Saturday, January 5, 2013

The New Order Promo

Agent enterprisePSI sent me a link to another YouTube video he's made for us (you may recall his earlier one). Behold:

The New Order Promo

Something must be in the water (or in the ice). Everyone's getting all artistic these days!

Permanent links to all supporter artwork may be found on the Links page.

Forty-One Billion in Shares Sold

I'm gonna get arthritis from all this hat-tipping. Today we passed three more billion isk marks, thanks to a purchase of 3,100 shares by Saphira Basenjies, who earns a Triple Supreme Protector's Tip of the Hat™. Saphira's purchase is a bit mysterious. She told me that she just started playing EVE about a week ago. So where did all of that isk come from? Ah, but that's not important. What's important is where the isk is going--to an outstanding cause. We're winning highsec!

The Rebels Strike Back, Part 2

Previously, on MinerBumping... Rebel forces have struggled to come up with a coherent plan to counterattack the New Order, which is stomping all over highsec. Rebels have debated many different tactics, but have mostly settled on the strategy of producing large quantities of miner tears.


Alac Carrel jumped at the opportunity to join a rebel fleet. Sadly, the text never came.


Another rebel boldly predicted victory, "when the time is just right". For resistance fighters, these guys can be very picky. The timing is never quite right.


After losing his ship due to a Code violation, Michael Loney recommended his fellow miners petition us to CCP for the crime of scamming.


Despite being as wrong as possible, Michael was absolutely confident about his interpretation of the rules: There's no scamming in EVE, you see. He lectured everyone in system about the finer points of the EULA.


If it only it were possible to bottle up a space lawyer's confidence and sell it.


Kendra Valen didn't think it was against the rules to gank miners, but she had faith that CCP would put a stop to it eventually. As I've always said, this is what carebears want. They're not interested in balancing game mechanics and all that other jazz. They just want highsec to be 100% safe for AFK mining. Oh, and it has to be highly profitable, too.


Meanwhile, Neckbeard TheFierce encouraged others to put a (bigger) bounty on me, though the bounty has had zero effect, since it doesn't make killing an Invincible Stabber any easier--or more tempting, given the bounty formula. I predicted this months ago, but that hasn't stopped the carebears from wasting money on ludicrous bounties for me and Agents of the New Order.


Then there's the phantom nullsec merc corp that never arrives. Part of the problem may be that nullsec mercenaries don't spend much time in highsec. And, to the extent the mercenaries exist, they know a bad deal when they see one.


A rebel sniper proudly trumpeted "his" Catalyst kills, which did nothing since it was Concord that did the work. Since snipers generally can't kill a Catalyst until faction police or Concord arrive, they have no effect on the gank. Even on the rare occasions that they do kill a Catalyst a second or two before the police show up, it shaves only a fraction of the DPS from one Catalyst, which itself represents only a fraction of the gang.

Perhaps that's why after participating in several dozen ganks, I have never actually witnessed rebels successfully prevent a gank. I'm told it's happened before, but basically they sit in the ice fields all day and watch helplessly as the miners die. If they linger too long, however, they occasionally find themselves in the crosshairs.


After seeing one too many ganks succeed despite rebel interference, Corrin Javalle throws up his hands. It's impossible to stop the Knights of the Order. Carebears, behold your champion!


In the end, the rebels have found themselves unable to do anything but cry--and suggest that other people stop us. Why? Because ultimately, the people who oppose us are people who support bots and bot-aspirancy. Their way of life in EVE is all about putting no effort into anything. It's hard to fight when you're AFK.

Those who do want to play EVE end up joining the New Order, where they belong.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Miner Tears Fill a Canvas

Yesterday, I made a post that mentioned Whitehound, a highsec ice miner who went AFK, lost his ship, continued to be AFK, lost his implants, and then wasted a billion isk on an alliance-wide bounty in retaliation. Although it would make far more economic sense to pay 10 million isk per year, he was too blinded by rage to make the right call.

Pablo Picasso famously painted Guernica after a Spanish town was bombed. Whitehound was similarly inspired by the coordinated strike against his ship and pod, but I don't think his work will be as celebrated:


This disturbing piece isn't the first time a rebel has been driven to creating anti-Order propaganda (Heavy Met4l Queen has since recovered). But Whitehound's painting confuses me. Why the "0815"? What's the rationale behind the "Don't Pay" slogan? (All miners should pay.) And why compare me to Adolf Hitler, who is practically my mirror opposite? The New Order are not Nazis, we're the good guys. I would have thought that we had all learned that by now.

Advanced Skill Training: Terror Weapons

A few weeks ago, I posted a skill plan for a Catalyst gank alt. The skill plan charted a course from freshly-minted althood all the way up to those level V gunnery skills you only train when trying to squeeze out the last bit of DPS for your pilot. For some of you, those skills are almost done training. People have asked me, what comes next--if anything?

Before you do anything else, get your Knight's skills close to maximum DPS for a Catalyst. No, I'm not suggesting you train Surgical Strike V or Small Blaster Specialization V; I'm not a monster, as I often remind people. But when you've just about finished running out of ways to enhance your Catalyst's DPS, the only thing left is to train Brutix and Talos skills.

Don't get too excited, now. I'm not announcing a tech II battlecruiser reimbursement plan or any craziness like that. And it will take quite some time before our Knights can fly either of those ships with enough skills to make the cost worth it. But in the future, I would like us to have the capability of forming fleets with massive DPS. Enough to take down an Orca--perhaps even a freighter--under the right conditions.

Two quick points before I list the skills needed. First, people will occasionally say "if we had X Catalysts, we could kill Y". We don't have the manpower (yet). In theory, we could get 25 tech I Catalysts together and affordably destroy big targets. But it's rare to muster such large fleets. Manpower is always the limiting factor. That's where tech II Catalysts come into play and, in the future, perhaps occasionally tech II Brutixes or Taloses. When you look at those killmails from the Goons' freighter-ganking campaign, they used a mix of Taloses, Brutixes, and Catalysts--whatever they needed to use, with the gankers they had available.

Second, Brutixes and Taloses are expensive. One tech II Brutix costs about as much as 30 tech I Catalysts--but does about as much damage as 3 moderately-trained Cats, not 30. Taloses are even more costly. Any operations using these ships would need to be prepared in advance, just to move the hulls into the proper system. Thus, it would be impractical to use them on a regular basis.

Think of these ships, or gank fleets containing these ships, as terror weapons. They're unwieldly and uneconomic, but when used in small doses they can send a powerful message. We may not use them often, but our having the capability would scare the living daylights out of miners across highsec. Naturally, we would maximize the propaganda value of such attacks by saving the killmails and flaunting them in local at every opportunity.

The use of terror weapons is a long way out, but since they take awhile to train, I thought I'd get the word out early. Now let's talk about the training.


The good news is, virtually every skill you train for the gank Catalyst is either a requirement or a very useful skill for the terror weapons. Start by finishing off your Catalyst skills. That means things like Gunnery V, Rapid Firing V, and Surgical Strike IV.

To fit 8 Neutron Blaster IIs, train Hybrid Weapon Rigging II. This reduces the powergrid drawback of your rigs enough to fit the guns. You can leave the midslots empty to save CPU.

Finally, Small Blaster Specialization IV. It's a scummy little skill that gives you 2% extra DPS, and only to tech II guns. But it's a requirement for tech II medium-sized (heavy) blasters.


Just to sit inside a Brutix, you must train Spaceship Command IV, Gallente Frigate IV, Gallente Cruiser III, and Battlecruisers I. No level V skills there, so it goes by quickly.

Some additional skills you'll find useful: Evasive Maneuvering, so you don't take forever to align. Trajectory Analysis to fit tracking computers, and Electronic Warfare to fit ECCM and prevent faction police from jamming you. I haven't worked out the midslots on Brutixes yet; that will come in time.

There's a fitting issue when it comes to Brutixes with a full rack of Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs. At first I thought we'd need to get Advanced Weapon Upgrades, which requires training Weapon Upgrades V. But then I noticed that the stacking penalties on the damage mods are so great that the fifth one will give you less than 1% extra damage. To heck with it. Fit a Reactor Control Unit I instead. It's ugly, but it works. Train Energy Grid Upgrades II to fit the module. If you want to squeeze out extra DPS, put your training time elsewhere, like tech II drones, as opposed to freeing up the powergrid.


Ugh. Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs require Motion Prediction IV, which is no problem. But they also require Medium Hybrid Turret V, which will take up the bulk of your training time. After that you can train Medium Blaster Specialization, which lets you fit the guns.

Lastly, drones. Only a small fraction of your DPS will come from drones, but it's just enough to make it necessary. Since a tech II Brutix only does a few hundred more DPS than a tech II Catalyst, adding that extra 100+ DPS from drones can't be passed up.

Carry 5 Hammerhead Is or Hammerhead IIs. Training Drones V lets you deploy 5 drones, plus it allows you to train Drone Interfacing, which gives you an additional 20% drone damage per level. (Thankfully, Drones is a rank 1 skill.) Combat Drone Operation will give you 5% per level, too.

Hammerheads require at least Scout Drone Operation I. To go tech II, which will give an additional 30% or so drone damage, you would train Scout Drone Operation V. Luckily, this is also a rank 1 skill. Training it gives you access to Gallente Drone Specialization II, the prerequisite for Hammerhead IIs.

I would say train tech II drones last, since they're a help but can be done without.


A tech II Talos costs around 130 million isk and does over 1,400 DPS. I'd much rather have four well-trained tech I Catalysts for 8 million isk total. But the point of the terror weapons is essentially to inflate the size of the fleet without getting extra pilots. Aside from cost, the bad news about Taloses is that they take a long time to train. The good news is that the requirements of a tech II Brutix and tech II Catalyst completely overlap the Talos requirements.

The only extra skill to get into the Talos hull is Battlecruisers III, but you should have trained Battlecruisers IV already.


The list of requirements for the Neutron Blaster Cannon IIs may make you want to vomit. This is natural. But you can subtract from that training time all of the training time you spent on Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs for the Brutix. Following the earlier pattern, you start with Medium Blaster Specialization IV to finish off the medium-sized weapon skills.

Next, all you need are Motion Prediction V and Large Hybrid Turret V to gain access to Large Blaster Specialization, which lets you fit tech II large blasters. Just a couple skills, how long could that take? About a month on top of everything else.

The Brutix skills, too, will take around a month to train. Many Knights will not be able to take that much training time away from their mains, so it's clearly not for everyone. But if you have nothing better to do train, you can get it started.

Once again, the use of terror weapons will not (and cannot) be an everyday occurrence. Plans for their use are in the very early stages. But when the time comes, they may give our misguided Code-violating friends some fodder for the horror stories that they share around the campfire.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Code Meets CODEdot

'Twas another leisurely day in the domain of the New Order, otherwise known as highsec. A group of Knights and I responded to a routine call about an unlicensed miner in Ardallabier, next door to Brapelille.


The offender, Whitehound, was forced to hand over his Mackinaw to the outer darkness. He had just enough tank on his ship to avoid being podded before Concord arrived. However, Whitehound was a truly AFK miner. In his bot-aspirancy, he didn't even notice he had lost his ship. So his pod just sat there in the belt.


Seven minutes later, still idling in defiance of the Code, Whitehound's capsule was sent home. Agent Wescro2 was in charge of delivery. More than 800 million isk worth of implants was lost. Oddly, most of these implants were combat-related. I guess Whitehound was another one of those dangerous pirates who mines all day.


I tried to send him the standard termination notice so that we could help him get into compliance, but I was already blocked!


After Whitehound finally returned to his keyboard, I received an interesting notification, which I reported to the crew.


In his rage, Whitehound placed a one billion isk bounty on our alliance.


According to EVE's bounty office, this made us subject to the fifth-largest alliance bounty in the game.


Other Knights who weren't members of the alliance were also given bounties by Whitehound.


His revenge assured, Whitehound took his leave of the system to go pick up some ice.


New Order Logistics had only been part of CODE. alliance for one day, and we were already pulling our weight. But what is this CODE. alliance, anyway?


CODE., one of the few alliances whose name is identical to its alliance ticker, is not run by me. It is the brainchild of Aria Stane and admiral root, who were already having fun wardeccing people with the Zantiu-Braun Alliance. They decided to create an alliance with the New Order "brand", if you will, on the theory that it would help attract incoming wardecs. Receiving wardecs is better than issuing them since it's free, and the aggressors can't call in allies.

I was happy to have New Order Logistics join their alliance and hopefully contribute some infamy. The corp's inclusion in the alliance does not actually change anything about the way we operate; since Knights are at -5.0 anyway, wardecs don't matter to us. Nor are there any security issues, since we still use our regular channels of communication.

I asked admiral root for some information about CODE. to assist them in their recruitment efforts. Unlike the New Order itself, which is more universal in its aims, CODE. will use a traditional model of recruitment, and will be based around highsec wardecs.

Their corporation in the alliance is Tolerancia Nihilum. They have not yet finalized the minimum requirements for admission, but have a list of four contacts, if anyone is interested in joining: Aria Stane, admiral root, thadyus, and eleq trizi't.

Judging by Whitehound's reaction, the association of their alliance with the New Order is already having the desired effect.

The New Math


Every other day, a new "hero" appears on the scene, declaring that he will save the miners.


These false saviours can do little more than stand and watch as our brave soldiers destroy the wicked bots and bot-aspirants.


Twitchy McTwitch learned a harsh truth about game mechanics and about the Knights of the Order. Our battles are always brief, but eventful. It's hard to intervene. In Twitchy's defense, Moratio Hita was probably AFK, which makes it difficult to call for help.


Nothing wakes up an AFK miner quite like having his ship go boom.


Moratio declared himself a dangerous rogue--someone you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley of lowsec. Much to his surprise, the New Order Agents he threatened had heard it all before.


It's funny, isn't it? You'd never suspect that everyone mining in the ice field is a fearsome pirate.


Moratio protested that he wasn't really AFK, he was just busy doing homework.


Agent NoseCandy tried to teach him a thing or two about arithmetic. Apparently math isn't Moratio's best subject.


He vowed revenge. What horrors would his "main" unleash? Had the New Order finally met its match?


Moratio chose not to unveil his main just yet. Instead, he decided to go the more popular route and whine in local about our cowardice. He couldn't be further from the truth--the New Order walks all over highsec each day with growing confidence!