The Art of Influence

It's been quite a while since I responded to a Blog Banter. This blog has a fairly focused topic list, and I like to avoid steering too far away from that focus where possible. Blog Banter 45 however caught my interest, and I'd like to share my thoughts with you. The subject? Propaganda.

We all know roughly what propaganda is, although many of us may feel like it's not something that we personally do. In short, propaganda means communication with the intent of influencing wider opinion. Ask someone to point to an example of Eve propaganda, and you'll probably see references to various pep-talks by nullsec CEOs, or perhaps some of the well crafted posters or parody songs used to rally the masses around their alliance banner.

In truth however, it's difficult to do anything in the sandbox without affecting someone's opinion of something. Whether you're posting a CEO update or simply asking a fallen opponent if they happen to be upset about the experience, every interaction with another player conveys some form of message. Even the ships you fly and the way that you act can play a significant part in shaping what other people think about you. There is no do or don't on this one - you can argue about where exactly the definition of 'propaganda' stops, but the simple truth is that your actions will influence the opinions of those around you regardless of whether you want them to or not. The only question is whether you want to understand and control that influence, or simply let it run unchecked.

Faction Warfare, LP, and the Metagame

There's an interesting post over at @Gamerchick42 regarding the metagame of FW. While I recommend reading that whole post, I can summarise it with a few basic facts:

• You do not gain any LP for defending a system in FW.
• You do gain LP for capturing a system in FW.
• Purely from an LP perspective, it actually makes sense to allow your opponent to conquer a system rather than defending it (which you receive no LP for) and then capture it again once it's taken (which you do receive LP for), providing you're confident that you can take it back.
• A faction which currently has high warzone control will gain far more isk for a given amount of LP - and thus, a given number of systems taken - than a faction which has lower warzone control.

Susan's conclusion is that it's in the interests of the minmatar militia (which currently has tier four warzone control out of a maximum five) to allow the amarr (who have tier one warzone control) to take systems from them and then to take them back later - this generates large amounts of LP for the minmatar, and while it also gives LP to the amarr their lower warzone control score means that the resulting income is far lower.

On the surface this might read like a reformulation of the old 'we didn't want those systems anyway' argument (and given Susan's recent move towards propaganda-heavy posting I'm sure that's partly the intention), however the logic is sound - if LP is your primary concern, then this strategy would maximise your income.

Let's look at a few possible applications of this. Please bear in mind that I don't personally endorse any of these behaviours, since I believe they would make FW less fun for all involved parties. I do however think they make for an interesting discussion.

Risk

Risk vs Reward is one of the great mantras of the eve playerbase - that a greater risk of loss should mean a more substantial reward for success. In most cases this is brought up from a purely financial standpoint, usually to justify or question why one way of making isk is more profitable than another. In my opinion though, it goes much deeper than that.

Most eve PVPers are risk averse, myself included. Nobody likes to lose, and when we're offered the choice between taking a risk and making a relatively small change which would eliminate that risk, it's only natural that most people choose the latter. How many times have you seen someone wait until they had overwhelming numbers before taking a fight that they could have won anyway, or reship from something comparable to their opponent into something larger or more powerful? We rationalise it as common sense - why would we risk losing when we could win? Fighting fair is, after all, not what eve is about.

However in my experience, some of the best fights come when we put ourselves in a high risk situation and come out ahead. By avoiding fights where there is a risk of losing, are we in fact cheating ourselves out of our own enjoyment?

Guest Article: FCing - The Soft Side

The following article was written by Christina Bamar, CEO of Agony Unleashed. It was originally written as an internal Agony article, but in the spirit of sharing knowledge we've decided to make it available to the public.

5 Common Myths About PVP

As you probably know, I spend a lot of time talking to people who aren't very experienced in PVP. Along the way I hear a lot of the same misconceptions, and I'd like to take a moment to set a few of them straight (or at least, post lots of words about them in the hope that it helps somebody out!)

I originally had a list of about 10 of these, but rather than terrifying you with a wall of text I've narrowed it down to 5. Hopefully anyone who has taken a class with me already knows most of these, but for those who haven't, hopefully there's something in here for you.

Intelligence & Counter-Intelligence, Part 2 - Would You Kindly

Last entry we spoke about how important it is to know stuff. Of course, any opponent worth their subscription is likely to be trying very hard to know stuff too.

Believe it or not, most people are opposed to the idea of throwing themselves into a situation where they are likely to lose. Add a bunch of their friends into the mix, and many FCs will err on the side of caution and only take fights where they have a reasonable expectation of winning. There are a a fair number of noteable exceptions to this rule, many of whom I have a great deal of respect for as a result, but for the most part it holds true.

So here's our problem - our gang finds an opposing gang which we'd rather like to make explode. If we've both been watching carefully the chances are both gangs know what the opposing gang has, and quite often one side will look better than the other. Depending on the disposition of each FC, one or more may decide that actually, the other gang is too much for them to handle and bug out. Assuming our gang is capable of beating the other, how do we convince them to go into a fight they have a good possibility of losing?

Intelligence & Counter-intelligence, Part 1 - Because Knowing is Half the Battle

This is intended as the first of a number of articles dealing with intelligence in Eve PVP.

All cliches aside, the more you know about a situation before you commit to it, and the better you're able to control what your opponent knows, the easier things are going to be for you. The former allows you to avoid situations you don't want, and capitalise on those you do. The latter lets you convince your opponent to do exactly the opposite.

This article is going to focus on the first of those two points.

Solo PVP in 0.0, or the art of incerceptor fishing

So I was browsing the Eve University forum earlier today, and noticed a thread by a new player asking how to go about learning solo pvp. There were a number of good responses already however they were mostly related to lowsec, so I decided to chip in with the 0.0 perspective.

A few walls of text in, I realised - I could probably write about this for quite a while, and it might be useful to a wider audience than just the guy asking the question. And so, the blog was born!

There's a lot that can be said about solo pvp, and indeed pvp in general, but I'm going to start off by going through a fairly basic, but common tactic used when out pvping on your own. In Agony, we call this tactic 'Interceptor Fishing'.