Candidate

0BAKEE for CSM 21
Protect the Sandbox. Create Reasons to Undock.
Hello, capsuleers.
I am 0BAKEE, and I am running for CSM 21.
I have played EVE since 2009, and I spend much of my time in lowsec as a pirate, hunter, and small-gang PvP pilot.
I am running because I believe the CSM should include perspectives from outside the largest power structures in New Eden.
The null blocs deserve a voice, I don’t want to take anything away from them, but so does the lowsec pirate,the ten-person corporation,the Faction Warfare frigate pilot,and the humble highsec miner.
My three biggest priorities are:
Risk and reward
Unstructured PvP
New-player retention
They all connect to one basic idea:
Players need reasons to undock, interact with each other, and care about what happens when they do.

Who Am I?
0BAKEE was created in 2009.
PvP has always been at the center of my EVE experience, especially:
Lowsec hunting
Solo and small-gang PvP
Piracy
Gate camps
Faction Warfare
The fights nobody planned
I also mine, harvest gas, haul my own resources, run PvE when appropriate, and use those activities to fund the part of EVE I enjoy most:
Blowing up spaceships.
I have lived in nullsec in the past and participated in territorial battles and response fleets, although that experience was nearly a decade ago. I was much less experienced then and often filled the unglamorous role of Interceptor tackle.
Get point, stay alive, Hope the fleet arrives in time.
That experience taught me something I still believe:
You do not need to be the FC or fly the most expensive ship on grid to matter.

What Do I Bring to the CSM?
My strongest areas are:
Unstructured PvP
Small-scale combat
Lowsec gameplay
Risk versus reward
The perspective of smaller and less institutionally powerful players
I also know the difference between having experience and being an expert.
I cannot know everything about every system in EVE, I won’t pretend otherwise.
If elected, I want to maintain an informal network of players from different areas of the game who can challenge my assumptions and help me understand issues outside my own expertise.
Anything covered by the CSM NDA stays under the NDA.
But when I don’t know something?
I will find someone who does.

Factional Warfare
Factional Warfare helped teach me PvP.
I have primarily fought for the Minmatar Republic, usually in inexpensive frigates while running complexes for income and system control.
That combination is important.
FW gives newer or lower-budget players:
A reason to undock
An objective
Income
A way to contribute
Access to smaller fights
Frigates are cheap.
More importantly:
Frigates are fun.
I want FW to continue offering meaningful participation without requiring an enormous wallet or massive fleet.

Unstructured PvP
This is probably the area I care about most.
I love the fights nobody scheduled,a roam finds a target,a gate camp gets challenged,a frigate fight escalates…Someone lights a cyno.
A response fleet forms.
Suddenly everyone involved is having a completely different evening than they expected.Those are some of the best moments EVE creates.
And no:
Not every fight needs to be fair.
If I am defending space and can bring three pilots for every one of yours, I probably will.
Preparation, deception, surprise, and overmatch belong in EVE.
Sometimes you want the 1v1.
Sometimes you want the Black Ops drop.
Both belong here.
The best fights in EVE are the ones that make you feel something.
Excitement. Anger. Regret. Adrenaline. Relief.
Sometimes all of them within five minutes!
I want to protect the conditions that allow those fights to happen.

Ships, Gameplay, and the HUD
My experience here is stronger on ships and gameplay than interface design.
I enjoy smaller hulls because they lower the financial barrier to taking risks.
On balance, I believe context matters.
Sometimes the ship is the problem,sometimes the surrounding mechanics are what make that ship a problem.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
For the interface:
Complex gameplay is good. Fighting the interface is not gameplay.
EVE should reward learning.It should not reward unnecessary clicking or hiding important information behind poor presentation. I hope the incoming UI changes will fix some of this
Quality-of-life improvements should reduce friction in the interface without automating away meaningful decisions.

Industry and Markets
I’m not an industrial tycoon,I mine opportunistically around my home systems, harvest gas when useful sites appear, compress resources, stockpile them, and eventually haul them to market.
Then I turn that income into ammunition and PvP ships,That gives me a simple view of the economy:
Production and destruction need each other.
The miner needs buyers,the industrialist needs demand,the hauler needs cargo worth moving,the trader needs markets,the PvP pilot needs ships.
And eventually:
Some of those ships need to explode.
When economic changes are proposed, I want to ask more than:
“Did the ISK per hour go up?”
I want to ask:
Does this put players in space?
Does it create movement?
Does it generate demand?
Does it create interaction?
Does the reward justify the investment and exposure?

Sovereignty and Logistics
I am not a modern sovereignty expert,I lived in nullsec nearly a decade ago and participated in territorial battles and response fleets, generally as an interceptor pilot.
A lot has changed since then.I would rely heavily on current sovereignty experts when discussing the fine details.
My interest is more in the relationship between large organizations and everyone around them.
Large alliances should be able to operate and defend their territory.
But outsiders should still be able to:
Raid
Interfere
Attack logistics
Exploit weak points
Create localized problems
Occasionally punch above their weight
Ten players should not have the strategic strength of ten thousand.
But those ten players should still be able to matter.

Highsec and New Players
This subject matters to me personally.
I hunt in lowsec,Sometimes I blow someone up and realize afterward that they are genuinely new.
I remember being that player! You worked hard for your new ship,Then someone destroyed it before you even understood what you did wrong.
That is hard.
When I recognize that situation, I usually try to contact the player,I explain what happened, tell them what they might have done differently.
I point them toward resources such as EVE University.And I often send them enough ISK to more than replace the loss.Not because I regret shooting them.
I would probably shoot them again.
I do it because I want them to keep playing,hopefully one day they come back and shoot me.
Good.
More players today means more content tomorrow.
New players do not need an EVE without danger,They need the tools to understand that danger,And on that point, I have a firm position:
Highsec should be safer. It should never be completely safe.
CONCORD and high security should create consequences and relative safety,they should not create immunity from the rest of the sandbox.
The goal should be to turn:
“I lost my ship and have no idea why.”
into:
“I know why I lost my ship. Next time I’ll be ready.”
That player now has a reason to log in tomorrow.

EVE Vanguard
I’ve played Vanguard and enjoyed it,what interests me most is meaningful integration between the two games.
I would love to see Vanguard players function in some capacity as ground forces whose actions can influence conflicts in EVE.Faction Warfare seems like a natural place to explore that.Large sovereignty conflicts may offer opportunities as well.
But there is an important condition:
Your actions should matter, but you should not be forced to play the other game.
EVE players should not need to play Vanguard to remain competitive in EVE.
Vanguard players should not exist simply as a support mechanic for spaceship players.
Integration should create opportunities.
Not mandatory homework.

My Three Priorities
1. Risk and Reward
Risk is more than ISK.
It includes:
Capital
Time
Logistics
Knowledge
Opportunity cost
Exposure
The possibility of interference from other players
Activities involving meaningful investment and risk need a reason to exist.
At the same time, exceptional rewards with almost no meaningful exposure deserve scrutiny too.
I want EVE to reward players for making choices and accepting consequences.

2. Unstructured PvP
Not every conflict should begin because a timer told everyone where to be.
I want:
Roaming
Hunting
Piracy
Small gangs
Bait
Third parties
Home defense
Escalation
Unexpected fights
When changes are made to travel, resources, intelligence, safety, structures, or force projection, one of the questions should always be:
Does this create more opportunities for players to interact, or fewer?

3. New-Player Retention
Eventually, today’s veteran players will stop playing,today’s new players need to become tomorrow’s veterans.
That makes retention important to all of us.
Fenris Creations has a responsibility to make EVE understandable.
The community has a role too.
Teach people.
Fight them.
Recruit them.
Answer their questions.
Point them toward good organizations,explain why they died,then give them another ship and tell them to try again.
We need those players.

Multiboxing
I know this one may be controversial.
I am concerned about extreme multiboxing.
Multiboxing itself is deeply embedded in EVE, and there are perfectly legitimate reasons to operate multiple accounts.
Scouting.
Hauling.
Mining.
Industry.
Cynos.
Logistics.
Specialized roles.
I am not proposing a blanket ban on multiboxing, my concern is what happens at the extreme end. When one person can effectively field twenty or more ships, we should at least ask:
At what point does multiboxing stop supplementing social gameplay and begin replacing it?
EVE is special because players depend on each other.
We recruit.
We specialize.
We coordinate.
We form corporations.
We make friends.
We make enemies.
My position is simple:
Multiboxing should supplement EVE’s social gameplay, not replace it.
I want that discussion informed by data and by the people actually using these systems.
If you disagree with me:
Challenge me.
Maybe you will change my mind.

Why Am I Running?
I want to give something back to a game I have played since 2009.
But more than that:
I want an outsider perspective at the table.
The major blocs deserve representation.
This is not an anti-bloc campaign.
It is a pro-representation campaign.
The independent pilot matters.
The small corporation matters.
The pirate matters.
The FW pilot matters.
The wormholer matters.
The industrialist matters.
The highsec miner matters.
You do not have to control a region or command a thousand-person fleet to contribute to New Eden.

What Can You Expect From Me?
Representation, not authority
I do not want to rule over players.
I want to represent them.
Being elected does not make my opinion more important than yours.
It gives me an opportunity to bring player concerns into conversations that most players cannot personally attend.

Accessibility
EVE is a social game.
I want to be a social representative.
If elected, I would like to use:
In-game office hours
Discord Q&A sessions
Short videos for announcements and updates
Forum discussions
Other community channels as appropriate
I want players to be able to talk to me.

Transparency
I will respect the NDA.
I will not leak confidential information.
I will not hint at secrets for attention.
Sometimes the answer will simply be:
“I cannot discuss that.”
Where I can speak openly, I will.
Where I cannot, I will tell you.

Challenge Me
Please do.
I cannot possibly understand every system in EVE.
If an industrialist thinks I am wrong, show me the numbers.
If a wormholer thinks I missed something, explain it.
If a nullsec logistics expert tells me an idea that sounds great from lowsec would cause a disaster at alliance scale, I want to hear why.
I would rather change my position because someone brought me better information than defend a bad idea because my ego got involved.

Working With Fenris
I also believe criticism should be informed.
EVE is an extraordinarily complicated game operating on infrastructure that supports conflicts at a scale few other games can approach.
Large battles create enormous technical demands.
Long-term modernization efforts are not simple projects.
That does not mean Fenris should be immune from criticism.
It means I will try to understand the engineering and design realities involved before pretending every difficult problem has an easy solution.
I want to represent players firmly and work constructively with the people building the game.

Protect the Sandbox
Underneath almost everything I have written is one principle:
EVE should remain EVE.
Highsec should be safer, not completely safe.
Lowsec should remain dangerous.
Nullsec empires should be powerful, but outsiders should still be able to interfere with them.
Small groups should not equal massive alliances, but they should still matter.
Loss should hurt enough that victory matters.
Players should build things because other players destroy things.
New players should learn how EVE works rather than be protected from ever experiencing it.
Vanguard should matter without becoming mandatory.
Multiboxing should support social gameplay rather than replace it.
And sometimes the most memorable battle of your year should begin because somebody tackled the wrong frigate.

Why Vote for Me?
I am not going to tell you that I am the only candidate capable of representing you.
I am not.
Read the platforms.
Ask difficult questions.
Challenge the candidates.
Decide who represents the EVE you want to play.
If my positions on risk, player freedom, unstructured PvP, new-player retention, transparency, and representation resonate with you, I would be grateful for your vote.
If another candidate represents you better:
Vote for them.
The important thing is that the CSM contains people willing to represent players.
I would be honored to be one of those people.
0BAKEE for CSM 21
Protect the Sandbox.
Create Reasons to Undock.
Represent the Players.

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