The Defias Blog

¶ The word Capsuleer carries a lot of weight in New Eden. We are the elite of society. The creme of the crop. We’re the pilots who are so skilled and so valuable, that the four empires don’t dare offend us by telling us what we can and cannot do, who we can and cannot work for, for fear of offending us to the point where we won’t work for them at all. The powers that be field similar ships to the heavily modified models we fly, but they’re not piloted by Capsuleers; they’re manned by conventionally trained pilots, men and women who failed to make the grade and their multitudinous crews, whereas our vessels are piloted by ourselves, our highly sophisticated on-board computer systems, and much smaller crews.
¶ However, the simple fact that we are more highly trained than any conventional pilot coming out of the various academies does not make us experts on New Eden. The politics and schemes employed by the larger, more powerful corporations are so deep, so multifaceted, so heavily layered and convoluted that even the average Capsuleer can get lost in the many twists and turns. Add to this that there are so many resources to be found and exploited and that the people in power guard these secrets so jealously that it can be difficult trying to pore over trillions of bits of useless data to find a valuable piece of information you can learn from.
¶ I’ve found just such a piece of information recently, left in the open by a rogue anti-establishment pilot and this piece of information led to much, much more.

¶ Of all people it was a VETO pilot, RuleoftheBone, who posted this message in New Eden’s Discussion forum for Corporation, Alliances and Organizations (CAOD). Bone’s intent was to shake up the CAOD forum and get the rabble roused. I’m no rabble, though, so while I won’t be flying up to Anthrax Death’s executor’s door with a torch and pitchfork demanding accountability, I knew that I would be doing my corporation a mighty disservice if I didn’t read the replies to this inflammatory message. So read I did, all six pages of it.

The average 0.0 dweller knows nothing about moon mining or POS. He barely knows of the existence of refine taxes. He doesn’t know how much the CEO makes from taxes or how much the alliance leader makes.

¶ I knew about refine taxes. In fact, in a petty act of defiance, VENOM Alliance set the refine tax at the D2EZ-X outpost to 40%, despite the fact that they’re barely even allowed in the system anymore. In fact, I’d be surprised if they weren’t entirely bound to empire by the end of the month, so grievously did they piss off United Legion. Having been a part of VENOM Alliance, there’s a part of me that feels a twinge of regret to see them in such a sorry state of affairs, but then I remember the constant bickering and in-fighting, I remember all of the scheming and the lack of trust and all of the reasons why I removed my corporation from their collective to begin with and I know that their current situation is only proof that I did the right thing.
¶ All of my pilots can see exactly what I make off of them, as everyone has the ability to view the corporation wallet journal. As the corporation grows larger, this will change for obvious reason (deliveries must be protected), but for now it’s serving us well. Every Capsuleer in the Brotherhood can see how rarely I remove any ISK from the corporate wallet, and more often than not it’s in a manner that leaves an automated receipt of the transaction. The alliance leader’s wallet, of course, is a different story but our leadership has never given me any reason to doubt them… not the way VENOM’s theBEANman did.
¶ To be perfectly frank, I was a POS noob. I knew very little beyond the basics about how to get a POS online and maintain it, but the basics have been enough to work with and a good starting point for learning more as time progresses. So far, our manufacturing POS has made us roughly 80M ISK - that’s not much, mind you, but that’s with no minerals other than those obtained through refining the trash modules deposited in the corp hangar by our pilots. Once we begin conducting regularly scheduled mining ops, I expect the profit margin to increase dramatically.
¶ But there was one thing in Bone’s first point that rang true - I knew nothing about moon mining beyond the fact that it has to do with T2 production. Due to the fact that I haven’t got any T2 manufacturers or inventors in my corporation that I know of, and the fact that I’m not really THAT familiar with industry and T2 production to begin with, I haven’t made moon mining a huge priority and so I have remained ignorant. As Chief Executive Officer of the Defias Brotherhood, ignorance is not tolerable.

Regular alliance guy is in a BS he bought with his own money, the money he was graciously allowed to farm from the belts.

Regular alliance guy doesn’t know how much his leaders make. He figures since he lives in 0.0 he must be a mover and a shaker.

He doesn’t understand that he’s actually a sharecropper living on someone else’s ranch.

¶ I’ve a couple of pilots in battleships, bought with their own money they farmed by one means or another, aye. None of my pilots know exactly how much I make, beyond the fact that I’ve told them I can get 20M ISK/hr or more from ratting in my Hurricane-class battlecruiser, depending on my luck with the spawns that night… unfortunately, I’ve entered the stage where I don’t seem to have much time for solo ratting right now so the lion’s share of my personal income has been in tanking rats in one of my corpmate’s exploration sites (they just can’t hit an interceptor, but damned if they don’t try!).
¶ I don’t know if all of my people are aware of this or not, but I am certainly hip to the fact that right now, ANTX is sharecropping - however, I also know that there’s more to it than that, and that the ‘more to it’ part doesn’t need to be aired in such a public forum as this Chronicle, so on that I’ll say no more.

The average 0.0 dweller knows nothing about moon mining

¶ As I read through the rest of Bone’s rabble-rousing message, my mind kept coming back to this. By the time I found the thread, it was already well into the third page. On the second page, I found an alt post, by a Capsuleer who did not bother to display his corporate or alliance ticker, but I’d apparently caught it before the moderators cleared his text:

Originally by: Tio 10
not saying that this is the case in ALL alliances, but Im sure most alliance members have heard “You cant do that complex” or “That moon is allready claimed” and so on.

Why Npc 10 hours to make 200m when you can log in your alt that is being payed for moon mining isk and do some hauling around for 2 hours and get 3b?

¶ 3 billion…? Jarvin Kell recalls this experience with moon mining:

Originally by: Jarvin Kell
My corp was interested in starting some low-scale moon mining and started asking around for scan results. It turned out that they weren’t available. Ok…interesting. So we started scanning some of the less inhabited areas of OASA…lo and behold, all of the best moons were claimed…even though there supposedly weren’t scan results available.

¶ This reminded me of an early exchange when DFIAS was in VENOM, where someone had said on the VENOM forum that they had scan results of all the local moons, on a spreadsheet but needed a place to host it so that everyone could see it. Yahfree, one of the three main figures in the alliance (the others being Viper69/TeamBETAalpha and theBEANman), said he’d look into it. Having my own hosting account, I offered to host it on insurmountablelogic free of charge as a way to contribute to the betterment of the alliance. This offer was ignored and the entire matter was swept under the rug.
¶ A week or two later, spurred by a passing curiosity, I asked where that spreadsheet was being hosted and was given what basically amounts to a runaround. At the time, not really caring, I didn’t think anything of it. Now, however, I’m sure that the corrupt VENOM leadership (and yes, VENOM’s leadership IS corrupt) had the spreadsheet emailed to them directly, not to be hosted, not to be revealed to anyone who wasn’t in their pocket or their inner circle cliqué.
¶ Now, though, reading the replies to Bone’s message, I had an entirely new interest in moon mining and looked back on that interaction in an entirely different light.
¶ Hymerus, of The Andromeda Directorate, had this to say:

Originally by: Hymerus
The average player just simple doesn’t understand how much isk is generated off moon mining towers at the alliance level. Most corp CEOs don’t even really get it.

People keep going on about the war in the south being about BoB being jerks. It’s not. It’s about controlling moons and making isk hand over fist by holding the moon mining rights to half of Eve.

All the reasons that get thrown around here are crap. It’s not about freedom, it’s not about fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here, it’s not about a new world order, it’s about the Eve equivalent of oil.

And 99.999% of the people who are losing battleship after battleship out there will never see a single isk in benefit out of it. Sure, they’ll get to mine in their covetors or rat, but its a pittance to what their alliance leaders will be making off their work.

¶ I read and re-read this post a half-dozen times. After reading the CAOD for the last two months, I couldn’t find a single hole in the logic. It was insurmountable. It’s not about BoB being the biggest (and therefor the most hated). It isn’t about BoB being arrogant in their power. It’s about the value of their territory… the moons, the ore, the npc agents - but especially the moons.
¶ So that night, just for a giggle, I did some digging to try to learn more about moon mining, and while it wasn’t as easy to find relevant information about this to begin with, when I did finally find something of use, I found a plethora of information that will do well to get us on our way when we’re prepared to venture into that corner of industry. However, I also learned that, even if DFIAS were in a position to mine a valuable moon or two, we’re not ready to go there just yet.
¶ But I will be looking around at what moons are in the area, including the ones that are currently occupied… I’ll be looking at who’s occupying them… and I’ll be looking for ways to capitalize. Thanks to RuleoftheBone of VETO for calling attention to the inner workings and behind-the-scenes type shit that goes on in nullsec and nudging us to look a little bit closer at the relationship between what we give and what we gain from membership in a 0.0 alliance.

-Havo out. 

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