadsheet; it looks all sorts of official. Work was done, things you don't want to deal with happened.
One of the interesting things this gets at is also how much things are actually worth. That 500M to not shoot a tower... it actually makes sense in the context of a large POS, because that's actually about how much, in the way of assets, it would cost to put it back up. On the other hand, if the frequency of risking losing it is not worth putting it back up, then you might as well just have them kill it to save you the trouble of taking it down and liquidating it.
ReplyDeleteand yes, mercenaries seem to be in a weird spot. I know vaguely how much a small entity would pay per day in assets for a sov war, if they're already pvp oriented. I'm not actually sure there are a lot of non-pvp groups, of any sort, that would actually be willing to pay that price to have someone defend them. It's the kind of numbers that make your brain shut down, and the ones who are actually making that money tend to be the ones who have also figured out how to not need a mercenary defense, either.
my "adventures" in wh, low, and 0.0 have _never_ been met with anything other than gunfire. Despite non-hostile actions on my part and attempts at communication. At least a dozen wormholes, and an equal number of low and null areas.
ReplyDeleteThis impenetratable wall of hostility. And I just don't enjoy being hunted like an animal. And I got boored endlessly grinding L4's in highsec.
So I decided to let all my accounts lapse.
You would think some corp out there would value an industrialist / PI / shopkeeper outside of highsec.
Things are valuable in proportion to their usefullness and how hard they are to get.
DeleteWith the skill changes made in Crius industrial characters have almost no barrier to entry (easy to get) and a high skill industrialist has almost no extra advantages over a low skill industrialist.
This combined with ultra easy trade means, industrial shopkeeper toons aren't valuable, which is too bad, because Eve's crafting system is by far the most interesting.
I have noticed that wall before too. So many are afraid of losing what they have built up that anyone entering their awareness uninvited is treated as an enemy. Once you figure out how to get that invitation, things go a lot easier. Even then, not everyone really needs a industrial-type player, which is why most of us end up in highsec where it's easier to get the materials to build and also to sell the products.
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