EVE Online: CSM minutes

Last week the CSM minutes were released.
The most important subject this time was the apparant lack of dedication from CCP to commit themselves to the POS spawning a huge threadnaught on the forums.
CCP responded with a vague noncommital answer and the public calmed down.

Null Sec
Null sec is dead or dying is often said. Pvp-ers need more prey to hunt. Therefore we need more features to draw in the prey.
Most pvp-ers are not interested in pvp, they are interested in killmails. They are not looking for other pvp-ers to fight, they are looking for carebears to gank.
Nullsec already has enough income sources to make it worth living there. The problem is that those income sources are all easily disrupted. And there comes a point  someone will decide they would rather mine or run mission in high because those are more stable income sources, not because they are more rewarding.
And once you switch to high sec alts for money making activities and only log on your main for mandatory cta's and complain about a lack of targets.... well then you are part of the problem and not of the solution.

Space ownership should be based on the ability to use the space as opposed to blowing up structures and alarm clocking.
How could such a system tie in with the current system of ever larger coalitions, renting alliances or shared space between alliances? 
I like the idea that to claim sov you need to mine , rat or kill a certain amount of nonblues in your space, just as you need to mine or rat to keep keep the mining/military index up. Or how about minimum activities to keep IHUBs or TCU's online in a system?

More activities that are taxable by alliances. How about simply giving a corp/alliance the option to set dual tax rates? So instead of 10% corp tax on ratting I pay 3% to the corp and 7% to the alliance. Or a simple 50/50 split between corp and alliance.
My current alliance has us paying a 15m tax per character per month and a 10% tax on PI. At stations I have to pay to rent a manufacturing/research slot (up to 50k per hour). I assume this goes to fill the alliance coffers as well.

Regarding the discussion about "Super veldspar" in null  I can be very clear. A big NO from me.
Null miners go for ABC because these are more valuable to mine. If super veldspar is worth more as ABC ores then null will simply start mining super veldspar and export this to high sec. If not then people will keep mining ABC ores, haul them to Jita to sell and buy a load of tritanium to fill the hold for the way back.
You will always be dependant on Jita anyway as moon and ice materials are region limited.

Ship Balancing
CCP would like to see a combat-oriented and a bridging/covert oriented Black Ops battleship.
More tiericide talk that fits in with the more specialized roles of T2 ships as compared to T1. I always wanted a BO because I think a Widows just looks cool and I imagined it as a safe and secure poor man's carrier. Then I looked at the jump range and forgot all about their existence for two years.

Factional Warfare
Soundwave mentions he would like to remove research agents. Curious to see if and when we will see any changes here but nothing to get really excited about even though I have 5 characters collecting datacores.

Then there was a discussion about FW having effect on high sec.
A tempting idea but one that needs a very careful approach to preserve balance. I like turning over faction navy responsibilities to players.

Bounty Hunting
Bounty button on the forums in the to-do list! ROFL!
No further thinking needed on this idea, just do it. I can already hear the screams and feel the tears.

A paragraph to my liking was:
SoniClover .... was worried further penalties could result in an unhealthy reduction in suicide ganking. He went on to affirm that suicide ganking is needed to make sure highsec is not completely safe, which elicited a nod from Soundwave. I am paranoid, every time I move cargo more expensive as the hull it's in I fear for suicide gankers. But I also think the different game areas are safe enough, espacially high sec. So when CCP defends suicide ganking I am happy I don't live in a theme park.

Mercenaries, Wars and Crimewatch
Tags4Secs was a buzzword here and one that I am in favor of. (Not for myself, I have never gotten a a security standings hit in my life).

In the talk about wars it is mentioned that having your high sec logistics in anything but an NPC corp is stupid.
The use of NPC corps to evade agressors is flawed. But it's just a symptom of current wardec mechanics. In 80% of the cases it's one small group declaring war on a bigger group and the bigger group just docking up for the duration of the war and being unwilling to fight or defend itself.

The only solution offered to the weak for now is Seleene's advice to get more friends and learn how to defend yourself. May the biggest blue blob win!

UI
The drone interface is only mentioned right at the end when Greene Lee and Two Stop mention their desire for something like a simple button to recall drones or order them to attack.
Arrow mentions this is fairly complex where I thought it would be relatively easy. You target something and press a 'module' button to send in a group of drones to attack, mine, salvage, ewar or repair your target?

Live Events
Here the discussion touched the fact that it was ridiculous you can spent all day murdering faction NPC's and then still dock at their stations.
Obviously those pirates are like the SoCo, an outsider might group them together and they might band together against a common threat but  they are all individuals that we just label as one group.

CREST
While I understand that Eve is a harsh place I am not sure about using third party applications anymore. It's ok to use them to scam or gather information on players by copying their mails or sending mails in their name for example. I am with Alek/Trebor on this and think third party developers should be held to a higher standard as ingame players, if only to prevent giving eve apps a bad name as legal spyware/malware. A good point for the case of allowing CREST scams though was made by mentioning eveskunk which I think is an acceptable site. But allowing an application access to mails because I am careless with my api is something else as an application cleaning out my wallet and contracting all my assets to the developer.

Player Experience
Sisyphus explained that for summer they will be prototyping a new radial menu system to replace the existing in-space version using mouse gestures, and eventually the right-click menus
I am a bit hesitant, but curious to see what CCP will come up with. In general I am not that much a fan of radial menus.

Eve Economy
Inflation (CPI excluding PLEX) fluctuated quite widely during 2012, from a monthly low of 4% deflation to a high of 8% inflation. However, taken as a whole, inflation was modest, and stayed within CCP's target range of +/- 1%.
I did not see this coming. I would have expected higher inflation based on plex prices but these are excluded in the calculations.

Eve Marketing
CCP gives a discount to people paying a year at a time, but there’s no discounts for anyone that has, say, 20 accounts.
I have multiple accounts but after 3 or 4 I don't really see the added value unless you are a botter.
It's one thing to be selfsufficient, it's another one to field a complete fleet by yourself.

UAxDEATH suggested a tangible benefit for players with multiple accounts would be discounts on subscription costs. He mentioned that at one time he had 90 accounts, but since becoming a CSM he has cut back to only 37, and asked "what would inspire me to [reactivate] those accounts?" Really? 90 accounts and now 'only' 37? Paid for by alliance members?

Conclusion
A huge document that could be a little bit shorter in my opinion. The russian CSM members were not as vocal as the obvious CSM carriers but they did give some good points.
How do russian players feel about them? Did UAxDEATH, Greene Lee, Dovinian do more or less as expected from them?