zombiewizardhawk
Potato del Grande
- 9,339
- 11,935
EVE Online
- Thread starter Eonan
- Start date
- 314
- 150
Kais and I will add the missing bits overtime - but one thing I'll reconfirm is that this was never about the "good fights" as Leadfoot and Polarized keep stating.
Good fights - is RNK spending effort and time to seed in caps and reasonable player numbers.. and then blapping us.
Good fights - is RNK spending effort and time to seed in caps and reasonable player numbers.. and then blapping us.
I don't know if I've ever really gotten the good fights thing. I like to win. I don't like to lose. I'd much rather just win and then dine on forum porn or Teamspeak tears later. People who say they like good fights still make every effort to put themselves into positions where they will win, by a large margin if they can. I doubt that any of the major alliances in WH space practice leaving folks behind for the sake of 'good fights'. Though some sort of Battletech Clan style bidding for matches might be kinda cool.
- 314
- 150
For the kind of effort it took to assemble and gain access to our hole - of course it was all to win (as in evicting us). Good fights was just their excuse to justify evicting a well known PVP entity in WH space. If they had truly been looking for good fights, they could have each tried to roll into Loveshack individually....because we almost always bring it.
Even now, the response to the WH eviction has been... lukewarm to say the least. Less pew for everyone to go around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd5w-RGFQsE
A fleet i ran the other day.... My fleets run so smooth!! Bomber's Bar prophecy gang #1
A fleet i ran the other day.... My fleets run so smooth!! Bomber's Bar prophecy gang #1
I'll warn you this is a long post. I made it for the scam forums on goonfleet.com and forum.pleaseignore.com, where we're used to lots of words!
I'd like to start this tale with a lesson for all would-be CEOs out there. Being CEO of a corporation may make you feel like king of the hill. It may make you feel like the Almighty himself. It may even make you feel like you are absolved from responsibility for your actions. Let me make one thing clear: you would be wise to believe none of the above.
[ 2013.03.28 05:56:13 ] Nicole Duval > I got lonely
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:38 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've been failing miserably at finding time to log in
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:42 ] Ennui DeBlase > so much homework this term
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:43 ] Ennui DeBlase > and hard exams
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:50 ] Nicole Duval > understandable
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:53 ] Nicole Duval > I'm the same way
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:01 ] Nicole Duval > I only log in for indy carebear shit mostly
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:34 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've made a few WH ops
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:39 ] Ennui DeBlase > just blasted through a couple sites now actually
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:41 ] Nicole Duval > depending how big our production gets in the next few months we may take over your tower if it's not getting much use
That last line right there? Never, ever say that to someone with Director roles. Definitely don't say it to someone with Director roles when you haven't secured your corporate shares. And above all else, definitely don't say it when your corporate assets look something like this:
(Not pictured: Over 500 blueprint runs of assorted t3 hulls, and several thousand blueprint runs of assorted t3 subsystems)
When I joined Project-Mayhem [50AP] over a year ago, it was never my intention to scam these people. Producing t3s in highsec with a corp I had very little responsibility to was really great income, and while the CEO could be a bit aloof, he didn't meddle with the business of the other corp members. As he invested more and more ISK into his own production efforts, he became progressively more interested in taking production facilities from other corp members whenever he could. Keep in mind, [50AP] was essentially an alt corp for rich members of Aether Ventures [AEVNT], executor corporation for the wormhole alliance Surely You're Joking <HAHA>. We all bought our own towers and structures, and paid for our own fuel. The corporation basically only existed to provide the ability to anchor towers in highsec.
Once I decided I'd had enough of Nicole's antics, I started forming a plot to take as much as I could from the corp and ride off into the sunset. The first iteration of the plan was to log in when those 99 t3 hulls were due, grab as many as I could, and have a roles alt in place in the lowsec station to grab all the capital BPOs as well. This was an okay plan, but very risky, as Nicole spends a lot of time logged in, especially when jobs are due for pickup. It would be very easy to spook him. And if I wanted the moons, I'd have to have at least a full half hour uninterrupted to unanchor the POSes and somehow have an extra corp (with standings) ready to place new towers. So I looked into alternatives.
When a corporation is created in EVE, 1000 corporate shares are automatically created and put into the custody of the corporation. At any time, for any reason or for no reason, any Director or CEO can give any number of these shares to anyone in the game, including himself.http://wiki.eveonlin.../en/wiki/Sharesprovides a warning in a pleasant green box advising would-be CEOs that they should not allow this to happen. Nicole Duval never read the text in that box.
Let's face it, I'm a Goon. I don't know how roles work. I don't even think I have Bee roles, and I don't even know if Bee roles are still a thing. But I do have an alt corp, so I set myself to testing. What happens when I initiate a CEO vote? Is there anything I can't grab as a Director? Is there any way anyone can interrupt the process?
I have, if enough people are interested, a lot of screenshots of how this all works. When you're the CEO and a vote to usurp you is called, you get a no-nonsense corporate Notification informing you that your roles as CEO have been suspended for the voting period, and you'll just have to wait it out. In fact, the roles-reduction is so harsh that you can't even see the corporate Politics tab and observe your own vote. You no longer have even read-only access to the Role Management or Title Management pages. Your context menu option "Edit member" becomes the "View member details" that we lesser citizens are all familiar with. You are instantly and irrevocably neutered.
Until the bugs kick in.
On the night of the heist, I waited ever so patiently for the CEO to log off. He's used to me having characters online now and then for fueling my tower, changing skills, setting orders, and starting jobs, so there was nothing for him to suspect. But he sure did take a long time to log out. It takes awhile to do the 15+ jump freighter runs necessary to carry the minerals to build an additional 7 capital hulls from Jita to his lowsec manufacturing station. Thank you for your ~15 billion ISK donation on your final night as CEO, Nicole.
When the time was right, I issued the go order to my partner in crime. We logged into EVE, removed every role and grantable role from every corp member but our own. Removed every title from every corp member but our own. Removed every role and grantable role from every title, except for a brand new one that we set up for our helper characters. This was a title that we already confirmed no other corp members had (except the CEO, who automatically receives all roles and titles as a benefit of being CEO, but more on that later). We then grabbed the 1000 corporate shares and immediately ran our Director character for CEO. We took everything that wasn't currently part of a build job, and left those to tick down, as my testing had revealed that with the CEO vote/roles suspension in place, we had the only three characters in corp who could cancel or deliver those jobs. I stuck around til downtime, partially for the prospect of tears but mostly because I had just pulled off the perfect heist (or so I thought), and was too wired to sleep. No one logged on all night.
The next morning, I am awoken by skype spam from my partner. Nicole is online and somehow has roles! He's taking things! He's cancelled the 7 capital hull and 10 capital component jobs, and started pulling BPCs from one of the POS hangars. The corporate Audit Log shows that he's assigned roles to various alts! How is this happening? The tests said everything was fine!
I made the mistake of believing that the most arcane, neglected, poorly implemented, and hacked-together system in all of EVE, the corporate roles system, actually worked consistently and without bugs. Especially when using a feature like CEO voting, which probably occurs less than a half a dozen times a year across all of New Eden. There are, as my frantic testing over the past 52 hours has revealed, at least two major cases in which a CEO can retain some control over his corporation. This is already a long post, so I'll only go into the super elaborate details as a follow-up if people are really interested. Otherwise, they'll be in my bug reports to CCP.
If the current CEO had explicitly granted roles prior to becoming CEO, he *might* keep some of them. It's not consistent. My tests on this one are ongoing, as CEO votes take a minimum of 24 hours and I only have one alt corp, but it appears that you will be unable to perform certain privileged actions, such as granting roles or directly accessing corporate assets. There's just one caveat. The corporate titles system we all know and love, because it so greatly simplifies the giving of roles to groups of members, is not an original feature of EVE Online. It was added in as part of a patch that I'm sure made Goonfleet directorate break open many bottles of champagne (or at least Jaeger bombs and wizard hats). When they added titles, someone at QA forgot to perform regression testing. CEOs in this bugged limbo state can't give roles. But they sure can give titles to anyone they feel like. Oh, and they can edit what roles are given by these titles. So while the initial designer of the CEO vote/roles suspension system had the presence of mind to realize that it's important to prevent the CEO from granting roles, the guy who added titles missed that step.
The second version of the bug occurs if the CEO had a title explicitly granted with a checkbox, rather than as a perk of being CEO. You will keep this title, and much like a role, there is nothing anyone can do about that. Being voted out of office or not, you are the CEO, and no one can touch your roles or titles. However, we once again run into inconsistent/buggy design. The CEO will still have these titles, but he WILL NOT have the roles/privileges granted by these titles. For example, let's say the CEO had the "Dread Cache" title which allows access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station (this is a work of fiction, any relation to a real role in the real game is coincidental, please don't :commissar: me). When the CEO vote is initiated, the CEO still has the Dread Cache title. But he does not have access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station. This is just common sense: it's not much of a lockout if you have to reorganize your entire corporate titles system just to make it work.
Ah, but there's a catch. Roles, as you may know, come in "Types." The "General" roles Types includes named roles: Accountant, Auditor, Communications Officer, etc. The other Types are things like wallet access, station services, corporate hangar access, etc. Hold on to your butts, because this is where it really shows how broken the system is.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 11 out of the 12 roles under Type General, he has no access to anything that any other corporation member would have if he had those roles. He can't view the corp wallet, he can't view the roles audit log, etc. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If any other member in the corporation has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, he has exactly the access proffered by those 12 roles, and nothing else. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, AND the CEO forces a hard client restart (session change is insufficient, you need to close the game and log back in), the CEO has all the powers of those 12 roles. And he has unrestricted free access to all corp hangars. And wallet divisions. And everything else. Even if the title explicitly has those boxes UNchecked. In fact, he even gets to see the Role Management and Title Management screens again. These are things you can't normally get access to via title; only Directors and CEOs get these tabs. Now, as mentioned above, the system is smart enough on the server side not to let him grant or remove roles. But also as mentioned above, now that he's got access to these screens, he can do whatever he wants with titles. He may as well still be the CEO.
Sad to say, but that's the short-form description of the bugs.
tl;dr
I had a chance to take everything in the screenshots above (approximate value 150 billion ISK), but because the corporate roles system is the buggiest software I've ever used in my life, I only got about 50 billion worth of capital BPOs and t3 BPCs. My petition demands satisfaction.
I'd like to start this tale with a lesson for all would-be CEOs out there. Being CEO of a corporation may make you feel like king of the hill. It may make you feel like the Almighty himself. It may even make you feel like you are absolved from responsibility for your actions. Let me make one thing clear: you would be wise to believe none of the above.
[ 2013.03.28 05:56:13 ] Nicole Duval > I got lonely
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:38 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've been failing miserably at finding time to log in
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:42 ] Ennui DeBlase > so much homework this term
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:43 ] Ennui DeBlase > and hard exams
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:50 ] Nicole Duval > understandable
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:53 ] Nicole Duval > I'm the same way
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:01 ] Nicole Duval > I only log in for indy carebear shit mostly
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:34 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've made a few WH ops
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:39 ] Ennui DeBlase > just blasted through a couple sites now actually
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:41 ] Nicole Duval > depending how big our production gets in the next few months we may take over your tower if it's not getting much use
That last line right there? Never, ever say that to someone with Director roles. Definitely don't say it to someone with Director roles when you haven't secured your corporate shares. And above all else, definitely don't say it when your corporate assets look something like this:
(Not pictured: Over 500 blueprint runs of assorted t3 hulls, and several thousand blueprint runs of assorted t3 subsystems)
When I joined Project-Mayhem [50AP] over a year ago, it was never my intention to scam these people. Producing t3s in highsec with a corp I had very little responsibility to was really great income, and while the CEO could be a bit aloof, he didn't meddle with the business of the other corp members. As he invested more and more ISK into his own production efforts, he became progressively more interested in taking production facilities from other corp members whenever he could. Keep in mind, [50AP] was essentially an alt corp for rich members of Aether Ventures [AEVNT], executor corporation for the wormhole alliance Surely You're Joking <HAHA>. We all bought our own towers and structures, and paid for our own fuel. The corporation basically only existed to provide the ability to anchor towers in highsec.
Once I decided I'd had enough of Nicole's antics, I started forming a plot to take as much as I could from the corp and ride off into the sunset. The first iteration of the plan was to log in when those 99 t3 hulls were due, grab as many as I could, and have a roles alt in place in the lowsec station to grab all the capital BPOs as well. This was an okay plan, but very risky, as Nicole spends a lot of time logged in, especially when jobs are due for pickup. It would be very easy to spook him. And if I wanted the moons, I'd have to have at least a full half hour uninterrupted to unanchor the POSes and somehow have an extra corp (with standings) ready to place new towers. So I looked into alternatives.
When a corporation is created in EVE, 1000 corporate shares are automatically created and put into the custody of the corporation. At any time, for any reason or for no reason, any Director or CEO can give any number of these shares to anyone in the game, including himself.http://wiki.eveonlin.../en/wiki/Sharesprovides a warning in a pleasant green box advising would-be CEOs that they should not allow this to happen. Nicole Duval never read the text in that box.
Let's face it, I'm a Goon. I don't know how roles work. I don't even think I have Bee roles, and I don't even know if Bee roles are still a thing. But I do have an alt corp, so I set myself to testing. What happens when I initiate a CEO vote? Is there anything I can't grab as a Director? Is there any way anyone can interrupt the process?
I have, if enough people are interested, a lot of screenshots of how this all works. When you're the CEO and a vote to usurp you is called, you get a no-nonsense corporate Notification informing you that your roles as CEO have been suspended for the voting period, and you'll just have to wait it out. In fact, the roles-reduction is so harsh that you can't even see the corporate Politics tab and observe your own vote. You no longer have even read-only access to the Role Management or Title Management pages. Your context menu option "Edit member" becomes the "View member details" that we lesser citizens are all familiar with. You are instantly and irrevocably neutered.
Until the bugs kick in.
On the night of the heist, I waited ever so patiently for the CEO to log off. He's used to me having characters online now and then for fueling my tower, changing skills, setting orders, and starting jobs, so there was nothing for him to suspect. But he sure did take a long time to log out. It takes awhile to do the 15+ jump freighter runs necessary to carry the minerals to build an additional 7 capital hulls from Jita to his lowsec manufacturing station. Thank you for your ~15 billion ISK donation on your final night as CEO, Nicole.
When the time was right, I issued the go order to my partner in crime. We logged into EVE, removed every role and grantable role from every corp member but our own. Removed every title from every corp member but our own. Removed every role and grantable role from every title, except for a brand new one that we set up for our helper characters. This was a title that we already confirmed no other corp members had (except the CEO, who automatically receives all roles and titles as a benefit of being CEO, but more on that later). We then grabbed the 1000 corporate shares and immediately ran our Director character for CEO. We took everything that wasn't currently part of a build job, and left those to tick down, as my testing had revealed that with the CEO vote/roles suspension in place, we had the only three characters in corp who could cancel or deliver those jobs. I stuck around til downtime, partially for the prospect of tears but mostly because I had just pulled off the perfect heist (or so I thought), and was too wired to sleep. No one logged on all night.
The next morning, I am awoken by skype spam from my partner. Nicole is online and somehow has roles! He's taking things! He's cancelled the 7 capital hull and 10 capital component jobs, and started pulling BPCs from one of the POS hangars. The corporate Audit Log shows that he's assigned roles to various alts! How is this happening? The tests said everything was fine!
I made the mistake of believing that the most arcane, neglected, poorly implemented, and hacked-together system in all of EVE, the corporate roles system, actually worked consistently and without bugs. Especially when using a feature like CEO voting, which probably occurs less than a half a dozen times a year across all of New Eden. There are, as my frantic testing over the past 52 hours has revealed, at least two major cases in which a CEO can retain some control over his corporation. This is already a long post, so I'll only go into the super elaborate details as a follow-up if people are really interested. Otherwise, they'll be in my bug reports to CCP.
If the current CEO had explicitly granted roles prior to becoming CEO, he *might* keep some of them. It's not consistent. My tests on this one are ongoing, as CEO votes take a minimum of 24 hours and I only have one alt corp, but it appears that you will be unable to perform certain privileged actions, such as granting roles or directly accessing corporate assets. There's just one caveat. The corporate titles system we all know and love, because it so greatly simplifies the giving of roles to groups of members, is not an original feature of EVE Online. It was added in as part of a patch that I'm sure made Goonfleet directorate break open many bottles of champagne (or at least Jaeger bombs and wizard hats). When they added titles, someone at QA forgot to perform regression testing. CEOs in this bugged limbo state can't give roles. But they sure can give titles to anyone they feel like. Oh, and they can edit what roles are given by these titles. So while the initial designer of the CEO vote/roles suspension system had the presence of mind to realize that it's important to prevent the CEO from granting roles, the guy who added titles missed that step.
The second version of the bug occurs if the CEO had a title explicitly granted with a checkbox, rather than as a perk of being CEO. You will keep this title, and much like a role, there is nothing anyone can do about that. Being voted out of office or not, you are the CEO, and no one can touch your roles or titles. However, we once again run into inconsistent/buggy design. The CEO will still have these titles, but he WILL NOT have the roles/privileges granted by these titles. For example, let's say the CEO had the "Dread Cache" title which allows access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station (this is a work of fiction, any relation to a real role in the real game is coincidental, please don't :commissar: me). When the CEO vote is initiated, the CEO still has the Dread Cache title. But he does not have access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station. This is just common sense: it's not much of a lockout if you have to reorganize your entire corporate titles system just to make it work.
Ah, but there's a catch. Roles, as you may know, come in "Types." The "General" roles Types includes named roles: Accountant, Auditor, Communications Officer, etc. The other Types are things like wallet access, station services, corporate hangar access, etc. Hold on to your butts, because this is where it really shows how broken the system is.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 11 out of the 12 roles under Type General, he has no access to anything that any other corporation member would have if he had those roles. He can't view the corp wallet, he can't view the roles audit log, etc. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If any other member in the corporation has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, he has exactly the access proffered by those 12 roles, and nothing else. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, AND the CEO forces a hard client restart (session change is insufficient, you need to close the game and log back in), the CEO has all the powers of those 12 roles. And he has unrestricted free access to all corp hangars. And wallet divisions. And everything else. Even if the title explicitly has those boxes UNchecked. In fact, he even gets to see the Role Management and Title Management screens again. These are things you can't normally get access to via title; only Directors and CEOs get these tabs. Now, as mentioned above, the system is smart enough on the server side not to let him grant or remove roles. But also as mentioned above, now that he's got access to these screens, he can do whatever he wants with titles. He may as well still be the CEO.
Sad to say, but that's the short-form description of the bugs.
tl;dr
I had a chance to take everything in the screenshots above (approximate value 150 billion ISK), but because the corporate roles system is the buggiest software I've ever used in my life, I only got about 50 billion worth of capital BPOs and t3 BPCs. My petition demands satisfaction.
That was really well executedI'll warn you this is a long post. I made it for the scam forums on goonfleet.com and forum.pleaseignore.com, where we're used to lots of words!
I'd like to start this tale with a lesson for all would-be CEOs out there. Being CEO of a corporation may make you feel like king of the hill. It may make you feel like the Almighty himself. It may even make you feel like you are absolved from responsibility for your actions. Let me make one thing clear: you would be wise to believe none of the above.
[ 2013.03.28 05:56:13 ] Nicole Duval > I got lonely
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:38 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've been failing miserably at finding time to log in
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:42 ] Ennui DeBlase > so much homework this term
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:43 ] Ennui DeBlase > and hard exams
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:50 ] Nicole Duval > understandable
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:53 ] Nicole Duval > I'm the same way
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:01 ] Nicole Duval > I only log in for indy carebear shit mostly
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:34 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've made a few WH ops
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:39 ] Ennui DeBlase > just blasted through a couple sites now actually
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:41 ] Nicole Duval > depending how big our production gets in the next few months we may take over your tower if it's not getting much use
That last line right there? Never, ever say that to someone with Director roles. Definitely don't say it to someone with Director roles when you haven't secured your corporate shares. And above all else, definitely don't say it when your corporate assets look something like this:
(Not pictured: Over 500 blueprint runs of assorted t3 hulls, and several thousand blueprint runs of assorted t3 subsystems)
When I joined Project-Mayhem [50AP] over a year ago, it was never my intention to scam these people. Producing t3s in highsec with a corp I had very little responsibility to was really great income, and while the CEO could be a bit aloof, he didn't meddle with the business of the other corp members. As he invested more and more ISK into his own production efforts, he became progressively more interested in taking production facilities from other corp members whenever he could. Keep in mind, [50AP] was essentially an alt corp for rich members of Aether Ventures [AEVNT], executor corporation for the wormhole alliance Surely You're Joking <HAHA>. We all bought our own towers and structures, and paid for our own fuel. The corporation basically only existed to provide the ability to anchor towers in highsec.
Once I decided I'd had enough of Nicole's antics, I started forming a plot to take as much as I could from the corp and ride off into the sunset. The first iteration of the plan was to log in when those 99 t3 hulls were due, grab as many as I could, and have a roles alt in place in the lowsec station to grab all the capital BPOs as well. This was an okay plan, but very risky, as Nicole spends a lot of time logged in, especially when jobs are due for pickup. It would be very easy to spook him. And if I wanted the moons, I'd have to have at least a full half hour uninterrupted to unanchor the POSes and somehow have an extra corp (with standings) ready to place new towers. So I looked into alternatives.
When a corporation is created in EVE, 1000 corporate shares are automatically created and put into the custody of the corporation. At any time, for any reason or for no reason, any Director or CEO can give any number of these shares to anyone in the game, including himself.http://wiki.eveonlin.../en/wiki/Sharesprovides a warning in a pleasant green box advising would-be CEOs that they should not allow this to happen. Nicole Duval never read the text in that box.
Let's face it, I'm a Goon. I don't know how roles work. I don't even think I have Bee roles, and I don't even know if Bee roles are still a thing. But I do have an alt corp, so I set myself to testing. What happens when I initiate a CEO vote? Is there anything I can't grab as a Director? Is there any way anyone can interrupt the process?
I have, if enough people are interested, a lot of screenshots of how this all works. When you're the CEO and a vote to usurp you is called, you get a no-nonsense corporate Notification informing you that your roles as CEO have been suspended for the voting period, and you'll just have to wait it out. In fact, the roles-reduction is so harsh that you can't even see the corporate Politics tab and observe your own vote. You no longer have even read-only access to the Role Management or Title Management pages. Your context menu option "Edit member" becomes the "View member details" that we lesser citizens are all familiar with. You are instantly and irrevocably neutered.
Until the bugs kick in.
On the night of the heist, I waited ever so patiently for the CEO to log off. He's used to me having characters online now and then for fueling my tower, changing skills, setting orders, and starting jobs, so there was nothing for him to suspect. But he sure did take a long time to log out. It takes awhile to do the 15+ jump freighter runs necessary to carry the minerals to build an additional 7 capital hulls from Jita to his lowsec manufacturing station. Thank you for your ~15 billion ISK donation on your final night as CEO, Nicole.
When the time was right, I issued the go order to my partner in crime. We logged into EVE, removed every role and grantable role from every corp member but our own. Removed every title from every corp member but our own. Removed every role and grantable role from every title, except for a brand new one that we set up for our helper characters. This was a title that we already confirmed no other corp members had (except the CEO, who automatically receives all roles and titles as a benefit of being CEO, but more on that later). We then grabbed the 1000 corporate shares and immediately ran our Director character for CEO. We took everything that wasn't currently part of a build job, and left those to tick down, as my testing had revealed that with the CEO vote/roles suspension in place, we had the only three characters in corp who could cancel or deliver those jobs. I stuck around til downtime, partially for the prospect of tears but mostly because I had just pulled off the perfect heist (or so I thought), and was too wired to sleep. No one logged on all night.
The next morning, I am awoken by skype spam from my partner. Nicole is online and somehow has roles! He's taking things! He's cancelled the 7 capital hull and 10 capital component jobs, and started pulling BPCs from one of the POS hangars. The corporate Audit Log shows that he's assigned roles to various alts! How is this happening? The tests said everything was fine!
I made the mistake of believing that the most arcane, neglected, poorly implemented, and hacked-together system in all of EVE, the corporate roles system, actually worked consistently and without bugs. Especially when using a feature like CEO voting, which probably occurs less than a half a dozen times a year across all of New Eden. There are, as my frantic testing over the past 52 hours has revealed, at least two major cases in which a CEO can retain some control over his corporation. This is already a long post, so I'll only go into the super elaborate details as a follow-up if people are really interested. Otherwise, they'll be in my bug reports to CCP.
If the current CEO had explicitly granted roles prior to becoming CEO, he *might* keep some of them. It's not consistent. My tests on this one are ongoing, as CEO votes take a minimum of 24 hours and I only have one alt corp, but it appears that you will be unable to perform certain privileged actions, such as granting roles or directly accessing corporate assets. There's just one caveat. The corporate titles system we all know and love, because it so greatly simplifies the giving of roles to groups of members, is not an original feature of EVE Online. It was added in as part of a patch that I'm sure made Goonfleet directorate break open many bottles of champagne (or at least Jaeger bombs and wizard hats). When they added titles, someone at QA forgot to perform regression testing. CEOs in this bugged limbo state can't give roles. But they sure can give titles to anyone they feel like. Oh, and they can edit what roles are given by these titles. So while the initial designer of the CEO vote/roles suspension system had the presence of mind to realize that it's important to prevent the CEO from granting roles, the guy who added titles missed that step.
The second version of the bug occurs if the CEO had a title explicitly granted with a checkbox, rather than as a perk of being CEO. You will keep this title, and much like a role, there is nothing anyone can do about that. Being voted out of office or not, you are the CEO, and no one can touch your roles or titles. However, we once again run into inconsistent/buggy design. The CEO will still have these titles, but he WILL NOT have the roles/privileges granted by these titles. For example, let's say the CEO had the "Dread Cache" title which allows access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station (this is a work of fiction, any relation to a real role in the real game is coincidental, please don't :commissar: me). When the CEO vote is initiated, the CEO still has the Dread Cache title. But he does not have access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station. This is just common sense: it's not much of a lockout if you have to reorganize your entire corporate titles system just to make it work.
Ah, but there's a catch. Roles, as you may know, come in "Types." The "General" roles Types includes named roles: Accountant, Auditor, Communications Officer, etc. The other Types are things like wallet access, station services, corporate hangar access, etc. Hold on to your butts, because this is where it really shows how broken the system is.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 11 out of the 12 roles under Type General, he has no access to anything that any other corporation member would have if he had those roles. He can't view the corp wallet, he can't view the roles audit log, etc. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If any other member in the corporation has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, he has exactly the access proffered by those 12 roles, and nothing else. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, AND the CEO forces a hard client restart (session change is insufficient, you need to close the game and log back in), the CEO has all the powers of those 12 roles. And he has unrestricted free access to all corp hangars. And wallet divisions. And everything else. Even if the title explicitly has those boxes UNchecked. In fact, he even gets to see the Role Management and Title Management screens again. These are things you can't normally get access to via title; only Directors and CEOs get these tabs. Now, as mentioned above, the system is smart enough on the server side not to let him grant or remove roles. But also as mentioned above, now that he's got access to these screens, he can do whatever he wants with titles. He may as well still be the CEO.
Sad to say, but that's the short-form description of the bugs.
tl;dr
I had a chance to take everything in the screenshots above (approximate value 150 billion ISK), but because the corporate roles system is the buggiest software I've ever used in my life, I only got about 50 billion worth of capital BPOs and t3 BPCs. My petition demands satisfaction.
You live in WH space, so maybe you know Pell Helix, CEO of AEVNT. If you do, you know he cries like none other.That was really well executedI hope that they end up correcting that for you. He's gonna cry if they do though. If I were him, I'd be making it as complicated for them to fix it as possible by throwing money across the galaxy.
At one point he was trying to move an Orca full of Sleeper loot, and got nabbed by some lowsec pirates. They offered a ransom, which he paid.
Can you believe they shot him after he paid the ransom? I mean really, pirates without e-honour?! He sure couldn't believe it. He threw an outright tirade about how hideously unjust it was and how he can't believe that sort of thing is allowed. He then declared war on a lowsec pirate corp and ordered his wormhole alliance to camp them into a station, which of course didn't work because it's lowsec. I also have old alliance mails wherein he uses 40-point red font in all caps to warn us not to undock/die because he wants a green killboard for the month.
Oh, and he threatened the owner of Ennui irl over this. Because you know, the best way to deal with an internet spaceship scam is to e-thug it up.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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Cool. Spot me a plex so I can train some racial ship skills before the patch.I'll warn you this is a long post. I made it for the scam forums on goonfleet.com and forum.pleaseignore.com, where we're used to lots of words!
I'd like to start this tale with a lesson for all would-be CEOs out there. Being CEO of a corporation may make you feel like king of the hill. It may make you feel like the Almighty himself. It may even make you feel like you are absolved from responsibility for your actions. Let me make one thing clear: you would be wise to believe none of the above.
[ 2013.03.28 05:56:13 ] Nicole Duval > I got lonely
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:38 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've been failing miserably at finding time to log in
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:42 ] Ennui DeBlase > so much homework this term
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:43 ] Ennui DeBlase > and hard exams
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:50 ] Nicole Duval > understandable
?[ 2013.03.28 05:56:53 ] Nicole Duval > I'm the same way
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:01 ] Nicole Duval > I only log in for indy carebear shit mostly
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:34 ] Ennui DeBlase > I've made a few WH ops
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:39 ] Ennui DeBlase > just blasted through a couple sites now actually
?[ 2013.03.28 05:57:41 ] Nicole Duval > depending how big our production gets in the next few months we may take over your tower if it's not getting much use
That last line right there? Never, ever say that to someone with Director roles. Definitely don't say it to someone with Director roles when you haven't secured your corporate shares. And above all else, definitely don't say it when your corporate assets look something like this:
(Not pictured: Over 500 blueprint runs of assorted t3 hulls, and several thousand blueprint runs of assorted t3 subsystems)
When I joined Project-Mayhem [50AP] over a year ago, it was never my intention to scam these people. Producing t3s in highsec with a corp I had very little responsibility to was really great income, and while the CEO could be a bit aloof, he didn't meddle with the business of the other corp members. As he invested more and more ISK into his own production efforts, he became progressively more interested in taking production facilities from other corp members whenever he could. Keep in mind, [50AP] was essentially an alt corp for rich members of Aether Ventures [AEVNT], executor corporation for the wormhole alliance Surely You're Joking <HAHA>. We all bought our own towers and structures, and paid for our own fuel. The corporation basically only existed to provide the ability to anchor towers in highsec.
Once I decided I'd had enough of Nicole's antics, I started forming a plot to take as much as I could from the corp and ride off into the sunset. The first iteration of the plan was to log in when those 99 t3 hulls were due, grab as many as I could, and have a roles alt in place in the lowsec station to grab all the capital BPOs as well. This was an okay plan, but very risky, as Nicole spends a lot of time logged in, especially when jobs are due for pickup. It would be very easy to spook him. And if I wanted the moons, I'd have to have at least a full half hour uninterrupted to unanchor the POSes and somehow have an extra corp (with standings) ready to place new towers. So I looked into alternatives.
When a corporation is created in EVE, 1000 corporate shares are automatically created and put into the custody of the corporation. At any time, for any reason or for no reason, any Director or CEO can give any number of these shares to anyone in the game, including himself.http://wiki.eveonlin.../en/wiki/Sharesprovides a warning in a pleasant green box advising would-be CEOs that they should not allow this to happen. Nicole Duval never read the text in that box.
Let's face it, I'm a Goon. I don't know how roles work. I don't even think I have Bee roles, and I don't even know if Bee roles are still a thing. But I do have an alt corp, so I set myself to testing. What happens when I initiate a CEO vote? Is there anything I can't grab as a Director? Is there any way anyone can interrupt the process?
I have, if enough people are interested, a lot of screenshots of how this all works. When you're the CEO and a vote to usurp you is called, you get a no-nonsense corporate Notification informing you that your roles as CEO have been suspended for the voting period, and you'll just have to wait it out. In fact, the roles-reduction is so harsh that you can't even see the corporate Politics tab and observe your own vote. You no longer have even read-only access to the Role Management or Title Management pages. Your context menu option "Edit member" becomes the "View member details" that we lesser citizens are all familiar with. You are instantly and irrevocably neutered.
Until the bugs kick in.
On the night of the heist, I waited ever so patiently for the CEO to log off. He's used to me having characters online now and then for fueling my tower, changing skills, setting orders, and starting jobs, so there was nothing for him to suspect. But he sure did take a long time to log out. It takes awhile to do the 15+ jump freighter runs necessary to carry the minerals to build an additional 7 capital hulls from Jita to his lowsec manufacturing station. Thank you for your ~15 billion ISK donation on your final night as CEO, Nicole.
When the time was right, I issued the go order to my partner in crime. We logged into EVE, removed every role and grantable role from every corp member but our own. Removed every title from every corp member but our own. Removed every role and grantable role from every title, except for a brand new one that we set up for our helper characters. This was a title that we already confirmed no other corp members had (except the CEO, who automatically receives all roles and titles as a benefit of being CEO, but more on that later). We then grabbed the 1000 corporate shares and immediately ran our Director character for CEO. We took everything that wasn't currently part of a build job, and left those to tick down, as my testing had revealed that with the CEO vote/roles suspension in place, we had the only three characters in corp who could cancel or deliver those jobs. I stuck around til downtime, partially for the prospect of tears but mostly because I had just pulled off the perfect heist (or so I thought), and was too wired to sleep. No one logged on all night.
The next morning, I am awoken by skype spam from my partner. Nicole is online and somehow has roles! He's taking things! He's cancelled the 7 capital hull and 10 capital component jobs, and started pulling BPCs from one of the POS hangars. The corporate Audit Log shows that he's assigned roles to various alts! How is this happening? The tests said everything was fine!
I made the mistake of believing that the most arcane, neglected, poorly implemented, and hacked-together system in all of EVE, the corporate roles system, actually worked consistently and without bugs. Especially when using a feature like CEO voting, which probably occurs less than a half a dozen times a year across all of New Eden. There are, as my frantic testing over the past 52 hours has revealed, at least two major cases in which a CEO can retain some control over his corporation. This is already a long post, so I'll only go into the super elaborate details as a follow-up if people are really interested. Otherwise, they'll be in my bug reports to CCP.
If the current CEO had explicitly granted roles prior to becoming CEO, he *might* keep some of them. It's not consistent. My tests on this one are ongoing, as CEO votes take a minimum of 24 hours and I only have one alt corp, but it appears that you will be unable to perform certain privileged actions, such as granting roles or directly accessing corporate assets. There's just one caveat. The corporate titles system we all know and love, because it so greatly simplifies the giving of roles to groups of members, is not an original feature of EVE Online. It was added in as part of a patch that I'm sure made Goonfleet directorate break open many bottles of champagne (or at least Jaeger bombs and wizard hats). When they added titles, someone at QA forgot to perform regression testing. CEOs in this bugged limbo state can't give roles. But they sure can give titles to anyone they feel like. Oh, and they can edit what roles are given by these titles. So while the initial designer of the CEO vote/roles suspension system had the presence of mind to realize that it's important to prevent the CEO from granting roles, the guy who added titles missed that step.
The second version of the bug occurs if the CEO had a title explicitly granted with a checkbox, rather than as a perk of being CEO. You will keep this title, and much like a role, there is nothing anyone can do about that. Being voted out of office or not, you are the CEO, and no one can touch your roles or titles. However, we once again run into inconsistent/buggy design. The CEO will still have these titles, but he WILL NOT have the roles/privileges granted by these titles. For example, let's say the CEO had the "Dread Cache" title which allows access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station (this is a work of fiction, any relation to a real role in the real game is coincidental, please don't :commissar: me). When the CEO vote is initiated, the CEO still has the Dread Cache title. But he does not have access to the corporate hangar, tab 1, at VFK station. This is just common sense: it's not much of a lockout if you have to reorganize your entire corporate titles system just to make it work.
Ah, but there's a catch. Roles, as you may know, come in "Types." The "General" roles Types includes named roles: Accountant, Auditor, Communications Officer, etc. The other Types are things like wallet access, station services, corporate hangar access, etc. Hold on to your butts, because this is where it really shows how broken the system is.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 11 out of the 12 roles under Type General, he has no access to anything that any other corporation member would have if he had those roles. He can't view the corp wallet, he can't view the roles audit log, etc. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If any other member in the corporation has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, he has exactly the access proffered by those 12 roles, and nothing else. This is normal behavior. This makes sense.
If the CEO being voted out has a title with 12 out of the 12 General roles, AND the CEO forces a hard client restart (session change is insufficient, you need to close the game and log back in), the CEO has all the powers of those 12 roles. And he has unrestricted free access to all corp hangars. And wallet divisions. And everything else. Even if the title explicitly has those boxes UNchecked. In fact, he even gets to see the Role Management and Title Management screens again. These are things you can't normally get access to via title; only Directors and CEOs get these tabs. Now, as mentioned above, the system is smart enough on the server side not to let him grant or remove roles. But also as mentioned above, now that he's got access to these screens, he can do whatever he wants with titles. He may as well still be the CEO.
Sad to say, but that's the short-form description of the bugs.
tl;dr
I had a chance to take everything in the screenshots above (approximate value 150 billion ISK), but because the corporate roles system is the buggiest software I've ever used in my life, I only got about 50 billion worth of capital BPOs and t3 BPCs. My petition demands satisfaction.
I'm not familiar, but someday, maybe I'll kill him~ I'll be sure and send your regards.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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It's nothing personal. People who put that many words bragging about free money should expect that others will expect you to toss them some.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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Well, that would be 2,048, but who's counting.
Wait, it's us. We're counting.
I just got another Senior GM reply. Doesn't look too good for me.