How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Crimewatch 2.0

The Den collects articles of general wisdom, from philosophical musings to the examination of game mechanics, to simple tales of great hilarity. This one is about miners, things that go "bump", and high-sec mentality.

The times, they are a-changing

One of the biggest changes coming to our little slice of EVE this December is the overhauled Crimewatch system with a new "suspect" flag. If you do something illegal, everyone in EVE can shoot you for fifteen minutes. This opens the door for vigilantes, "white knights" or whatever you want to call them to come to the aid of a mission runner and asplode your boat. Even opportunists sitting at gates or stations might take a shot. This makes ninjering a whole lot more dangerous than it was.

Oh shit I got a flag!

Me, I'm not worried. I believe the vast majority of high-sec residents simply don't have the chutzpah to actually get up and do something with this new flag. Allow me to illustrate.

James 315 and the New Order of High Sec

You may have heard about this whole miner bumping business which has gradually been picking up steam over the last few months. If you don't follow the official EVE Forums (which you probably shouldn't) you'll have missed some hilarious shitstorms which have been stirred up by miners who are really, really angry. Angry and utterly incapable of helping themselves.

The "too long, didn't read" of it is that James 315 came up with a new way of torturing miners after the hitpoint buffs to mining barges and exhumers made suicide ganking impractical. An overpowered ship can bump a miner out of range of his rocks and, with persistence, keep him out of range indefinitely. This might be classed as harassment were it not for the New Order offering the miners a way out: pay 10 million ISK and adhere to a code of conduct to be left alone for a year.

Whether you buy into the New Order's professed ideals, or consider it simple extortion, a donations scam, or even just a clever facade to keep the petitions at bay – it works. The New Order has collected billions of ISK in donations from entertained players. And tears. Mighty rivers of sweet, sweet tears the likes of which haven't been seen since Hulkageddon.

One angry miner.

Have a look at their bingo card and spot the similarities to some of the things mission runners throw at us. "This is an exploit?" Check. "Try working for your ISK honestly?" Check. "I know powerful people in null-sec?" Check. I love that last one. It's a well-known fact that the major null-sec coalitions are all about keeping high-sec carebears safe and unmolested. Heh.

Resistance is futile

Compare the success of the New Order to its counterpoint, the Proveldtariat. It is composed of exactly one bloke with a blog. It has achieved exactly nothing, save for some mildly entertaining reading. It has a list of suggestions to counter miner bumping and they're actually pretty good, but no-one is employing these techniques. But why? Why do miners not take some of the simple precautions that could safeguard their operations? Why do they not band together, even if just to share intel? Why do they not stand up and do something to protect themselves?

Here's why.

The answer is simple – these people don't want to play with others. And the majority of high-sec mission runners is like that too. I have no statistical data to back that up of course. I say this from experience, having encountered hundreds of them. Old players who've never been out of their NPC corps. Players who have no idea how to fit a ship (the fact that they can run missions in them being a testament to how borked EVE's PVE is). Players who couldn't find Local if you wrapped it around a trout and slapped them in the face with it. They're out there in great numbers. And they don't want to play with you or anyone else. Not even to help themselves.

Ninjering 102: The UI

Ninjering 102 is not about how to probe mission runners, how to d-scan or how to fit a hilaricane. That would be 101. 102 is about some of the finer tricks of the trade. This one's about the UI and how to set it up for ninja work.

Make it easy

In September I wrote a post on setting up the Overview. The objective there was simple: to make life easier on yourself by sorting information in a sensible manner. It is a good idea to do the same for your user interface (UI). The UI is basically all the stuff on your screen – the various windows and displays that provide you with information and allow you to interact with your ship and your environment.

Before you read on, I invite you to check out this excellent article by PVP virtuoso Azual Skoll. His thinking on screen layouts is sensible and you'll see that I've shamelessly copied many of his ideas. That's why he put them on his blog, after all! Of course, for ninja work there are a few things you'll probably want to do differently. I'll outline my own UI setup according to a pretty picture.

My UI setup

Yes, that's the same screenshot I used in the Overview article. It works because it has pretty much everything active. Let's go over it by the numbers.

1. Local Chat. Local is an invaluable intel tool. It allows me to quickly check if my target has any corpmates in system by setting his corp to an alternative standing. This will cause any pilots in that corp to light up in a different color. I have also set known “white knights” and ninja hunters to a separate standing so I know if I need to look over my shoulder for them. I've set the list to names only and the font to fairly small. I don't talk in local but I do like to see the ubiquitous tears in there.
2. Other chats. Should be fairly self-explanatory.
3. People & Places and Scanner. I'm quite happy with these two being tabbed in the same window. Obviously I interact with the scanner a lot, both when probing down mission runners and for D-scanning while in or near a mission. I also use People & Places a lot for setting standings and making spot safes. But I never need to use them simultaneously.
4. Cargo and Drones. For looting purposes, I have activated the option to open every new container in a new window. By doing so I can keep my ship's cargo window small but easily accessible. When I'm in a ship with drones, I also have the Drones window tabbed here. This keeps the interaction close to the ship's HUD where my cursor spends most of its time.
5. The ship's HUD. With passive modules not displayed, and shield/armor/hull percentages shown. These options can be accessed by right-clicking the little four-bar icon to the bottom right. Come Retribution, you'll also find your safety setting here, which should be at “Partial.”
6. Locked targets. They're a bit of a pain to move around – you need to have something locked and then fidget about until you find a little crosshair to the bottom-left. You can drag this to move your locked items around. I put them above the HUD modules with enough clearance for EWAR effect icons (points, webs, neuts etc.) to show up.
7. Selected Item. This window goes just above the locked targets. This keeps the targets, mods (from the HUD) and various commands from the Selected Item window very close together for quick mouse cursor transit.
8. Overview. The Overview needs a fair bit of space because, especially when looting and salvaging, there can be quite a bit of stuff on there. I've elected to not take it entirely to the top of the screen though. In combat, the Overview will be notably less filled up and I don't want hostile ships or drones to be all bunched up in the top-right of the screen while my main action items are at the bottom.
9. Fleet window and Watchlist. This is a screen I don't interact with very much, but when I do it's mostly because a fellow ninja needs remote repairs. I therefore keep this window open at all times. The last thing a ninja wants is for his RR to be late because the pilot was looking for the fleet window...

Up to you

And there you have it. As with the Overview, personal preference will factor in to how you set up your UI just as much as occupational needs. How your UI works best for you is ultimately up to you. But I would encourage you to take some time to really sit down and think about how you can make the UI as user friendly as you can. Don't just grit your teeth if some ergonomic nightmare is costing you precious seconds in combat – fix it!