CCP's vision - Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.  Hanlon's Razor

Ever run into the type of player who thinks he knows everything and can't be bothered with your friendly advice, or at least your attempts to figure out how much of eve's mysteries he's actually uncovered? The kind that always gets wardecced, or suicide ganked, or corp thieved, or scammed...or really any other sort of half-assed greedy lazy way to play this sci-fi mmog.  This is the sort of person who avoids risk and expects others to carry the ball. This also includes the type of amateur griefer who doesn't learn any finesse because the loopholes built into the game make his job so easy a retard with a potato gun could harm an equally amateurish corp.

It's funny that these people are so risk-averse, so blatantly dramatic about admitting their tactical mistakes (yet blind to their many strategic blindspots), yet their egos are so very overweened. Ironic i suppose.

This is exactly the mindset of CCP. These people have a 'vision' and it's very very important everyone knows about it cuz that's their selling point, yet it's merely a trite platitude they believe in. They've never had a coherent vision for this game, and likely never will. Their incoherent vision for this game is to make griefing so easy, so prevalent, that anyone can do it without half trying.  I suppose that would be an okay thing for a mmog, if all things were equal. except, they're not. In fact, the very last thing you want to do is actively attract killer types.

By nurturing explorers using software means (ie. giving the game great depth or "mystique", or encouraging non-explorers to dabble for a while by regularly adding new areas and features), the overall population of explorers will gradually rise, and the killer population will be held in check by them. The killers who remain do exert an influence on the number of socialisers, sufficient to stop them from going into fast-breeder mode, but insufficient to initiate an exodus. Achievers are set upon by killers often enough to feel that their achievements in the game have meaning. This is perhaps the most balanced form of MUD, since players can change their position on the interest graph far more freely: achievers can become explorers, explorers can become socialisers, socialisers can become achievers - all without sacrificing stability. However, actually attaining that stability in the first place is very difficult indeed; it requires not only a level of game design beyond what most MUDs can draw on, but time and player management skills that aren't usually available to MUD administrators. Furthermore, the administrators need to recognise that they are aiming for a player mix of this kind in advance, because the chances of its occurring accidentally are slim. Richard Bartle

 Thankfully, i think it's more a case of CCP so incompetent at understanding the social aspects of eve (like, you know, how we as players learn to adapt to eve's inhospitable social engine) that i doubt it's deliberately ignored...The CSM has been dominated by null sec alliances all too happy to downplay this 'corporate' aspect of eve (i shudder to think what may come of that fanfest graphic flowchart)

Our Vision

Let's start with a timely evemail that arrived in my inbox before the dev blog did.

Chapter 1 - The BBD

Playing the game by yourself
Just finished the tutiorials, got some cash and a shiny new ship. lets see whats this is all about. pick a direction any direction, off i go, oh wait who is that convo'ing me.
"hi n00b, im mister recruiter and ive been looking for you. i heard a lot about how great you were in just your first week and thought id offer you the oppotunity of a life time, join us and all your dreams will come true"
Right, heard that before, "I'm from the government and i'm here to help you" block, align and warp, that away
A year later, after learning how to fit a ship and mine a belt and make some isk, our n00b is in the game, but lost asking that old question "is that all there is?"
After another year, hes still in the game, expert at fitting a ship and learning to fit implants
Then learning how to optimize playing with jump clones
Still, is that all there is, i've got 100% refining, enough isk to buy what ever i want,  oh cool orcas!
Now our pilot knows how to optimize an orca for a mission with its fit plus ships inside with there fits, complexity rules, there is more to this than i thought. i think i'll play for another year
Alts! now i can have a corp and fit multiple players with complex implants selections and jump clones and pick a ship, any ship, plans and this is really changing so i think ill stay another year
At some point the question will be asked again, "Is this all there is?" at some point, playing solo, the answer will be yes

chapter 2 - Social Diseases

Bar hop till you drop
So mister recruiter gets his man, signs him up hands him over and gets his bonus, rinse and repeat. our n00b this time goes right to the rock pile with a weekly pay check, which he becomes dependent on because he has all these friends now and he has to buy things to impress them. he learns his job well, maybe gets a small promotion now and then.
But then the day comes when the question is asked "is this all there is?, i think i'll call in sick. next log on, hes out of his comfort zone and in the npc corp with only what was in his personal hanger. now what!
Join another corp, leave, another, leave, boy that's a long employment list, what are you go for again?
Goonie for a year and then gone, for good
Just because you're in a corp doesn't mean it means anything. roids, missions wormhole corps, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got... something
But what, new expansion comes out next week, lets hang around and see, just one more time

Chapter 3 - WTF

Wow, i didnt know that
 This time our n00b lands in a system and hooks up with the bitter vets. they teach him and teach him well. every session somebody says what the fuck, i didn't know that. this is really complex, i couldn't do this without you guys.
But bitter vets being the players they are have very long term views and drift in and out. sometimes it seems like nothing is happening, but only because it happens so slow.
N00b isn't a n00b anymore, and hes seen things that players 3, 4 years older haven't
Then the question get asked, "Is this all there is?"
Think i'll wander around for a while guys, maybe circumnavigate the galaxy, try some can art, maybe get famous.
We hear from our corp mate now and then but after a while, nothing. that's all there is

chapter 4 (i think)

cha·os  [key-os]
noun
1.
a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.Well this time n00b is getting recruited and something completely out of the ordinary happens, a ceo from day zero shows up and rescues n00b.
Look son , here's the plan. just like you can plug modules into you ship for different missions, i can plug pilots into my corp for different expeditions. pick a profession, any one you like, theres a place for you with us.
But you're a mining corp, i don't want to mine all day, is that all you've got.
No, we have a plan to conquer chaos.
But chaos cant be conquered
Yep, i know that, the plan is the thing, not the conquering, we're like vikings, mostly sit at home tending the belts and training, lots of training and planning. in the spring we set out to see what we can do. most people think we're after the loot, because we get lots of it, but thats not what it all about. anybody can steal all of your wine, we celebrate stealing all of the wine, without spilling a drop or waking anybody up. when somebody ask "How do you do that", we say "Very well!" thats what they remember us for.
Come play with us and you *will* be remembered
Tell me more, please
Ok one time we organized our selves into divisions, navigation, communications, security, resourse extraction, survey parties... really detailed stuff, a plan to overcome chaos. we had pilots trained in null sec covert ops and then spend weeks looking for the right systems to raid. we had planning sessions where we brainstormed how to get in and out again, what the break even was risk and reward ratios, you name it we tried to prepare for it. lots of fun, everybody had something useful to say. and we caught spies too, that was fun, at least for us
After the system, actually a whole constellation, had been locked in, forward parties went out, logistics started placing supplies, war parties suited up. another 2 weeks went buy before we finally rolled. the pre show tension was great, maybe the best part of the whole thing. first thing we did was take the gates, nobody got in and out again, i personally saw 5 ships webbed at the same time and the pilots forced to exit and jump out of the system, we're not murders you know, though we're good at fighting and killing, we took all of their ships and parked them at a safe spot and emailed the owners after we'd left with the bookmarks
Then the fun began, once all ingress and egress was controlled by us, the rorqs cynoed in and the orcas showed up full of ventures with greed fits and leathal war birds. pilots clone jumped to the rorqs in each system and started taking out the roids and ice, others burned all of the rats out and another team flew salvage, sucking up everything. blocade runners haulled every thing out on a continuios basis and stealth bombers flew escort.
It was the most complex raid i'd ever seen. we got away with everything in the system, without killing anyone or loosing a single ship. tons and tons of stuff, null sec resourses. and we got all of it like ninjas and were back home before the war decs even started.
We faced chaos and beat it. we out planned it and we out trained it. and we excuted it like a ballet. you can ask around, people still talk about it, we're legends
The one day old n00b with his jaw hanging open just has to ask "But Is that all there is?"
Eleven year old ceo and master of eve says no, that's not all there is, next year we're planning something bigger, want to join us?
N00b just says yes, for life
Author: Eitheror Andorian

Devblog the day after outlining a ship that enables the dreams i had about mining in dangerous areas of space...the very areas i feel most at home. Where ore isn't mined out by greedy afk botting morons day in day out. Where you can usually interact with players who pay attention to local chat. Where the regulars will get to know your reputation and visa-versa, including your bad habits. Where i've always experimented with cloaked miners of some ilk, for it seems the ability to sit there mining in low sec and just cloak up and wait for the enemy to leave to start up mining again. Where i've always hoped i could refine ore into all the minerals i'll ever need to build stuff (aka the missing megacyte)

Does the tech2 mining frigate actually rival high sec mining?
seeing as how my venture skills are lackluster i'm training the skill on my alts in the test server. stay tuned

commitment issues for CCP

"Not to bash on anyone caught in the middle of these events, but I just want to point out that CCP always, always display some serious problems with delivery:
- bringing Eve to beta was grueling.
- after five years in development and a helpful hand from Sony, Dust was far more broken in beta than it had any reason to be.
- eight years in development, and yet WoD had some many open high level issues, with hardly anything concrete to show for.
- As much as it pains me, Valkryie is giving all the impressions to be going the very same route. You can't just keep saying for years over how great the game could be if you implement it one way, or perhaps another way, or perhaps even a third one. At some point you must commit to one of them and go for it.

CCP is bad, bad, bad at making these decisions and the result is that the teams of yet-to-be-delivered games waste way too much effort implementing stuff just to have all the code thrown away.

Compare WoD to Pillars of Eternity, just to name an example that is on top of my mind. Development team of comparable size, budget of comparable size, scope comparable to Baldur's Gate, and yet they intend to deliver the game between two and three years total." ~Anon commenter

Endorsements

autofilled voting form

Steve Ronuken        eve-match; campaign forum; interview  tl;dr = API/crest
Mike Azariah          eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = casual play
Alner Greyl             eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = corp overhaul
Asayanami Dei        eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = corp overhaul
Karen Galeo           eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = new blood/wormhole
Commander Aze     eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = 60% match
Sugar Kyle              eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = low sec 
Mangala Solaris       eve-match; campaign forum; interview  tl;dr = social engine
Einear Lightfingers   eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = ?
Ali Aras                  eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = new players
Jayne Fillon             eve-match; campaign forum; interview  tl;dr = ?
James Arget            eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = wormhole
DJ FunkyBacon      eve-match; campaign forum; interview   tl;dr = low sec/FW/eve-radio
riverini

Complicit silence normalizing a peer culture of harassment

I think the operative word is "expressing" one's objection. What i've learned over the years from listening to speakers on the topic of harassment is that being silent is the worst thing you can do because it reinforces the peer pressure to applaud the bad behavior, which supports the status quo.

Jackson Katz's Bystander Approach (anybody who is not a perpetrator or a victim in any given situation; peer culture relationships) "How do we not remain silent in the face of abuse?"..."Isn't your silence a form of consent and complicity? Well, the 'bystander approach' is about giving people the tools to interrupt that process and to speak up and to create a peer culture climate where the abusive behavior will be seen as unacceptable. Not just because it's illegal but because it's wrong and unacceptable in the peer culture. And if we can get to the place where [people] who act out in [bigoted] ways will lose status"..."as a result of it. Guess what? We'll see a radical diminution of the abuse because the typical abuser is not sick and twisted, he's a normal guy in every other way. Isn't he? Now, among the many great things that Martin Luther King said in his short life was, 'In the end what will hurt the most is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends'"..."It's not easy in male culture for guys to challenge each other. Which is one of the reasons why part of the paradigm shift that has to happen is not just understanding these issues as men's issues but they're also leadership issues"..."Because ultimately, the responsibility for taking a stand on these issues should fall on the shoulders of adult men with power, [whom] we need to be holding accountable for being leaders on these issues."..."When somebody speaks up in a peer culture and challenges and interrupts he or she is being a leader."..."We don't need sensitivity training, we need leadership training"..."Caring deeply is not enough. We need more men with the guts, with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other."

I find Anita Sarkeesian message to resonate so strongly with this current "earthquake" (as Ripard Teg puts it) that i'm going to transcribe a part of her TEDx talk starting about 6 minutes in. I'll let her words speak for themselves.

What type of game is it? (it's fundamentally a social one) "Now we don't usually think of online harassment as a social activity, but we do know from the strategies and tactics that they use that they were not working alone. They were actually loosely coordinating with each other. And this social component is a powerful motivating factor that works to provide players/perpetrators with incentives to participate and to actually escalate attacks by earning the praise and approval of their peers. We can kind of think of this as an informal reward system where players earn internet points for increasingly brazen and abusive attacks. Then they would document these attacks and then they would bring themselves back to the message boards as evidence to show off to each other. Kind of like trophies or achievements. So, we have this general structure of a social game."..."The end result is maintaining, and reinforcing, and normalizing a culture of [bigotry] where men who harass are supported by their peers and rewarded for their [bigoted] attitudes and behaviors."

She tends to not have any other decent talking points because she is a pandering hack who routinely devolves into useless anecdotes. That doesn't take away from her one and only salient point above, albeit probably plagarized.

----

What do i really think about this whole sordid episode?

• Of CCP i think it was merely PR damage control...It came down to public relations and controlling the message.
• Of the perpetrators i think they proved Anita Sarkeesian's point about "this social component is a powerful motivating factor that works to provide players/perpetrators with incentives to participate and to actually escalate attacks by earning the praise and approval of their peers."
• Of  the victim i thought a while ago it was designed as a huge troll, except according to FunkyBacon this happened back in November, and there's been "hundreds" of bonus rooms (and golly gee "one winner"...riiiight) But, you see there's something really suspicious about a 2009 character falling for a jita local scam, who from his eve-who stats looks all the world like an alt...He's actually made forums posts (two following his TS appearance) which strikes me as disingenous. So, yeah, i still think it was a massive troll and Jester bit down real hard. It's a damned good thing he did because i'm betting this CSM bid by E1 was going to have something splashy to crow about CCP's silent complicity in the villain peer culture.
• Of the patsy i thought Ripard Teg proved Jackson Katz' point about leadership skills and challenging abusive behavior, even if he found out about it long after the incident and regardless of the victim's apparent claims he's been misrepresented and ignored.

So, yeah, what i said on Minerva Zen's blog still holds true in my mind: "I believe it was just a huge troll on the part of the 'victim' and the griefer that would have been revealed if CCP's continued apathy towards enforcing their eula/tos against flagrant cases of griefing (aka 'The Code' and this tool) made it attractive to dump on bloggers championing on high horses."
You see, the griefer was running for CSM before he was banned. What better way to garner lots of attention than destroy the recent platform of a prolific blogger, on ethics? Gotta wonder who exactly brought this to the belated attention of Jester's Trek and more importantly why...

I think this problem is bigger and more systemic than simply E1 being a bad apple. I think Ripard Teg's hasty Pontius Pilate act is typical of him avoiding the real issue in the hast to throw out the griefer, bath water, tub and entire house connected to the bathroom. It's effectively making E1 the Messiah; a Martyr.

There is The Code griefing right under the nose of the EULA/ToS about "roleplaying" not being an excuse to grief/harass/etc, griefers running amok in starter systems with aggro traps, duel popups and basic trolling of n00bs, griefers using neutral RR while awoxing; griefers basically using whatever convoluted loopholes they can abuse in order to interfere in the gameplay of others at almost zero risk/energy on the part of the griefer.

There are devastating loopholes in the corporate (aka social engine) mechanics of this game defended by trollish examples of bullshit roleplayed stories of daring do against Ubiqua Seraph and the dissolution of BoB.

But, sadly, i suspect this is merely CCP doing damage control on a single bad apple and, like Ripard Teg (who's merely following their example), washing their hands of the entire affair. I doubt this will motivate the community to demand CCP finally close those systemic loopholes, and will have the griefers in The Code realize they just dodged a bullet and conclude CCP condones their roleplay.

Also, what will fascinate me is if Psychotic Monk gains alot more votes than expected and gets onto the CSM because of this episode.

Optimism in an anti-heroic age

 Blog Banter #54: Heroes

Today's topic comes Diaries of a Space Noob blog and other sources:

Quick post. I was listening to a song and a question occurred to me. Where are the EVE heroes? Against a dark background surely all we have are anti-heroes? A lot of mockery is aimed at any who attempt to be white knights. EVE is a dark place and yet pretty much all other MMO's try to place the player in the role of some form of hero, boosting the ego and taking the player out of the humdrum 1 in 7 billion that is RL. Why have I fitted into EVE? Did I never want to be that? So I guess my question is:

Do classic heroes exist in EVE? Is such heroism even possible in EVE? How would you go about being one without opening yourself wide open to scams? Is the nature of the game so dark that heroes can't exist? How do you deal with that irony? What effect does this have on us and the psyche of new players coming in from other MMOs? Is it something special that we don't have classic heroes, or should we? Are our non classic heroes more genuine?

And I would add to this, who have we elevated to the level of larger than life heroes ourselves in the game, and do they actually deserve it?

"Who" are heroes? Is SirMolle or Mittens a hero? They are larger than life...people whose ambition beggar our imagination that we may do the same one day, or frighten us into believing they would only crowd us out and nip our ambitions in the bud. Whether they "deserve" it or not is besides the question.
Is it Chribba? how about Grismar? I'd certainly say Chribba is a famous figure well known and liked. What is there to debate about them "deserving" such high stature?
What is the frame of reference for such a question? I'm not going to deal with the question of whether they earned the fame or not. The fact is they are names of characters we know of in a pixelated universe we pay CCP $15 for us to pretend to work in outer space. period.

I'd rather focus on the definition of Hero and ignore the "who."
I go by C.G.Jung's definition of a hero being someone we place the best of our social mores onto and stop expecting it in ourselves.
We are all heroes, at least those that don't use the excuse of roleplay to interfere with the play of others simply because it takes little to no effort on our part. Heroes in the sense that we play this game grateful for the risk inherent in flying that which you cannot afford to lose. Heroes in the sense that we will try to warn others of griefers (aka those roleplaying the dickheads they can't be in real life; aka villains) and protect the weak instead of hurling as many of them as we can off that spartan cliff.

The anti-hero is that which blames the victim. Who admonishes the n00b with condescending talk about "thou shall not fly that which thou cannot afford to lose"...who ridicules any criticism of their grief behavior with hair splitting distinctions about how long can n00bs dance on the head of a pin before they're no longer considered n00bs. As though they'd not know a n00b if they saw one.
The anti-hero is that which exclaims, "there are no innocents" and proceeds to aggro trap in starter systems fully aware that CCP won't enforce it's EULA unless some samaritan happens by and bothers to petition and even then probably gets a polite "go fuck yourself, plzkthxdrvthru" from a jovial GM ever so serious about looking into it. yeah, right.
The anti-hero is the cult of personality. The ones that say, "internet spaceships is serious business" and don't give a fart about noble qualities just fame &/or fortune.
The anti-hero is the elitist prick whose peers snigger aloud, letting the sandbox bully get away unchallenged with the notion that kicking sand in a weaker opponent is somehow acceptable.
But, then again, the true Anti-Hero is the rebel - the person who isn't a team player at all;  With zero idealism, courage, nobility, fortitude, moral goodness, nor altruism. There's nothing to "see" here, move along. The sort of person who cast a jaundiced eye at roleplay excuses for griefing and exclaims, "well played"

But do we want a villain (a 'foil') so badly as a roleplaying device that we'll turn a blind eye towards anti-social behavior and say, "wow, he really did a professional job on that contracted hit" - swallowing hook line and sinker the griefer's excuse for hitting a random target in the wrong place at the wrong time??


Just look at CCP's ToS section 4 compared to CCP's smug marketing happiness about the loss of Ubiqua Seraph oh so long ago. Really? A contract from some mysterious patron? That's original *cough*NOT*cough*
By their actions, certainly not words (like the blind leading the blind there), CCP have proven they have stopped expecting heroic things from themselves and expect the players to police the sandbox. It's a fairly simple rationale actually: Every player is a hero, therefore why should we step up to the plate and fix this damned social minigame of theirs called "corp management: a lazy griefer's paradise"?

And what brainfart occurred to have them 'fix' jetcan aggro trap with a duel popup that is not only opted in by default but there's no opt-out option in settings? One misclick and pop goes the weasel.

When does it cross that ethical line from nonconsentual immergent gameplay that champions the element of risk into a clear violation of ToS article 4? It's like the judge talking about pornography: "i know it when i see it"
CCP has championed the smaller than life anti-hero to the point where their actions truly are larger than ToS.4, and flipped the scales so that the actual heroes are usurped in favour of the imposters.

I for one am certainly not going to fade away in noble sacrificial fashion. The pigs may have taken over the animal farm, and run around acting like Don Quixote bashing afk carebears, but that doesn't mean they "deserve" the pearls cast by CCP. To expect larger than life figures like SirMolle, Chribba, Mittens and Grismar, et al. to do something about it while we complacently toil away and do nothing to help is to stop expecting the heroic in ourselves, as C.G.Jung once opined.

Bounty exodus

Blog Banter # 53 - A state of disrepair and jury rigging

Today's topic comes from a tweet from @erlendur in a conversation he was having with a pilot about having multiple overview tabs open in separate windows:

So that is the topic this month: The Overview. Is it sufficient? If not how can it be improved? Is there some way to replace it? Does it give too much information, or not enough? Please be creative and specific as the overview currently is the heartbeat of the GUI.

 There are numerous solutions to overcome the deficiencies, most notably Sarah Schneider and Blitz Kotare's overview importable .xml files. Plus, a very pvp oriented 'fix' to overview/bracket appearances using pictures:

The result is quite...erm...colorful. I find the effect to be more pvp friendly, and nullsec oriented than anything


The problem with the default overview these profiles are attempting to fix is the 'default' overview setting options aren't really helpful to the dedicated, specialized things eve players tend to get into.

Actually, there's no "Combat" or "Missioning" or "Exploration" that caters to the needs of players, and the 'Brackets' option (the one that shows you icons in space, not the overview itself) is woefully inadequate to keeping lag/performance issues under control.

So the aim of those two profile packages is to make things not only Aesthetic but informative to specialized uses.

I myself have endeavoured to created such a profile package for carebears, and for the most part, i feel i have succeeded. I decided that in order to take best advantage of the mechanics of 'import' and 'tabs' that having multiple files based on career choice, and more importantly, the amount of performance issues (aka. lag) you want to avoid having was the best of both worlds. Not only that but i made sure the number of "selected type settings" was 20 total shared by all 10 'import' XML files - compared to 29 types (excluding the 5 divisions) & 1 xml for Sarah's, and 27 types & 4 xml (solely color styles) for Blitz's. Below are the two core overview profiles you can import at will to tailor your overview needs. The top picture shows the "Belter" type profile and the bottom picture shows the "Shepherd" type profile. the names were inspired by C.J.Cherryh's sci-fi series, "company wars."

------------------------------
EDIT: I looked at the way Sarah's overview pack displays the 'hover over' cursor information. (the ship type listed first, then [alliance], then pilot name, and lastly ship name;  Blitz's used this rather aethetic format i'm not quite sure was the purpose of...And the ship type last...i wonder what advantage that gives?
I think i'm going to adjust my profile to be more like Sarah's (ship type first, pilot name bolded)...and i think i'll tone down the tone size. I still like yellow tho.
As you can see in the picture to the right, with OMNM's profile top, Sarah's middle, and Blitz's bottom (red profile), the information shown is much better than the default by far.

------------------------------

Am i happy with the options i am forced to work with, and the lack of ability to see exclusively WarTargets...not to mention the annoyance i have with the way bountied pilots crop up when i'm trying to ensure every single instance of a wartarget's attributes is checked? Not really...That's kind of a big deal: Not being able to separate wartargets into a tab of it's own (outside of null-sec)...You see, if i choose to check solely pilots at war with my corporation, and uncheck everything else, you'd THINK that would make things simple wouldn't it? but, no, if a pilot has an attribute i have unchecked, say a bounty - no matter if they are clearly at war with me - they won't appear in that type of overview settings.

Besides this annoyance about highsec wartargets (most use background colors to ensure target selection, as a jury rigged solution) the other issue that custom profiles can't jury rig a solution to is bountied pilots are probably the number two problem facing the overview...since CCP fixed what wasn't broken a while back anyone can bounty any pilot with zero restrictions.

TL;DR   So if CCP somehow worked a solution so that we could have a "wardec" tab showing only wartargets (by separating bounty indicator from the attributes and having it appear some other way, say perhaps in the 'ships' settings as a check box) that would be an improvement.

EDIT: having differentiation in beacons (especially cynos) would be great, plus something else in that vein but it's slipped my mind