Monday, December 17, 2012

New Order Logistics

If you've been in our fleets lately, there's been quite a bit of talk about the possibility of creating a corporation to help resupply our Knights. We use up a lot of Catalysts and fittings. We're going to use up a lot more. I had forgotten, but for some reason my ganker alt, Currin Trading, already had a bunch of corporation management skills trained up from years ago.


The purpose of New Order Logistics is not to have every Knight be a member. After all, the New Order transcends corps and alliances, and many Knights are perfectly happy with the corps they've already got. Moreover, allowing every aspiring ganker into the corp would cause security issues.

Nor is the purpose to create an industrial/logistics corp, despite the name. I expect this corp to be on the receiving end of wardecs before long. Everyone who joins this corp will have negative sec status. Since you're killable by everyone in highsec anyway, the wardecs won't matter.

So what is the point of this corporation--aside from the spiffy logo?

Our Knights have proven that it's quite possible to operate freely across highsec with -5.0 or worse standings. We can travel in pods when we need to move. We can use insta-undock bookmarks to nullify station camps. We can use all manner of scouting and Concord manipulation techniques to get warp-ins on targets and kill them before anyone can respond. We can even seed a healthy market for our Catalysts, within our HQ.

But it is not enough. I would like to expand our scope. I'd like to create an environment in which a group of Knights can fleet up, pick from among many different target systems, and arrive unexpectedly, raining destruction upon the enemies of the Code. In such an environment, our enemies would be even less capable of mounting a defense or adapting to our strikes. We're almost there: Our pods travel quickly from system to system, and the "turbo-priming" technique enables us to prep multiple systems without delay.

There's only one piece missing. Though we're able to seed a healthy market in our HQ, we don't yet have the ability to seed healthy markets in multiple systems at once. Doing so requires smaller stockpiles in many systems, as opposed to one big stockpile in one system. Once you're dealing with smaller stockpiles, the possibility of market manipulation gets in the way (even if it's not intentionally directed against us).

I've received correspondence from a lot of industrialists who are interested in corp contracts. In theory, these contracts allow our providers to sell ships and mods just to us, without third parties being able to buy up the stuff and relist it. Granted, there are limitations. Each individual order needs its own contract, as opposed to the market, where you can sell in bulk and have buyers buy individually.

I've also heard from people who point out the advantages of corporate hangars, with varying levels of access. Trusted Knights could use these to gather stockpiles of equipment and then distribute them to their gang members. There are limitations there, too, since we would need to rent offices, keep the hangars stocked, and deal with security issues.

I'll put in my two cents, and then I'll open up the comments for brainstorming how best to use New Order Logistics to connect our Knights with our suppliers.

My own impression thus far is that the most promising option is to have suppliers use corp contracts for small "packs" of, say, 10 ships and 10 sets of modules. (Sets of Tech II guns should have their own contracts, since they're more expensive.) This would allow our suppliers to supply large numbers of ships/mods with less time and fewer contract slots, but still make the "packs" relatively inexpensive, so a Knight leading a gang could put down 20 million isk, supply the gang, and get reimbursed by other gang members.

I like corp contracts, because a supplier can set it up and refill where the most demand is. Knights wouldn't need to run around to various systems and keep the lower-level hangars stocked. Security issues are also minimal, since an infiltrator would need to buy a bunch of stuff at what is basically a fair market price--as opposed to stealing a bunch of stuff for free. Knights with at least a moderate level of earned trust could join the corp and act as mini-distributors without issue, I think.

Suppliers could, but would not need to, pre-fit the ships. Pre-fit ships make things easier on our gankers, but fitting ships is a lot more convenient these days with saved fittings. I've noticed the fitting of ships is never the bottleneck in ganking operations--it's waiting for a scout to get a good target, or for the 15 minute aggression timer to expire. If a supplier wanted to, he could just select a stack of 10 Catalysts, a stack of 80 guns, etc., and hit "create contract".

Alright, enough from me. What are your thoughts?

8 comments:

  1. Love it!
    This could also be like a corp for all the FCs to join cause if they get the knights to pay them then there is a 0 chance anyone could scam the reimbursement system too. If that makes sense.

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  2. James could put up corona contracts for the packs for any one who has good standings to fill and better he can choose the system the items has to be delivered to.

    Sounds like an awesome idea to get smaller groups of knights in to many more systems concurrently, thus spreading the word further and faster than ever before.

    I believe I'm now in the market for a few catalyst bpos.

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  3. Why not take this a step further.

    Now we are ganking miners undocking from stations getting concorded. Docking.
    Undocking again after 15min. killing miners.
    Docking and waiting 15min.

    We have a lot of gankers ganking the New Order Suiciders we can stop this.

    Lets go stealth.

    I am an ex Suddenly Ninjas member and proud of it. We had Ninja Opses stealing complete missions 4 or 5 at a time and appearing and dissapearing never having to dock in stations and never showing up.

    We can use orca's one orca should be able to carry 7 destroyers. This orca can be parked in a safe spot.
    The orca can give boosts and should have a cloak fitted.

    After the gank every pod should warp to a safe spot. Or have a squad leader squad warping the pods around true safe spots. Until concord agro is gone.

    The Orca could refill with destroyers in this time.

    This way the New Order pilots never show up on a station anymore.

    There are downsides. You need to have standard fittings for the destroyers. Or you need to rename them to the pilots name.

    It would come in handy if there are to many rebels on the field.


    Just as a second option.

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    1. Another option is to have your guy who's seeding the market to seed some choice systems to operate out from. With those systems there you could have knights gank in multiple areas. If they have Orca support, they could strike anywhere.

      The Kamio market has been good with keeping up with the demand of ganking equipment and it has had minimal outsider manipulation. I feel that it can be replicated elsewhere with the same success.

      Also I'm 9 days away from able to fly a Orca. I'll try to get one as soon as possible.

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  4. Gankers can stage out of a station, out of an Orca, or out of a POS.

    A station can be camped, and we inevitably lose a few capsules due to lag or not having proper redock bookmarks. On the other hand, pilots can refit their ships at a moment's notice, and do not have to worry about warping between safespots constantly. There may also be a greater margin for error - if a gank needs to be aborted, pilots can simply warp back to station and dock up.

    I could be wrong about what I'm about to say regarding staging out of an Orca, so I hope others can correct me.

    With an Orca, each pilot needs to fit their ship beforehand and store it - changes cannot be made on-the-fly. They need to wait in space, with the possibility of being probed down. They are committed to a gank as soon as they board their ships, because ejecting from their ships will still cause faction police to destroy them (unless it's possible for the Orca to scoop them back up). The Orca can only store 7 catalysts at a time, so it needs to restock at a station anyways - why not simply have the pilots sitting in station. Finally, I think the main problem is simply that not everyone has an Orca - the Orca pilot may be more helpful as an additional scout.

    A POS is probably not viable for the New Order - it is time-consuming to setup, and gankers are in separate corps/alliances. Goonswarm staged out of POS's for their Gallente ice interdiction, but they were focusing on a smaller set of ice systems.

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    Replies
    1. I agree there seem to be significant downsides to Orca use. Stations are much easier.

      I think the possibility of being probed down is pretty remote. Since there's nothing to do anyway when under GCC you might as well keep an eye on d-scan. No everyone will, but we are a group, so one of us can at least. So long as we stay in a pod-fleet we should be fine; just let the FC move us around to avoid any combat probing. And I think any would-be probers will quickly learn that tracking us down is nigh-well impossible, and they'll stop trying.

      Our biggest problem with stations is just that we are predictable and therefore draw campers, who can pod us if they are competent and we are sloppy. But we can cut down on this a lot by moving around. It took days for the vultures to settle around Kamio. Imagine that we move 10 systems after a gank, perhaps once per day, or even more often. (This should be done as a fleet to get herd safety, and also for purposes of creating a spectacle for random passers-by, which is good P.R..) It would be quite difficult for rebel vultures to know where to go. At the very least they'd have to develop their own intel network.

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  5. It would be nice to be able to have station offices for sharing stuff. On the other hand, this can be expensive, and there is no way to guarantee to low rates.

    We will want a fair number of bases. We should concentrate on ice belts, as we always have, because ice belts are few. But even focusing only on ice, there are still many ice systems -- I count 11 just in the Forge. Several of these are within two jumps of each other, but it would still take 8 bases even accepting one-jump hops. Highsec must have hundreds of ice systems. That is a large number of bases. I don't think the N.O. could afford to have an office in each of 100 stations, at least not for more than a month or two.

    Given that we will lose pods from time to time, I think it is important to for there to be medical facilities in or at least near to N.O. bases. Just something to keep in mind.

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  6. The purpose of New Order Logistics is not to have every Knight be a member. After all, the New Order transcends corps and alliances. palletline courier

    ReplyDelete

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