Fireside Chat Transcript 8 Feb 2k20

Blade Runner 2049, just like shameless plug, Blade Runner 2049 is like one of the best
movies I've ever seen just like in terms of like things that bitens like, if you care
about that crap.
Blade Runner 2049 is like literally the only movie I have gone out of my way to see a second
time by myself in the theater.
I was just like, this is so amazing, I'm just gonna go by myself and just watch it again
in IMAX because it's that awesome.
It's beautifully shot, it's amazing to look at.
God, it's just a work of fucking art, like the way that the soundscape itself, like they
managed to make the sound part of the oppression, like watching Blade Runner 2049, it's not
necessarily fun, but it's just like, it's a, it's like a thing that happens to you.
Anyway, so I have very high hopes for the new Dune movie because D'Lisville knew how
to fuck your pronouncer's name because my French still sucks.
And we are basically living in like the prequel to a fucking Blade Runner movie right now.
So it's basically a question of whether we go further from Blade Runner into Mad Max
or whether we turn this thing around and figure out how to get to Star Trek, but that's neither
here nor there.
We're going to talk about some internet spaceships today.
I'm not really a big Star Trek guy myself, but my model for that kind of future is more
of the culture novels from Ian Banks, which is also why I have named all of my Necromunda
dudes in my little 40K skirmish game I'm playing here in Madison after culture vessels.
Because I'm a fucking nerd.
Yeah, I literally have like a subjugator sergeant named Sergeant.
Now we try it my way.
Good call, sir.
I'm a fucking nerd.
All right.
So, the first of the issues that we have in this organization is homeland defense and
rules and regulations and order, goddammit.
I refer to the Imperium as the state, unironically, on a pretty regular basis.
And as EVE has changed, we have of course had to update how we manage defense, our markets,
basically everything.
And one of those things that had to change after the Drifter attack and the blackout
was we implemented all these PVE regulations.
Like, if you're gonna be in the Delve umbrella, if you can see the Emperor's Light in the
Astronomicon and be protected by our warriors who are constantly dropping what they're doing
to bail out Orc walls and bail out supers who have been attacked under the umbrella,
you need to have certain fits.
You have to be at least vaguely willing to obey the rules in order to enjoy the protections
that we provide in Delve.
However, this was controversial.
You know, one of the things about the PVE regulations is that at a fundamental level,
we now have far more restrictions on how and how you can fit your ships and where you can
use your ships in the PVE sense within Delve than we do in the actual fleet doctrines.
And this is a herd immunity thing.
It's a mutual defense thing.
Like if everybody's Orc wall is fit correctly, it means that essentially every Orc wall becomes
part of the first step in a counter ambush, in a trap.
Every Orc wall becomes a Q ship, as it were, if we're making World War II analogies.
However, there are a lot of our dudes who are like high speed, low drag guys that are
like, well, I want to, you know, I can, you know, watch my own back.
I want to fit my Orc wall in a way that has no tank on it.
I want to just go with the Nix out there and just put a whole bunch of DDAs on it and,
you know, fuck you, dad, you can't tell me what to do.
So this is actually like a really fucked to me a funny story.
So we have actually had a couple of problems since the whole blackout thing, the drifter
thing and the PDE doctrines regulations.
One of those problems, of course, is that the people who are dying stupidly that are
not obeying the rules are incredibly frustrating for the homeland defense guys.
They're like busting their ass.
They're dropping what they're doing to like to try to save some motherfucker that is not
obeying the fucking clearly stated rules after they have been told to obey the clearly stated
rules.
And this causes a lot of morale burnout.
It causes a lot of issue and things like that.
That's one problem is burnout of our of our heroes and homeland defense.
And every single one of you who has ever been on a homeland defense op to bail out some
motherfucker who did not obey the rules.
I am sorry you have had to go through that.
It is so fucking frustrating.
And I understand that.
So that's one problem.
Paradoxically, the other problem is that everybody who is obeying the rules is doing such a fucking
good job of it that we really aren't losing that much stuff anymore.
Right.
So the people who are losing things are typically the people that are breaking the rules.
Sometimes we do have losses that are like legitimate, like we didn't get there in time.
But now, most of the people that we're seeing losses for are people that are not, you know,
with the fucking program.
And why is this a problem?
Like why is it bad that we're not really experiencing losses?
Well, we're actually having an impact on our economy because we certainly we actually need
a certain amount of people to like lose ships in order to make it valuable enough for the
producers to make things like there is a comfortable attrition rate.
To keep the economy going, that's around, you know, I don't know, somewhere between
like five to 10 percent per month.
Right.
So Merkel Jen brought to me just like this this fucking beautiful idea on a platter earlier.
And I'm like, oh, my God, this solves so many problems, which is basically this.
We are declaring the floodplain regions.
We are rebranding the floodplain regions, those being querious and period basis, though
for now, this only applies to period basis.
We are rebranding them.
We're not going to call them floodplains anymore.
They are the off delve colonies.
And we are inviting you to make a new life in the off delve colonies.
If you are one of those people that thinks that you do not need a defense fleet, that
you are you feel oppressed by the regulations of order, God damn it, within delve and within
the super cap umbrella, none of the fitting rules or any of that shit now applies in period
basis.
You are invited to and this is only for routing and mining freedom, as Tuzzy points out, it's
got nothing to do with moons.
If you try to like Bogart moons, which the state controls through our various systems,
don't do that.
It would be bad.
But you can fucking go down a period basis and we don't care with the understanding that
you will probably die one to you will probably drag the hunters who would otherwise be in
delve down to period basis because we're now saying, hey, guys, what if I can go out for
people and do it in period basis?
We're not going to defend them.
Go nuts.
That will get our loss rates up a bit.
And also the people that are not obeying the rules can be exiled to fucking space Siberia
if we feel like it and say, you know what, you've you've just lost too many rock walls
without actually learning.
You clearly haven't learned from the fine.
So we're going to send you and or your entire corporation to fucking the off delve colonies
to do to exile you for like a month until you fucking learn.
So basically, the offworld colonies are an opportunity for you to strike it rich, because
if you and your friends think that you can defend yourselves outside of the grace of
the emperor's light and the and the space umbrella, you know, the our actual, you know,
defensive network within delve, if you want to go off like a fucking 40K analogies here,
guys, I'm sorry, but we want to be like a fucking rogue trader and go into the far outer
reaches seeking your fortune.
You can do it because period basis is a really rich region and we are not going to defend
you, but you can just fucking go nuts with routing.
And also, if you're a shitbag and you don't obey the rules, we might just fucking exile
you there if you don't figure it out.
So either riches or hard labor in the gulags take your pick.
But period basis is now our first off delve colony and this is effective immediately.
So one of the other things we're hoping about here is that for people who do want to operate
within system and circle umbrella within delve, this will draw off a bunch of the hunters
to period basis where they now know very publicly open season and hopefully make life a little
bit easier and also raise ADMs in period basis.
And we're just going to see what happens, but that's what it is.
A new life awaits you in the off delve colonies.
Let's see about questions about this before we move on.
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all right let's see what we got
yeah there's questions about who is allowed to write like people about like greater western
co-prosperity sphere people where they're able to go and whatever
we have obviously not changed any of the rules and regulations about that when i tell you guys
that there is a new rule about something that does not necessarily mean that we are changing
the rules that i if we change the rule we're going to tell you right so we're saying we're
changing the routing and mining restrictions for period basis you guys can go down there and go
fucking nuts that does not mean we have changed anything involving the moon regulations that does
not mean that we have changed any of our policies involving where renters can and cannot rat the
only thing we are changing is now period basis is a free fire zone where you can use whatever
doctrine you want you can do whatever you want in terms of ratting and mining there uh and you
will not be defended you can either strike it rich or die horribly and either way the state
is improved the state is improved because our loss rates become better the state is improved
because the hunters all go to period basis and the state is improved because the people that are
obeying the rules and our homeland defense dudes do not need to expend their time and effort
defending the indefensible is the dark ochre rule down there no absolutely not uh there is
no rules in the off delve colonies if you want to go to period basis and just strip mine everything
and ignore dark ochre and just leave it there go nuts but you will not be defended you will if you
come back to us and you're like oh i lost a rope whatever it's like well that's uh that's life in
the off delve colonies man that's how it is it's hard out there there's no space police to defect
you indeed you are you are beyond the reach of the emperor's light it's an astronomical con joke
one thing most of all so just so everyone also knows about i-hub upgrades down there
when we took over period basis from the russians that used to live there we tried to upgrade like
let's say the indexes were at level three and four for military index in a system when we
flipped those i-hubs we plugged in level three and four upgrades as fast as possible before the
indexes drop but um there are a number of systems that aren't fully upgraded so if you if you were
to go down there and start writing up an index and are like hey fuzzy you know is this system
upgrading just um ping g sole and we'll check and tell you if it's upgraded and if it's not and you
get the indexes up to five for both in mining and writing we can upgrade them the rest of the way
we actually have a shit ton of upgrades pre-positioned down there from like january
of last year when we moved down that are ready to go to be plugged in we just need to get the
indexes up so g sole will upgrade the systems if you ask us yeah i'm kind of confused by this
question docs is asking what happens if you uh send a harpy fleet down to period basis we're
saying that the mining and writing regulations are uh no longer applying to period basis we're
not saying that people there aren't blue and that you like can shoot our own people or something
like that like there's no if there are hostiles in period basis which we think that there will be
because we expect hunters to be there i do anticipate like a little you know skirmish
commanders are gonna take harpy fleets and go to period basis and shoot things so when i say that
we're not gonna defend people at three bases it's not like you know you're not gonna have the super
cap umbrella but if a skirmish commander randomly feels like taking dudes down there to like chase
off hostiles like that's cool but there's a huge difference between the what happens in delve and
a skirmish commander felt like it right like organizationally speaking we have this [ __ ]
command chain and the system and teams of people working together to ensure that delve is ever more
a [ __ ] fortress right and so when you're getting bailed out you know maybe people don't know this
so i'm going to explain it when you're getting bailed out in delve it's not just like some random
fc felt like doing it and saved your [ __ ] right protecting people in delve involves the efforts of
hundreds of human beings either through the actual line that are joining the fleets to defend
the coordinators the scouts the directors the people overseeing the entire system there's this
whole [ __ ] complicated you know i i think just amazing machine state that goes into creating
fortress now so when you get bailed out it's not just like hey some random skirmish commander
felt like bailing you out with a harpy fleet and delve it's because there's a system there's a
process there's oversight if things go wrong i get like you know i don't want to say i get pissed
but it's like hey why didn't this work is there an organizational hole do we need to fix something
like that in period basis maybe you'll have a skirmish commander decide to come bail you out
if they happen to be in the area and they feel like it but none of this sort of apparatus of
military and oversight and managerial uh machinery will apply in the octave colonies and hopefully
this makes more sense and yes this does apply to all of period basis uh salil it's it's less more
that like we won't send skirmish commanders down there and more like if you're in the acid of period
basis and get tackled don't hop in theta jabber and expect you know us to do anything but laugh
at you when you ask for help yeah it's a it's a hall guys like if you if like based from like
1dq1 if you're in like western bumfuckastan in period basis or really i guess geographically
speaking technically we're talking about eastern bumfuckastan but you know if you're in eastern
bumfuckastan odds are pretty good that by the time that we could even send a fleet if we felt like
it which we probably won't to bail you out uh you'd be dead by the time that we'd get there and
it would be a waste of time for all the dudes there so that's in a in a 10 light year jump range
jump freighter it takes me three to four midpoints to get to parts of period basis uh and that's with
the 90 fatigue reduction and probably still about 10 or 15 delays minutes delay on waiting for the
fatigue and stuff like there's no way in fuck a super fleet's going to get down to period basis
to do anything at six light years a jump and like an hour fatigue between you know yeah and uh
bumfuckastanding is indeed a a really good name for a hypothetical uh umbrella fleet in one of
the off delve colonies but uh there will probably not be an umbrella fleet like there will be no
no organized super capital response in period basis at all so good luck out there and or
enjoy your punishments in the blog until you uh get back into the uh the emperor's grace i actually
need to stop making all these like 40k jokes because i don't want to actually like make people
think that i think that i'm like the fucking emperor or something but i i really i've gotten
into necromunda really fucking hard like i i'm in like some turbo nerd bought my first airbrush
like try hard war hams like i'm i'm like i have this really just shameful
shamefully earnest crush on my like little little palantine enforcer space cop
anyway let's see about some of this other shit uh so there's a locus fleet tomorrow i think people
get it with the opt-out colonies uh there's a locus fleet tomorrow uh so be there uh locus
fleets are defended and they are something that now comes under attack so this is a full military
operation when we do a locus fleet please make sure that you bring your toys not just the
rock walls but that we have uh the iron fist of the imperium as it were oh my god if i start
making 40k barrels this is gonna be fun because the whole anyway um speaking of homeland defense
i want to give a shout out here for uh the delve 911 channel uh which is uh kind of important for
that so who actually wants to do the shout out for that is there somebody in the director that
can speak to that we forgot to talk about the aloo meeting about what could me uh on the
delta 911 uh i don't know anything about that well he can give a shout out and uh answer it
and only see when he gets to it bob roff is recruiting allied scouts are recruiting and uh
the main thing i want to take a pulse of people on if you were at the jeff meeting before this
i have been fucking delighted to see these typhoons work i i just want to sort of like
riff on the typhoon thing for a little bit because like we i've always had like this weird
like enthusiasm for like the flying trash can right like as you guys know i don't really like
log in and like play eve online all that much directly very often like there are certain
spaceships that i just think are fucking bad i i want to see them used and typhoons have been
something that for many many years we have occasionally tried to make work one way or
another and the fact that we have actually found like a way to like make the fucking space trash
can actually like work with the doctrine and like kick ass with it is like it's just like it's one
of those dreams it's like one of those like fucking bucket lists like fucking yeah like
typhoon doctrine yeah so um please join the gef if you haven't yet and uh it's a lot of fun like i
said before and i'm going to be reiterating this on a number of firesides we really do want people
to take these things out and learn how to fc and like make mistakes because they're flying trash
cans with like t2 frigate lodgy so basically we can just piss them away and the other thing about
this is this we have i was shocked hearing from uh from eric today when we're talking about finance
stuff that there is actually a necessary loss ratio in the imperium in order to manage the
economy we need to lose a certain amount of ships in any given month or otherwise people will stop
making ships and making modules and making all the things that are necessary in order to be able to
go to war when we want to you know if you have a producer just quit producing it takes it's a lot
harder to get somebody back into it you can't just like turn off a production line and walk away it's
like stopping a factory in the real world right if you turn off the production line it takes a long
ass time to start that shit back up it's a big pain in the ass people have to emotionally and
managerially re-engage and it's it's all this stuff so we need to keep the lights on in terms
of the space factories and that means a certain amount of motherfuckers have got to die every
month either on the off delve colonies in period basis trying to strike it rich out there on the
frontier or because we are mashing typhoon fleets into anybody who's willing and one of the things
that i am kind of looking forward to is potentially i don't know whether this is going to work out
um you know it's the year of our lord 2020 i used to make fun of the word content but i really like
the fact that you know we can just take a battleship fleet and mash it together against
another fleet and uh i am kind of thinking about uh you know reaching out to gobbins and periodically
just being like look dude like forget all the nc dot stuff with all the like their super capitals
and things let's just take two battleships and like meet in the middle and just smash them
together at least once a day and you know high fives all around and i would be entirely comfortable
with that i think that would be cool well i have some news mittens uh uh horde has formed a group
we have uh jeff the uh goons from expeditionary force horde has formed the drone lands
expeditionary force and they're actually deploying right now to come closer to fight jeff so it looks
like we might have uh even more people to shoot and people closer to shoot and more and more
frequent fights so it's pretty exciting news yeah let's get the spread like that's gonna be uh
that's gonna be a thing that's great news actually um yeah i think the jeff thing is working out
great it's really sort of like the dream is to find a way that we can like train skirmish
commanders on battleship fleets or inspire people who have never been skirmish commanders to like
do it and be like look guys it's at this point we have enough money the like the the fight in
the northwest is over regions that we at a fundamental level we just don't give a [ __ ]
about what really happens in the northwest because you know the bad guys they might take tinole and
branch who cares that doesn't bother us i don't think they'll go further and if you know if they
did who cares we used to live in the northwest we know all the territory very well it's not a
threat to us we are up there to mash spaceships together and the strategic goal is really training
you know next generations leaders training new coordinators training new fleet commanders
training new scouts giving people an opportunity to mash these things together and make mistakes
and [ __ ] up and then learn from that you cannot if there's anything that you ever learn from a
fireside chat that you take away and apply to real life uh please take this to heart for every single
task a student fails a master has failed that same task a thousand times in a thousand different ways
the path to mastery is not through just getting it right it's failing and [ __ ] up that thing in
so many different ways that you know how to avoid so many different [ __ ] ups in so many different
situations right so if you're ever frustrated trying to learn something remember that just tell
that to yourself until you internalize it for every task the student fails the master has failed
that same task a thousand times i know there's a better proverb version of that that can be tidied
up a little bit but you guys get the gist of it all right let's see about questions we haven't
really done q a's i think that's it in terms of like the the actual like business of uh the day
bullet points so questions in elisionconference.com you can ask anything you want and uh then we do
have a meta show in 20 minutes and we're going to have uh the leader of fraternity norris uh is going
to be joining us and we're going to be asking him and possibly another guest uh from the other side's
perspective of uh what's happening within the chinese community uh two weeks ago we did a meta
show we did not do a meta show last week because of all the ddos stuff uh two weeks ago we did a
meta show and we had a lot of discussion about uh the frt ranger regiment stuff so now we're going
to have a uh the leader of our team let me just remember that there was a fireside on saturday
so he may be coming to talk about his thing okay well he's here he says has he made it
holy [ __ ] coming where are you on the goddamn list
okay you're unmuted hi
you hear me yeah you're quiet uh the delve 911 thing is basically just
lately a lot of people that normally are on comms listening for stuff happening aren't there because
we're doing 24/7 fleets basically so i made this new channel delve 911 anyone can join it
if you see something happening in delve and it seems like everyone's just sitting around holding
their dicks then feel free to do beeping all in there and hopefully it'll get the attention of
someone that can actually do something about it that's all it's for it's no chatter just
it's uh oh god something's happening super tackled no one's responding type thing
i'm gonna give you authorization explicitly to uh broadcast uh invitations over jabber i mean
obviously can't invite to an in-game channel but uh please remind people about this by just
broadcasting yeah we've been getting all every couple weeks or whatever and not just a theta
just in general like cool and guys for for that channel don't [ __ ] talk about the off delve
colonies in the delve 911 channel right like do not talk or screw that up in any way about
any crap in period basis because we ain't coming to help you out there on the outer rim
okay so and yes this is an in is this an in-game gate driver channel i assume in-game as opposed to
uh jabber or is it a jabber channel oh it's just a jabber channel then that's even [ __ ] easier
sorry yeah you see you read the mldd all the instructions there you can just beeping all
if you don't know what to do if you do know what you can do you can do bping coward you can do bping
sc it's all in the mldd if you just read it the most important thing is like having people in
there that are you know sitting around ratting or whatever and are paying attention what's
happening in delve so when there isn't anyone that's paying attention you can get their attention
did the uh did eve just start shitting itself it looks like well
why is my coffee never fueled when the fireside start it's because
but by the time i get to a fireside every day i've usually had like two or three meetings
already and so i like go to refuel the breaks between like on any given saturday i will run
my mouth non-stop for like four or five hours it's uh kind of crazy actually a lot of tbs reports
the apparatus of state
i think people don't know how much like effort goes into actually running this alliance
how much time per week do i spend on eve um one time we uh like tuzzy went through and like took
a it was at a tizzy or nominate went through and figured out who chats the most in the director
a nominate um of each of the director channels and uh there it was just me number one like i spend
and this is this is what i do like i think about eve all the time when i learn something new like
you guys have seen me like spurring out on twitter about politics crap uh you know when i'm like
learning about something new or any system i always just turn around and think about like
how can i analogize whatever new thing i'm learning to eve how can i use that to like
harden the organization uh this is basically all that i've been doing non-stop for uh since i went
like full-time space emperor in like 2010 so for like what like a decade now i probably like i
don't spend too much time logged into the game but like i'm talking to people and thinking about
eve and like reading stuff about eve and thinking about like organizational psychology and like
warfare and destroying our foes uh like i can't turn it off i'm kind of obsessive so like if i
get wrapped around the axle about something i have terrible insomnia problems because my brain will
not shut up about something if my brain is latched onto something and thinks that it's a cool idea
that hasn't been fully explored will not be able to sleep until i like fucking collapse unless my
brain has gone through every possible iteration of a given thing like my mother is basically a
mad scientist so this is the product of that what does it take for an alliance of this size to become
what it is uh a lot of fucking work and a lot of people working together i mean when i when i took
over in may of 2010 it was because nobody actually wanted to uh to run this thing and i thought i
would be a terrible leader and we had like 30 people in fleet and we had nothing we were in curse
in may of 2010 and uh the alliance was basically just like ashes on fire like we could we could
be so at first it was you know logging in every day and i was on fleets for like eight hours plus
a day in the early days and you know once you start showing people where you're going and lead
people and you lead them from then you get people working and then you scale up organizations and
you set up manage your real systems to make sure that that function can be done and then you move
on to the next system and it just goes on and on and on and the next thing you know it's tens of
thousands of people do you have a picture of an up-to-date org chart we don't use org charts
because they're a huge waste of time turns out though there is a little sticky thread in the
ask a director forums that has just like a list of every last director and what their job is in
case you're ever like i need to talk to someone about this but i don't know who to talk to that's
a good place to look all right guys well um i need to scamper off and get ready for the fireside so
thank you all for coming and if you want in on that hot hot typhoon action make sure to join the
jiff or the jeff or the yef for uh whatever we happen to be calling it at any given moment
and i will be headed to the medicine now thank you for coming see you all next week
a new life awaits for you in the off delve colonies