Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Prophet and loss

I hate to keep following up on previous posts I've written, but the changes that are happening pretty much daily in EVE right now are kind of demanding it. So let's do a double follow-up, one related to Kronos changes, one not.

As I noted in my post about the freighter/jump freighter rebalance, the addition of rig slots to freighter mated to large nerfs in cargo hold and/or align time and/or tank (depending) was leaving JF pilots with one and only choice: fit cargo expander rigs. The original idea was to put some customization into freighter fittings and CSM8 felt like rig slots would be an interesting way to do that. We had also talked about low slots instead but the idea of rig slots was slightly more interesting to us: we had the idea that players or corps that do heavy-duty logistics might create a small fleet of freighters specialized to different tasks.

In practice, it's clear it wasn't working that way and yesterday CCP Fozzie announced they were dumping rig slots on freighters and JFs in favor of three low slots for freighters and JFs, as well as some new low slot modules to increase base warp speed and (eventually) jump fuel conservation. For those who only care about cargo, three T2 Expanded Cargoholds will increase freighter capacity by 21-25% and JF capacity by 1-2%.

That opens up a few more choices (as well as making those choices non-permanent). JF pilots will be able to jump out to null with full cargo loads and come back with Inertia Stabilizers or the new Hyperspatial Accelerator low-slot modules with much reduced cargo loads. Freighters will have a bit more freedom to customize in both directions since their base cargo is starting above 435k.

So overall, a little bit less interesting but a positive change, I think!

In the same post, malko asked in comments:

You cheerfully admit having invested in that type of salvage material the day it's been made public. Did you already know, as a former csm member, that this resource would be involved in that rebalance pass?
More generally, do you guys, part of the csm, have a code of conduct to respect regarding speculation and nda-protected information?

And those are really good, interesting questions! The second one, regarding the "code of conduct", refers to a quiet little trolly rumor going around that although CSM8 member mynnna can't profit from changes that CCP tells him about, but there's nothing stopping him from (falsely) hinting to players that changes are in the offing and then delighting as they lose tons of ISK on bad bets based on those hints.

What will EVE players think of next, right?

Here's my response:

CSM members are not allowed to profit by things that we learn that are NDA'ed until those changes are made public. Larkonis Trassler was famously removed from the CSM for breaking this rule a few years back. The finances and inventories of CSM members are periodically audited to make sure this isn't being done.

However, there is no ethical code of conduct for CSM members whatsoever. CSM members can be as evil as any other EVE player and indeed can use their position to be even more evil. Mittens famously ran a supercap third party service scam during his time as CSM chair, for instance, and Darius III famously scammed for votes directly.

To answer your coy little question, there is nothing at all preventing mynnna or anyone else from driving people toward hugely unprofitable investments (hinting that those investments would be made profitable by future changes to the game) and then laughing up his sleeve at any who fall for them. That said, there's no evidence that I've seen that he's ever followed such a strategy.

I later added:

[This] includes alts and corps owned or directed by alts.

Example: at one point during the CSM8 term, a dev made a reference to something that I had stored in a cargo can owned by my alt corp in an office hangar.

CCP has VERY good tools to link the movement of ISK and assets around different characters.

...and...

Yes, once a change is made public, a CSM member can compete on the market along with everyone else.

So there you go. If you had questions along those lines, hopefully that answers them. Thanks for the question, malko! Quite a good one!
Source: Prophet and loss