The Best-Laid Plans...

        It feels like things have stagnated a bit. There was a large call about a month ago to move our base of operations right next to Serpentis NPC space so we can take over the area and run Archangels missions, turning in the loyalty points for shiny faction ships. So far that plan hasn't gone well. After we moved our staging system I was expecting to see lots of planned fleet ops to roam around the area and catch any enemy stragglers who happen to be hanging around. That hasn't happened very much. In fact the inhabitants seem to be holding on to the neutral space quite well, which does not bode well for our potential mission runners, myself included. There are the likes of Interceptors, Instacanes, and even a Carrier camping the stations. And like the 0rphanage, they hide in their hole anytime a fleet shows up.

        The problem is that we are not displaying our show of force like we did in the siege of 6VDT. An ideal alliance would have ships in each of the seven NPC systems, even some with cynos fitted so that they can hotdrop on a carrier who tries to take a potshot at our fleet and think they can hold on to their tank for a minute while waiting to de-agress.

        Instead what does it feel like we've been doing? Shooting a tower here, saving a tower there. Not much else. On the forums there's a general feeling of a lack of direction. I tend to agree with that sentiment. I have my own plans for improving things but I can't do it alone. In the meantime I'm focusing on a little bit of liquidation. Not because I'm wanting to move anywhere else, but to be ready to do so in case the situation with the alliance changes.

On Downtime and Exploits

        So it seems my alliance managed to create a nice bit of controversy. EVE was taken down for half a day to apply the Tyrannis 1.2 patch. Before the server went down, TEST planted Territorial Claim Units in areas of unclaimed 0.0 space. They normally take 6 hours to complete the claim, during which the unit can be destroyed. Due to the downtime, however, nobody could contest the claim and TEST returned to EVE several systems richer. Apparently the former owners (or non-owners to be more accurate) did not like this chain of events and petitioned the GM's who revoked the claims on the territory.

        So the first question is: was this an exploit? Probably. My personal thought as a programmer is that timed items like this should not elapse while the server is in downtime. As soon as the server came up and was accepting player connections, then the competing alliance should have had 6 hours from that point to contest the claim.

        So now extrapolate that. What if the downtime was arbitrary, like the two-day unforeseen outage caused by moving the database? The timer starts when the server is up, but how can a group organize when the server comes up at a random time with real-life constraints sometimes preventing you from acting?

        Also, consider what timers stop and which ones continue. Skills continue training because they don't affect other groups directly. What about reinforced towers? Other sovereignty timers? Planetary Interaction? Research and Industry? Capital Shipbuilding? My opinion is that any timer that can cause a loss to someone should stop. That means that towers and sovereignty freezes and everything else keeps going.

        It's not perfect, but it's better than provoking GM interference in the shadow of the whispers of favoritism of which CCP will probably never rid themselves.