For CSM7, This Blog is Supporting....

Low sec is fight club. Leave all the empire-building, resource management, brutally blobtastic warfare, and bullshit political drama to those that seek it in 0.0

- Hans Jagerblitzen

As announced on Sovereignty Wars here yesterday, or was it day before yesterday in my timezone, Hans Jagerblitzen (Here are his blog and Twitter links) is running for CSM7 on a High-Sec/Low-Sec/Faction War/Piracy manifesto. I recommend that you head over to Sovereignty Wars and read the open letters from both Hans and Shalee.

After those open letters you can read his post and get his platform document here at his Jita Park Speakers Corner post. Below I've done a quick summary of the platform document which explains why I'm backing Hans.

Overall, Hans said he is to concentrate on high sec and low sec and he has little to add to 0.0 as he is not a resident or expert in those areas. The CSM will be mostly 0.0 power-bloc delegates so they are well represented anyway.

High Sec

CONCORD
Hans proposes that high-sec has a proportional CONCORD responce according to security status. In a 0.5, with the right ship, someone may be able to tank the security responce (whether that be CONCORD or faction police) for a while before being kersplatted. In a 1.0 you'll DIAF if you stare at someone too hard.

As well as security status he suggests some improvements to mining to stop it being mind-numbingly boring and to reduce botting. However, I'm not interested in that!

Bounty Hunting
To counter high-sec ganking, he has some nice suggested changes to the bounty system. What if the bounty is paid as a percentage of cost of multiple ship losses from the target not just a pod which he'll probably do himself with his alt when it gets financially worth it.

War Decs
One of Hans areas I personally don't agree with is increasing wardec costs against hi-sec corps. Not sure this will work. Shadows of the Federation do not war dec 100% carebear corps for shits and giggles, but we DO war dec hi-sec corps (and low-sec and null sec corps and alliances) that bully our friends. How is this going to work? Won't this system to prevent "bullying" also protect the "bullies" and penalize the people who like to "bully" "bullies"?

PvE Fitting verses PvP
Back to something I agree to. PvE combat discourage players from learning PvP fits. If the better AI seen in sleepers and incursions was added to mission and belt rats (obviously would need balancing too) then it might encourage new PvP style fittings rather than just a massive buffer tank and sitting still.

Low-Sec

Low-sec should have rewards to entice hi-sec players in, but not so rewarding that it entices null-sec players. It's a battle zone, and should be developed as such.

GCC
The Global Criminal Countdown should be reduced to 10 minutes. Oh yes! I'd personally go for 5 but Hans said 10.
Rats in low-sec should be the only ones that give you a security status increase. If CONCORD don't change your security status in null sec when killing a neutral, why should they do it when you kill a rat? This will attract more solo and small gang to low-sec. The reward for the risk! What a fantastic idea to get some fighting in low-sec.

Scalable Sec Status
Not sure about some of the idea's here about you cannot drop below -2.0 from going GCC in low-sec. My personal preference was someone's idea based on Jack Dants original that CONCORD are only looking where there are gate/station guns in low-sec. If you are travelling through, or visiting a station, then the gate guns and the GCC mechanic will offer some protection to you. If you are sat in the top belt then there is no GCC and no sec status penalty as you are obviously looking for PvP.

Station Games
Session Change and Re-dock timer should be the same. If you can dock after 20 seconds but are invulnerable for 30 seconds, where is the risk in undocking?
Also in Faction War, if your militia captures the system, the gate guns should fire on the enemy militia as if they were GCC. Plus station services should be compromised if you don't own the system.

Faction War
LP's for plexing. Plexing encourages fighting, LP's would encourage plexing. I think we need to clarify this as offensive plexing only. Defensive plexing would be another LP farm.
Fix the risk-reward balance of faction war missions. Prevent farming of them in cloaky ships. FW missions were supposed to encourage PvP, not for alts to use cloaky ships and hiding whenever a member of the opposing militia shows up!
When doing ANY faction war improvements ask "Will this cause more PvP". That's all we care about.

Pirate Factions
Add the pirate factions to faction war. Could be interesting for the pirate corps to align themselves with one of the factions and fight on their behalf?


So there you have it. I've paraphrased and broken down his 22-page manifesto down to this relatively short post. If he sounds like he's your man, read the full thing here.

Do I agree with everything in there? No I don't. However, as far as I've seen he's the only person concentrating on what matters to me. He freely admits he doesn't know what needs fixing, or how to fix it, in null sec as he doesn't live there. That's what I've been saying on this blog for months. The CSM needs a diverse range of players who spend their Eve time in different areas of the Eve universe doing different things, not just the 0.0 power blocs.

Oh and finally he has some great gaming taste - "X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Privateer, Freespace, and Homeworld were the staple games of my youth."

This is a massive task. The 0.0 power-blocs are going to be tough to beat. Lets face it, the Mitani will be chairman without even any campaigning needed. So.....

Come on you hi-sec industrialists, miners, missioners and traders,
Come on you brave low-sec industrialists and POS owners,
Come on you low-sec militia pilots,
Come on you pirates of low sec who yarrrrrrr daily,
Come on all of you who play, live, fight and die in a fire in Empire space.

Vote Hans Jagerblitzen and lets have a voice on the CSM.

P.S. On a personal note, thanks to all the people who suggested I should run for CSM (I think there were three or so). But lets be serious, who wants Glen Quagmire on the committee. The NEX store would be full of stockings, high-heels, lingerie and stripper poles by the summer...... Giggity!