CrazyKinux's Musings

Coriolis: The Great Dark — We came to explore. Somehow, we’re solving a murder

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 23:26:18 +0000

When I created Safiya for Coriolis: The Great Dark, I had a pretty clear picture of the kind of campaign we were about to play. Or I thought I did that is.

Exploration. Expeditions. Ancient ruins. Dangerous places beyond Ship City where having a Roughneck who could repair machinery (and crack a few skulls when necessary) would come in handy.

Instead, we've spent our first few sessions investigating a murder.

So much for the plan.

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING

This post contains story details from The Flowers of Algorab, the first complete boxed campaign expansion for Coriolis: The Great Dark, published by Free League Publishing. If you're planning to play the campaign—or think you might someday—you may want to stop reading here. Part of the fun is figuring out what the hell is going on for yourself.

A funeral, a murder, and a missing tablet

Our story really began with the funeral of Levon Najjar, co-founder of the Explorers' Guild in Ship City.

Officially, Levon had committed suicide after falling from his apartment. Moska, the Guild's other co-founder, wasn't buying it. She pulled us aside after the funeral and told us she believed Levon had been murdered.

More importantly, two days before his death, Levon had been digging through the archives looking for a stone tablet dating back to the founding of Ship City. Apparently, he believed he was on the verge of a major discovery.

Whatever he had found—or was about to find—seemed important enough that someone may have wanted him permanently out of the way.

And suddenly our group of explorers had become amateur detectives.

Even at the funeral there were people who immediately raised questions, including the mysterious Coriolite Ser Aren Mir-Bilal, whose apparent longevity doesn't quite add up, as he was supposedly already serving some 80 years ago.

There was also the celebrant, who managed to earn himself a place on our increasingly long list of suspicious people.

Naturally, our next stop was Levon's apartment.

Breaking into the crime scene

Levon lived on Ship City's fifth level, and when we arrived, the apartment was being guarded by a young female police officer, a Zapty, assigned to the scene by Lei Kavani, a much more senior officer—and, as it happens, an old friend of Zahir, one of the members of our party.

With the Zapty watching the entrance, two of us managed to create enough of a distraction to get one of us inside. Amiraz, our Archeologist crewmate volunteered. Someone had thoroughly trashed the place. Among the mess, he found a strange collection of clues:

A large blue Garuda feather, roughly 30 centimetres long.
A crumpled page containing a sketch and a rubbing of an engraved stone tablet.
A strange thread suspended near the ceiling.
The reference 122-Y.

And three books Levon had apparently been researching: the Book of Glyphs, Salamander God, and another volume dealing with Nadzir.

It wasn't exactly a smoking gun, but it was enough to start pulling on threads.

Apparently people don't like us asking questions

The Garuda feather led us to wildlife expert Siran Gaffari, who identified it as belonging to a Garuda modified through underground networks.

That connection eventually pointed us toward Gar Boutaleb, a former dweller with ties to a criminal group called the Black Toads, operating around Aluminum Bay.

So off we went.

Someone clearly noticed.

While travelling down toward the space docks by funicular, five men attacked us. This was one of those moments where Safiya finally found herself operating in territory considerably closer to what I'd imagined when I created her. The fight got ugly quickly.

We managed to take one attacker alive long enough to learn that the group had been hired through an anonymous intermediary. Then Lei Kavani arrived.

Unlike Zapty, Lei is no rookie. He's a senior police officer, someone who clearly knows exactly what he's doing, and his history with Zahir added another layer to the encounter.

He coldly dealt with the surviving attackers and warned us that continuing our investigation was going to have consequences. At that point, I think we were well past the stage where any of us were considering walking away.

The Great Archives of Jumuah

Our next lead took us into the Great Archives of Jumuah, where we tried to track down the mysterious 122-Y reference. The records showed that three people had recently accessed that section: Levon Najjar & Gar Boutaleb. And a gold-masked Coriolite named Aldor mir-Zirtain.

Deep within the archive caverns, we eventually located the box that should have contained the tablet.

It was empty.

Instead, we found a black-and-yellow matchbox from a bar somewhere in Aluminum Bay, along with evidence suggesting someone had recently escaped the archives after stealing an archivist's robe.

And then things got personal.

When the others returned toward the entrance, they found Safiya collapsed on the ground, poisoned. Before losing consciousness, she was able to tell them that she'd been attacked by a remotely controlled automaton being operated by the gold-masked Aldor mir-Zirtain himself.

His message was pretty straightforward: STOP INVESTIGATING.

Fortunately for me and the rest of the crew, Safiya survived.

We got her back to the Explorers' Guild, where Moska managed to administer an antidote.

Our report also convinced her that Levon's death definitely wasn't suicide. The Black Toads and Gar Boutaleb were somehow mixed up in all of this, and the Guild gave us another **4,000 ruks** to keep digging.

Meanwhile, we also began quietly investigating Aldor and the Coriolites themselves, including making contact with a love interest of Amiraz, Lucret Ventri, a prominent blue-clad Coriolite, who might know something about Aldor mir-Zirtain and whatever faction he's involved with.

Back to Aluminum Bay

Eventually, that matchbox from the archives brought us straight back to Aluminum Bay.

The port was already buzzing thanks to the arrival of a massive cargo ship from Dabaran, but we managed to trace the matchbox to a clandestine bar built into shipping containers called The Golden Ape.

There we met Maizy, the owner—and conveniently, a former member of the Black Toads. A little money and negotiation finally bought us the information we'd been chasing for several sessions. Gar Boutaleb was apparently staying at the Sadaalian Rose.

And that's where we left things.

Which means tonight's game session begins with us heading there to find him. Given what usually happens whenever we get close to someone who might actually have answers, I'm sure this will go perfectly.

The character I didn't realize I needed

One thing I've found particularly amusing about this campaign is how differently it's unfolding from what I imagined during Session Zero. When I created Safiya, I pictured us leaving Ship City relatively quickly and heading into the Great Dark.

Exploring ruins. Repairing equipment. Surviving hostile environments. Getting our hands dirty out there. Had Alamo told me, “You're going to spend your first several sessions investigating a murder,” I'm honestly not sure I would've rolled the same character.

Safiya isn't exactly built for detective work. She ain't no Sherlock Holmes. But something unexpected has happened along the way. Her toughness, her ability to hit ridiculously hard and—perhaps more importantly—her ability to take a beating have made her a pretty crucial part of the group.

When things turn violent, Safiya is usually the person you want standing between everyone else and whatever is trying to kill us.

She's become our tank.

Turns out investigators occasionally need one of those too.

And despite the campaign going somewhere completely different from what I'd expected, I'm having a blast with it. There's clearly something much bigger hiding behind Levon's murder, that missing tablet, the Black Toads and these mysterious Coriolites, and I'm genuinely looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds.

A big part of that is our GM, Alamo, who's been amazing at keeping the mystery moving while giving us plenty of room to make questionable decisions along the way.

Our sessions are always a blast.

So tonight, we go looking for Gar Boutaleb.

I'm sure he'll calmly answer all our questions.

The Safe Spot — Episode 14: The AI Debate

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 02:49:44 +0000

The messy line between AI-assisted and AI-generated

AI can turn an ordinary conversation into a minefield remarkably quickly—and EVE Online is no exception. Rixx and I wade into the debate from our sometimes differing perspectives, beginning with “AI slop” and the increasingly blurry line between AI-generated content and work that remains human-led but AI-assisted.

We discuss how we each use (or deliberately avoid) these tools in our creative and professional lives. Taste, experience, judgment, fact-checking and accountability don’t magically appear with a good prompt, but does every use of AI deserve to be thrown into the same bucket?

When AI enters New Eden

From there, we bring the conversation into EVE. Could Aura Guidance make New Eden easier to understand while unintentionally weakening the player relationships that make it special? How much friction can you remove before you also remove the uncertainty, mistakes and hard-earned knowledge at the heart of the experience?

We also explore the more promising possibilities surrounding Fenris Creations and Google DeepMind, including better testing, balance, accessibility, smarter PvE, economic analysis and a New Eden that feels more dynamic and genuinely inhabited. Nearly every exciting idea, however, comes with an uncomfortable question attached.

Hopeful, skeptical, and still curious

This isn’t an argument for or against AI so much as a conversation about where the lines should be drawn, who should draw them and what must be protected along the way. We remain cautiously hopeful, occasionally skeptical and fully aware that reality will probably be considerably messier than either the utopian or apocalyptic versions people like to imagine.

And then there’s that end track…

Stick around for the closing track! A suitably understated musical tribute to a certain well-known and thoroughly infamous character whose legend may be only slightly larger than his actual reputation.

Where to find us!

And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

AI didn't make me creative, but it did change "how" I create

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 15:17:59 +0000

I've been writing on CrazyKinux's Musings in one form or another since 2005. Long before ChatGPT, Claude, image generators, or any of the current AI tools existed, I was writing about EVE Online, about the community of players & bloggers, sharing things I had learned, interviewing people and generally following whatever rabbit hole happened to interest me.

So AI didn't suddenly make me creative, but it's definitely changed how I create.

Take The Safe Spot, the EVE podcast I co-host with Rixx. The conversation itself is ours. We decide the topics, who we want to talk to and what we're curious about. But afterward I can take a transcript and use AI to pull out themes, build show notes, identify things worth following up on, or even notice parts of the conversation I'd almost forgotten.

The same thing happens with the EVE guides I write about.

Quite often I'm asking questions because I've returned to the game after a long absence and genuinely need to relearn something. We, that is ChatGPT and I, might work through a ship fitting, a skill queue or some obscure mechanic. I'll challenge the answers, test things in-game and come back with what happened. Eventually I realize: there's probably a guide in here. Other times, I'll use transcripts from EVE players’ YouTube guides as raw material for written guides of my own, especially when I want something easier to reference while playing. When I do, I usually embed or link the original video and clearly credit the creator, while reshaping the information into a format that fits how I learn and how I write.

Fiction does get a tad messier. My recent story involving Caelin and Cassian Drake is a good example. I created the characters, their histories, their relationship, BlackCrystal, the favour between them and the meeting aboard Jita 4-4. But I also used AI to help turn that into drafts. Then I rewrote things. Cut things. Changed dialogue. Rejected ideas that didn't fit the characters. Eventually I even used Claude for another editorial pass.

So no, I didn't type every sentence myself, but I still it as my writing. but I'm also perfectly comfortable calling that AI-assisted writing if push comes to shove.

The visual side works much the same way. By the time I've spent a while exchanging ideas with an AI image tool, I usually have a fairly specific picture in my head. If what comes back doesn't match it, we go again. I change things, reject things, push it in another direction and keep working at it until what I'm looking at feels like the thing I was trying to create. It's a work in progress and so is my learning of these tools.

Final thoughts on AI and a good creative process

Which is why I've become less interested in the question, "Did AI make this?", and more interested in asking: "Where did the creative decisions come from?"

Because whatever AI contributes, I'm still the final editor and the gatekeeper.

Every word, sentence & paragraph gets read, and then reread. Every word can be changed. Every image gets judged against what I had in mind. I'll polish, tweak, reject, rewrite and reiterate until I'm satisfied with it. Sometimes ChatGPT gets me there. Sometimes Claude helps. Sometimes I use a combination of both.

Nothing gets published simply because the AI produced it. That applies to pretty much everything I create with these tools. AI can help me get somewhere faster, explore more directions, or work through ideas I might not have reached on my own, but it doesn’t make the final decision.

So maybe AI hasn’t changed whether I’m creative as much as it has changed what I, or it, can bring into the creative process.

I’m still the final editor, the gatekeeper, and the one deciding what is of good quality so that I'll be proud to put my name on.

And that's good enough for me.

CK out.

In Jita, debts come due — an EVE Online short story

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:12:11 +0000

The message arrived while Caelin “Crazy Kinux” Kinotsuki was only a dozen or so jumps from Jita.

He almost ignored it.

There was nothing unusual about receiving messages in space, but this one was different. No corporate header. No security tag. No context. Just a name he had not seen in a very long time.

Cassian Drake.

The text beneath it was short.

Jita 4-4. 2200.
The Glass House. Come alone.
I need the favour back.

He stared at it for several seconds, then checked the routing data attached to the message.

Drake was not the kind of man who crossed dozens of systems for a casual conversation. If he was willing to travel that far just to ask for a favour in person, whatever had happened was serious.

Reluctantly, he set course for Jita.

For most people, Drake was nobody. Just another capsuleer name among others. For Caelin, it reached back to a period of his life he rarely talked about, somewhere between the refineries of Haajinen and the pilot he had eventually become.

It had been after the ambush.

After his mining crew had been wiped out in a Gallente attack that the Federation later dismissed as another regrettable border incident. After the funerals, the reports and the polite language that reduced men and women he had known for years into numbers on someone else's screen.

Caelin had finished his contract with Kaalakiota because that was what a Caldari did. Then he started learning how not to be helpless.

Combat training came first. Ship command. Small-unit tactics. Navigation through hostile territory. Hunting rats. Eventually that brought him to BlackCrystal Logistics.

Calling BlackCrystal a logistics corporation had always been generous. It had very few regular pilots, a network of contacts, and manifests that were almost entirely creative.

It moved weapons, ammunition, restricted military hardware. Sometimes it moved people who did not want their names associated with their destination. Nobody in BlackCrystal cared much about ideology. Caldari rifles travelled to Gallente buyers. Gallente targeting systems found their way into Caldari hands.

Caelin had hated that part of it.

He stayed because BlackCrystal taught him things legitimate corporations could not.

It was also where he met Drake.

Drake was Gallente in the way that made it difficult for Caelin to appreciate the man — blond hair too long, expensive jackets worn without concern for what they cost, an infuriating habit of behaving as if nothing around him was quite serious enough to deserve panic.

Caelin disliked him immediately.

Drake seemed to find this mildly amusing.

What made it worse was that Drake was good. Damn good. One of BlackCrystal's best runners, a hauler who treated gate camps less like obstacles and more like a dance. He made himself difficult to catch. A slippery target that always seemed to find a way to slip through the clutch of gate campers.

Drake monitored the local chats and scanned every corner of a system. He studied camps before approaching them. He could often tell the difference between bored opportunists and pilots who actually understood what they were doing.

He taught Caelin that a gate camp was not really about ships.

It was about expectations.

A camper expected you to panic, to take the obvious route, to behave like the last twenty pilots who had come through.

Drake survived by doing something else.

Caelin never liked taking advice from anyone, least of all a Gallente with too much attitude.

He took it anyway.

Their relationship might have remained nothing more than mutual professional tolerance if not for one run through lowsec.

BlackCrystal had split a shipment of illegal military hardware between a few transports. Drake carried the most valuable portion. Caelin had another section.

But someone had sold them out.

The camp was waiting.

Drake made it through.

Caelin did not.

His ship survived the initial engagement, but he was forced away from the planned route and eventually pinned down in system while hostile scouts began closing off his options.

BlackCrystal's response was immediate and practical.

Abort the run.

Preserve the rest of the shipment.

Caelin was considered compromised.

He remembered the language because it had sounded familiar.

[Acceptable loss].

Nobody actually used the words, but they did not have to.

That was the part that stayed with him.

Not the decision itself. BlackCrystal's logic was sound. One pilot was not worth exposing an entire network.

It was the ease with which a person could become a number once an organization decided the arithmetic no longer favoured them.

Drake had already delivered his cargo.

His contract was complete.

Then he came back.

Caelin never knew exactly what Drake did. He learned pieces afterward. False routing information had been leaked. A dockworker had suddenly become considerably richer. At least one BlackCrystal safe route was permanently burned.

The hostile group shifted position.

For a brief moment, a path opened.

Caelin took it.

By the time he met Drake again, he had lost a ship, a significant amount of ISK and at least one contact who never answered him again.

Caelin demanded to know why.

Drake looked at him for a moment before answering.

"They'd decided you were expendable."

Caelin waited.

"I disagreed."

That was all.

No ideology. No explanation. Drake had simply come back.

And something had shifted.

Caelin had stopped thinking of him as Gallente after that. He was simply Drake. The pilot who had decided that one other person was worth the cost.

BlackCrystal did not survive much longer. A director disappeared. Someone else took money they should not have taken. Pressure increased, clients became nervous and the remaining pilots scattered.

Caelin moved further into combat.

Drake resurfaced somewhere else.

For years, they had existed in parallel. Different corps, different operations, different spaces. Caelin had built a reputation, moved into systems where he could shoot back, surrounded himself with people who asked fewer questions. Drake had become something else — a name in occasional rumours, a ship that passed through Jita every few months, someone from a life Caelin had supposedly left behind.

They had not spoken since BlackCrystal.

Until now.

When Jita finally appeared ahead of him, the system was what it’s always been: crowded, loud and indifferent. Ships poured through the gates. Traders filled every available channel with offers, scams and promises of wealth.

He docked at Jita 4-4 and made his way toward the Glass House.

The bar occupied part of an upper commercial level, far enough from the main trading concourse to be quieter but close enough that its clientele still smelled faintly of money. Curved windows looked out toward the endless flow of traffic within the immensity of the hangars.

Drake was already there.

Of course he was.

Caelin recognized him immediately.

The hair was still blond and still too long. The jacket was still better tailored than anything Caelin would willingly spend money on. A glass sat in front of him.

But something was wrong.

Drake had chosen a seat facing the entrance. His jacket rested within easy reach. His eyes moved occasionally toward the reflection in the glass behind the bar.

And the drink in front of him was almost untouched.

Caelin sat across from him.

“You asked me to come.”

“I did.”

“After all these years.”

Drake glanced at him. “I wasn’t certain you would.”

“You mentioned the favour.”

“I thought that might improve the odds.”

“I’m not here to reminisce.”

“No,” Drake said. “I know you aren’t.”

For a moment, it almost felt familiar.

Then Drake’s smile faded.

"You said you needed the favour back."

"I do."

"What did you do this time?"

Drake looked toward the window. Ships of all sizes moved about in the hanger, tiny against the bulk of the station.

“Someone from my past has resurfaced.”

Caelin stared at him.

“A friend?”

“An acquaintance,” Drake said. “He remembers our association rather less fondly than I do.”

“A grudge.”

“An old one. Apparently very well preserved.”

“What does he want?”

Drake finally took a sip from his drink.

“At present? Me.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Take care of it.” Drake set the glass down. “But to do that, I need to disappear for a while.”

"Then disappear."

"I intend to."

Caelin waited.

"Issue is, I work for Mantis Acquisition now. I handle transportation. Certain clients. Certain routes."

Somehow, Caelin already knew all this.

"The leadership knows I'm stepping back. They've already reviewed your file. Vetted you."

That stopped him short.

"You already told them about me!"

"I had to."

"And they're okay with this?"

"They're okay with you filling in. Temporarily. While I sort things out."

Caelin stared at him.

"That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't intended to be."

Drake turned the glass slowly between his fingers, watching the amber catch the light from the hangar beyond the viewport.

“If I know you as well as I believe I do,” he said, “you’re going to like working with Jim.”

“Working for him?”

“With him,” Drake corrected, a faint smile touching one corner of his mouth. “The distinction matters.”

“Who is he?”

“Jim Halescott. The man behind Mantis Acquisitions. Though when you meet him, you’ll probably assume he’s someone’s security chief. Young looking lad, broad through the shoulders, military haircut. He looks like the man who stands behind someone important.”

“But?”

“He is the important man.”

Caelin waited.

“You’d never know it from speaking to him. No entourage. No expensive Gallente theatre. No implants advertising the size of his accounts. He’s remarkably humble, considering the wealth, information and productive capacity he controls.”

“How much wealth?”

“Enough that quantifying it becomes tedious.”

“And his network?”

Drake lifted his glass but did not drink. “Thousands of people contribute to his operations. Some knowingly. Many without the slightest idea that he exists.”

Caelin’s expression hardened. “That sounds less like humility and more like camouflage.”

“With Jim, it is usually both.”

“And you trust him?”

“I trust that he rewards competence, remembers loyalty and has no interest in making enemies when he could make suppliers.” Drake set down his glass. “He has accumulated extraordinary power without developing the tiresome need to perform it for everyone in the room. I suspect you’ll appreciate that.”

“You seem certain we’ll get along.”

“I think he’ll respect that you do what you say you’ll do. And you’ll respect that he never asks anyone to kneel.” Drake’s smile returned, easy and faintly mischievous. “He simply arranges matters so that standing beside him becomes the most profitable place to be.”

“And if I don’t like him?”

“You will. He’s a surprisingly decent fellow.”

A brief silence passed between them.

“By my standards, anyways” Drake added.

Then he leaned forward.

“I need you to cover my work. For a while. Someone people already know. Someone they’ll trust because they trust me.”

For the first time since arriving, Caelin noticed something beneath Drake's composure. Not panic. Pressure. The kind that had been building for long enough that even Drake could no longer simply outfly it.

That, more than anything, convinced Caelin this was real.

Caelin remembered the gate camp, BlackCrystal writing him off, and Drake turning his ship around.

He remembered what it meant to have one person decide you were worth the cost.

"How long?"

Drake's shoulders relaxed slightly.

"I don't know."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

Caelin studied him.

Time had done little to soften what he felt toward the Federation. The people he had lost were still dead. No apology had ever made that right.

Drake had never asked him to forgive any of it.

That was probably why Caelin had eventually learned to trust him.

The one pilot who had looked at the arithmetic and disagreed with it.

Caelin sighed.

"You're going to owe me."

Drake finally smiled, and for the first time that evening it looked genuine.

"I was rather hoping we were even."

"We're not."

"Of course not."

Outside the window, another ship undocked and made its way into the traffic beyond Jita 4-4.

Years ago, Drake had gone back for a Caldari pilot everyone else had decided to leave behind.

Now he had reached out because, for once, he needed that pilot to come through for him.

Caelin had no idea what Drake was running from, or into.

But he already knew how this was going to end.

That was what the favour was for.

That was what it had always been for.

The Safe Spot — Episode 13: Jim Halescott

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 02:52:00 +0000

This week, Rixx Javix and I sit down with Jim Halescott, one of EVE Online’s most unconventional entrepreneurs. From thousands of characters and an industrial network stretching across New Eden to an ambitious plan for something resembling a galaxy-wide chain of convenience stores, Jim has built an EVE career almost entirely outside the paths the game officially gives us. What sounds absurd at first gradually reveals itself as a remarkably sophisticated operation involving manufacturers, haulers, intelligence gatherers, market manipulation and hundreds of working relationships.

But the conversation goes well beyond ISK and spreadsheets. We explore why Jim considers highsec a legitimate endgame, how certain mechanical changes quietly weakened player communities, what EVE’s Freelance Jobs could become, and why the game’s greatest opportunities often exist in the spaces its developers never deliberately designed.

Along the way, we also reflect on how EVE can shape real-world careers, business instincts and our willingness to take risks. It is a fascinating glimpse into what becomes possible when someone stops asking what there is to do in EVE and starts inventing something no one else thought to build.

Where to find us!

And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

Dark Matter Season 2 is upon us in less then 3 weeks!

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 01:27:21 +0000

I went into Season One of Dark Matter knowing absolutely nothing about it—which, in retrospect, was probably the best possible way to experience it. A former coworker had simply told me I had to watch it. That it would blow my mind.

And yes, suffice to say, my mind was thoroughly blown.

There’s a point in the season where you think you understand the ramifications of the Box and the alternate realities it opens. Except you don’t. You’ve barely scratched the surface. By those final episodes, the full breadth—and potentially infinite consequences—finally begins to sink in.

That’s what stayed with me.

Not simply the science-fiction premise, but the uncomfortable personal question underneath it: how many different lives might each of us have lived? What if we’d been more cautious, less cautious, more direct—or simply made one different choice at precisely the right moment?

Season Two premieres August 28, so now is the perfect time to watch the first if you have not seen it — or in my case, binge it again so everything is still fresh for Season 2.

I've only watched the Season 2 trailer twice, so I genuinely have no idea where the story goes from here, and that’s precisely why I’m excited.

Silo: The strange grief of an adaptation

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:56:20 +0000

A note for show-only viewers: no major plot spoilers here — just one book reader's reflections on how much the characters have changed.

Watching Silo with my teenage daughter has reminded me of something I hadn't expected.

We're watching the same show. But we're not watching the same story.

She's experiencing Silo exactly as it unfolds on screen. Every mystery is new. Every revelation lands for the first time. Every theory is still possible.

I've read Hugh Howey's trilogy — Wool, Shift, and Dust — at least twice, if not three times. I've lost track.

I don't just remember the story.

I remember the characters. As actual people.

And that's made Season 3 a surprisingly more difficult experience so far.

Not because I think the television series is bad. Far from it. Rebecca Ferguson continues to carry the show with a fantastic performance, the production design is among the best science fiction currently on television, and Apple has built a world that genuinely feels lived in.

The problem isn't the quality.

It's that somewhere along the way, I realized I was no longer watching one version of Silo.

I was watching two.

This isn't new to Season 3 since the show has been charting its own course starting with the first season. Sims exists in the novels as the head of IT Security, but he occupies a relatively small role in the story. The television series elevates him into one of its principal characters, while the entire Judicial storyline—including Judge Meadows—is largely an invention of the adaptation. I noticed those divergences early on and, for the most part, made my peace with them.

But by Season 3, the accumulated weight of those differences finally caught up with me.

The conversations got harder

Normally, discussing an adaptation with someone who hasn't read the books should be fun. You avoid spoilers of course, ask about their theories, and quietly smile when they get close to the truth.

Season 3 has made that almost impossible. Not because I know what's coming. But because after three seasons of invented characters, merged storylines, and reshaped motivations, I don't always know anymore. The series has drifted far enough from the novels that every conversation feels like walking through a minefield.

For the first time, my knowledge of the novels isn't helping me enjoy conversations about the show.

It's actually getting in the way.

Grieving for the version of the characters as I'd imagined them

When people compare books and television, they usually focus on scenes that were cut or plot points that changed.

I found myself missing something else entirely.

People.

Not because the actors aren't good.

Not because the writing is poor.

Simply because many of the people I spent hundreds of pages getting to know either don't exist in this version of the story, have been merged into someone else, or have become fundamentally different.

Donald and Helen's bittersweet relationship.

Anna.

The version of Senator Thurman I had carried in my head for years.

Knox as I imagined him while reading.

Even smaller supporting characters whose personalities quietly shaped the novels.

Some disappeared entirely. Others survived only in name.

And that's a strangely difficult thing to explain.

Oh, Juliette

Rebecca Ferguson's Juliette is compelling, determined, and completely believable. But she's not quite the Juliette I've carried around in my imagination since finishing Wool.

And that's not a criticism of Ferguson. She's playing the Juliette the series has written, and she's doing it exceptionally well. The Juliette I remember was a mechanical engineer first.

A different version of MacGyver.

Faced with an impossible situation, her instinct wasn't to react emotionally.

It was to understand how the machine worked.

To figure out the problem, and build a solution.

The television series understandably leans harder into her emotional journey. Books can spend pages inside a character's mind. Television can't.

Neither approach is wrong.

They're simply different interpretations of the same person.

Reading is actually a collaboration when you think about it...

I think that's what I've been struggling with all throughout the series. Reading a novel has always felt like an act of collaboration to me. The author gives us the words, but we provide the faces, the voices, the pauses, and the expressions. We assemble these people in our own imagination, piece by piece, until they become as real to us as any character on screen. After reading a trilogy so many times, those imagined people become remarkably real.

A TV or movie adaptation doesn't replace blank spaces. It replaces your version.

I've often thought Peter Jackson accomplished something remarkable with The Lord of the Rings. Of course, Jackson made changes to Tolkien's masterpiece. Entire chapters disappeared, characters were reshaped, and timelines shifted. Yet I always felt I was watching Tolkien's story translated into another medium. The details had changed, but the soul of the story remained intact.

With Silo, especially by the third season, I find myself feeling something different. Not disappointment. Not frustration. Something closer to watching another talented storyteller reinterpret a world I already know by heart. That's neither good nor bad—it's simply... different.

I'll keep watching, not because I'm hoping it eventually becomes the books. That ship sailed a long time ago. I'll keep watching because I'm genuinely curious to see where this version of Silo wants to go. I just wasn't prepared for how much I'd miss the version of Howey's characters who existed in my imagination.

And maybe that's the unexpected gift of watching it with my daughter.

Every week, I get to experience Silo through someone else's fresh eyes, even if I can never quite watch it that way myself.

The Safe Spot — Episode 12: Winning In Eve

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 11:34:00 +0000

After a nearly month-long hiatus, Rixx and I are back from the summer lull and easing into one of those deceptively simple EVE questions that quickly opens up into something much bigger: what does it actually mean to win in a game that never really ends?

We start with vacation, heat, and the usual New Eden summer slowdown, then wander into sandbox metaphors, piracy, loss, leadership, friendship, aging, and why EVE is less a game you beat than a place you keep returning to.

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Back from summer, back to New Eden — We catch up after vacation, talk about the summer slowdown, and how EVE tends to get quieter when real life, heat, travel, and family time pull people away from Discord and New Eden.
Can you actually win EVE Online? — We dig into the main question of the episode: how do you define winning in a sandbox MMO with no final boss, no ending screen, and no single path everyone is meant to follow?
The sandbox within the sandbox — Rixx and I stretch the sandbox metaphor into a full playground, with different players coming and going, playing their own smaller games, leaving stories behind, and returning years later to find the world still there.
Small wins, long goals, and pirate victories — We talk about the many different ways players create their own victories, from finding a good fight or moving goods safely to running events, supporting a corp, planning ahead, or simply logging off satisfied.
When losing still counts — Rixx shares stories about failed objectives, painful early losses, and mistakes that still turned into something valuable, which leads us into one of EVE’s oldest truths: sometimes you lose the ship but still win the story.
The corp that keeps you playing — We talk about how important the right corp can be, especially when you are new, frustrated, broke, or convinced you may never figure the game out. A good group can turn a hard loss into the reason you stay.
The meta keeps moving — From old ship fits to changing mechanics to locals adapting to your habits, we look at how EVE constantly pushes players to relearn, adjust, and avoid becoming too predictable.
Leadership, scale, and knowing what works — Rixx reflects on Stay Frosty, A Band Apart, coalition projects, and the point where growth can stop feeling like winning if it turns the game into too much management.
Quitting, returning, and the community that remains — We push back on the idea that quitting is the only way to “win EVE,” while also recognizing that people leave for good reasons, come back years later, and often remain part of the wider community even when they are no longer logging in.
EVE as an experience, not an endgame — We close on the idea that EVE is not really something you complete. It is a world you experience, shape, step away from, return to, and carry with you long after you close the client.
Closing it out by rolling the hole — We wrap with the usual links and sign-off, then hand the episode over to this week’s song: “Roll the Hole,” a wormhole-flavoured sendoff full of statics, scouts, Bob, probes, and the quiet terror of ending up on the wrong side.

Where to find us!

And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

The Foundational Rules of EVE Online

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:09:14 +0000

Before we recorded Episode 11 of The Safe Spot, Rixx sent me three simple rules for EVE Online: all rules apply to all players equally, EVE is about spaceships, and nowhere is 100% safe. That was the spark for the episode — the idea that beneath all the mechanics, balance passes, doctrines, wars, and player drama, there are a few foundational principles that explain why EVE works when it works.

But the idea stayed with me after we finished recording. Those three rules felt less like a closed list and more like the beginning of a larger conversation. They made me think about loss, trust, information, inconvenience, player history, and all the strange social machinery that makes New Eden more than just another online game.

What follows is a further exploration of those rules — not an official rulebook, and not a manifesto anyone needs to agree with completely, but an attempt to name the principles that feel foundational to EVE Online. Read them as a returning pilot. Read them as someone who's been around long enough to remember when some of these things went without saying — and who's watched what happens when they get ignored.

Coming back to EVE after time away is strange. The launcher is familiar. The map is familiar. The old instincts are still there — but the game has shifted around you. Ships have changed. Groups have risen and collapsed. Systems you once understood now carry new assumptions.

So when Rixx laid out three foundational rules on The Safe Spot, they landed less like nostalgia and more like a diagnostic tool: if EVE feels right, it is usually because these rules are intact; if it feels wrong, one of them is probably being bent.

The first three come directly from Rixx. I agree with them completely — and I'd argue they're the load-bearing foundation the rest of the structure sits on.

Read them as a returning pilot. Read them as someone who's been around long enough to remember when these things went without saying — and who's watched what happens when they get ignored.

1. All rules apply to all players equally — no exceptions

The sandbox only works if the same universe pushes back on everyone. Veterans, newbros, solo pilots, bloc leaders, industrialists, pirates, and haulers all operate under the same underlying laws. No playstyle receives special immunity from consequence, and no player earns special protection from outcome.

Equal rules don't mean equal results. Better preparation, better intel, better friends, and better judgment should matter. Bad decisions need room to produce bad results. The sandbox should be fair in structure, not symmetrical in experience. Special treatment corrodes trust in the world faster than almost anything else.

2. EVE is about spaceships

Everything eventually connects back to ships undocking, travelling, fighting, scouting, hauling, building, dying, or being replaced. Industry matters because ships need to be built. Markets matter because ships and modules need to move. Diplomacy matters because it decides where ships go and why.

No single fantasy should become the official "right" version of EVE — the miner needs the pirate, the pirate needs the hauler, the hauler needs the industrialist, and the industrialist needs destruction. Lore, structures, events, and expansions should support the central fantasy of capsuleers in space. EVE works because playstyles collide. Removing one ecosystem weakens the others.

3. Nowhere is 100% safe — safety is a scale

High-sec should be safer, not safe. Low-sec should feel predatory and opportunistic. Null-sec should be dangerous, political, and player-policed. Wormholes should remain uncertain and intelligence-poor. Risk should vary by space, but it should never disappear.

The one genuine sanctuary is a docked ship — as long as you're in station, you're technically safe. But that safety comes at a cost: you're not flying, not earning, not contributing. The moment you undock, the scale applies again. Conflict does not need to be constant, but it must remain possible everywhere — in markets, in hauling lanes, in highsec mission pockets, and in diplomatic channels. Systems that fully remove player interference tend to become sterile. EVE should protect possibility, not comfort.

4. Loss must matter

This one is a direct corollary of Rule 3. If nowhere is truly safe, then loss is always possible — and if loss is always possible, it has to mean something. Destruction gives ships value. A killmail is not just an ending — it creates demand, memory, revenge, lessons, propaganda, and industry. Loss teaches what survival cannot. The player economy depends on things exploding.

When loss becomes painless, EVE becomes thinner.

5. The economy must remain player-shaped

Mining, production, hauling, markets, destruction, speculation, and war should remain connected. Player decisions should create shortages, gluts, opportunities, cartels, scams, and regional differences. Industry should matter because other players depend on it. War should affect markets, and markets should affect war.

The proof is in the data. The official EVE Online Monthly Economic Report reads like a macroeconomic briefing for a small nation — ISK supply, trade volumes, mining output, destruction sinks. Oz breaks it down every month on The Oz Report, a podcast that treats EVE's economy with the same seriousness you'd bring to real markets. That level of analysis is only possible because the economy is genuinely complex — because players are the ones moving the numbers.

The economy should never feel like a vendor system with extra steps.

6. Information is power — and preparation beats reaction

Intel is often more important than raw firepower. D-scan, local, probes, maps, market data, wormhole chains, spies, scouts, and memory all matter. zKillboard — EVE's public killmail database — is one of the most powerful intel tools available: a corp's kill history, their preferred ship doctrines, their activity patterns, and their losses are all readable before you ever share a grid with them. The caveat is context. A killboard shows what happened, not why — a string of losses can mean a corp is getting farmed, or that they're deliberately absorbing fights to learn. Read it as a data point, not a verdict.

The fight often starts long before grid. Fitting, staging, scouting, bookmarking, doctrine design, logistics, and enemy research are all part of combat. Good preparation lets smaller groups punch above their weight, and poor preparation should have consequences. EVE rewards the player who thought three jumps ahead.

7. Trust is a game mechanic

Reputation has value because betrayal is possible. Corporations and alliances are built on social risk, not just shared objectives. Recruitment, diplomacy, hauling contracts, director roles, spies, and shared infrastructure all depend on trust.

Friendship is powerful because the game allows betrayal. If trust has no consequence, EVE loses one of its strangest strengths.

8. Scale creates burdens as well as power

Bigger ships should be powerful but vulnerable to commitment and escalation. Bigger blocs gain reach but inherit bureaucracy, logistics strain, politics, and inertia. Bigger wallets create options, not immunity. Scale should solve some problems while creating new ones.

Every advantage should carry a tradeoff — safety reduces reward, mobility costs something, projection creates exposure, specialization creates weakness elsewhere. Power without tradeoff is design rot.

9. The universe should remain inconvenient

Distance matters. Logistics matter. Fuel, hauling, timers, regional markets, staging, and geography create strategic texture. Convenience should remove needless irritation, not erase meaningful friction.

New Eden feels large because movement and supply require effort. A universe that's too easy to traverse becomes too easy to dominate.

10. The unknown must remain dangerous

EVE needs uncertainty. A neutral in local should mean something. A wormhole connection should carry tension. A cyno, an empty system, an unfamiliar corporation, or a too-easy target should raise questions.

The game is strongest when players can misread the room — and be lethally wrong.

11. The social fabric is core gameplay

Corporations, alliances, fleets, Not Purple Shoot It (NPSI) groups — open-fleet roams where anyone can join regardless of corp or alliance, with the only rule being "if it's not in fleet, it's a target" — wormhole crews, mining operations, logistics chains, and market networks are not side systems.

The real game often happens in comms, Discord, jabber pings, spreadsheets, doctrines, and trust networks. Leadership is gameplay. Mentorship is gameplay. Community infrastructure is as important as ship balance.

12. Players create the history

The great stories of EVE are wars, betrayals, migrations, scams, rescues, market shocks, collapses, and impossible logistics projects. Developer-authored story should frame the sandbox, not replace it. The strongest EVE history is emergent, messy, political, and player-owned — carried forward by pilots, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, and old war stories told in corp chat at 2am.

That’s the distinction that matters: Fenris can light the fuse, but players decide whether it becomes a skirmish, a doctrine shift, a diplomatic crisis, or a war people still talk about ten years later.

13. New Eden must remember

EVE's power comes from accumulated history: wars, scams, grudges, monuments, killmails, doctrines, betrayals, coalitions, and ruined empires. Player history gives systems emotional weight — a fight in a famous system feels different because memory lives there. That memory takes physical form inside New Eden, and the monuments are worth knowing.

The Journey of Katia Sae Memorial stands in Saisio, near the gate she jumped through to begin her decade-long tour. From December 2009 to March 2019, Katia visited all 7,805 reachable systems in both known space and wormhole space without losing a single ship — a Guinness World Record, and the first time Fenris built a monument to honor a specific player's achievement.

In B-R5RB, the Titanomachy marks the Bloodbath of 2014 — a 21-hour battle involving over 7,500 players and the destruction of 75 Titans, at the time the most destructive engagement in gaming history. The wrecks are non-salvageable. They just drift.

In the quiet system of Molea, the Fallen Capsuleers Memorial marks what began in 2007 as a player-built cemetery — Azia Burgi collecting corpses left on battlefields and cataloguing them in anchored cans. Over time, pilots began using it to memorialize real-world friends and family who had passed. Fenris eventually made it permanent. The cans remain.

And in Reykjavik, Iceland, the physical EVE Monument — erected in 2014 — stands as a tribute to the EVE Universe and its community. Player names were engraved into the monument, and a digital time capsule was placed beneath it, set to be opened in 2039.

The game's culture depends on stories being carried forward. This is why Empires of EVE by Andrew Groen matters — it treats EVE not merely as a game, but as a political and cultural history shaped by real people inside a virtual universe.

EVE survives when it remembers what it is: a hostile, player-shaped universe where ships are tools, trust is currency, loss has weight, and history belongs to those reckless enough to undock.

The Safe Spot ep. 11 — covers several of these rules directly. Worth a listen before or after.

Fly safe. o7

The Safe Spot — Episode 11: Summer Rules

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 01:42:00 +0000

No guest this week — just Rixx and me catching up, comparing notes, and accidentally wandering into one of those bigger EVE conversations: what actually makes the game work after all these years. A little summer lull, a little corp movement, a little real-life desk tinkering, and then straight into the rules beneath the rules.

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Summer EVE and real-life catch-up — Rixx talks through a quiet roam, the weird slowdown that hits during summer, and the arrival of his award from Iceland, while I share a few updates of my own: a new gaming rig, another corp move, and my jump into UCN as I get ready to relearn PvP in a more active environment.
Getting back into the fight — We talk about why returning to PvP is easier when you’re surrounded by people who know what they’re doing: fitted ships, skill plans, corp support, small gang opportunities, and enough structure that losing ships becomes part of the learning curve instead of a reason to log off.
Why this episode is just us — After two guest episodes, we take a breather and go back to the loose Safe Spot format: no big agenda, no interview structure, just two players talking through where they are in EVE and what the game keeps teaching them.
The rules beneath EVE Online — The main thread becomes the foundational ideas that make EVE feel like EVE: one sandbox where the same rules apply to everyone, no pay-to-win shortcuts, spaceships at the centre of the experience, danger even in “safe” places, loss that actually matters, and an economy that only works because ships explode and players have to rebuild.
Information, risk, and reading the room — We dig into how much of EVE happens before the fight starts: checking zKillboard, reading local, using D-scan, spotting bait, understanding ship behaviour, and accepting that even with good intel, the human on the other side can still surprise you.
The real power of friendship in EVE — The conversation lands on the social fabric of the game: corps, alliances, mentorship, shared intel, wingmates, familiar names in chat, and the way other players turn EVE from a complicated spaceship simulator into a living universe worth coming back to.
Closing it out with the Logi Bro — We wrap with the usual links and sign-off, then hand the episode over to this week’s song: “Logi Bro,” a tribute to the logistics pilots quietly keeping everyone alive while the rest of us pretend we had it under control.

Where to find us!

And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

Brawl or kite: how a veteran pirate rebuilt my Hookbill for Faction Warfare

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:38:13 +0000

It's late. I've been dabbling with my Caldari Navy Hookbill fitting for the past hour. Trying to figure out what's the best setup for my first foray into Faction Warfare (or Factional Warfare?). I think I've got a good fit, but I'm not convinced.

Then comes the next question: what next?

I've joined the Caldari faction, read through all the WARNINGS, but I have not a clue where to go next. The Militia tab popped up, but the conversation doesn't seem too friendly (aren't we supposed to be in the same camp?), and I resist the urge to ask. I'd rather test the waters by myself first, though that might be a bad idea, since I'm now a flashing little blip on someone's overview.

Then I remember Rixx telling me about using Plexes to get into PvP.

So I message him. "I'm in a Hookbill, looking to find Plexes. How does one do that? Please don't laugh..."

He doesn't laugh. He gives me the two-line answer: be in an FW system, make sure plexes show on your overview. That's it.

I've been overthinking this.

Then I ask a fitting question.

"And are 2 Webs better than 1x Web with a Warp Scrambler?"

"Not for you. Start with one web and a scram. Work up to it."

This is going to be a recurring theme. Every time I try to skip ahead to the cool advanced thing, Rixx narrows the decision space. Dual web is a real fit. It is not my fit. Not yet.

I tell him I've got an MSE II, 6,132 EHP. He approves. He asks about rockets. Inferno Rage, I say.

Pause.

"Mostly use scourge, HBs get a bonus."

The Hookbill gets a kinetic damage bonus. Scourge is kinetic. I have been actively not using my hull's signature bonus. I have been flying a Hookbill like it's a generic rocket frigate. Filed under: things the show info screen tells you that I apparently have not been reading.

Then comes the question that reorganizes my entire understanding of the ship.

"Are you using a mwd? Or an AB?"

Afterburner, I tell him. The 1MN Y-S8 Compact.

"Ok so you need rockets my friend. Rapid lights are for distance. And you'll need a mwd, long point for that. Scram AB = rockets."

The fundamental fork in the Hookbill road, delivered as a single line of shorthand. There are two Hookbills. There is the brawler — AB, scram, web, rockets, fighting at 6-9km — and there is the kiter — MWD, long point, light missiles, fighting at 20km plus. They share a hull. They are not the same ship. You pick one.

I pick brawler. I had already picked brawler, I just hadn't known I was picking one.

Rixx starts unspooling the rest of the doctrine. Scourge primary. Carry Caldari Navy variants. Carry some Javelins for reach. AB inside scram range, because — and this is the bit that finally makes everything click —

"The other dude's scram will shut down your MWD. But it won't shut down your AB."

The reason every brawler runs AB isn't preference. It's that the MWD is a dead module the moment someone scrams you. Your propulsion has to survive being tackled, or you're a static target with delusions of mobility. Scram + AB go together because they're the modules that function while you're being held. MWD + long point go together because they're the modules for the fight that happens outside tackle range.

I'd been staring at fits for months without understanding the logic of why certain modules cluster.

I'm trying to keep up. I type back: "So I'm looking at Rockets - AB, scram, web - short range for now. 6 to 8 klicks range."

"Yep. Brawl versus kite."

I confirm the framework back to him like a student trying to prove he was listening. Brawler being close range. Kite being 20k+. He confirms. I'm not lost anymore. I have a map. Or I think I do.

Then he says I should consider a Caldari Navy Medium Shield Extender. It's expensive but worth it. I ask if it replaces the MSE II.

"Hang on ok?"

He's pausing his evening to teach me this. Gotta love the man. I tell him there's no rush, don't intrude on his time. He vanishes for four minutes.

He comes back with a killmail.

Not theory. Not a fitting tool screenshot. Three actual Hookbills he has personally killed, each demonstrating a different variation on the brawl-scram-kite theme. The first is the basic fit. The second has a Target Disruptor in the mids — same archetype, specialized against gun ships. The third runs the faction shield extender.

"Now you can single web it, or double web it. You can faction your shield extender, etc. Some people even faction the AB. You can even use a Target Disruptor in one of the mids — but then you only fight gun ships. There are a thousand variations, but start with something like that and get used to the ship."

He drops another link. Another variation. And another.

"Slow down cowboy!!" — He's got more variations queued up than I have processing bandwidth.

"Those are just 3 variations on that theme."

Three killmails, and he's holding back.

Here's the thing I notice in retrospect: every single one of those killmails is a brawler. He's showing me the same ship in three outfits. None of them are kiters. He's not confusing me with options — he's showing me the range of one decision. Brawl variations.

Stay in your lane.

I ask, just to be sure: "Brawler still, right?"

"Trust me, there are more — but lets keep it simple. These are all brawl, scram kite, fits. You operate right at scram range. And inside web range."

Here comes the geometry lesson. Scram range: 7-10km. Disruptor range: 24km. Web range: roughly 10km. Overheat your scram and you get a little further. Fly a faction scram and you get a little further still. The space you fight in as a brawler is this narrow band — close enough that your scram holds them, close enough that your web slows them, far enough that you've got room to dance with transversal.

I think about Tzophiyah's video I saw earlier. The dual-prop nullsec Hookbill that confused itself between scram-kiting and point-kiting because it had too many mid slots. I think about my own fit, which I'd worked through earlier in the evening — the buffer tank, the three launchers, the AB. I'd accidentally built something close to what Rixx is describing. Not by design. By default. I'd avoided Tzophiyah's trap without knowing I was avoiding it.

I tell him it's slowly registering.

"Yeah, these are complicated things. So one at a time."

That's the line of the night. One at a time. These last 15 minutes, Rixx has been narrowing my decision space — not because the options don't exist, but because trying to learn them all at once is how you learn none of them. Brawl or kite. AB or MWD. One web or two. Scourge or other. Each fork is a real choice. You make it once, you live with it, you fly it until you understand why the choice is what it is.

Then you earn the right to ask about the next variation.

I sign off knowing more about Hookbill PvP than I did when I started, but more importantly, knowing what I don't need to learn yet. The dual-web is sitting there waiting for me. The Target Disruptor variant is sitting there waiting for me. The faction shield extender is sitting there waiting for me. None of them are mine yet. They become mine after I've lost a stack of basic brawl Hookbills in Black Rise and can articulate, in my own words, exactly which limitation of the basic fit is bugging me.

The trick Rixx pulled tonight wasn't teaching me a fit. It was teaching me how to learn a fit. One decision at a time. Master the boring version first. Earn your variations.

Now I just have to undock the thing.

My current fit

Here's where I landed. Four decisions, four groups, each one Rixx talked me into one at a time.

Tackle — scram, AB, web. Caldari Navy Warp Scrambler. 1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner. Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier.

"Scram AB = rockets."

No MWD anywhere on this hull. No long point. I had the kiter sitting right there as an option and I didn't take it — because this whole time was Rixx steering me away from the version of this ship I wasn't ready to fly yet.

Tank — buffer and resists. Caldari Navy Medium Shield Extender, Multispectrum Shield Hardener II, two Small Core Defense Field Extender rigs, one Small Ancillary Current Router.

The faction extender was the expensive ask. I asked if it replaced the MSE II instead of stacking with it. It doesn't — it is the MSE, just the version that costs more and tanks better. Small distinction. Took me a question to get there.

Damage — three Rocket Launcher IIs, Ballistic Control System II, Co-Processor II. Caldari Navy Scourge Rocket and Scourge Rage Rocket in the hold. No Inferno Rage. I'd loaded it out of habit — generic rocket-frigate muscle memory — before Rixx pointed out the obvious thing the ship itself had been telling me the whole time.

"Mostly use scourge, HBs get a bonus."

Kinetic bonus. Scourge is kinetic. I'd been flying a Hookbill like it was any other rocket boat for months. It isn't. It just took someone saying it out loud.

Capacitor — Small Ancillary Current Router I, doing the unglamorous job of keeping the lights on for everything above.

Total cost, a tad over 72M ISK.

That's the fit. It's not the optimized version. I'm not claiming it's the perfect fit (if that even exists!), or that it's the fit a fifteen-year vet would settle on.

It's mine though. It's me figuring it out in real time, one module at a time — same as the chat log above. That's the whole point of starting here instead of three killmails deep.

Fly dangerous. Or die trying! o7

The complete guide to planetary industry in EVE Online

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 01:40:58 +0000

Last evening, my new corp's CEO (more on that later) ran a ninety-minute tutorial on Planetary Industry in lowsec. Genuinely interesting stuff, and exhilarating when you're being chased around a system — enough that it sent me down a rabbit hole earlier today.

I went looking for more, found a handful of YouTube guides, and figured the useful thing to do with that research was put together one guide that actually covers it end to end: what PI is, the two philosophies for running it, what to train and in what order, and how to build both an extraction setup and a full factory chain.

Get ready to dive down another long guide. You should come out the other end with a solid foundation on Planetary Industry — or Planetary Interaction, if you're working off the same ancient New Eden memory as I am.

Table of contents

What is planetary industry?
The tier system: P0 through P4
Two philosophies: extraction planets vs. factory planets
Skills you need
Choosing what to produce
Where to do PI: security space considerations
Setting up an extraction planet (step by step)
Setting up a factory planet (step by step)
Tips and tricks
The bottom line
Resources

Compiled from guides by AloneInFinland & TheMadRambo (factory planet setup) and Aceface (extraction-based PI philosophy and planet mechanics - top image is a screenshot from his video)

What is planetary industry?

Planetary Industry (PI) lets you build structures on planets that extract raw resources and process them into increasingly valuable commodities. You can sell at any tier — raw extracts, refined goods, or high-end manufactured products. The further up the processing chain you go, the more ISK each unit is worth, but the more complexity, logistics, and management you take on.

Think of it as EVE's version of passive income: tedious to set up, largely autonomous once running, and scalable across multiple planets and accounts.

Did I mention that it's passive income?

The tier system: P0 through P4

PI commodities are organized into five tiers. Each tier requires components from the tier below it, and each jump in tier multiplies both value and complexity.

P0 — Raw resources. Extracted directly from planets. Examples: aqueous liquids, felsic magma, non-CS crystals. Worth almost nothing on the market (around 2 ISK per unit for aqueous liquids).
P1 — Basic processed goods. One P0 input, processed in a Basic Industry Facility. Examples: water, silicon, chiral structures. A meaningful jump in value (water sells for roughly 600 ISK versus 2 ISK for aqueous liquids).
P2 — Refined commodities. Two P1 inputs, processed in an Advanced Industry Facility. Examples: coolant (water + electrolytes), miniature electronics (silicon + chiral structures), consumer electronics (toxic metals + chiral structures). Typically sell for around 9,000–12,000 ISK each.
P3 — Specialized commodities. Two or three P2 inputs, processed in an Advanced Industry Facility. Examples: biotech research reports, cryoprotectant solution, supercomputers. Higher value, but require multiple P2 inputs that may come from different planet types.
P4 — Advanced commodities. Three P3 inputs, processed in a High-Tech Industry Facility. Examples: wetware mainframes, integrity response drones. Worth roughly 2.4–2.5 million ISK each. Require a complex multi-tier factory chain.

The core tradeoff: Higher tiers yield more ISK per cycle but demand more planets, more logistics, more hauling, and potentially more accounts. Lower tiers are simpler and more autonomous but generate less income per planet. Whatever tier you you're generating income.

Two philosophies: extraction planets vs. factory planets

These two approaches represent fundamentally different ways to use PI, and understanding the distinction is the single most important decision you'll make.

Extraction planets (Aceface's approach)

You extract raw P0 resources from a planet and process them into P1 or P2 goods on the same planet. Everything happens in one place — no hauling materials between planets.

Best for: Players who want minimal management, are comfortable with moderate income, and don't want to move materials between planets. Ideal for solo players or those with limited play time.

How it works: You place extractors on the planet surface, route the raw materials through Basic Industry Facilities (to make P1s), and optionally through Advanced Industry Facilities (to make P2s). The finished product routes to a launchpad, from which you transfer it to the customs office for pickup.

Key constraint: You're limited by what a single planet produces. You need a planet type that has both P0 resources required for your chosen P2 product. For example, coolant requires water and electrolytes — both found on gas planets. Miniature electronics requires silicon and chiral structures — the P0 precursors (felsic magma and non-CS crystals) are both found on lava planets.

Advantages:

Fully autonomous once set up — extractors run on a cycle (typically 7 days), factories process continuously
No inter-planet hauling
Simple to replicate across all six planets
Very low ongoing effort — just collect finished goods periodically

Disadvantages:

Income per planet is lower than factory setups
You're constrained by what resources exist on the planet
Extraction rates vary by security space (nullsec > lowsec > highsec)
Resource hotspots deplete over time and need repositioning

Factory planets (AloneInFinland & TheMadRambo's approach)

You buy P1 materials on the market, import them onto a barren planet, and process them through a multi-tier factory chain up to P4. The planet is purely a manufacturing facility — no extraction at all.

Best for: Players willing to invest upfront capital and do a resupply run every 4 days in exchange for significantly higher returns. Works well in highsec where extraction yields are poor anyway.

How it works: You deposit purchased P1 materials into the customs office, transfer them to launchpads on the planet surface, and the factory chain processes them through P2 → P3 → P4 automatically. You collect the P4 output every 4 days and resupply with fresh materials.

Key constraint: Requires upfront ISK to buy input materials and a one-time painful setup of factory routing. Only works on barren (preferred, due to smaller radius) or temperate planets.

Advantages:

Highest ISK output per planet (potentially ~2.4 billion ISK every 4 days per planet at current prices for wetware mainframes)
No dependency on extraction rates or security status
Once set up, the resupply cycle is mechanical and fast
Scalable to six planets with maxed Interplanetary Consolidation

Disadvantages:

Requires capital investment for P1 materials every cycle
One-time setup is genuinely tedious (routing every factory)
Profit depends on market spreads between input costs and output prices
Prices fluctuate — your margin can shrink

Skills you need

The short version, if you just want the floor and ceiling: you can start PI with almost nothing trained — Remote Sensing I is the actual hard requirement to touch planets at all. But "can start" and "should run efficiently" are different bars. If you're committing to PI as an income stream rather than a one-off experiment, three skills are worth pushing to V regardless of which philosophy you run: Command Center Upgrades (it's mandatory at V for any P4 factory chain, no exceptions), Interplanetary Consolidation (each level is a whole additional planet — this is the single highest-leverage skill in the list), and Customs Code Expertise (every cycle, forever, so the V is worth it even though it's "just" a tax reduction). Everything else below is real and helps your margins, but those three are the ones that change what you're capable of running, not just how efficiently you run it.

Mandatory for any PI

Command Center Upgrades — Determines how much you can build on a planet. Each level increases the power grid and CPU available. For factory planets producing P4, you need this at level V (no exceptions — the infrastructure simply doesn't fit otherwise). For extraction planets, level IV is workable but V is strongly recommended.
Remote Sensing — Minimum level I to interact with planets at all. Higher levels let you scan planets from further away, which is a convenience, not a necessity.
Interplanetary Consolidation — Each level grants one additional planet (base is one planet, level V gives you six total). More planets = more parallel setups = more income. Train this as high as you can.

Important for profitability

Customs Code Expertise — Reduces NPC tax on imports and exports through customs offices by 10% per level. At level V, you reduce the NPC tax component to its minimum. This directly affects your profit margin on every cycle.
Planetology / Advanced Planetology — Only relevant for extraction setups. Improves the accuracy of resource scans so you can place extractors more effectively. Not needed at all for factory planets.

Market skills that affect PI income

Accounting — Reduces sales tax when you sell your output.
Broker Relations — Reduces broker fees on market orders.

Caldari Navy standings (or the relevant faction) — Higher standings with the faction that controls the station where you sell can add additional percentage reductions.

Every one of these shaves a percentage off your costs or taxes. They compound.

Choosing what to produce

Use a resource like the Adam4EVE PI tool or similar community resources to map out what each planet type produces and what the market prices look like.

The decision framework

If you want minimum effort: Produce P2 items on single-planet extraction setups. Pick a P2 whose two P1 inputs both come from one planet type. Good examples:

Coolant (water + electrolytes) → gas planets
Miniature electronics (silicon + chiral structures) → lava planets
Consumer electronics (toxic metals + chiral structures) → lava planets

If you want maximum ISK: Set up factory planets producing P4 items. Buy P1 materials on the market, import them, and run the full P2 → P3 → P4 chain. Good examples:

Wetware mainframes → barren planets
Integrity response drones → barren planets (same factory layout, different materials)

Adapting to what the planet gives you: Not every planet of the same type has equal resource distribution. Aceface's example is instructive — two of his three lava planets had very low felsic magma, which would bottleneck miniature electronics production. So he switched those two planets to consumer electronics (which uses heavy metals and non-CS crystals instead), because those resources were more abundant. Check your specific planet's resource scan before committing to a product.

Where to do PI: security space considerations

Highsec — Safest, but extraction yields are the lowest. Factory planets work just as well here since they don't extract. Tax rates on NPC customs offices can be high — look for player-owned customs offices (POCOs) with 15% tax or lower.
Lowsec — Better extraction yields than highsec. More risk during customs office interactions. Less traffic means fewer POCOs to choose from.
Nullsec — Best extraction yields. If your corporation has infrastructure and a buyback program, this is where extraction setups shine. Risk depends on how well-defended your space is.
Wormhole space — Comparable to nullsec yields. Logistics are more complex due to wormhole connections changing. Some wormhole corporations run PI as a core income stream.

The takeaway: For extraction setups, nullsec or wormhole space gives you meaningfully more resources per cycle. For factory planets, security status doesn't matter — you're buying inputs on the market anyway, so set up wherever you find low-tax POCOs.

One more lever, if you're serious about the income: tax rate isn't just something you check, it's something you can own. If your corp or alliance controls customs offices on the planets you're using — or you're willing to put one up yourself — you set the rate instead of paying whatever NPC or a rival corp charges. This is most relevant in nullsec, where your alliance likely already has infrastructure, but it applies anywhere.

The gap between "I found a POCO at 15%" and "I or my corp owns the POCO" is the difference between PI as a hobby and PI as real income.

Setting up an extraction planet (step by step)

This follows Aceface's approach for producing P2 items on a single planet.

1. Place and upgrade your command center

You must be in the same solar system and undocked to place a command center. Tether to a player-owned structure for safety. Select the planet, open Planetary Industry view, go to the Build tab (not Scan), place the command center anywhere on the surface, and submit. Then click the command center, upgrade it to maximum level, and submit again.

2. Place your structures

You need:

2 extractor control units (one for each P0 resource)
6 basic industry facilities (3 per resource, converting P0 → P1)
3 advanced industry facilities (combining two P1s into your P2 product)
1 launchpad (storage and customs office interface)

Place everything as close together as possible — shorter links use less power grid, which might let you squeeze in an extra extractor head.

3. Create links

Links are just communication pathways — they don't determine what goes where, only that structures can talk to each other. Chain your structures together with the shortest possible links. You don't need to link every structure to every other structure; an indirect connection through the chain is sufficient.

Think of links as roads. Routes (set up next) are the delivery instructions.

4. Set up extractors

Click each extractor and select the P0 resource it should extract. The scan overlay shows you where that resource is most concentrated — position your extractor heads (the circles you drag around) over the hotspots. Set your cycle length:

Shorter cycles (1–3 days): Higher average yield, but you need to restart extraction more often
Longer cycles (7+ days): Lower average yield, but runs unattended for longer. Extraction rate is highest at the start and tapers off

Choose based on how often you want to log in and interact with PI.

5. Set up routes

This is where you tell each structure where to send its output.

Extractors route P0 resources → launchpad
Launchpad routes P0 resources → basic industry facilities
Install the correct schematic on each basic facility (e.g., felsic magma → silicon)
Basic facilities route P1 output → launchpad
Launchpad routes P1 resources → advanced industry facilities
Install the correct schematic on each advanced facility (e.g., silicon + chiral structures → miniature electronics)
Advanced facilities route P2 output → launchpad

6. Start production and collect

Submit everything. The extractors begin pulling resources, the factories begin processing. When you want to collect, open the launchpad, select your finished P2 goods, and transfer them to the customs office. Then fly to the customs office and pick them up.

Setting up a factory planet (step by step)

This follows AloneInFinland & TheMadRambo's approach for producing P4 items (wetware mainframes).

1. Find your planets

Look for a system with 3+ barren planets (6 is ideal if you have Interplanetary Consolidation V). Barren planets are preferred over temperate because their smaller radius means shorter links, which saves power grid. Check the POCO tax rates — aim for 15% or lower.

2. Place and upgrade your command center

Same process as extraction: be in system, be undocked (tether for safety), place the command center on the planet surface, submit, then upgrade to maximum and submit again.

3. Build the factory infrastructure

The layout for a P4 factory planet (working from center outward):

Center: 1 high-tech industry facility (produces your P4 item)
Inner ring: 3 advanced industry facilities arranged in a triangle around the high-tech facility (these produce the 3 P3 inputs)
Middle ring: 3 launchpads, one attached to each advanced facility (these serve as storage and import/export points)
Outer ring: 18 basic industry facilities — 3 pairs of 2 coming off each launchpad (6 per launchpad). Each pair produces one of the three P2 inputs needed by its corresponding P3 factory. You need pairs (two factories per P2 type) because the P2 production rate needs to be double to keep up with the P3 factory's consumption rate.

Place structures as close together as possible (push until the highlight goes red, then pull back just enough to place).

4. Create all links

Connect each pair of outer factories to each other, connect each pair to its launchpad, connect launchpads to each other, connect launchpads to the inner-ring advanced factories, and connect those to the central high-tech facility. Everything needs a path to everything else.

5. Set recipes (one-time)

Working from center outward:

High-tech facility: Select your P4 product (e.g., wetware mainframes). Create a route sending the output to any launchpad.
Three advanced facilities: Each one gets one of the three P3 inputs required by the P4 recipe. For wetware mainframes, these are biotech research reports, cryoprotectant solution, and supercomputers. Route each output to the corresponding launchpad.
Eighteen basic factories: Mouse over each P3 recipe's info to see its three P2 inputs. Each pair of basic factories produces one P2 input. Set the recipe and route the output to the corresponding launchpad.

6. Route materials between tiers (one-time)

From each launchpad, route the P2 materials inward to the advanced factory that needs them. Then route the P3 output from each advanced factory's launchpad to the central high-tech facility. When everything is correctly routed, the red warning rings on all factories will disappear.

7. Deposit materials and create final routes

Go to the customs office for the planet. There's no trick to landing here safely — warping in-system now takes you straight to the customs office gantry (it's directly warpable and visible on the overview), and you're exactly as exposed on arrival as you would be at a gate. Check local before you commit, fly something you can afford to lose, and align out before you start the transfer if the system's hot.

From the customs office, transfer materials to the correct launchpads. You need to know which launchpad handles which P3 chain — write down each launchpad's ID code and which recipe chain it feeds.

Materials needed per planet for a 4-day cycle (wetware mainframes):

Material	Quantity
Oxygen	7,680
Biofuels	7,680
Chiral structures	7,680
Toxic metals	15,360
Proteins	15,360
Electrolytes	15,360
Reactive metals	23,040
Bacteria	23,040
Water	23,040

On first setup only: once materials are on the planet, go to each outer-ring factory and create routes from the launchpad to that factory for each of its two P1 inputs. Red boxes turn orange as inputs are routed; red rings disappear when both inputs are connected. This step is never repeated — on subsequent cycles, you just deposit materials and they flow automatically.

8. Submit, collect in 4 days, repeat

Hit submit. The factories kick into gear. In 4 days, collect 48 wetware mainframes from the customs office. Deposit the next batch of P1 materials. The routes are permanent.

The hauling reality nobody mentions

Look at that materials table again: roughly 138,000 m³ of P1 inputs per planet, every 4 days (P1 commodities run 1 m³ per unit). Scale that to six planets and you're moving close to 830,000 m³ of cargo on a recurring basis — that's a freighter-scale problem, not a "throw it in an Iteron" problem, and it's a different fit and a different risk profile than the finished P4 output (50 m³ a unit, trivial to move).

Figure out your hauling ship and your route before you commit to six factory planets, not after. A freighter alone in a system isn't safe just because it's highsec — it's slow, it's a known gank target, and most freighter pilots fly it without a webbing escort or a scout. If you're running this at scale, budget for the hauling logistics as part of the setup cost, the same way you'd budget for the P1 materials themselves.

Tips and tricks

There is no warp-drag trick anymore — and treating the customs office as exposed is the safer mindset. Older PI guides (pre–Into the Abyss, 2018-era) taught a timing trick where you'd drag materials into the customs office window the instant your warp decel bar started dropping, beating attackers to the punch before they could lock you. That assumed an approach window that doesn't work that way anymore — in-system warp now takes you directly to the customs office gantry, full stop, the same way it takes you to a gate. You arrive exposed, same as anywhere else in space. There's no special defense baked into the mechanic.

If you're hauling something that matters, the actual safety habits are: check local before committing, fly a hauler you can afford to lose, don't bling it out, and align toward your next destination before you start the transfer if the system feels hot.

Highsec ganking has picked back up through 2026 — Caldari space and common hauling routes have seen a real uptick in gatecamps and suicide-gank activity — so don't assume highsec PI runs are automatically safe just because the security status says so.

Tether everything you can: Any interaction with the planetary industry interface (except the initial command center placement and customs office visits) can be done while tethered to a player-owned structure. Use this.
Links are roads, routes are delivery instructions. This distinction trips up every new PI player. Links establish that two structures can communicate. Routes tell materials where to go. You set up links once and mostly forget them. Routes are where the actual logistics logic lives.
Shorter links save power grid. Place structures as close as possible. The power grid you save might let you add another extractor head or factory.
Check resource distribution before committing. Not every planet of the same type is equal. One lava planet might have abundant felsic magma while another has almost none. Adapt your product choice to what the specific planet actually offers.
Launchpads double as storage. You don't need separate storage facilities — launchpads have substantial storage capacity and also serve as your import/export interface. Using them for both roles saves power grid.
Factory planet routes are permanent. The painful routing step is genuinely a one-time operation. Every subsequent 4-day cycle is just: deposit materials → separate into launchpads → submit. That's it.
Write down your launchpad codes. Each launchpad has a unique alphanumeric ID. Map which launchpad feeds which production chain and keep that reference somewhere — if you put the wrong materials in the wrong launchpad, nothing gets produced.
Adapt to market conditions. The factory planet layout for wetware mainframes works identically for integrity response drones or other P4 products — same structure count, same topology, just different recipes and materials. If one P4's margin shrinks, you can switch.

The bottom line

PI is not glamorous. The setup is tedious, the interface is clunky, and the optimization is fiddly. But it's one of the few truly passive income streams in EVE — once configured, it generates ISK whether you're online running missions, PvPing, or not logged in at all.

The real decision isn't "should I do PI" but "how much management am I willing to tolerate." If the answer is "almost none," run single-planet extraction setups producing P2 goods. If the answer is "I'll spend one painful afternoon and then 15 minutes every 4 days," build factory planets and produce P4 commodities worth billions. Either way, the planets don't care if you're asleep.

For the record, I'm nowhere near actually running any of this.

But it got its hooks in me writing it out, enough that I'm queuing up the skills now — just enough to get P0 (maybe even P1) going on a single planet, nothing fancier than that to start.

I'll loop back once I've got something running and let you know how it actually goes versus how it reads on paper.

Resources

Official EVE Online

Community tools

The Safe Spot — Episode 10: "Black Rise Regional News"

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:57:49 +0000

Ten episodes! 10!!

I honestly can't believe we've hit double digits. Most podcast series — EVE or otherwise — never make it past the first handful before fading out, so the fact that Rixx and I are still here, still recording, and still having an absolute blast feels like a milestone worth celebrating.

And we're not slowing down. No siree, Bob!

We've got so much more in store.

So, in this episode we welcome Black Rise Regional News — let's call him "Burn" short for BRRN — to The Safe Spot. Burn is a Caldari faction warfare pilot, UCN director, and the creator behind one of EVE's most unique written content projects: a regional newspaper covering the wars, politics, and shenanigans of Black Rise and surrounding space.

Rixx and I dig into how Burn went from flu-ridden backlog gamer to militia diplomat and propagandist-in-chief, and I listen in while the two of them swap faction warfare war stories along the way.

I mostly listened and took notes on this one — these two had a lot to talk about!

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Meet our guest, Black Rise Regional News — Burn is a Caldari militia pilot flying with UCN who got nominated for a Creator Award in the written category. We introduce him and settle on his nickname for the show — Burn, it'll be!
Burn's EVE origin story — Started in February of last year after getting the flu, loaded up the backlog, remembered reading about massive space battles and heists, and gave EVE a shot. Spent two weeks gas huffing solo in wormhole space, got recruited into a bad corp that stuck him on moon mining, then found UCN through the EVE Discord and joined Caldari faction warfare.
The speedrun to leadership — Burn went from recruit to recruiter to trainer to director within six months of joining UCN, not because of fitting theory or FC skills, but because he's the morale guy — the Neelix of the corporation, as I put it. Finding the right corp and your people is job number one in EVE.
Suspect mechanics and expensive cynos — Burn shares a story about blowing up a suspect miner who didn't even know what suspect status meant, then reimbursing the hull. Rixx and Burn swap tales about a Rapier used to light a cyno and mention that eternal lesson of never flying what you can't replace.
Gate camps and the Tama shortcut — The Onnamon-Kinakka gate camp, fat haulers dying on the regular, and a top-five kill list featuring a 7 billion ISK Mastodon. People still take the shortcut through Tama from Jita, and we still appreciate them for it.
The Griffin Navy leaderboard challenge — Burn took on a personal challenge to climb the Griffin Navy Issue leaderboard using ECM and two blasters, punching up into Algoses and Coraxes. ECM is divisive, but the stories are great.
How Black Rise Regional News got started — After UCN lost 80% of its active FCs and roster to a corp departure, Burn needed something to boost morale. The militia took a surprise command op system, and that victory became the first edition of BRRN. It started circulating in Caldari militia Discord servers before eventually hitting Reddit.
The Caldari militia's insular comms problem — Unlike the Minmatar with Minmatar Fleet Alliance, the Caldari don't have a single unified militia Discord. There are four or five to choose from. The guys from Sheriff built caldarifw.com to help centralize guides, after-action reports, and a large-print version of BRRN.
Burn's editorial process — He runs a private Discord server as his newsroom, uses Dotlan's faction warfare filter to track system flips, and collects funny comms moments and militia chat snippets to turn into headlines. The "news in short" section comes from copy-pasting those little notes and distilling them. No strict schedule — sometimes one edition every three or four days, sometimes longer gaps depending on how busy work is.
Shouting out the small corps — Burn makes a point of crediting smaller groups that show up to bashes and system captures, like Hisera Kab Delivery, Stone Warriors, and Private Security Squad with Eve Dest. Those shoutouts mean a lot to small corps trying to make their mark in faction warfare.
Advice for aspiring EVE regional journalists — Don't take yourself too seriously, keep your eyes and ears open, and don't cut off communication with the other side. Burn is also a diplo for UCSC and keeps open lines with Gallente and Guristas groups — you'd be surprised how much people tell you if you just ask and don't start drama.
Notoras News nostalgia — Rixx brings up the old YouTube series Notoras News, set in a dead-end system near Kedama where nothing ever happened. Burn had seen it too. We briefly mourn its passing and celebrate the tradition of weird EVE content.
Burn's move into video content — His first video edition of BRRN took two weeks to edit, but now he has a framework to reuse. He also speed-edited a video about clearing the Historic Wanderer achievement in two days after the Cradle of War expansion dropped.
Rixx's early take on Cradle of War — Rixx is cautiously optimistic but wants to give it another week before forming a real opinion. New plex types — moderate, interceptor, elite chaos plexes — and environmental effects inside them are creating a lot of unpredictability.
The Caldari campaign goals and the Syndicate gate — The Caldari are the only faction to have completed three campaign objectives. Their reward: a stargate from Ienakkamon to Syndicate, with the Intaki Syndicate dissolving and its corps folding into the Caldari State, plus some Syndicate LP store modules moving to State Protectorate.
I confess to being the sponge in the room — I admit I spent most of this episode absorbing everything like a junior leaguer sitting between two vets. I'm flying with Jaeger Inc, dabbling with faction warfare, some corp mates are coming through Jaeger Academy in Exordium, and looking forward to eventually holding my own in conversations like this one.
The Oz got podded — Burn reveals that the Oz, yes yes, our previous guest who said he'd go Gallente, got podded in Piak in Black Rise. Burn arranged to procure his frozen corpse and added it to his favorites on Frozen Crypt, a tool that scans your assets and displays your corpse collection. New Safe Spot tradition: every guest must eliminate the previous one. Station containers have a 2,000 item limit, which one of Burn's corpmates discovered by filling one with corpses. One of the new Cradle of War achievements requires losing 500 ships to earn the title "Meat Popsicle.
Wrap-up and the Black Rise song — We close out the episode and the outro song is, impossibly, actually called "Black Rise." Sometimes the universe just lines up.

Where to find us!

And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

Speedlinking New Eden — June 7th, 2026

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:38:13 +0000

The week New Eden held its breath.

That's the only way I can describe it. Seven days, almost no major announcements, no lore bombs, no surprise developer streams — and yet the whole EVE ecosystem felt coiled, tense, pointed at one fixed date: Tuesday, June 9th, 11:00 UTC.

The Cradle of War expansion drops in less than 48 hours and the pre-launch machinery ran full-tilt this past week: expansion notes published early, a developer roundtable posted to YouTube, and the Mastery Pack sale running down to its last hours.

Oh, and NoizyGamer quietly dropped some of the most interesting player-retention data of the year. We'll get to that in a minute.

Let's jump right in.

Fenris Creations / EVE Online — official

Warpath ends as CONCORD protocols re-established | EVE Universe (Published June 2nd | YC128-06-02) The in-universe news dispatch closing out the Capsuleer Day XXIII: Warpath event. CONCORD has finally purged the Warpath cyberattack from its security protocols, allowing its rapid response fleets to resume operating in highsec and forcing empire navy fleets back to designated warzones. The lore details are worth paying attention to: military spending during Warpath is estimated to have spiked to 300% of normal levels, prototype navy destroyers logged over 700 capsuleer kills during the conflict period, and the four empire leaders have agreed to convene at the Inner Circle — hosted by AIR in the newly opened Manifest system inside Exordium.

The diplomatic summit opening Cradle of War's narrative arc is literally being held in the new player starter region. Fenris is doing real worldbuilding work here, threading the seasonal event directly into the expansion that follows it. If you skipped the Warpath event, this dispatch is the cleanest way to catch up on where New Eden's story stands when the servers come back up Tuesday.

Mastery Pack sale now in the NES! | EVE Online (Published June 4th) 23% off Omega time, skill points, MCT bundles and boosters in the New Eden Store. Runs until June 8th — that's TOMORROW!!One purchase per pack per account. Pure commerce, but worth flagging: this is the pre-expansion push, and NoizyGamer's data (more below) suggests the PLEX market has already cooled from Fanfest-era spikes. The timing makes sense — get pilots topped up before launch day.

Cradle of War: expansion notes | EVE Online (Published June 5th) Fenris dropped the full expansion notes four days ahead of launch, something they've been doing more consistently lately.

The notes cover everything: Exordium going fully live, Military Campaigns (PvE and PvP objectives, individual reward tracking, ISK and LP payouts, standings gains without derived standings loss), command carriers for all four empires (Simurgh, Salvation, Gaia, Ymir), four navy destroyers, the Heraldry and Achievements systems, ship balance changes, and the economic adjustments baked into Exordium itself.

The forum thread is already lighting up with questions about campaign objectives, which is exactly the kind of pre-launch engagement Fenris wants to see.

Community Beat for 5 June | EVE Online (Published June 5th) This community spotlight covered a 2.6 trillion ISK dreadbrawl in Querious (WOMP side footage linked, OnlyFleets POV also noted), a newly launched Amarr faction warfare website with fleet timers, auctions, and fitting suggestions. The Querious battle footage is ABSOLUTELY worth watching if you missed it — the editing is genuinely cinematic. Goosebump material.

The meetup calendar is worth bookmarking: EVE Glasgow was on June 6th, EVE North (Toronto) on June 20th, EVE Manchester on June 20th, EVE Down Under in August. Which reminds me, I need to set up a group for Montreal! Or find if one exists.

Cradle of War developer roundtable | YouTube (Published June 5th) The EVE Online lead devs (FC Swift, FC Rattati, FC Okami & FC Burger) sat down for a roundtable discussion ahead of launch. Flagging it here because it's the definitive hear-it-from-the-source summary of what Cradle of War is and what Fenris is hoping it accomplishes. Worth watching if you want to hear the team's framing of Military Campaigns, the Exordium philosophy, and how they're thinking about the Theatres of War saga as a three-expansion arc.

Community signals

The Safe Spot — episode 9, featuring Oz | EVEOGANDA (Published June 2nd) Rixx posted the episode to EVEOGANDA. Episode 9 was a milestone for us: our first-ever guest, Oz, an EVE market analyst and CSM member. We were both really happy with how this one came together.

The timing — right between Fanfest and expansion launch — gave us a lot to dig into, and Oz's perspective on the economic implications of Military Campaigns and the Exordium regional adjustments (reduced payouts, added market fees) is the kind of analysis you won't find in the official dev blogs. If you play the market side of EVE, this episode is worth your time.

I've put together my show notes over on here, on CrazyKinux's Musings.

The Capsuleer Day XXIII: Warpath event wrap-up | The Ancient Gaming Noob (Published June 3rd) Wilhelm closes the book on Warpath with his usual measured take: the event was fine, the competitive nature brought out some predictable behaviour, the mining tasks were a grind, and he ended up running it on four characters anyway despite swearing he wouldn't.

The near-death Mastodon run in Amarr is worth reading for the comedy alone. But the line that sticks with me is his observation that EVE Online has a way of revealing who we are. He's not wrong. Worth reading alongside the in-universe Warpath closure dispatch above; the two pieces bracket the event neatly from both sides.

Flying solo in EVE: going into a brief lull | The Nosy Gamer (Published June 4th) NoizyGamer's regular Tuesday column is doing something most pre-launch coverage ignores: looking at what actually happened to player activity in the run-up to Cradle of War. The numbers are interesting. May averaged 25,629 concurrent accounts on Tranquility — the highest monthly average so far in 2026 and ahead of pace for his bold prediction that this year will hit the highest ACU since 2014. EVE seems to be in a great shape, which Oz had mention on The Safe Spot also.

Noizy remarked that the PLEX market did cooled noticeably this past week: ISK traded for PLEX dropped 25.1% week-over-week, volume down, price stabilized. His read is that the big promotional push is being held for launch day rather than the pre-expansion window, and that the Mastery Pack sale alone isn't moving the needle the way the Fanfest PLEX sales did. That's a useful calibration. The hype is there, but it's not converting to commercial activity yet. Tuesday will tell.

Universal Geographic B-R5RB | EVEOGANDA (Published June 4th) Rixx continues his Universal Geographic video series with a piece on B-R5RB, EVE Online's most famous battle which occured back in January 2014. Rixx has been building this series as a kind of travelogue and memorial project — flying to significant locations in New Eden and documenting them.

Dropping it the week before a major expansion about war is perfect timing on his part. B-R5RB is what Cradle of War aspires to generate. Worth a watch, if only for the visuals, or the track. Hell, just head over to EVEOGANDA and have a watch!

The shape of the week

This week wasn't about new content. It was about positioning for what's about to go LIVE. Fenris spent the week making sure every piece was in place before Tuesday: patch notes early, store sale running, community content surfaced in the Community Beat, dev roundtable live for the curious.

The machine is well-oiled. The expansion is ready.

What's less certain is whether the community is ready — not for the content, but for what it means.

Cradle of War is Fenris's first real test of the post-Fanfest. The Theatres of War saga is a three-expansion commitment. Military Campaigns are only as good as player participation rates — and those will depend on whether new pilots arriving in Exordium actually stick around long enough to graduate into the conflict, and move into the deeper end of the pool — where the rest of us are having fun.

NoizyGamer's ACU numbers suggest the player base is genuinely healthy. The PLEX market cooling is noise, not signal. Tuesday will tell us whether the momentum is real.

Tomorrow, everything changes. Or it doesn't.

New Eden has a way of making you feel both can happen.

Fly safe friends. o7

Got a link I missed? Drop it in the comments. o7

The Safe Spot — Episode 9: "Featuring Oz"

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:43:00 +0000

Hey everyone, we're back after what felt like forever. I got pulled into the Habs' Stanley Cup run (no shame, that was a hell of a series for our Montreal Canadiens), and we finally sat down for episode 9 with our very first official guest: Oz.

Both Rixx and I were genuinely stoked about opening the format up to guests, and even more so that Oz agreed to be the first one through the door. I came in with way too many questions lined up like a checklist, and Rixx, true to form, just rolled with the conversation in full Buccaneer bravado.

Very different styles, yet somehow it worked.

Who is Oz?

Oz is one of EVE Online's go-to voices on the in-game economy. He's been around since 2004, took a long break, and came back during the pandemic to start streaming on Twitch — where he now runs The Oz Report, a weekly market analysis show that's become required viewing for traders and industrialists in New Eden.

Outside Twitch, he's on YouTube, runs an active trading Discord, and maintains theoz.space, a Bloomberg-style dashboard for the EVE market. He's just wrapped his third (and final) term on the CSM as the resident economic specialist, hosted FanFest 2026 on the official Twitch stream, and took home the creator award for best podcast this year.

Real-life day job: data aggregation at a German company — which, once you've met him, makes a lot of sense.

We talked FanFest from the host side, the slow professionalization of the creator program, his actual day-one origin story, the two ways people fall into market gameplay (and why most of them burn out), and a pretty generous tool list for anyone wanting to try trading without rage-quitting in a week.

No theme per se, no agenda really. It simply went where it went, which is how Rixx and I like it.

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Cold open, reunion, and meeting our first guest — back on the mic after a long gap, finally cracking open the "just us two" format, and admitting I may have already taken some of Oz's advice before we even hit record.
FanFest 2026 from the inside — Oz on what hosting actually looks like behind the cameras, a few moments that made this year's FanFest hit different, and the bar-stream experiment that worked better than anyone expected.
Oz's origin and the long way back — how a stockbroker fresh out of college turned EVE into a spreadsheet, what made him walk away for a decade, and the very 2020 reason he came back.
Why EVE's economy hits different — twenty-three years in, and we get into why nothing else really comes close, plus a confession about my own economic blind spot.
Tools, then and now — Oz's actual go-to list for anyone serious about markets, and how AI has quietly reshaped what's possible.
The two doors into market gameplay — one of them burns you out fast, the other one keeps you. Plus some sharp words about the ISK-per-hour mindset.
Three terms on the CSM and what comes next — Oz wraps his run, looks ahead to what he actually wants to do with his free time, and reads CCP/Fenris' financials with a clear eye.
Wrap, future guests, and the music tease — we open the door to listener guest suggestions, and Rixx warns you about this week's track.

Where to find us!

If you enjoyed this episode, you can catch The Safe Spot wherever you get your podcasts — find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Past episodes and full show notes are up on the blog at CrazyKinux's Musings. And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

Coriolis: The Great Dark session zero - The exploration begins

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Mon, 25 May 2026 11:23:00 +0000

Last Thursday evening, while the Habs plowed through the Carolina Hurricanes, my roleplaying buddies and I were rolling up our characters for a first run within Coriolis: The Great Dark.

I picked a Roughneck, with Machine Tender as her specialty and Mechanics as her innate talent.

Your archetype already tells you what kind of story you came to play. A Roughneck says: "I want to be the one with grease under my nails when the lights flicker, the one who notices the hum in the bulkhead before anyone else does."

Not the diplomat or scholar. Not the mystic or poet. The hands.

What is Coriolis: The Great Dark?

Coriolis: The Great Dark is Free League Publishing's sci-fi roleplaying game, built on the Year Zero Engine. It picks up the Third Horizon setting and pushes deeper — into uncharted space, dead civilizations, and the strange things still waiting in the dark between stars.

Players take the role of Explorers: salvagers, scholars, mystics, and roughnecks crewing fragile ships on the edge of known space. The play loop leans toward investigation, exploration, and atmosphere — closer to Alien, Dune, and The Expanse than to a tactical shooter.

Combat is fast and lethal. Faith and technology share the same table. And the universe, more often than not, is watching you back.

A quick bit of context before I go further.

Our group spent a few months playing Fallout, and though I loved the atmosphere, the wasteland and the group of characters we had, we seemed to be fighting the system to play the game, or were often times bogged down by the game mechanics.
Combat sometimes slowed to a crawl, we were managing systems more than surviving the wasteland. More rolls, than roleplay. For me, that's the moment a game starts losing me.
So we simply pulled the plug. No drama. Just time to move on.
And I'd already been waiting a few years for the alternative.

Coriolis: The Great Dark

Though I didn't back Free League Publishing's Kickstarter for The Great Dark, the theme and lore definitely caught my attention. Explorers, not soldiers. Ancient ruins, not simply rooms to clean out. A universe that quietly stares back, and sometimes bites back hard.

If I had to pitch it in one sentence: Alien meets Dune meets The Expanse, with a salvage job that might wake something older than civilization.

Combat exists. Combat is also fast, dangerous, and costly. Treat every problem like a gunfight and the setting answers with disaster.

That's the game I wanted to be in. Tension over tactics. Investigation over inventory. Mystery over churn butchery.

Meet Safiya al-Khatib

Roughneck. Machine Tender. Mechanics.

Her stare is ice.

One side of her face carries a tribal tattoo that reads lived-in rather than decorative.

Her armor is scratched industrial plate, utility straps, grease-stained tubing, retro-futurist edges worn smooth by use. Resilience. Exhaustion. Competence. And something quietly violent underneath.

She joined the Explorers Guild for one reason: Greatships. The mile-long behemoths that crawl between the stars. She wants to be inside one — to hear how something that big actually holds together.

That's her hook.

The rest of her arc, we'll find out soon enough.

The crew

Around the table: Shadi, Vynx, Alex, with Alamo running the show. The same crew I've been playing D&D with these past few for years, and recently Fallout. We have a Scholar. We have an Esoteric. Shadi hasn't rolled yet as I write this post. The pleasant surprise wasn't a single "aha" moment — it was the texture of the character creation process itself.

The professions feel genuinely distinct from each other, or from anything we've played before. The background system gives you story hooks you didn't know you wanted. And once you've rolled, you can still bend the arc. Nothing is locked. The character grows as the campaign progresses.

Running it on Foundry

This was my first time on Foundry (as well as Coriolis). The first thirty minutes were the usual scramble — where's the sheet, how do I roll this, why is that window floating there. But Alamo was there to guide us through.

The themed look matches the tone. Drag-and-drop just works. Rolling is two clicks and a result.

Next session is this Thursday evening. Then June 6th, in person — dice on the table, snacks in arm's reach, the way RPGs were truly intended to be played.

What comes next

Picking the Roughneck wasn't an accident.

I'm here for the ancient machines, the fragile crews, and the things that hum in the dark before the lights go out.

I'm looking forward to sharing how this story unfolds!

The Safe Spot — Episode 8: "Our EVE Fanfest 2026 reaction"

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 20 May 2026 00:18:36 +0000

This one's our reaction episode to EVE Fanfest 2026, which wrapped up the day before we recorded. Rixx and I sat down Sunday evening to talk through everything — the Polaris Award he picked up while not even being in Iceland, the Cradle of War reveal, the Google DeepMind sit-down, where Vanguard and Frontier are headed, and a pile of asides along the way.

It's a long one, but a good one.

Pour something cold (or hot, in Rixx's case) and dig in.😂

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Welcome back to the Safe Spot — Rixx and I open the episode, flag that this is our Fanfest 2026 reaction show, and joke about needing a drinking game for every time someone says "Fenris Creations" instead of CCP, or was it the other way around. Sorry, I've been drinking way to early tonight!
Rixx's Polaris Award and the lead-up — The big news: Rixx took home a Polaris Award for lifetime contribution to EVE, and we dig into the strange road to get there — his original confusion about being left off the Creator Awards shortlist back in March, the passionate blog post I wrote at the time, the cryptic DM from FC Convict the day before Fanfest hinting he should "definitely" tune in Saturday at 19:00, and a full day of wallowing in his own anxieties before the ceremony — t'amber also winning a Polaris, deservedly, for everything he's done with the ship-scanning designer platform that helped Rixx with his fan art way back in 2014–2015 — and a shout-out to the literal hundreds of people who reached out through Bluesky, Discord, Facebook, and everywhere else with congratulations and stories.
How far back we go — A quick walk down memory lane: a screenshot contest Rixx ran where I won using shots from sneaking inside a POS shield to photograph an Avatar Titan, plus his old Battle Clinic win with a carved pumpkin that said "Rixx is in local." Probably 2008 or 2009. We've been at this a while.
Fanfest then vs. Fanfest now — My first Fanfest was 2008 at a much smaller venue (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, EVE Fanfest Memorabilia Giveaway, EVE Fanfest 2008 Blues) before Eve Vanguard or Frontier or any of it existed, so coming back this year (watching from home) the production quality felt like a different league entirely — Rixx, who's been going every year since 2014, walks me through what you actually miss on the stream: the hallway conversations, the hugs, putting faces to names, the bumping-into-people-you-haven't-seen-in-years stuff that's the real heart of Fanfest — which is also why I just bought my ticket for 2027.
Hosts and vibe of the stream — Quick appreciation for the between-session hosts (Yrsta, Lauru, Toxic, Oz, and the rest), how well FC Convict held the Creator Awards together, and how some of the old geeky charm — the friendly heckling, devs snapping back at players, players hassling devs — is still very much intact under all the polish.
Cradle of War and factional warfare — Rixx is genuinely pumped for this one. We get into the new Military Campaigns, the four empires getting more dynamic personalities, new hubs, and the new Navy Destroyers and Plexes (interceptor-only, solo-only, battlecruiser-only) — what it might mean for Stay Frosty and low-sec PvP — and the broader question of whether this finally hits the right balance between hand-holding newbros and pushing them out the door into the real game.
The newbro story — A classic EVE-in-a-nutshell: a Stay Frosty pilot tries to gank a month-old miner in a Pioneer, the miner escapes, they chat, and the Stay Frosty pilot gives him 60 million ISK out of the kindness of his heart to buy a special mining ship. Within an hour, a different Stay Frosty pilot blows him up in it. The miner has of course promised revenge. He'll never come back. They never do.
The Art Department and citadels — Why I'm so glued to the art team's work — the visuals are what pulled me into EVE in the first place — and Rixx tipping me off that the gorgeous docking animation I'd been geeking out about is on the player-built citadels, not the new air stations. There's a public Keepstar in Amamake (Minmatar lowsec) if you want to see it yourself, and Rixx predicting (correctly, again) that the first question at the Q&A would be about ship customization.
EVE Vanguard — It's finally starting to feel like a real game. We get into how Fenris seems to have learned the lesson from Dust 514: don't try to force the two games to mesh, just let them share the universe — different audiences, same New Eden — and that Operation Avalon, the first alpha playtest, runs July 7–20 on Steam or via the Eve launcher. I'll be checking it out. And you should definitely watch the Operation Avalon Details Reveal, with FC Collins & FC Rattati, freshly back from Fanfest.
The "514" mystery solved on air — Neither of us could remember what Dust 514 actually stood for. Google AI saved us mid-podcast: it's a nod to the Shanghai devs, an auspicious date, and a play on the Mandarin phrase "I don't want to die" — a reference to capsuleer immortality.
EVE Frontier — Rixx is out: it's just too much like EVE for him, and if he's going to play a sandbox space game he'd rather just be playing EVE. I'm still scratching my head on it too — the survivalist vibe gives me a claustrophobic feeling every time I log in, and I came back to EVE for the community, not to be alone in the dark. We do appreciate the premise (thousands of years post-New Eden, our stuff as ancient ruins) and the open-source modding angle, even if neither of us is a modder — and we raise the obvious question of what happens when someone mods Frontier in a way that ruins your experience and you don't even know they did it.
The Google DeepMind sit-down — Hilmar's fireside chat with Adrian Bolton was — by design — kind of boring, and that's exactly what should have eased everyone's nerves: this is strictly a research collaboration, with maybe something useful three-to-five years out — Hilmar's track record of attaching EVE to big partners (Sony for VR back in the day, now Google) is a real strength — and what excites me is the possibility of AI eventually putting some real intelligence into NPCs that currently just run pre-programmed scripts. Also: the right answer to "what if the AI learned to win EVE?" is that you can't win EVE.
What we're still waiting to sink our teeth into — Cautiously optimistic across the board, especially on Exordium and the new empire systems with titles, achievements, and the empire-progress hub. The expansion doesn't drop until June 9th, this is the first of a three-arc Theatres of War saga, and a lot of it is trust-us-it'll-work until we can actually play it. One interesting wrinkle: new players may not have to pick a race right away anymore. I wish I'd had that option — I rolled Caldari at random.
Wrap-up and the closing song — Two thumbs up from a freshly minted Polaris Award winner, see you in Iceland next year — and Rixx teases the outro track, which he pivoted at the last minute to something factional-warfare-themed in honor of this episode.

Where to find us!

If you enjoyed this episode, you can catch The Safe Spot wherever you get your podcasts — find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Past episodes and full show notes are up on the blog at crazykinux.ca. And if you're watching on YouTube, do us a solid — like, subscribe, and drop a comment. It helps more than you think.

Fly safe. o7

Speedlinking New Eden & more - The May 17th, 2026 edition

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Mon, 18 May 2026 02:57:59 +0000

Back in the heydays of this EVE blog, I used to do this thing called the "Speedlinking New Eden", which was a weekly wrap-up of EVE Online news, and then some. So with the excitement around the Fenris Creations rebrand, the Google DeepMind announcement and EVE Fanfest 2026 wrapping up, I thought I'd rekindle this initiative.

Fanfest week. Three days of keynotes, reveals, and blood donations (yes, literally). Fenris Creations came out swinging with a three-expansion arc, a new extraction shooter playtest, a survival sandbox reset, and enough coverage to keep you scrolling for a week.

Let's go.

EVE Fanfest 2026

EVE Fanfest 2026 is Live Now! | EVE Online — The full livestream schedule for May 15-16 at Harpa. Friday highlights: Opening Ceremony, Oz on what makes EVE markets move, Paul M. Sutter's "How to Die in Space" keynote, The Infinite Game with FC Hellmar and DeepMind's Adrian Bolton (with opening remarks by the President of Iceland, Halla Tómasdóttir), Dr. Beth Healey on surviving hostile environments, and the EVE Fanfest Keynote at 16:30 UTC. Saturday: EVE Vanguard Keynote, the Capsuleer Edda deep dive, Evolving Empires panel, EVE's Art Team on New Eden in high fidelity, EVE Frontier Keynote, the Cradle of War expansion deep dive, Closing Ceremony, and the Creator Awards.
EVE Fanfest Wrapped | EVE Online — The official wrap-up. Cradle of War announced for June 9. Capsuleer Edda moves forward with capsuleers donating blood for the ink. Alliance Tournament XXIII confirmed, sponsored by the Amarr Empire. Fanfest 2027 dates announced: May 13-15. Early-bird tickets already on sale.
EVE Keynote | EVE Fanfest 2026 | YouTube — The full keynote recording, kicked off by FC Orca. Cradle of War, Capsuleer Edda, Google DeepMind partnership, and more.

EVE Online: Cradle of War expansion (June 9)

Cradle of War Expansion Launches 9 June | EVE Online — The official announcement. Military Campaigns, 8 new ships (4 Tech II Command Carriers, 4 Navy Destroyers), the first non-PvP starter region in EVE's history, titles and achievements, new Epic Arc missions (Caldari Prime Breakout, Liberation of Intaki, and more). First chapter of the three-expansion Theatres of War saga.
EVE Fanfest 2026: EVE Online's Cradle of War expansion sets the universe on fire June 9th | Massively Overpowered — Brendan Drain's on-the-ground coverage. Biggest cheer from the crowd was for Command Carriers. Notes that EVE is "finally getting achievements and titles" after 23 years. Disclosure: Fenris paid for travel.
EVE Fanfest 2026: EVE Online's Cradle of War Expansion Brings Military Campaigns, New Player Starter System, And More | MMORPG.com — Joseph Bradford's deep dive. Good context on the Jita handover to CONCORD and how it sets up Cradle of War's narrative.
Prepare for EVE Online's Next Expansion, Cradle of War | CGMagazine — Overview with Bergur Finnbogason quote: "Military campaigns connect player actions into persistent, multi-front wars."
EVE Online Cradle of War Expansion announced for June 2026 | Shacknews
The Most Interesting Game Out There Just Got Easier To Start Playing | GameSpot — A Fanfest-on-the-ground feature piece about EVE's new player experience, the Cradle of War starter region, and the community's warmth. Mentions a 70-year-old CSM elected member.

EVE Vanguard: Operation Avalon (July 7-20)

Fenris Creations Unveils EVE Vanguard's Alpha Playtest: Operation Avalon, Launching July 7, 2026 on Steam | Fenris Creations — Official press release. Rebuilt combat, expanded enemies, new modular weapons, deeper risk-and-extraction loop. Always-on Alpha release via the EVE Launcher coming November 2026.
EVE Fanfest 2026: EVE Vanguard opens Steam signups for Operation Avalon alpha test | Massively Overpowered — Signups now open on Steam. Notes that Vanguard is "officially leaving pre-alpha" and embracing its extraction shooter roots.
EVE Vanguard Alpha Playtest Operation Avalon announced for July 2026 | Shacknews
EVE Vanguard Is Getting A Brand-New Overhaul Update & Alpha Playtest Window | CGMagazine
EVE Vanguard Alpha Playtest: Operation Avalon Comes To Steam In July | Worthplaying
Operation Avalon | Alpha Playtest Trailer | YouTube — Official trailer from Fenris Creations.

EVE Frontier: Cycle 6 - Sanctuary (June 25)

EVE Frontier Enters Cycle 6: Sanctuary on June 25 | Fenris Creations — Full server wipe. Modular ships, Dormant Gates, environmental hazards (thermal, electromagnetic), new Feral enemies, Leeches that harvest your resources and evolve into Wreck Stalker mini-bosses. Manual firing and skill shots.
EVE Frontier's Cycle 6 Announced, Brings Full Server Wipe To Founder's Access | MMORPG.com — David Bowman: "This is our most impactful update yet."
EVE Frontier Cycle 6: Sanctuary announced for late June 2026 | Shacknews
EVE Frontier's Cycle 6 "Pushes Deeper Into The Unknown" On June 25 | CGMagazine

Fenris Creations / business news

Pearl Abyss Q1 2026: Black Desert and Crimson Desert push Pearl Abyss to huge revenues – without CCP Games | Massively Overpowered — Bree Royce on the first PA earnings without CCP. Crimson Desert and Black Desert carrying the load.
Fenris Creations announces updates for Eve Online, Eve Frontier, and Eve Vanguard | GamesBeat — Comprehensive roundup of all three product announcements from Fanfest.
EVE FanFest 2026 Reveals Multiple New Additions Across The Board | Bleeding Cool — Good summary of every major announcement across all three EVE titles.

Other EVE Online news (May 11-17)

Claim Capsuleer Day's Biggest Rewards | EVE Online — May 11 was the last day to start logging in and still claim the big 325K SP haul. Capital support sites live in lowsec.
Capsuleer Day XXIII PLEX and SKINs Offers | EVE Online — May 15 and 17 store offers for Capsuleer Day. Stock up on PLEX and look your best.
Patch Notes (updated 2026-05-13) | EVE Online — Mid-May patch notes.

EVE blogsphere & community

Friday EVE Online Bullet Points on Thursday for EVE Fanfest | The Ancient Gaming Noob — Wilhelm's Fanfest preview. Highlights the Crucible-era gameplay stations nostalgia trap, the $80K EVE Frontier hackathon prizes ("a blockchain boondoggle"), the dead CCP Twitch channel that doesn't redirect to Fenris, and PLEX For Good going permanent.
EVE Online Is Shifting Fast — Here’s Everything You Missed - Kekbur
Flying Solo In EVE: Prelude To Fanfest 2026 | The Nosy Gamer — Weekly ACU numbers at 26,000, session-by-session preview of what to watch at Fanfest, and thoughts on the rebrand timing.
Capsuleer Day XXIII: Warpath and the Event So Far | The Ancient Gaming Noob — Hands-on impressions of the Warpath event. Comparisons to the Gallente Presidential Election event. CCP learned lessons and upped the difficulty.
From CCP to Fenris Creations: EVE Online enters the Age of AI | CrazyKinux's Musings — Deep dive into the rebrand, the DeepMind partnership, and what it all means. Covers the Fenris name's connection to CCP's 1997 origins as Loki Multimedia, breaks down what DeepMind might actually do with EVE's 23 years of behavioral data, and flags the risks of AI messing with the game's core systems. "I know how to be excited and skeptical at the same time. I've had practice."
What DeepMind's partnership could actually mean for EVE's future | CrazyKinux's Musings — Follow-up post digging deeper into the DeepMind angle.
Fanfest 2026 Stream Review from Home - Greybill reviews the EVE Fanfest 2026 streaming experience, the news, the content, and his thoughts.
EVE Creator Awards - Rixx Javix reflects on his winning the Polaris Award, and the journey that got him there.

Ping me with links that I've missed, and I'll make sure to add them to this Speedlink, and track them in the future!

Fly safe!

What DeepMind's partnership could actually mean for EVE's future

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:26:54 +0000

Earlier this week I wrote about the Google DeepMind and Fenris Creations partnership and came away cautiously excited. So I took Friday off from work to make sure I could watch the LIVE broadcast from the Harpa Concert Hall. Then earlier today, Hilmar and DeepMind's Adrian Bolton took the Fanfest stage for 'The Infinite Game' session, and I walked away with considerably less.

The above video was added on Fenris Creations channel on May 25th, 2026. I thought I'd add it here for full context.

Like a lot of those who listened in, I came away fairly empty-handed from that conversation. Not disappointed, but very much hungry for more. As in a lot more. Yes, yes, there was lots of framing, lots of "excitement" about the partnership's potential, about AI lifting the popularity of games like Chess and Go, but very little about what it actually means for the game we play.

So I thought I could give it a try myself and dive into how I'm hoping DeepMind's research could realistically be applied and leveraged in EVE. Basically trying to add the substance that was missing from their talk. Trying to imagine what that near future could be.

I'm probably going to be way off mark, then again maybe not. We'll see.

But I thought I could give it a try.

Here goes nothing...

What's ahead in this post:

NPCs that actually adapt to how you fly — not harder stats, different behaviour
An AI-powered NPE in Exordium that keeps rookies alive past the two-hour quit window and hands them off to real player run corporations
Dynamic universe events that respond to what players are doing, not what a designer scripted
Behind-the-scenes economic modeling that could make balance patches less painful
The stuff I think people are overhyping — and why TiDi probably isn't going anywhere

It's a long read, but if you care about where New Eden is headed, you'll want to stick around.
So grab a coffee, tea or a cold one, and let's dive in.

Let's fast-forward five years.

It's May 2031.

DeepMind has had half a decade of research access to an offline copy of New Eden. Fenris has been bridging the gap between lab results and Tranquility.

Here's what I think is plausible, what I think is hopeful but unlikely, and what's probably just wishful thinking.

The most likely transformation: NPCs that actually think

This is easily the lowest-of-hanging fruit and the highest-impact change in my humble opinion.

Currently, EVE NPCs — mission agents, belt pirates, even Drifters and Triglavians — follow scripted behaviour trees. They aggro based on rules, orbit at fixed ranges, and use abilities on timers. Old and experienced players read them like an open book. You learn the pattern once, then you optimize around it forever. PvE in EVE has always been something you solve and then farm, not something that challenges you on the hundredth run.

Five years of DeepMind learning EVE PvE combat and mining missions could produce NPC opponents that actually adapt. Not "harder stats on the same script" but genuinely different behaviours. Agents that remember and adapt to the way you complete missions dynamically. Rats that recognize when you're kiting them and change approach. Mission NPCs that focus fire intelligently, call for reinforcements based on what you're flying, and retreat when they're losing. AI NPCs adapting to player behaviours, making sure the game experience is always pushing you outside your comfort.

This would be transformative for PvE, which has not been EVE's strongest content pillar, and the first impressions newbies get of the game. Suddenly ratting isn't just an ISK faucet you optimize and forget. It becomes an evolving challenge. The meta shifts not just because of patch notes, but because the NPCs got smarter.

The Exordium connection

Next is where it gets interesting for the current trajectory. Fenris announced Exordium back in mid-April as the new player experience region. If they're applying DeepMind's learnings to Tranquility by 2031, Exordium could be the first testing ground.

Before you shout back in horror, here me out!

Imagine an NPE where AI-driven mentor agents actually respond to how a new player behaves — not a scripted tutorial that marches you through the same steps regardless, but a system that recognizes "this player is exploring the market mechanics" versus "this player wants to shoot things" and dynamically adjusts what content it pushes your way. That's directly in DeepMind's stated research area of continual learning and long-term planning.

The numbers on why this matters are brutal. At EVE North in 2019 (Toronto, Canada), Fenris (CCP Burger, or should I say FC Burger) shared data showing that nearly 90% of new players who sign up for EVE quit within the first seven days. A 2016 Fanfest keynote was even grimmer: over 1.5 million new players signed up in a single year, and the overwhelming majority permanently quit after just two hours. Executive producer Andie Nordgren's reaction to that stat was two words: "It's super depressing." EVE has never had a problem attracting new players. It has a catastrophic problem keeping them.

An AI system that meets new capsuleers where they are on their journey of learning to play EVE — rather than where a designer assumed they'd be, could be the single biggest retention improvement in the game's history. And Exordium, as a dedicated region for new players, is the obvious place to deploy it without risking the "main" sandbox. Or at the very least to test it.

Now, I'm not naive about how the community may/will react to this.

We've already seen the tension play out. When Fenris launched Aura Guidance earlier this year — an AI chatbot trained on 5.8 million Rookie Help messages — the reaction was exactly the split you'd expect. The studio went out of its way to stress in a devblog that the system "does not give fleet advice, market strategies, or detailed fitting optimization" and "does not replace the depth of knowledge you get from experienced players, mentors, or specialized communities." Fenris was practically tripping over itself to reassure veterans that this wasn't the beginning of the end.

And the community's concern wasn't irrational. As many players pointed out, if newbies stop talking to humans because the bot is "good enough," EVE loses its most powerful retention tool: its community. That organic moment where a veteran drops a million ISK on a confused rookie in Rookie Help chat — that's the hook. That's what makes people stay. Replace it with a chatbot and you've optimized away the very thing that makes EVE special.

The data backs this up. At a 2019 presentation, CCP Hilmar identified what he called "the magic moment" — when a new player loses their ship for the first time, that's when they decide to stay or quit. And the single strongest predictor of which way they go? Whether they belong to a social group in the game. Not better tutorials. Not smoother UI. People.

So the goal of an AI-driven mentor system in Exordium shouldn't be to teach new players EVE. It should be to keep them in the game long enough — past those lethal first two hours, past that first ship loss — to figure out what kind of capsuleer they're becoming, and then hand them off to the real players and corporations that match their interests.

That's the job. Not companion. Not teacher. Matchmaker.

Here's what that could look like. The AI reads that you're gravitating toward exploration and connects you with Signal Cartel, or similar a corporation. It notices you keep picking fights (and loosing them) and nudges you toward a PvP corp, maybe one engaged in Factional Warfare. It sees you spending all your time on the market and introduces you to a trading community. The handoff from artificial guide to human community becomes the graduation moment — the point where EVE stops being a tutorial and starts being EVE.

That model respects the social contract in a way that a permanent AI companion never could. The AI doesn't replace the player-driven experience; it gets new players to the door of one.

And it solves the real problem, which was never "EVE lacks content for new players" but "new players can't find the people who would make them stay."

Dynamic universe events that aren't scripted

Fenris has tried this before with live events and invasion arcs, but they've always been hand-authored with predetermined outcomes or branching paths. Someone at the studio decides "Triglavians invade these systems on this date," and players react to the script.

An AI system trained on EVE's emergent behavior could generate events that respond to what players are actually doing. Not "invasion begins on patch day" but "an AI-driven faction notices a power vacuum in a region where a major alliance just collapsed and moves to exploit it." Content that emerges from the game state rather than being imposed on it.

This is plausible but harder than it sounds. And maybe a tad riskier.

The risk is that AI-generated content feels generic or random rather than meaningful. EVE players care deeply about narrative coherence and political context — they want to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Fenris would need to maintain storytelling quality on top of the AI's strategic logic, which is still something humans do better. But the combination — human narrative designers working with AI-driven strategic behavior — could produce something neither could achieve alone.

The invisible revolution: economic modeling

This one is less visible to players but potentially huge.

EVE's economy is notoriously hard to balance. Fenris has economists on staff, but the interactions are so complex that interventions often produce unintended consequences. Nerf a blueprint and three markets you didn't think about crash. Introduce a new resource sink and inflation shifts in ways nobody predicted.

An AI system that has spent five years modeling EVE's economic flows could give Fenris vastly better predictive tools — "if you nerf this blueprint, here's the cascading effect on 47 related markets over the next six months." That doesn't change what players see directly, but it means fewer economy-breaking patches, more confident design decisions, and a healthier game overall.

Players won't notice this one. They'll just notice that balance changes feel less jarring and the economy feels more stable. Which, ironically, might be the most valuable outcome of the entire partnership.

What I'm skeptical about

I don't think Fenris puts DeepMind-trained combat agents into nullsec or lowsec as hostile entities that fight players with player-level tactics. The political backlash would be enormous — "Fenris is using Google's AI to kill our fleets" — and it undermines the core social contract that EVE is a player-driven universe. If it happens at all, it stays contained in PvE content.

I'm also skeptical about any fundamental server architecture changes coming from this partnership. TiDi will probably still exist in 2031. DeepMind is a research lab focused on intelligence, not infrastructure engineering. The server improvements will come from Fenris's own engineering team making incremental progress, not from AI breakthroughs.

And I'd temper expectations about the pace. Five years sounds like a long time, but going from "research paper" to "stable live game system used by tens of thousands of players" is a brutal pipeline. The first two to three years are probably mostly research with small controlled experiments. Meaningful Tranquility integration likely starts showing up around year three or four, with big visible features closer to year five.

If you're expecting revolutionary changes at Fanfest 2027, you're probably a year or two early. Maybe even longer.

The shift nobody's talking about

The most profound change might not be any single feature.

It might be that EVE becomes an MMO where the universe genuinely feels alive — where the space between player interactions isn't dead but populated by systems that learn, adapt, and create pressure.

Not AI that replaces players. AI that fills gaps between them.

That's the version of this partnership that makes EVE not just a better game but a different kind of game, one small AI-optimized mechanic at a time. Whether Fenris can deliver it in five years is the open question. But the pieces are there — the research partner, the financial independence, the revenue momentum, and a game world complex enough to actually stress-test whatever DeepMind builds or learns from the game.

For the first time in a while, I'm looking at EVE's future and seeing something different from what we've seen the last 25 years or so.

That alone is worth paying attention to.

Fly safe. o7

Source articles on new players retention

EVE Online Developers Discuss Ways To Stop New Players From Leaving The Game - Kotaku
EVE Online has no problem getting new players, but retaining them is a hell of an issue - Destructoid
Aura Guidance - Fenris Creations DevBlog
High Sec and New Player Experience Are Tied - Make a change CCP - EVE Online Forums
EVE Fanfest 2015: Using Science to Help Newbros - YouTube
EVE Down Under 2019 - Beyond The Friendship Machine, by Hilmar "CCP Hellmar" Pétursson

From CCP to Fenris Creations: EVE Online enters the Age of AI

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:26:00 +0000

What a time to be an EVE player!

When the news dropped Wednesday last week, I wanted to sit down and start writing immediately. CCP Games rebranding as Fenris Creations. Entering a research partnership with Google DeepMind. Damn!! But the hot take is rarely the right take. So I shut up, read everything I could find, and gave myself a few days to let it settle.

It's been nearly a week since the news dropped, and this is where I'm at three days before Fanfest starts: I'm excited. And I'm eager to learn more when DeepMind founder Adrian Bolton takes the stage alongside Hilmar at Fanfest later this week, even though I won't be there in person.

I've also been following EVE's development since the late nineties, which means I know how to be excited and skeptical at the same time. I've had practice.

So buckle up folks, cause Kansas is going bye-bye, as this is going to be a "DeepDive" into the biggest EVE news in years. Pun very much intended!

So what actually happened?

Three things, announced simultaneously, which is probably why the coverage has been a mess of conflicting headlines.

First, and this is the part most outlets led with, CCP Games is no more. The studio rebranded as Fenris Creations. The name is a callback to CCP's first published game in 1997, which is a nice bit of continuity.

Second, the management buyout from Pearl Abyss is complete. We've known this was in motion since April 30th. Hilmar and the team own the company again. Birgir Már Ragnarsson, CCP co-founder, takes the Board Chair. After eight years under Pearl Abyss, the studio is Icelandic-owned and independent. That matters more than people realize.

Third, and this is the part I keep coming back to, Google DeepMind has taken a minority stake and entered a research partnership with the newly independent studio.

Most of the press treated the rebrand as the headline. Don't be fooled. The rebrand branding, important yes, but something bigger is brewing: the DeepMind deal is the story.

Why pick our game?

Hilmar told Engadget: "We jokingly say that the final boss for AI in games would obviously be EVE Online."

I know how that sounds. Every studio thinks their game is special. But sit with this for a second, because the people at DeepMind aren't idiots, and they specifically picked EVE Online, with its unique single shard gameplay environment, for specific reasons.

DeepMind has spent fifteen years burning through game environments. Atari. Go. StarCraft II. 3D open worlds. They've beaten all of them. AlphaStar was impressive, but its longest StarCraft match lasted about thirty minutes. EVE wars unfold over months. Sovereignty campaigns require logistics and patience that operate on timescales AI has never had to deal with.

And that's just the easy part.

Your reputation in 2026 was earned in 2014. Alliances remember betrayals from a decade ago. There's no session reset. No clean slate. Memory isn't a feature of New Eden, it's the foundation the whole thing sits on. AlphaGo never had to lie convincingly. In EVE, the metagame is reading other humans: their bluffs, their grudges, their tolerance for risk. Diplomacy and espionage aren't edge cases. They're the game.

ISK persists. Lose a Titan, it's gone forever. Tens of thousands of pilots with conflicting goals, all operating simultaneously. Two to three hundred thousand monthly active players generating 23 years of behavioral history.

That's not a benchmark. That's a civilization.

Adrian Bolton said it himself: EVE "requires skills that AI has not yet fully mastered," specifically long-term planning and continual learning. Alexandre Moufarek, a Director at Google DeepMind, called it "a one-of-a-kind simulation for testing general-purpose artificial intelligence."

We've been saying for years that EVE is unlike anything else in gaming. Now the people who built AlphaGo are saying it too.

Okay but what does this mean for the game?

This is the part I care about most, and it's the part with the least detail so far.

The partnership will run on an offline version of EVE, hosted on a local server, firewalled from Tranquility. Our live game isn't the lab. That's the line Hilmar is drawing, and for now, it holds.

The press release promises "new gameplay experiences" and "insights" flowing back to EVE Online from the research. That's deliberately vague. Nobody, not Hilmar, not DeepMind, is committing to specifics yet. Bolton on the Fanfest stage later this week is where we'll find out if this is a real roadmap or a mood board.

I'll be honest, I'm a tad concerned about how DeepMind's involvement might eventually affect the game itself. Smarter mission agents that adapt to how you fly? Pirate NPC factions that actually learn from player behavior and respond accordingly? Absolutely. That's the kind of thing that could make PvE in New Eden feel alive in ways it never has. But too much messing around with the inner workings of the game, the economy, the market, the core mechanics that players have spent decades learning and mastering? Hard pass.

EVE works because its systems are legible. Players can study them, "exploit" them, literally build empires on top of them. The moment those systems start shifting under our feet because an AI decided they should, the trust breaks.

But here's the other question I keep asking, and I haven't seen a satisfying answer anywhere: what about our data?

The offline-server framing protects gameplay integrity. Great. But it doesn't tell us whether historical player data, chat logs, market transactions, behavioral records, 23 years of decisions made by hundreds of thousands of capsuleers, gets fed into DeepMind's models. Explosion.com flagged this concern. Nobody else in the mainstream coverage touched it. Hilmar's community letter, which is otherwise thoughtful and clearly written by someone who cares how this news is received, does not address it.

That's a gap. And it deserves a direct answer before Fanfest is over.

The numbers (because someone needs to keep score)

Pearl Abyss bought CCP in 2018 for $225M cash plus up to $200M in performance earn-outs that never triggered. The buyout price was $120M, roughly $100M cash plus about $20M in EVE Frontier token acquisition rights. The "$425M loss" figure floating around Reddit is wrong. Actual loss to Pearl Abyss is closer to $80M, and they accepted it because Crimson Desert money makes the write-down survivable.

The Google piece? Hilmar told Bloomberg the investment was "in the millions." So "small" stake. Not an acquisition. Basically, this is Icelandic ownership with a Google research contract attached.

A studio doing $70M+ in 2025 revenue, profitable at the EVE Online level, with a 20-year persistent IP, sold for 1.7x revenue. Well below comparable studios. The new ownership group got a favorable deal. Good for them!

What does worry me: Fenris is now running four concurrent products. EVE Online. EVE Vanguard. EVE Frontier, online space survival with a blockchain layer. And EVE Galaxy Conquest, a mobile 4X that Hilmar's letter quietly added to the portfolio. One cash cow, two unproven betas, and a mobile entrant. That's a lot of products for a small-ish independent studio.

Engadget called Frontier "likely-doomed." First piece of mainstream press to say that out loud.

The things you're already thinking

We're probably all thinking some version of these:

"AI in my EVE?" Yeah. I hear you. The offline-server framing limits exposure for now. But for now is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence, and we all know it.

"This is just another Hilmar hype cycle." Fair. I respect the man's ambition, but his track record cuts both ways and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Apocrypha and Citadel on one side. Incarna, monocle-gate, Project Nova, and Project Legion on the other. Independence removes the parent-company cushion that absorbed past failures. The highs are high. The lows cost people their jobs.

"Google bought EVE." They didn't. Minority stake, small dollars. Hilmar and the management team own this thing. But I get why the headline makes people nervous.

"Just a press release stunt." A founding DeepMind team member on the Fanfest stage and a real check with real dollars argue otherwise. This is funded research with named contacts, not a logo on a slide. More to come soon...

The bigger picture

Here's what I keep coming back to.

Game studios as AI research infrastructure is a genuinely new thing.

Big-tech investment in gaming has historically been about distribution platforms, Stadia is dead, Luna is dying. This is different. Google isn't trying to own a games platform. They're treating EVE as a research environment. If it works, watch for similar deals between AI labs and studios running deep persistent worlds. EVE might be first. It won't be last.

And one thing worth noting that the recent mainstream coverage mostly missed: CCP already shipped AI features in EVE this year, an assistance tool trained on 5.8 million Rookie Help channel messages. The community accepted it without too much drama. DeepMind isn't AI's first arrival in New Eden.

It's just a hell of a lot more ambitious.

What I'm watching for

Three things, over the next 18 months.

EVE Online update cadence. If expansions and patches slow because attention shifts to DeepMind work, that's the bear case materializing. We'll notice. We always notice.

Visible results. Papers. Blog posts. Something in the client. Vague long-term R&D partnerships are how companies announce things and quietly let them die. Show us something.

EVE Vanguard's Steam Early Access. Slated for Q3 2026. Lands right when Fenris needs to prove the new structure can actually ship a product. If it underperforms, financial pressure on the new ownership group accelerates fast.

Before any of that though, there's Fanfest

Bolton takes the stage this Thursday. Hilmar beside him. Us in the room, or watching from home, refreshing feeds. A community that has heard bold promises before and has the memory to hold people accountable for every single one of them.

The company that started in 1997 by saying "death is a serious matter" is now asking whether intelligence itself is.

I can't wait to find out what they mean by that.

Fly safe folks.

References

The Safe Spot — Episode 7: "Pearl Abyss & Fanfest"

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:30:00 +0000

Big news this episode — Pearl Abyss is selling CCP Games back to its own leadership team, and Rixx and I break down what that means for EVE Online, Frontier, and Vanguard.

We also look ahead to Fanfest 2026 (which neither of us is attending this year, don't judge), swap some FanFest war stories from years past, geek out over the EVE Faction Warfare Yearbook, touch on the brand-new Capsuleer Days event, and Rixx shares a couple of PvP encounters that remind us all why you check local and never fly what you can't afford to lose.

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Pearl Abyss sells CCP Games back to its leadership — The big headline: Pearl Abyss acquired CCP in 2018 for around $425 million and has now sold it back to the management team led by Hilmar for roughly $125 million, just two weeks before Fanfest. We talk about what this means for the studio's independence, who might be providing financial backing, and why the timing feels very deliberate — with more details expected at Fanfest.
What happens to Frontier and Vanguard? — With CCP no longer under Pearl Abyss's umbrella, we wonder how the studio carries two major side projects alongside EVE Online. We dig into CCP's history of experimental development — from World of Darkness to VR — and whether that Icelandic instinct to explore always ends up feeding the core game. I share my early impressions of EVE Frontier after picking up a founder pack, and Rixx talks about being in the very first alpha test and how much the game has evolved — plus we float the theory that Frontier's Web3 and blockchain angle may actually be attracting serious outside investment, especially after a very successful recent hackathon with over 800 modders. Vanguard also gets a mention as the spiritual PC successor to Dust 514, minus the PlayStation exclusivity mistake.
Fanfest 2026 is two weeks away (and we're not going) — Neither Rixx nor I are attending this year. Rixx and his wife have been to eight Fanfests since 2015 and basically seen the entire island of Iceland, so it still feels like they just got back. I've been twice — 2008 and 2011 — and I'm targeting next year instead, possibly timed to CCP's 30th anniversary. We both agree that watching the stream will be interesting and that next year is the one to plan for.
Why every EVE player should attend a Fanfest or player event at least once — We swap stories about the magic of meeting corpmates and rivals in person. Rixx describes arriving in Reykjavik for the first time and being recognized on the street before breakfast, then falling into a table of 30 EVE players at the laundromat — selling posters, signing autographs, having dinner with CCP Seagull, the whole whirlwind. I recall meeting corpmates from the States for the first time at my 2008 Fanfest and covering the event for PC Gamer in 2011. We shout out EVE Vegas, EVE Toronto, EVE Amsterdam, and the small-scale meetups — Rixx hosted players at his home for five years, I organized pub meetups here in Montreal — and the point is the same: you share a universe, you share a single shard, and that instant common ground is unlike anything else in gaming.
The EVE Faction Warfare Yearbook by T Sky — I stumbled back into this 94-page document after my break and it's absolutely incredible. Published by T Sky (of EVE Frigates fame), it's packed with frigate stats, fits, killboard deep dives, and balance analysis going all the way back to 2013. We'll drop links in the show notes — if you're into faction warfare or frigate PvP, this is a treasure trove.
Capsuleer Days event and the Warpath — A new in-game event dropped literally the day we recorded, so neither of us has much detail yet. It's the annual Capsuleer Days celebration leading into Fanfest, with free skins, skill points, daily login rewards, and event sites scattered everywhere. Rixx warped into one, thought he was getting scrammed by rats, and bailed. We'll have more to chew on next episode once we've actually explored them.
PvP stories from lowsec — Rixx shares two encounters. First, he catches a month-old player mining in a Pioneer destroyer, takes it out, sends the guy a million ISK with an encouraging note — and then the pilot comes back in a Thorax and gets killed again, having apparently learned nothing about checking local for a -10 flashy red skull. Rixx even has to bump the guy's pod to get him to warp off. Second, there's the "most boring fight ever" short — a Hookbill with a target disruptor and long point kiting his Comet at 23km for nearly 10 minutes of slow, painful death at 120 DPS. The takeaway for both: sometimes you just take your lumps, and never fly what you can't afford to lose.
Next episode: post-Fanfest special — We're holding the next recording until after Fanfest wraps and dropping it the Tuesday after, so expect a full debrief on everything CCP announces. See you on the other side of Fanfest 2026.

Where to find us!

Fly safe. o7

The Safe Spot — Episode 6: "Exordium | Training wheels don't teach you how to crash"

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:05:00 +0000

In episode 6, Rixx and I dig into the biggest EVE Online announcement in a while — CCP's Exordium, a 53-system PvP-free region for new players. We've got strong opinions, open questions, a healthy dose of skepticism, and a quick recap of the latest Frigate Free-For-All. I was also fresh off a trip to France and still a bit jetlagged, so bear with me.

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Intro and the France trip — I'm back from a week in France with my partner, still jetlagged, and Rixx wastes no time steering us toward the big news that dropped while I was away.
CCP announces Exordium — CCP revealed a massive 53-system PvP-free starter region called Exordium, designed to give new players a safe space to learn the game. Rixx has been advocating for something like this for years — he called his version "Sanctuary" — and digs into the lore setup, the central hub system called Manifest, the four empire-linked clusters, and the two-way bridge through Uli. We also talk about whether third-party groups like Mike's Magic School Bus and EVE Rookies will be allowed in, how safety settings will work (green only, no player combat), and the general structure of what CCP is building.
Where's the data? — I push back on the announcement because CCP didn't share the research behind the decision. We revisit the old "friendship machine" narrative — that players who get blown up early actually retain better — and wonder what changed. The 8% retention stat comes up, and we both agree we'd love to see actual numbers explaining why this approach was chosen over alternatives.
The culture shock problem — This is the big one. We both worry that Exordium creates a false first impression of EVE — a safe, cushiony, Care Bear paradise — and that players who spend weeks or months there will be completely unprepared for the real game. I compare it to learning English in a sheltered learning center versus being dropped into a real classroom, and Rixx frames it as the antithesis of what EVE actually is. We talk about autopilot habits, the thrill of risk, and whether you can really teach EVE without the danger.
Graduation mechanics and kicking players out — Rixx raises a critical question: what's the mechanic for moving players out of Exordium? If there's no timer, no graduation path, no incentive structure, people will just stay forever. I float the idea of rewarding players who leave sooner with better loot or bonuses, and Rixx riffs on a hilarious graduation ceremony concept — 500 ships outside Manifest, fireworks, a speech from the Amarr Empress, and a diploma in your cargo hold before you get booted.
Exploits, farming, and EVE players being EVE players — We both acknowledge that EVE's player base will find every loophole. Rixx recalls the old can-flipping trick in starter systems where vets would bait rookies into taking from a jettisoned container to trigger aggression rights — a perfect example of the kind of creative exploitation CCP needs to anticipate.
EVE isn't really a game — Rixx makes the case that EVE's retention problem isn't about PvP danger but about the fact that EVE is a sandbox, not a traditional game. Nobody holds your hand. Nobody tells you what to do next. That's what loses people — not getting ganked. We talk about friendship as the real driver of long-term retention, the emotional pull of not wanting to let your corpmates down, and how none of that can be replicated in a sterile safe zone.
The branding and marketing problem — Rixx shares a story about his barber — a gamer who'd never heard of EVE Online — and we talk about how the game has a visibility problem, especially in North America. More players might help, but only if people know the game exists in the first place.
Rixx's prediction for Exordium's future — Rixx lays out the classic CCP development cycle: big launch, exploit discovered, mad scramble to patch, six months of neglect, then either a revamp or total abandonment. He compares it to Pochven and wormholes as cautionary tales. We agree that success would show up as a steady climb in server numbers — from the current ~26K toward 35–40K — but neither of us is holding our breath.
The friendship-first alternative — I pitch an idea: instead of a safe zone, why not build better matchmaking into the onboarding experience? Let new players flag their interests — hauling, PvP, mining, wormholes — and make it easier for corporations to recruit them directly. Lower the threshold for human connection instead of removing the risk. Rixx agrees the friendship angle is the real retention lever.
Frigate Free-For-All recap — Rixx gives a quick rundown of the latest Frigate Free-For-All in Amamake. It was a deliberately smaller event this year due to ship supply concerns, but it went smoothly — great feedback in local, no major drama, no TiDi. It did overlap with Anger Games again (a player-run 7v7 tournament), which Rixx plans to avoid next year. We also talk about how past Free-For-Alls have been the gateway moment for players who'd never tried PvP before.
Pirate etiquette and helping rookies — Rixx shares a story about engaging a player in an Algos while flying a Vigil Fleet Issue. The player begged in local, and since you can't tell a real rookie from an alt anymore (show info age means nothing when you can inject skill points), Rixx gave him 10 million ISK, left his loot, and spent time explaining what went wrong. He does this three or four times a week — and I argue those encounters are exactly the kind of experience that makes players fall in love with EVE.
Wrap-up and what's next — I mention the New Eden Banter #2 is running a bit late thanks to the France trip but will be up soon, with the next topic announced in May and posts going live on the 15th. Rixx plugs the YouTube channel, and we sign off with the usual "fly safe."

Where to find us!

Fly safe. o7

New Eden Banter #2: You're the Executive Producer of EVE Online

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:04:00 +0000

Welcome to the second installment of the New Eden Banter (NEB), the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux (that's me!). The NEB involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a couple of weeks to post articles pertaining to the said topic.

The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the New Eden Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com.

Check for other New Eden Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic: CCP just handed you the keys to EVE Online. You're the new Executive Producer — full authority over development, technology, marketing, monetization, and community. The only mandate: make EVE thrive. What's your vision? What do you prioritize, what do you cut, and what sacred cow do you slaughter first?

You are the Executive Producer — but first, understand what you're running

So I've got the keys. Congratulations to me, I guess. 😬

Before I start tearing things down or pouring developers into some crazy pet projects, I need to stop and think about what I've actually inherited.

Because EVE Online isn't a game in the way most MMOs are games. It's a tangle of overlapping systems — mechanical, social, economic, political, temporal — that hold each other up in ways that aren't always obvious. Pull the wrong thread and something three rooms over collapses. Push the wrong lever and a dozen emergent behaviors vanish overnight.

I've been back long enough to know I don't know enough to pick a priority yet. But I've been back long enough to see the shape of the thing. So instead of writing a manifesto, I'm going to map out what I think any incoming EP — me or anyone else — needs to understand before they touch anything.

The spheres of influence that make EVE, EVE

1. Sandbox vs. theme park

EVE is a sandbox in a genre dominated by theme parks. There are no quests funneling you down a golden path, no level cap to chase, no developer-scripted hero's journey waiting for you at character creation. The world doesn't care if you log in. You choose what matters, and you live with the consequences of that choice. This is the foundation of everything else — and it's also why EVE is hard to market to people raised on WoW-shaped MMOs, who often show up expecting to be told what to do and bounce off when no one tells them.

2. Science fiction, not fantasy

The setting isn't just decoration. Space strips away entire content categories that fantasy MMOs have to hand-build — no towns to populate with NPCs, no voice-acted questgivers, no dungeons with bespoke encounters. The universe is procedurally coherent in a way that lets a small studio punch far above its weight. It also attracts a different kind of player — the kind who reads patch notes, runs spreadsheets, and argues about capital ship doctrine for fun. Change the setting and you change the audience.

3. Player-driven economy

Almost everything in New Eden is made, moved, traded, and destroyed by players. Industrialists, haulers, traders, market manipulators, and scammers are all playing legitimate, deep versions of the game that have nothing to do with combat. Break this layer and you don't just hurt industrialists — you break a huge chunk of the player base's reason for logging in. The economy is also the substrate for warfare. Every fleet battle is, underneath, an economic event.

4. Multiple games in one

Two players with ten years each can have played completely different games. Null-sec warlord, high-sec mission runner, wormhole explorer, faction warfare pilot, market trader, industrialist, scammer, spy, logistics pilot, content creator. They share a universe, not a gameplay loop. This means the EP has to balance systems that don't even overlap for most players — and has to resist the temptation to "fix" one playstyle in ways that quietly break three others.

5. You are your ship

Identity in EVE is weirdly distributed. You're not really your character — you're the ship you're flying today, the fit you chose, the role you took in fleet. Every hull plays like a different game, with its own fitting constraints, tactical rhythms, and skill prerequisites. This is a complexity multiplier that shapes fitting theory, skill training, ship progression, and even how players talk about themselves ("I'm a Caracal pilot" means something very specific). Mess with this and you mess with how players relate to the game itself.

6. One universe, one server, one history

Tranquility is a single shard. What happens, happens to everyone. Forever. This is why EVE stories matter in a way that stories in other MMOs don't. B-R5RB wasn't a server event — it was the server event. The Great War, World War Bee, the Casino War, the death of any named character — these are shared history, not instanced content. Most MMOs fragment their players across realms to spread load. EVE doesn't. This is a defining technical, philosophical, and cultural choice, and it's almost impossible to walk back once made.

7. Time as a mechanic

Skills train in real time whether you're logged in or not. You can't grind past a timer, no matter how many hours you pour in. Combined with the rhythm of daily downtime, the length of fleet engagements, structure timers, and the in-universe YC calendar, EVE runs on its own clock. This filters the player base hard — patience isn't a nice-to-have, it's a prerequisite. It also means the game respects the lives of players who can't log in every night, which is part of why so many of us come back years later and pick up where we left off.

8. The social and political layer

Corps, alliances, coalitions. Diplomacy, espionage, propaganda, betrayal. Other MMOs treat guilds as a feature — a chat channel and a shared bank. EVE treats them as the game. Most of what makes EVE famous to people who don't play it — the heists, the wars, the billion-ISK scams, the spies who played long cons for years — happens at this layer. And most of it emerges from player behavior, not developer design. The EP's job isn't to write this content; it's to keep the soil fertile enough for it to grow.

9. Loss and consequence

Ships die permanently. Undocking is a decision. A single mistake can cost weeks of work, billions of ISK, or the trust of an entire alliance. This is the emotional engine under everything else in the game. It's why victories feel real and defeats sting. Soften it too much and EVE becomes just another MMO where nothing matters. Leave it too harsh and new players bounce before they ever understand what they've signed up for. The EP lives on this tightrope — and every balance decision, every insurance tweak, every new safety mechanic is a vote on where the line sits.

10. The meta-game outside the client

Discord servers, Pyfa, zKillboard, Dotlan, EVEMarketer, third-party tools, forum propaganda, killmail culture, fan fiction, podcasts, and blogs. EVE spills out of its own client more than almost any game in existence. Much of the actual play happens on voice comms and spreadsheets. The EP has a strategic question to answer: is this infrastructure to embrace and support, or leakage to contain and bring back inside the client? Neither answer is obviously correct, but picking one matters.

11. The developer-player relationship

CSM, Fanfest, dev blogs, direct community engagement, CCP devs who play the game and get podded in lowsec like anyone else. CCP is unusually close to its player base — for better and worse. It means feedback loops are tight, but it also means every patch is a political event. This isn't normal for MMO studios, most of whom treat players as consumers rather than collaborators. An EP has to decide whether to formalize this relationship, expand it, or pull back from it. And each choice reshapes what CCP is as a company.

The EP's real job

None of these spheres exist in isolation. Nerf industry and you affect war. Soften loss and you gut the economy. Fix onboarding badly and you alienate the veterans who are the content. Market the game to a wider audience and you have to ask whether the game can survive that audience actually showing up.

This is what makes EVE both impossible to kill and impossible to grow easily. It's a system in tension with itself, and the tension is the point.

So if I'm handed the keys tomorrow, my first act as EP isn't a roadmap. It's a whiteboard — and a long, uncomfortable conversation with the people who know where the wires go.

Then, and only then, do I touch anything.

The Safe Spot — Episode 5: "Bad Patch"

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:48:00 +0000

In this episode, recorded back on March 24th, Rixx and I dive into what happens when CCP pulls the rug out from under your favorite ship mid-stride. Rixx has been on a PvP tear, stacking up fights and cracking the mystery of his disappearing video recordings, while I'm still reeling from the Catalyst major update that basically nerfed my entire gameplay loop.

We get into patch notes philosophy, Pochven lore, blockade runners, abyssal arenas, and why the best advice in EVE often comes from the guy who just blew you up.

Show Notes / Table of Contents

Rixx's PvP recording breakthrough and the hidden video stash — Rixx has been on a hot streak of fights and finally solved the mystery of where his in-game recordings were disappearing to — buried 12 folders deep in a system library — unlocking a backlog of content and a new workflow for capturing fights as YouTube Shorts.
PvP Shorts as teaching tools and the "windows of engagement" — We talk about whether Rixx's fight Shorts could become mini-tutorials for new and returning players, the tension between content creation and protecting corpmates, and what Rixx calls "windows of engagement" — that moment you commit to a fight without knowing how it'll end.
The Catalyst major update and the SUIS nerf that wrecked my week — CCP's mid-expansion patch gutted my go-to ship — cargo hold slashed by a third, align time pushed above the critical 2-second threshold — and I talk about how I'm adapting instead of rage-quitting, including training into the Hecate as a replacement.
How EVE expansions, patches, and ship balancing actually work — Rixx breaks down the rhythm of EVE's development cycle — big expansions followed by tuning patches — and how CCP nerfs and buffs ships to keep the meta from calcifying around a single hull, with the Redeemer-to-Widow shift as a recent example.
Blockade runners and the ships you never think about — A spontaneous deep-dive into blockade runners like the Prorator — cloaky, fast transport ships perfect for hauling assets through dangerous space — which neither of us had planned to discuss, proving that even a 20-year vet can't keep every ship class in their head.
Pochven, Triglavians, and filaments into the unknown — Rixx walks me through the basics of Pochven — the Triglavian-controlled region with its own gate aesthetics, security tiers, and filament-based access — plus standing mechanics with both Triglavians and EDENCOM that can get you shot on gates if you're not careful.
Abyssal space, arena PvP, and the players who broke it — We explore abyssal filaments, the gorgeous instanced PvE missions they unlock, the trick of probing down abyssal traces to ambush returning players, and the now-removed arena PvP mode that got pulled after players min-maxed the matchmaking.
Why you should read patch notes before you undock — A practical tip for all players: check the patch notes in the launcher before logging in, because the ship you were planning to fly today might not work the way it did yesterday — as I learned the hard way with the SUIS nerf.
The mammoth, the autopilot, and the gentleman pirate — Rixx tells the story of catching an autopiloting Mammoth on a lowsec gate, getting called names in DMs, and then sending the player fitting guides and advice — because blowing someone up and helping them get better aren't mutually exclusive.
Learning from losses and the long road to getting good — We close out with the philosophy of sticking with it — from the pilot Rixx used to blow up regularly who's now one of the most respected PvPers in the area, to EVE University as a resource, to the simple truth that asking "what did I do wrong?" is the fastest way to improve.

(Back posted on May 4th)

Where to find us!

Fly safe. o7

What returning EVE Online players need to know before undocking

noreply@blogger.com (CrazyKinux) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:39:00 +0000

This guide is based on a video by AloneInFinland, an EVE Online player and fantastic content creator who covers gameplay, fitting advice, and the state of the game from a veteran's perspective. Full credit to him for the insights, warnings, and hard-won lessons that follow.

You can watch the original video on which this guide was built below. 👇

Overview

As I've mentioned before in recent posts, if you're coming back to EVE Online after a long break — whether that's five years or fifteen — there are a handful of changes that can ruin your day before you even realize what happened. In AloneInFinland's opinion, the biggest and most dangerous of these is the introduction of lawless systems in what used to be safe high-sec space. This guide walks you through what changed, how to protect yourself, and what else you should double-check before you undock that expensive ship.

What are lawless systems?

EVE Online introduced Pirate Insurgencies as part of the Havoc expansion in late 2023. Through a mechanic called Corruption, pirate-aligned players can degrade the security status of systems in Faction Warfare zones. When corruption reaches its maximum level (Stage 5), something dramatic happens:

A high-sec system becomes functionally low-sec. CONCORD will not respond to aggression against your ship (though they still respond to pod kills).
A low-sec system becomes functionally null-sec. Players can deploy warp disruption bubbles, use bomb launchers, and operate under full null-sec engagement rules.

These affected systems are labeled "LAWLESS" in the UI and marked with a small inverted triangle on your route planner. If you're not paying attention, you can warp straight into what looks like a routine high-sec gate and find yourself in a system where anything goes.

Step-by-step: How to stay safe

1. Reset your warning pop-ups

Open the Escape menu → Settings → Reset Settings. Scroll down to find all the warning dialogue options and reset them. This ensures you'll receive pop-up warnings when you're about to jump into a system with reduced security, including CONCORD advisories, Edencom/Triglavian warnings, and lawless system alerts.

If you previously dismissed these warnings (or if they were dismissed on your account before you returned), you won't get any notification before jumping into danger.

2. Set your autopilot to prefer safer routes

Open your route settings and make sure "Prefer Safer" is selected. This tells the autopilot to route you through high-sec systems whenever possible. It won't guarantee you avoid lawless systems, but it reduces your exposure.

3. Check your route for lawless systems before departing

Before you undock in anything expensive, look at your planned route on the map. Lawless systems appear with a bright red highlight and a small inverted triangle (▼) icon. If you see one on your route, you need to deal with it before you fly.

4. Use the avoidance list to route around dangerous systems

Right-click on any lawless system in your route and add it to your avoidance list. The game will attempt to find an alternate route that bypasses it. Be aware that sometimes the detour is significantly longer, and in rare cases there may be no alternate route available depending on your origin and destination.
You can manage your full avoidance list through the route settings panel.

5. Never autopilot through unfamiliar space in an expensive ship

This was always true, but it's doubly important now. Autopilot lands you 15 km from the gate, leaving you slow-boating through open space — perfect gank bait. Manually warp gate-to-gate instead. If your route passes through a lawless system you can't avoid, dock up in the nearest station and wait for conditions to change, or switch to a cheaper ship.

6. Check your faction standings

Open your character sheet → Interactions → Standings and review your standings with all factions, including Edencom and the Triglavian Collective. If you have poor standings with either, you may face NPC hostility in systems you'd normally consider safe. This is especially important for returning players who may have accumulated standings changes they've forgotten about.

Other changes returning players should know

Module changes

Some modules that were previously passive are now active. Warp Core Stabilizers are the most notable example — they now require activation and have fitting cost implications. Check every module on your ship before you undock and make sure you understand how it works in the current patch.

Capital ship reclassification

If you had capital ship skills before you left, you may find new skills injected into your character. Carriers were split into separate classes, and the old carrier skills were redistributed. Check your skill queue and your available ships carefully — you may have access to hulls you didn't expect, or you may be missing qualifications for ships you used to fly.

Tech 3 subsystem changes

Tech 3 strategic cruisers now use four subsystem slots instead of five. If you had a T3 fit saved from the old system, it will need to be rebuilt from scratch. The subsystem options have been restructured, so your old fitting knowledge may not apply cleanly.

Fitting changes in general

Ship bonuses, slot layouts, and module stats have shifted across many hulls over the years. Don't assume any saved fitting still works. Import your fits into the in-game simulator and verify everything before you commit to a hull.

Tips and best practices

Lawless status is temporary. Systems move in and out of lawless status as insurgency corruption levels rise and fall. A system that's dangerous today may be safe tomorrow, and vice versa. Check before every trip.
Don't fly what you can't afford to lose. This rule never changes. If you're traveling through uncertain space, fly something disposable or at least something you won't rage-quit over losing.
PvP ships for PvP, PvE ships for PvE. If you're going to pass through a potentially hostile system, don't do it in a PvE-fit battleship worth billions. Switch to something fast, cheap, or both.
Read the route, not just the destination. It's easy to set a destination and start jumping. Take ten seconds to scan the route for warning indicators before you leave dock.
Don't bother reading ten years of patch notes. Nobody is going to do that, and nobody should have to. Focus on the changes that directly affect your gameplay — security mechanics, module changes, and ship rebalances — and learn the rest as you go.

Common mistakes

Assuming high-sec is always safe. This is the single biggest trap for returning players. Lawless systems can appear on major trade routes, and they look like normal high-sec until you check the indicators.
Ignoring warning pop-ups. If you see a warning you don't recognize, stop and read it. Don't click through out of habit.
Flying expensive ships through unverified routes. Always check your route before undocking anything shiny. A two-minute check can save you billions.
Forgetting to check standings. Edencom and Triglavian standings can make otherwise safe systems hostile. If you don't know where you stand, check before you travel.
Using old fits without verifying them. Module changes, slot layout changes, and subsystem restructuring mean your old fits may literally not work anymore. Always simulate first.

AloneInFinland's take: Why lawless systems are bad for the game

Beyond the practical advice, AloneInFinland has a strong opinion on this mechanic — and I think it's definitely worth hearing, because it reflects a sentiment shared by a lot of veteran and returning players, including yours truly.

His core argument is that lawless systems are a forced-PvP mechanic aimed at players who never signed up for PvP. CCP has acknowledged in their own Fanfest presentations that roughly 80% of EVE's player base is primarily PvE-focused — miners, mission runners, industrialists, haulers. The lawless system mechanic takes space those players relied on and turns it into a combat zone, with no opt-out other than docking up and logging off.

That's the engagement problem he keeps coming back to. When a player sets a route, sees a lawless system blocking it, and decides the detour is too long or simply impossible, the most common response isn't "time to fit for PvP." It's "guess I'm done for the day." For a game that depends on active player counts, mechanics that push people to log off rather than adapt are counterproductive.

He also points to the exodus that happened when the mechanic launched alongside the resource redistribution changes. Players lost stations and outposts to lawless flips. A significant chunk of the mining community left. CCP has since walked back some of the redistribution changes, and he acknowledges that EVE is generally moving in a positive direction — but he sees lawless systems as an unresolved wound that still needs attention. And I'd tend to agree with him.

His suggested compromise: if lawless systems stayed in backwater, off-the-beaten-path systems, that would be tolerable. The real pain point is when major trade routes get cut in half by a lawless flip, forcing players into impossible detours or outright blocking their session.

It's a perspective worth considering, especially if you're a returning player weighing whether the game is still worth your time. The mechanic is real, it affects daily gameplay, and it remains a source of friction for some of the player community.

Summary

If you've tuned in to The Safe Spot, you've heard Rixx and I mention this a number of times: the most important thing a returning player needs to understand is that high-sec is no longer unconditionally safe.

The Pirate Insurgency system introduced lawless states that can strip CONCORD protection from systems you've flown through safely for years. Reset your warnings, check your route for the lawless indicator, use the avoidance list, and never autopilot anything you care about.

Beyond that, double-check your modules, your standings, and your fits — the game has changed in ways both large and small, and a few minutes of preparation will save you a lot of grief.

Over to you

Here's my question to you: Should high-sec systems ever be allowed to go lawless on major trade routes?

AloneInFinland argues it's a net negative — that it doesn't convert PvE players into PvP players, it just converts active players into logged-off players.

But there's a counter-argument that New Eden was never supposed to feel completely safe, and that dynamic security is exactly the kind of chaos that makes EVE worth playing.

I'd have to agree with AloneInFinland on that one. Though, it'd be interesting to see how many high-sec systems have become Lawless.

So where do you land?

Did lawless systems push you away from the game, pull you deeper into it, or are you just finding out about this right now and reconsidering that resubscription?

Drop a comment and let me know which side the fence you've planted your flag.