CCP Announces the Candidates for CSM16

The drive to the CSM16 election continues.

CSM16 is approaching

Yesterday CCP hit another checkpoint in the run up to the CSM16 election when CCP Dopamine and CCP Swift did a live stream announcing the candidates who made it through the vetting process and will be on the ballot come June.

In total 47 candidates made the cut, which is up from the 40 who were on the ballot for the CSM15 election.  Here are all of their in-game portraits.

The candidate field for CSM16

As I did last year, I will list them all out alphabetically with a link to their campaign thread and their alliance or corp affiliation.  The portraits above are in the order of the list below.  CCP has their own list with trading card like summaries should you prefer that.  It is also in alphabetical order.

The List

1. Angry Mustache – Goonswarm Federation
2. Arsia Elkin – Electus Matari
3. Baculus Orden – Goonswarm Federation
4. Brisc Rubal – The Initiative
5. Broodin – Goonswarm Federation
6. Dr Spodumain – ISK.Enterprises
7. Dutchgunner – Arataka Research Consortium
8. Eluwein – Hole Control
9. Evie Kouvo – Wingspan Delivery Network
10. Gay Pride Booooom – Novus Ordo
11. Gobbins – Pandemic Horde
12. Hurleyalex hurley – Test Alliance Please Ignore
13. I Beast – Method Synergy
14. Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
15. Jim Halescott – The Scope
16. Jurius Doctor – Nullsechnaya Sholupen
17. Kay-lynn Tsero – Tsundere Triad
18. Kenneth Feld – Pandemic Legion
19. Knockerwrench Alduin – Black Wolves
20. Lucrative Business Opportunity – The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
21. Maldavius – Stribog Clade
22. Mantis Akiga – Red Alliance
23. Mark Resurrectus – Turbofeed or Glory
24. Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
25. Micromancer – Goonswarm Federation
26. Mike Azariah – The Scope
27. Phantomite – No Handlebars
28. Progodlegend – Test Alliance Please Ignore
29. Reicher514 – Pandemic Horde
30. Rheaha Preynar – Free Range Chikuns
31. Rich Richman – Plucky Adventurers
32. Rixx Javix – A Band Apart
33. Robert Downey Iron – Unreal Alliance
34. RonUSMC – Test Alliance Please Ignore
35. Seddow – Dreadbomb
36. Shui Jing Jing – Caput Draconis
37. Stitch Kaneland – The Tuskers Co.
38. Styxx – D.A.R.K.
39. Suitonia – We Form V0lta
40. Tdor Clau – Test Alliance Please Ignore
41. Teddy Gbyc – Outfoxed
42. Uriel Paradisi Anteovnuecci – Arataka Research Consortium
43. Vily – Test Alliance Please Ignore
44. White Orchid – We Form V0lta
45. Winzentowitsch Madeveda – PARABELLUM
46. Xenuria – Goonswarm Federation
47. Xeromus Plague – Interstellar Triglavian Collective

That is a lot of people, so let me try to break them out into groups to make the list more easily digestible and maybe make finding your ideal candidate a bit easier.

Incumbents

Eight of the ten current members of CSM15 are running for re-election.  They are:

• Brisc Rubal – The Initiative
• Gobbins – Pandemic Horde
• Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
• Kenneth Feld – Pandemic Legion
• Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
• Mike Azariah – The Scope
• Phantomite – No Handlebars
• Vily – Test Alliance Please Ignore

Of that list, Gobbins, Innominate, Merkelchen, and Vily are all running for their third consecutive term, which will disqualify them from running again for a spot on CSM17, as term limits allowing only three consecutive terms were introduced as part of the CSM15 race.

Sov Null Sec

22 of the 47 candidates in the race hail from organizations that hold sovereignty in null sec.  They are:

1. Angry Mustache – Goonswarm Federation
2. Baculus Orden – Goonswarm Federation
3. Brisc Rubal – The Initiative
4. Broodin – Goonswarm Federation
5. Gobbins – Pandemic Horde
6. Hurleyalex hurley – Test Alliance Please Ignore
7. Innominate – Goonswarm Federation
8. Jurius Doctor – Nullsechnaya Sholupen
9. Kenneth Feld – Pandemic Legion
10. Mantis Akiga – Red Alliance
11. Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation
12. Micromancer – Goonswarm Federation
13. Progodlegend – Test Alliance Please Ignore
14. Reicher514 – Pandemic Horde
15. Robert Downey Iron – Unreal Alliance
16. RonUSMC – Test Alliance Please Ignore
17. Seddow – Dreadbomb
18. Suitonia – We Form Volta
19. Tdor Clau – Test Alliance Please Ignore
20. Vily – Test Alliance Please Ignore
21. White Orchid – We Form Volta
22. Xenuria – Goonswarm Federation

Sov null candidates tend to do well when it comes to being represented on the CSM as they belong to organized groups that harness their power to aim votes at candidates that represent their values.

That said, there are only 10 seats up for grabs and even the largest alliance in the game, Goonswarm Federation, only has the numbers to get 2 or 3 of its candidates on the council.  Their electoral power also makes outsiders less likely to vote for them.  There are 7 Goons running, so 4 or 5 of them are likely going home disappointed unless they have a constituency outside of the alliance or coalition.  The other big alliances are good for 1, possibly 2 seats, depending on how well the coordinate with their allies.

Brisc Rubal is perhaps the only stand-out on this list as somebody who has constituency outside of his coalition.  Having dual Initiative-Goon citizenship and likely to be in the third spot on the Imperium ballot, he has a decent shot of returning to the council.

The alliance ballots will be interesting this year.  With World War Bee still raging almost 11 months now, there are hard feelings all around and I doubt we’ll see, for example, Vily appearing on the Imperium ballot because we can “work with him” this year.

Small Gang / Low sec / Faction Warfare

There are 7 candidates in what I grouped up the combat oriented, mostly low sec focused tribe.  That includes one incumbent.

• Lucrative Business Opportunity – The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
• Phantomite – No Handlebars
• Rheaha Preynar – Free Range Chickuns
• Rixx Javix – A Band Apart
• Rich Richman – Plucky Adventurers
• Stitch Kaneland – The Tuskers Co.
• Styxx – D.A.R.K.

Lore  /  Triglavian

This is kind of an odd group which I imagine, in another year, might look like low sec players.  But then the Pochven region got carved out of New Eden by the Triglavians.  This group has an affinity for that and the lore around it.

• Arsia Elkin – Electus Matari Pochven
• Dutchgunner – Arataka Research Consortium
• Kay-lynn Tsero – Tsundere Triad
• Maldavius – Stribog Clade
• Uriel Paradisi Anteovnuecci – Arataka Research Consortium
• Xeromus Plague – Interstellar Triglavian Collective

Wormholes

There are five candidates that appear to spend much or most of their time in wormhole space.

• Eluwein – Hole Control
• Evie Kouvo – Wingspan Delivery Network
• Mark Resurrectus – Turbofeed or Glory
• Teddy Gbyc – Outfoxed
• Winzentowitsch Madeveda – PARABELLUM

High Sec / Industry / Mining

There are three candidates that seem to fit into this category, including incumbent Mike Azariah.

• Knockerwrench Alduin – Black Wolves
• Mike Azariah – The Scope
• Shui Jing Jing – Caput Draconis

High Sec Ganking

And, finally, the record and statements of two candidates indicate that they just want to blow you up and CONCORD be damned.

• Gay Pride Booooom – Novus Ordo
• I Beast – Method Synergy

Early Projections

I am very bad at projecting winners in advance as my track record will attest, yet here I am again.   As in real life, I wouldn’t bet against most if not all of the incumbents who are running from being returned to the CSM.  They have proven they have an constituency.  I think Innominate, Kenneth Feld, Merkelchen, Gobbins, and Vily are all almost guaranteed to return to the council.

Brisc Rubal and Phantomite are also strong candidates, though they also have obstacles.  With World War Bee on and Brisc on the Meta Show every week, he might have polarized some of his past constituents against him.  He’ll need more Goon votes being passed down from Innominate and Merkelchen than he has in the past.

On the other hand, there being a war on means that the null sec groups have a lot more active and (somewhat) motivated players.  That could push their usual organizational advantage further than the last election.  Maybe they get 8 seats?  Maybe Brisc in the first round? (Assuming he gets third spot on the Imperium ballot.)

Meanwhile, Phantomite faces a possibly bigger name in Low Sec than his own when it comes to Rixx Javix, though Rixx comes with his own baggage.  And then there is Stitch Stitch Kaneland from Tuskers, who is not to be dismissed.  A split vote may keep them all from being winners in the early STV rounds, though if they can coordinate ballots, the bleed off from the others may elect one of them.  Like many things in New Eden, working with others often gets you further than trying to do it all yourself.

And then there are the wormholers.  Will they get their act together this year?  Maybe?

So let me get my early, and likely bad, prediction in now and say the results could look like this:

1. Vily
2. Innominate
3. Gobbins
4. Merkelchen
5. Kenneth Feld
6. Phantomite or Rixx Javix
7. *wildcard*
8. Mike Azariah
9. Whoever is second on the TEST/Legacy ballot
10. Brisc Rubal, ahead of 11th by less than 100 votes

Voting

Voting commences after downtime on June 1, 2021, and closes at downtime on June 8, 2021, giving people seven days to cast their ballots.

The results will be announced on June 12, 2021.  We will see if that gives the community team enough time to come up with another animated representation of the STV process in action.

Rebuffed Again in X-7OMU

We had another op out of Cloud Ring run last night.  The ping popped up as I was sitting down, so I logged right in and got in the fleet.  We were once again headed out in Sacrileges, so I went with the logi wing in my Guardian.  As we were getting ready I stepped away for a minute, got distracted, and when I got back I heard the FC, Kocicek, telling us to align for the Ansiblex.  I quickly hit the undock button and got out just in time to pick up the warp and follow the fleet, jumping through not too far behind.  By the next gate I was caught up.

Sac fleet outbound

We took the same route we took the other day after the move op, heading up to 6RCQ and into Pure Blind.  It was gate, Ansiblex, gate, and so on until we hit our first waypoint, KLY-C0.  There an armor timer was coming out on a Pandemic Horde Raitaru, which we formed up and shot, sending it to the final timer.

Just a blob of us flying around

That done, we warped off to a Fortizar of our own and met up with a titan who quickly bridged us off to our next destination, X-7OMU.

Off we go

There again.  That was where we had a tough time after the move op, and PanFam and the locals were formed up and waiting for us again, with Abaddons and Muninns and capital support, again.  This was another armor timer, thus not the final fight for the structure, so I suppose there was some question as to whether they would show up.  Question answered.

We got on grid with the Astrahus, as we did back on Saturday, and started putting damage on it as the time came out.

Circling the Astrahus

Unlike the last fight, where we left the citadel grid to take the fight elsewhere, this time we stuck it out.  It did not go well.  The gunner on the Astrahus was throwing a mix of damage and void bombs at us, the latter which can disrupt even cap chaining Guardians.  The void bomb hits and your capacitor is suddenly empty to the point that your cap transfer modules turn off and if you’re not paying attention you can find yourself drained and falling behind.

Meanwhile the damage bombs were keeping everybody broadcasting while the web on the Astrahus was on our anchor to slow us down, though we kept swapping anchors in order to mitigate that.  And then the hostile fleets came out to get us.  Things seemed to fall apart about then, though I was very busy following broadcasts for damage.

At one point Kocicek warped us and I caught the warp just as an interdictor bubbled the fleet, so I was alone until I could turn around and warp back to the fleet with a couple other ships that happened to be as quick to align as I.  That broke the cap chain where I was until I got back in range, by which time one of my cap buddies was down, as were two of the alternate anchors.

Kocicek told us to starburst as a bubble went up and warp to a safe.  I was getting yellow boxed as that happened, but had quickly scooted out of the bubble that was on us and was warping off as damage began to hit.  I was going to get away.

Almost on my way out… just pixels left on that align bar…

And then another bubble went up and I was just inside of it, cancelling my warp.  I scooted out of that, overheated my hardeners, and set myself to warp once more.  Damage was landing and I had to move to align and things looked pretty dicey for a bit there.  And the warp drive kicked in and I was off.

The hull is still half full, right?

I had warped to a planet, but wanted to get away from there, so warped to another in order to make at least a mid-point bookmark.  But X-7OMU is one of those huge systems and I fell out of warp before I made it to my destination, my capacitor drained.

So there I was, wandering at a mid-point in the system, halfway into my structure, heat damage on my lowers (and no nanite repair paste, I seemed to have forgotten it), and not really in any shape to do anything but hide.  However, Kocicek spoke up and told us to warp to him when he said to… so I got that up and ready to click… and he said “Warp to me…” and I was off.  And then he counted down from three, so I landed way off from him, but still on grid and close enough to get the fleet warp that pulled us all off to the J-CIJV gate, where we jumped out of the system.

An unguarded way out

We went from there to G95-VZ where we tethered up on yet another Fortizar we have hanging around the region and the repair function slowly took care of my hull, armor, shields, and heat damage.

Repairing on the Fort

From there the way home was pretty straightforward.  Once everybody was ready we made our way back to the end of the Ansiblex network and headed back to Cloud Ring from whence we had started.

Back in the Cloud Ring nebula

The fight, such that it was, did not go well for us.  The battle report, which looks incomplete to me… though if you don’t get on a kill you don’t appear on the list and we got precious few kills… shows us taking a pasting for very little gain.  We lost the objective and over 100 ships for only 9 real kills.

Battle Report Header – Click to Enlarge

But we cannot win them all.  Mistakes were made, ships were lost, and hopefully some lessons were learned, as I am sure we will be back again.

During the fight I did see Riverini get called as a target, one of the few I I recall coming up.  The experience of the fight was invigorating enough that he actually wrote about in on EN24, his first post in quite a while.  There was also a short AAR on Reddit, again highlighting that this was not a shining moment for the Imperium.

MER – Did Mining and Bounties Go Down?

So the previous two posts I have done about the EVE Online Monthly Economic Report were specifically to call out baseline numbers against which to measure the changes CCP made in March and April updates.

Last week we got the April MER so we can see if anything changed.  I began in February with NPC bounties, the biggest faucet in the game, so I will start there to see what happened.

Actually, even with the March report NPC bounties seemed to be going down, and the Top Sinks and Faucets chart seems to bear that out, that bounties were down.

April 2019 – Top Sinks and Faucets over time

The looks… promising.  Numbers were down a lot in March as the update changed anomaly spawn times, continuing in April as that update hit fighter damage application to subcaps and the VNI got reeled back in a bit.

April 2019 – ISK Sinks and Faucets

The Sinks and Faucets chart for April shows NPC bounties ringing in at 57.2 trillion ISK, which is down from the almost 70 trillion ISK in bounties paid out back in February.  The listing of bounties by region also shows some decreases.

April 2019 – NPC Bounties by Region

In Delve, the benchmark region that is always at the top of the list, NPC bounties were down by almost 3 trillion ISK in April when compared to the February numbers.  Branch, however, was up over the same period of time and, at 6.7 trillion ISK in bounties, appears to be racing to catch up to Delve.  So while there were fluctuations in the bounties across regions, it wasn’t universally down even if April rang in at only 82% of the February overall numbers.

That is a lot, but might be accounted for, at least in part, by other factors.  And, of course, the question remains as to whether or not that was enough of a drop?

And then there is mining.  Nerfs for that went in with the April update, specifically the yield of excavator drones, as well as some changes to the dynamics of Rorquals and their drones.  I highlighted the data from the March MER to give a before picture.

The initial chart looks pretty positive that this change had some impact.

April 2019 – Mining Value by Region

Delve, ever my benchmark region for economic excesses, was down considerably.  The March report showed 13.5 trillion ISK worth of ore mined in the region, while in April that number was down to 9.8 trillion ISK.  Going to the raw data to get the totals for all of New Eden showed the following:

• Feb mining –  56.1 trillion ISK
• Mar mining – 58.9 trillion ISK
• Apr mining – 46.3 trillion ISK

With April ringing in at less than 80% of the March totals, it looks like there was some impact.

April 2019 – Economic Indices

Mineral pricing remained fairly flat in April.  That means that the decrease in the value of mined ore wasn’t due to a drop in mineral pricing.  However, it also seems to mean that the flow of ore was not stemmed sufficiently for demand to cause prices to rise.

So, as with the NPC bounties, we are left to wonder if there was enough of a correct to have any substantive impact on the overall economy of New Eden. (I also wonder about a couple of discrepancies in the data. Depending on which spreadsheet I pull data from, bounties may have been a bit higher and mining a bit lower.)

Next month the report for May should show some additional changes in output for both bounties and mining.  As I noted yesterday, the Imperium is deploying for a war and has started moving north en masse.  This means that the defensive umbrella in Delve will be mostly absent, save for a structure killing subcap fleet.  Smart Imperium pilots won’t venture out to rat and mine, while the ignorant or oblivious will be targets for hunters who will no doubt flock to the region in search of easy prey.

When the biggest producing region in New Eden goes on a road trip, the numbers are bound to fall, which will give me something to look at when the May report shows up.

 

Vacation in Venal

Asher pinged to warn us that we would be moving.

The question was where.  Where would we be heading after Pure Blind?

We have been in Pure Blind for a while.  There have been a couple of short breaks, but we have been deployed up there since November at least.  However, once Pandemic Horde moved on from Fade to Geminate and people started sensing blood in the water when it came to Guardians of the Galaxy, things have started to get a bit more crowded.  Adding to us and the TNT deployment near another corner of Pure Blind, The Initiative has become a lot more active coming in from Fountain through Cloud Ring, with FedUp joining them, and Space Violence, anther Imperium group, chose to deploy into the middle of Pure Blind as well.

All those Imperium pilots roaming around the area has attracted the attention of GotG’s neighbors.  NCDot had deployed to Gehi to threaten Querios in the hope that it would make us pull back our groups in the north, but the Imperium has proven to be big enough to have mainfleet ops running to defend Queious without needing to call anybody back.  So NCDot has also been drawn into supporting GotG direction in the north.

And then there is Pandemic Legion.  They had been occupied since February attacking Providence.  Having pushed back ProviBloc and ground down their sovereignty slowly week after week, PL up and withdrew when TEST declared they were deploying to the area specifically to fight them.  ProviBloc quickly regained their territory.

Providence changed over the course of a week

That meant PL was back in the north looking for something to do as well.  With all those forces mixed about us, our small fleets seemed less likely to be effective.  Or so I gathered from Asher’s ping.

We did not know where we would be headed, or most of us did not.  The best way to broadcast intel to your enemies is to make it widely known among your friends, some of whom are no doubt spies.  All most of us knew was that all of us would be going and we would be hauling along all doctrines.  That meant capitals going as well, which helped some as the caps could carry extra ships for people in their ship maintenance bays. (CCP adding those to dreadnoughts a while back boosted deployment hauling potential significantly.)

After handing over a few ships to cap pilots to haul, I got my main in an Oneiros for the trip and my alt in a stealth bomber to haul that along as well.  When things finally came together we undocked to begin our journey, which was estimated to take us about an hour.

Combined fleet undocking for the move

Bombers went to hang out on a black ops battleship on a citadel, the rest of the sub caps loitered on the undock as the capitals were undocked and jumped to their first mid-point.  It was without a station, so they had to land, warp off to make safes, then cloak up to wait out their timer.  Meanwhile, the main subcap fleet aligned out to catch up with the capitals in order to cover them for their next jump, leaving the bombers behind.  But we ran into trouble almost right away.  The locals had heard about our move op and dropped supers and subcaps on us as we jumped through the first gate.

A local welcoming committee

We got away from that with only two ships lost, but it was an indication that our move might be eventful.  We bounced around to get away and when the drop cleared out we ended up back where we started.  We actually stood down for a while to let the hostiles clear out.  The caps were safe down the road, but people were trying to scan them down.

Eventually that cooled down and the subcaps were able to move out and catch up to the capitals, then move ahead to the next mid point, which had a station for them to dock up.   The bombers were sent along as well.  The caps were able to jump again and the subcaps ran along to our final destination, which turned out to be deep in Venal.

I hadn’t been to Venal since early in the Casino War.  It is an NPC held section of null sec, owned by the Guristas pirate faction, and follows the design philosophy of an past era.  It is a region consisting of 95 systems, but it only has five NPC stations in it, so there are not a lot of truly safe locations there.  But it is also in the center of the north.  If you like EVE Online donut metaphors, if the north is a donut (blue or otherwise) then venal is the hole in the middle.

Venal in the North

While none of the stations in Venal are particularly handy, if you don’t mind a few gates between yourself and the locals the region gives you access to quite a bit of the north.  Black Legion used to use Venal for this back when we lived in the north.  For us the likely target seemed to be Branch, where GotG has been able to rat and mine in relative peace for while we have been active in Fade, Pure Blind, and Tribute.  And so we settled in to our new home.

A Guristas Station in Venal

Well, we settled in once we got the bombers caught up.  Somehow they got left behind without a black ops battleship so one had to be cyno’d back in to jump us to our destination.

But once that was done we were able to settle in and start operating from our new location.

Undocking from the new station, Guristas logo visible

From there ops started rolling for targets of opportunity.  While waiting around for opportunities there were a few things locally to shoot.  There are towers and citadels hanging about for us to hit.

Following Asher around on a shoot

So we quickly got on the board with a couple of easy kills.

A POS module goes up, just because I like the picture

But juicer targets await.

GotG, learning of our change of location, packed up and deployed to counter our threat.  Never mind that of the groups deployed in and around Pure Blind represented much larger numbers, we were apparently the threat.  Or maybe we seemed like a manageable target.  Or perhaps they really were worried about their as yet unmolested ratting and mining space.

My Oneiros, lit by the destruction of a POS

This led to a particularly dramatic fight, which I totally missed.  It was on Saturday night and I was at home and not doing anything in particular.  But I wasn’t at my computer and so I did not see the pings for it until The Mittani was smug pinging about it.

We managed to catch and drop on Sort Dragon as he was moving his titan to the GotG staging in WLF-D3.  Sort is the leader of GotG, so this was a particularly satisfying kill.  The clash also saw another titan killed with the ISK war leaning well in our favor.

Battle Report Header

I am extremely bummed that I missed this fight, all the more so as I was home and could have easily joined in.  Ah well, I can’t be there for everything.  But this certainly did make for an auspicious start to our time in Venal.

More information on that battle:

• Imperium News Report about the Ambush
• Battle Report
• Reddit Post showing Sort’s Location

Other posts related to the situation in the north:

• Talking in Stations summary
• Imperium News on the latest GotG Defection
• New Eden Report and the State of the North through May 15
• New Eden Report and how GotG is screwing their line members on ship prices

Honest Trailers – Aliens

With the launch of Alien: Conevant, another entry in the Alien franchise, which stopped being great after the first two movies, Honest Trailers went back and took a look at the second of the two entries worth seeing, Aliens.

 

If I recall right, I saw this with Potshot in a theater in Fairfield back in 1986.

Of course, if you’re not a fan Cinema Sins decided to nitpick Aliens as well this week.