Carebears. In EVE Online Carebears occupy a special place within the meta-game. There morals of trust in your fellow players, abstaining from PVP combat, honestly, compassion and doing the right thing are shining lights of decency in a game where theft, scamming, destruction and conspiracy are rampant. To some, they are the way people should play EVE. To others they are heretics and shall be hunted as such.
However the supply on Carebears is not infinite. They do have a limit, a tolerance for being prey that can blowout, often causing even more content for those who attack them. But it can also blow back. Soon they stop coming through your territory, mining in your space or exploring your anoms. To some this may seem a good thing, but after awhile it turns out not to be so. If they are not doing the above things, they are not going through your gate camps, not buying your super cheap stuff. The Orca kills, the loot pinatas, the mining barges, they all begin to dry up or take much longer than once before meaning less content for you and them still doing what they want. Not a good result. This is where the conservation comes in.
But first, what is “conservation”. Conservation, in its simplest form (with wildlife) it is the act of preserving, guarding or protecting the ethic biodiversity of species. There other forms on Conservation, Like conserving near-extinct languages, cultures etc. But in EVE, and with Carebears we will take this definition, and make it fit EVE like it should.
Using the Conservation Status bar you see on Wikipedia we will place Carebears on LC (Least Concern) and place Nullbears a bit higher to NT (near-threatened) since they are a bit harder to find.
So, we can see using the above diagram that LC and NT are the two lowest ratings, meaning the species are plentiful and in no real danger of going extinct. So, why should we start conserving Carebears? Well although the OVERALL population of Care and nullbears are doing OK, there local populations in some areas are not.
Populations in some areas are so over hunted that they have hit CR on our scale, meaning they are critically endangered. This means nothing coming through the gate camps, nothing to hunt in the fields and no one apart from you and your friends buying your stuff. Slowly, over time the PVPers hunting the local populations will start to leave for greener pastures causing a depopulation in the predators, without the PVPers buying the local market begins to crash and the people supply the area will also leave causing the area to become depopulated. This is the worst possible case if you are the guy running an alliance or coalition.
Your members are leaving, content is poor and the local markets are so under stocked your members have to fly 30 jumps to get anything. This is just bad for business, bad for the local economy and bad for having fun. If this is starting to sound familiar, too familiar then you’re in need of launching your own carebear conservation program. Because without an adequate supply of carebears our content goes south and we end up depopulating hole regions because of it.
So the plan, what does it involve? well lets take a look;
One plan, and the simplest is to just leave. Hunt the area down to nothing and move on, come back once you hunted another area and repeat. This however can cause longer term issues, where the local carebears simply dry up permanently but there is always that risk no matter what.
Gate camping is the staple of Low-sec life. All of us have ran into one at one point or another a well ran low sec gate camp can catch 90% of the traffic that comes through, in Null and W-space that figure hits as high as 99% with the help of bubbles. Now since i’m assuming you’re running a well ran gate camp, you are probably camping a choke point, or high traffic area or the main route into your area. Here is a quick way to increase traffic into your area. Stop killing them all before they get there. If you camp everyday, camp every other day. Reduce your killing of traffic as to make the carebears think its safe, thus bringing more things through, and over time they will get greedy and bring something shiny the day you DO camp. Like soda or fatty foods take everything in moderation. Overkilling gate camps can lead to this:
Meaning even less traffic if people are scared easily. (Image came out worser then expected)
I’m not meaning bluing them and leaving them alone for weeks. I’m meaning let them come in, run a few sites, mine a few loads, let them get a false sense of security. With that false sense they may start bringing in bigger, shinier ships or more friends. If they think they have that the locals will leave them alone then that will end up benefiting you more then them, as you will end up killing something bigger, better or simply more of them. They won’t expect it, making the hunt that bit easier too.
In true EVE fashion, instead of killing the Carebear, exploit him instead. Charge him a rental fee, with gate camp fees and ratting fee stacked on top, then using out of corp alts, or regional allies kill the carebear anyway and then go charge him also. the ideas are endless.
Adding further to Number four. Holding the carebear hostage on gates, rental scams or good old fashion Goon style recruitment scams are some ways you can make money off your local Carebear population. However, overdoing this can lead to similar problems as killing them, soon your earn a reputation about the scamming, reducing the likelihood of receiving payments if the carebear knows through your reputation that you do no honour ransoms and scam potential recruits.
If your area has a high sec border, and you’re killing most of the traffic entering low and they aren’t coming to you, go to them. War-decs, taking local POCOS and suicide ganks can add the extra piece of content and cash flow. However you run the risk of running them out of the high-sec areas near you also making matters worse down the pipe.
These are just some ideas you can use in your own Carebear conservation plans. Number Two and Three will provide reduced content over a longer period vs four and five adding more content to the short term.
Whatever your opinion of Carebears, the fact is they are part of the game. The Hadrosaurs of EVE. The bottom of the foodchain. Without them, the larger species who rely on them for food, mainly the Low-sec pirate and the W-Space boogeyman will find there main source of content drying up and living more and more in the carebear sanctuary that is highsec space, or find ourselves hunting something that we use to find regularly for hours. We don’t want to end up like the Haast Eagle, who went extinct due to their main food source, the Moa (yes the Caldari Cruiser the Moa is named after it) being hunted to extinction, Let’s start our efforts before it becomes too late.
