Contraction

As EVE's sunset period slowly progresses we are starting to see the effects of a lower overall player base.

As you can see, the 2018 max PCU is maintaining parity with 2017 so far for the most part, but these numbers don't reflect overall activity of those pilots. I'm noticing a definitely downward trend of activity in low sec so I went to Zkillboard and scraped the number of kills from Black Rise region, one of the bloodiest battlegrounds between Gallente and Caldari Militias in years past.

As you can see, the spring of 2018 was the worst in the past 3 years for the Black Rise region as GalMil moved to null sec for all intents and purposes.It improved over the summer months (as Gal Mil came back and reasserted dominance over Cal Mil) but has dropped back to the sub 25K kills per month for both September and October.

Plotted differently while showing the percent change compared to the previous year, we see a dramatic shift.

This October represents a -42% drop in number of kills compared to 2017 October. No month in 2018 was higher than 2017. Black Rise is slowly drying up. I'm willing to bet the same can be said of other low sec areas overall.

I believe the active playerbase is contracting and PvPer's will have to roam farther afield from low sec to find content. Maybe Gal Mil and FEDUP had the right idea investing into null sec and I'm the one with my head in the sand wanting low sec to be what I remember.

Seismic Shift

DISCLAIMER: Sadly this post has nothing to do with Seismic Stan.

If you live and fight and die in low sec, you might want to brace yourself for the coming seismic shift in the meta scheduled for December 8th. There are not one, not two, but THREE whole new classes of four ships each coming that will completely disrupt the current meta and throw all known doctrines into disarray for at least a couple months.

First off we have the new navy E-war frigates:

Navy Maulus

With instability spreading across the cluster, the Empire navies are hard at work developing new ships to reward and equip their dedicated loyalist Capsuleers. Four new Navy Disruption Frigates are rolling off the assembly lines, wielding powerful electronic warfare systems alongside strong applied damage. These ships are an excellent match for small gang and solo pvpers.

Despite already having tech I and II e-war frigates, these ships promise to up the ante in the novice plexes where the tech II version cannot dwell, with short range but powerful combat capabilities. These ships are not earth shattering, but only the start of the shift.

Up next we have tech II logsitics frigates:

New Tech Two versions of the remote-repairing Support Frigates are being released, opening up new progression paths for your friendly neighborhood Logibros. These ships are especially well suited for supporting fleets of fast-moving Frigates and Destroyers without falling behind the pack.

This is going to be interesting as there is definite hole between the light tech I logi frigs and the tech I cruisers, something tougher than the former and faster than the latter. I can see destroyer fleets especially benefiting from these little medics.

Finally we have the mind-blowing Tech II Command Destroyers:

Four new Tech II Destroyers that favor defense and speed and can fit the powerful and versatile area-of-affect Micro Jump Field Generators, which microjump you and any ships nearby far from your current location.

These things are going to upset all corners of null, low, and wormhole space but low sec especially will see extensive use of these things. We can`t even comprehend all the uses yet! Chaining multiple command dessie jumps in a row to fling a fleet multiple hundred km jumps away, pulling enemy fleets apart to take on smaller numbers at a time, getting the jump on kiters, surprising station campers, the list goes on and on. Fleets that are precisely composed and constructed and need to have the logi wing exactly X km from the DPS wing are going to need to be watchful that enemy ships don't infiltrate one or two of these and rip those fleets apart. You've got 9 seconds to react, good luck.

Each one of these new classes individually has the potential to shake up the established doctrines and common knowledge, combined they will overturn almost every aspect of low sec combat.

Migrations

Picture I actually took!

Over at Target Caller blog Talvorian Dex had a post called Into The Great Wide Open in which he discusses his dissatisfaction with null sec under the new sov mechanics and how he has decided to move elsewhere in EVE:

For my part, I’m not interested in sov null right now, at least as a defender. I want to search for those enjoyable fights, fight outnumbered, and use the sp Talvorian has, similar to how we did when RP was based in lowsec. As I considered the kind of content I enjoyed and looked at the time zone activity of corporations who engaged in it, one strong option came to the top.

Adversity. is a slightly smaller corporation with a good pedigree and the kind of activity that really appeals to me. Their doctrines are expensive, but perform admirably. I haven't even moved all my assets out yet (Archon 2.0 on the way...), but I've already gone on a few fleets with them. I've gotten to fly my dreads and T3 cruisers. So far, everyone I've spoken to has been friendly, welcoming, and very capable. I'm always impressed and energized by how friendly dirty pirates and criminals are to members of their community. We have, I believe, one blue. It’s the wild west, baby, and I should have plenty of opportunity to shoot all the things.

And while null may have had the wind knocked out of its lungs, lowsec is getting more crowded by the day.

A couple days later Stabs at Stabbed Up blog posted about his first day in Faction Warfare with Brave:

All told I've spent about 8 hours of the last 24 doing FW and had really good fun. Of the 10 Merlins I brought down 8 are dead but I've got 7 kills and am the corp's top killer!

A couple weeks ago I posted about seeing famous faces in my roams lately, like Elo Knight of former Black Legion fame.

Low sec, especially in the Caldari-Gallente war zone and neighbouring systems, is getting very busy lately. There definitely seems to be a migration from null sec to low sec this fall and I wondered exactly why that is. There seems to be a general flow of unhappiness from current null sec overlords about Fozzie Sov but as Rixx Javix on the most recent A Podcast Apart episode said, the complaints actually describe the system working as intended for the most part.

I have a theory.

As much as the null sec coalitions were unhappy with Dominion Sov, they largely adapted their social structures and operations around it. The large entities developed No Attacking Sov treaties and simply roamed and farmed each other for the "good fights". The static stagnation of null sec was boring in one sense, but offered a rich environment to make ISK relatively risk free and still have fights with each other that were all about the killmails and less the strategic objectives.

Fozzie Sov combined with Phoebe jump changes modified the environment purposely to break up the stagnation, and as much as the null sec overlords have adapted to the new rules the line members have found themselves thrown out of their comfort zone. AS much as everyone hated Super Capital Enforced Sov and wanted Occupancy Based Sov, it required a lot less effort on the part of the alliance members to maintain it the former compared to the latter. Suddenly its not just make ISK and have good fights, its work to defend your space and keep indexes up.

So these disgruntled pilots look around and what do they see? Relatively safe space and plenty of good fights going on in low sec all the time. As and former allies and enemies make their home in low sec, more pilots are enticed to leave null sec and give it a try.

But its not all bad news for null sec, oh no! Although the existing power structures have some crumbling around the edges there are still a lot of pilots invested in staying in null and maintaining their empires. And, a lot of small groups previously locked out of the null sec game are squeezing in using the new mechanics to dip their toes in null and have some fun. Additionally, a portion of the newcomers to low sec will eventually get the urge to try their hand at null sec domination once more and will migrate back. But for now, the cluster is turned on its head.

Where will you be?

Fun Per Hour

Brave Newbies is leaving null sec for a vacation in low sec to reorganize and gather themselves after a rough season. The topic is not about Brave per se, but more about fun in the various types of space.

First off, I'm defining fun purely from a combat PvP perspective as that is the most common type of fun people are looking for in EVE.

I've written about Brave and how null sec is fun until its not. If you are looking for raw fun per hour for your organization, null sec is not it. Null sec is about Empire Building and clash of cultures wars, and as such can have vast amounts of quiet time and build up followed by frantic explosive battles. Overall, fun per hour is low but the highs are higher and bigger and the satisfaction derived from control of systems / structures / empires is larger and deeper.

Wormhole space also runs low on the fun per hour ratio. Its more about stealthy-stealthy-ninja-surprise! fun which has many fans and definitely makes wormholes interesting for many people. But the hardships of logistics, living out of POSes, scanning down connections, looking for fights cuts into the sheer amount of fun that can be derived per hour of game time.

High sec is a virtual desert for any PvP outside of arranged wars like Red versus Blue, or groups that like constant suicide ganking. For a large group looking for fun dynamic PvP, high sec will not work out.

And then we come to low sec. I've written before that low sec is the best place for consistent and destructive PvP and I suspect the whole "Fun per Hour" concept that is susposed to be part of Brave's DNA comes from having gestated in low sec in the first place. Quite simply, low sec is the best area of the game to maximize fun per hour, and to highlight that I want to present this excellent article from Crossing Zebras portal called The Battle of Kehjari:

A handful of times each year, Factional Warfare erupts from restless simmer into a protracted bloodbath. Days on end of relentless slaughter leave space littered with wrecks in the thousands. These kinds of multi-day battles are unique to FW and are always an amazing thing to be a part of.
Such was the recent battle for Kehjari, a well known north-western system in the infamous Black Rise region. Unfortunately for me I was on a much needed vacation at the time. Fortunately for all of us, Epikurus (Mjolnir Bloc CEO) and Veratrix (Spaceship Bebop FC) saw fit to join forces and write the amazing report you see below. Get a hot cup of tea and sit comfortably, this tale spans four days of bloodshed. – Niden

I'm not going to quote the whole thing, but let me quote parts of it (emphasis mine):

Critically, experienced HECON and Templis FCs were able to start effective defensive operations and to begin trying to slow the assault down. For four hours, from 1600 to 2000, the CalMil Coalition forces under allied command prevented any further gains. However, as Gallente numbers increased again in EU prime, the contested level started rising again. EU prime saw 3-4 hours of heavy fighting with GalMil being overwhelmingly victorious, and their numerical advantage only increased during the transition to US prime.
[...]
By 0500 eve time on Saturday morning, the situation looked very bleak indeed for the Caldari defenders. The initial Gallente assault had pushed Kehjari up to 75% in its first 24 hours, sweeping aside most resistance. However, GalMil was now moving into a timezone during which the Caldari Militia has recently dominated. Whilst GalMil had complete AU dominance during their sweep of the warzone last year, the return of The Church of Awesome, a highly experienced and dedicated AU corp, in the early months of 2015 had changed the equation dramatically. This allowed the Caldari Militia Coalition to maintain 20-man fleets on the field throughout the period up to and immediately following downtime. Gallente planners took this imbalance into account and hoped additional pilots would stay up late and get on early to try to keep things even in this timezone. The tactic paid off on Saturday morning. Gallente fleets held the contested level steady for most of the AUTZ though CalMil forces were able to pull back 10% in one sustained burst.
[...]
In the face of ferocious fighting, the Gallente managed to make slow but steady gains over the next 10 hours, hanging another 12% on the system by midnight, averaging an advantage of one-and-a-half plexes per hour. Exploiting their generally higher skill point levels, GalMil deployed its Zealot/Guardian fleet to dominate the medium and the large plexes, constraining Caldari efforts to the smaller plex sizes. In response to this, Caldari State Naval Operations [CSNO], the primary EU corp in HECON, redeployed their stocks of Guardians and faction cruisers across the warzone to Kehjari, generously handing them out for free to defending pilots. After some skirmishing, though, the Caldari fleet was defeated in one of the more notable pitched battles of the weekend.
[...]
This fight was symptomatic of a new ‘environmental factor’ in Kehjari. The large numbers of kills started to draw in third parties from across the map. Most notable among these were the enthusiastic local posters of Pandemic Horde [THXFC]. The Horde brought fleets of 30-40 pilots on a regular basis during EU and US timezones throughout the rest of the battle, causing problems for both sides. They generally avoided pitched fights with the Caldari and Gallente fleets, opting to camp the station and plex gates as well as gunning for solo and small gang plexers who were detached from the main militia fleets. On those occasions that they did engage directly, the Horde tended to be comprehensively defeated by the hardened militia pilots, but their ongoing harassment remained a significant irritant throughout the rest of the weekend.
[...]
Affecting the concerns about the supply situation was the fact that the fighting in Kehjari only got more intense as the day wore on, reaching a peak of violence with a gruelling non-stop fight that began at 1834 between two 30-man fleets with large logistics wings rolled on until 1848. After 14 minutes of intense and constant destroyer and frigate PvP, the remaining fleets had become kitchen sinks of whatever the pilots could find nearby and 98 wrecks sat gathered around the button in the plex. The ship losses were 60/40 in favour of the Gallente, but the tide had turned at the end with GalMil out of instantly available reshipsl. When it was clear that the fight was unwinnable, they warped out, conceding the plex to the Caldari.

Read the whole article, sure parts of it can be dry but its an excellent read about an intense battle for a single system in low sec. Sure, these battles don't happen very often but smaller versions of these battles for control of a system here and there are common enough and the entire area is constantly inundated of small to largish groups roaming and looking for fights, militas, pirates, and visitors.

If you are looking to maximize fun per hour, if its part of your corporate DNA, then you should strongly think about whether or not you want to live in null sec.

By the way, if you want a preview of what CCP wants from Fozzie Sov, read that article and imagine it writ large across null sec in multiple battles at any one time. Let's hope it works.

Welcome to my Citadel

On my podcast I already raved about the dev blog introducing Citadels but I'm going to go into again here because I cannot stress enough how much I like it.

I've lived and worked out of Player Owned Stations, aka POSes, before in null sec, low sec, and wormhole space over the 8.5 years I've been playing this game.

I still remember that feeling of awe the first time I saw one back in Pelille in my misspent youth. Someone was showing me how to scout out moons and we warped in to check it out. The large glowing sphere, the mysterious icons with names I saw nowhere else like Moon Harvesting Array, Silo, Corporate Hanger Array, etc. Some time later my group of friends decided to set up our own POS and I began to learn the Byzantium art to anchoring and setting up a "stick" of our own. And began to learn the horror of fueling calculations (be thankful new players for that evil has been vanquished at least).

Later on I would join a null sec alliance and our corporation would live in a stationless constellation and we, all 20 or so of us, would live out of one or two POSes. In order to have some private space for modules and loot, we each had anchored a secured cargo container at least 150 km from the POS itself so you could do short warps back and forth instead of having to slowboat around the POS itself. God, I hated that.

And then having to unanchor that thing? And all the structures? Evil.

I once had a high sec research POS in my solo indy corp but got war decced and it was destroyed in a long weekend I was away with family. That's when I decided that solo POS was not for me.

All this is to say, POSes are evil. They are overly complex, use mechanics that are not really shared anywhere else, and are generally a pain to setup, manage, and take down. Pretty, but pain in the ass.

And up until recently, the only thing outside of null sec Outposts that players could erect for themselves to live in, and Outposts require a magnitude larger amount of resources to make and then you could lose it in the next sov war.

Citadels hold great promise to fix this frustration. By using well understood and common mechanics (i.e. fitting modules like one fits a ship) and introducing station like docking and asset management, we enter a new age where players can come toegether to erect, live out of, and defend their own home without having to be part of a huge alliance or deal with the terribleness of the current POS mechanics.

I'm very excited.

Of course, there is a fine line to be traversed here in order to make feasible. In low sec, a common conflict driver is control of the Player Owned Custom Offices in the areas in which entities live. They are in a perfect balance of risk versus reward versus effort triangle where it takes enough effort to reinforce and destroy them that people are not doing it willy nilly but not so much effort that only the big entities can even consider doing so. Citadels, being potentially a lot more valuable than a POCO, will attract a lot of attention of people willing to expend more effort to reap the possible rewards of good kills and tears, so need to be sufficiently hard enough to justify the effort while not being so hard as to be impossible to reinforce and destroy.

So I eagerly await to see the final product for Citadels and how they change the landscape of low sec and beyond because I think they have tremendous potential for interaction and excitement.

Warp Core Stabs, Faction Warfare, Plexing, and Rewards

Rixx Javix responded to my defense of Faction War Farmers in his post titled "Two Algos Walk into a Bar" last week in which he writes this:

I mention this story for a couple of reasons, but primarily as a response to Kirith's post over on Ninveah. He makes the argument, which so many people have, that there is nothing wrong with people being allowed to play the game anyway they want. Which I happen to agree with. But he also lumps in the use of stabs in a combat zone into the argument. And I would like to make an intelligent counter point to that insane circle of logic. You don't need a crutch.

I didn't respond right away because I wanted to think on it hard and respond solidly. No one quite goes to war for something they believe in like Rixx Javix; he will fuck up the unprepared. (That is meant as a compliment, BTW.)

On Friday I did comment on his post:

I think you are not seeing the situation from the other side very well. Not all farmers want to be on constant vigilance when doing something as boring as plexing can be, similar to afk mining in high sec or ratting in null sec. I don't see stabs as a crutch for bad players but as a tool for a player to casually farm the plexes while doing other things with their attention.

But I do want to dig into this issue deeper and discuss some philosophical issues with Faction War in particular and grinding for ISK in general in the game.

* * * * *

One of the big  issues with EVE is that the PvE experience is vastly different than the PvP experience. You can run missions until you are blue in the face with 100 million skill points, it does not prepare you for your first instance of combat against another player. The NPCs, aka rats, are dumb, weak, foolish opponents that can be dispatched with ease once their scripted responses are figured out and cataloged. This has changed a bit with Sleeper AI, incursions, and the new burner missions but even there an NPC is never going to fit outside the current meta to catch you unawares or set a bait trap and crush you when you engage.

So this creates two divergent gameplays, one where interaction is with scripted NPCs and the goal is to earn (ultimately) ISK for the player's purposes, and another where the interaction is with other players and the goal is to beat them (roughly boiled down).

The friction we are talking about today comes from the fact that faction warfare plexing mechanics straddle both sides of that gameplay coin. Rixx and I, being PvPers, care not a whit about the ship fittings of mission runners, high sec incursion runners, wormhole sleeper farmers, or null sec ratters. Of course, they don't fit warp core stabs because they actually need to fight their NPCs, but I'm willing to bet if they did that it would not be a big deal because they live in areas were getting attacked while doing PvE gameplay is the exception whereas the dangerous waters of low sec doing PvE is pretty much impossible, hence why low sec incursions, mining, and missions are unheard of.

Faction warfare has no high sec option, nor does it have the vast stretches of null sec or wormhole space to stretch out in. So the plexing side of it is unusual PvE in that respect. The other unusual aspect is that defensive plexing requires no guns as the rats in the plex are friendly, allowing the situation where a pilot can fly a non-tanked warp core stabbed frigate and still do PvE content.

Is this acceptable?

My position has been stated as "yes" due to the fact that I don't see an issue with players doing this type of PvE in this manner any more than I have issues with almost AFK mining, mission running, or null sec ratting. I think the reward is congruent with the effort of this boring gameplay (boring unless someone attacks you I suppose).

Rixx's position (and correct me if I get it wrong) is that the implication of being in faction warfare is that you are ready for warfare at any time. After all, its part and parcel of being a low sec denizen that non-consensual combat with other players is one grid away at all times. Being in low sec in any capacity and being relatively safe and able to AFK do anything in space goes against the nature of the region and should be actively discouraged. In other words, warp core stabs on an ostensibly combat ship is in-congruent with low sec in general and faction warfare in particular.

In my opinion, it feels like I'm looking at the PvE aspect of the defensive plexing and Rixx is looking at the PvP side of it, and to be fair, I can see what he is arguing for and against and at first pass I would have agreed with him.

Here's the aspect that gives me pause.

Rixx and I have a very privileged position in the game in that neither of us is hurting for ISK to fund our PvP habit due to the fact that we are long time players and have built up reserves of assets and Rixx I'm sure can leverage his considerable skills for ISK-paying jobs much like I have done with my writing skills over the years. I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about grinding out a few dozen plexes to fund the next set of ships we need for our PvP adventures.

Others are not so fortunate and, outside of buying a time code from EveTimeCode.com or some other less-awesome retailer, they have to face the prospect of the mind numbing orbit of so many buttons with the constant threat of maybe being attacked. The best way to do plexing is with friends to chat with to whittle away the time but if you are alone, the internet beckons to distract you, so I can see the desire to only pay half attention and let warp core stabs save you when you inevitably get attacked.

What I'm getting at it is that plexing is SOOOO boring. But it is ultimately the only easy beginner friendly way to make money part of faction warfare. (I've heard that better money is in fact warfare missions but that requires a lot more attention and effort I believe.) So if you want Faction Warfare to be self contained in that pilots can live and make a living in the system without having to have outside sources of funds, you either need to have reward sufficient enough that the effort is worth it, or effort low enough so that the meager reward can be harvested relatively often enough.

Right now defensive plexing in faction warfare opts for the latter alternative and I think its a valid question of whether it should be that way, but I'm concerned that simply changing the paradigm by essentially making it require more effort (which is the end result of removing warp core stabs from the equation) might be most detrimental to younger pilots who want to be in faction warfare for the PvP but don't have the secondary sources of income to support the PvP expenses incurred. I don't want players to feel like they have to exit faction warfare to make ISK to enjoy it as a similar situation happened in null sec a few years back when anomalies were rebalanced and many line members of the old Northern Coalition realized they were better off running level four missions than ratting in null sec.Many left and didn't come back as they felt abandoned.

But this starts to lead into another philosophical discussion on all grinding for ISK in all areas of space, and perhaps further into all AFK gameplay like mining, high sec hauling, afk cloaking, etc. Players automate and go partially or wholly AFK when the gameplay is necessary for a desired outcome (getting ISK, getting to point A from point B, etc) but is extremely un-compelling to participate in. I don't want to lead to far into that tar pit today so let's stop there and get to my closing.

I can see the point Rixx is making about warp core stabs being a crutch. However, I can see the pressures that lead to such a choice on the part of a pilot running that plex, and I have concerns that changing the mechanics to put pressure the other way, or disabling the option altogether, might have knock on effects that are undesirable, such as lowering the ability of newer players to fully participate in the faction warfare environs. If we are going to approach the goal of getting warp core stabs off combat ships, we need to ask some question about how they got there in the first place and what can be done, if anything should be done, to alleviate the blowback from getting them off.

Null Sec Is Fun...

The drama surrounding Brave Collective and their retreat from catch with Pandemic Legion nipping at their heels, combined with the coup and counter-coup within their leadership ranks, serves a powerful reminder to me of why I ended up in low sec.

Don't get me wrong, null sec can be vast amounts of fun. There is a certain level of satisfaction of seeing your associated group come together to build something grand, something that individually would be impossible to achieve. Even if you are just a scrub in a frigate, there is a feeling that you are part of a greater whole, a cog in an important machine, build towards something glorious. Even in those fights when you do nothing but target called primaries and hit F1 you feel a sense of accomplishment. "I was there!" Sitting on the forums and discussing plans, seeing ops scheduled, watching for pings on jabber, buying the new doctrine ships... I can still feel the tingle and many days I miss it.

Null sec is fun... until its not.

The flip side of all that organization is that when the wheels come off the bus, the bus doesn't just go into the ditch, it flips and bursts into flames and everyone runs around throwing piles of flaming shit at each other. I've been there; chaos ensues, every carrier for themselves, for every bright spot of self sacrifice there are ten instances of rats abandoning the ship (disclaimer: I've been both).

Once I got out of the null sec grinder and really moved into low sec via piracy and then faction warfare, I discovered a truth. Null sec is more fun for those in leadership positions than those in the lower echelons. As a front line grunt, you don't get to see the diplomatic shenanigans, the wheeling and dealing, the strategic level planning, the secret ops, the glory of building the coalition and the agony of when it burns. From low sec I was able to clear my head, look back, and while appreciating the feeling of being part of something larger I was able to understand that in order to own my own fate I would need to forge it in low sec where the demands are lighter and the risks less destructive. Your alliance looses a station in null sec and your assets in there are locked up tighter than fort knox. In low sec in faction warfare, you send in a neutral alt.

Low risk lower reward for sure, but if you are looking for pure fun per hour (as certain organizations claim to do) then for the front line pilot low sec is the answer. More kills in a concentrated area means more action at almost all fleet sizes from solo to large fleets, excepting the largest which is the domain currently of null sec. For large scale castle builders your fun is more likely found in null sec.

I expect Brave will continue to try and exist in null sec despite the evidence that low sec is a better fit for them. I understand, null sec is addictive and there is always the belief that this time will be the time the coalition will succeed.

Good luck Brave, but if you change your mind, low sec is waiting ;)

PvP Low Sec Is Where Its (Still) At

Back in February I wrote a post exclaiming the virtues of low sec PvP quantity and quality:

In other words, low sec sees more destruction per system spread pretty evenly than any other part of EVE in 2013. If you are looking for consistent PvP action, low sec is the place to be.

Now, about the grey coloured circles, they are low sec systems I recognized as part of the Gallente-Caldari faction warzone and we visited most of them on our roam last Friday night and they are frequent destinations for our fleets. If I coloured in the Minmatar-Amarr warzone systems, most of the other large low sec destruction circles would be grey as well.

In other words, Faction Warfare: its where consistent and destructive PvP is at.

Things have changed since those heady days in early 2014, as the blog EVE Lost and Found explains in a post titled "The State of EVE - Ship Kills in 2014":

2014 is the light blue line, click to enlarge.

There are some straightforward explanations of the trends witnessed in 2014.TEST leaves Innia and Faction War in late 2013, part of the slow decline of faction war that culminates in the second half of 2014. In February, Barlegeut had 11,800 kills; in March, 4800; and by April, just 399. Brave's PVP activity in March and April was largely clustered around Sendaya and the low security systems surrounding the area, but by May virtually all of Brave's PVP switched to to null security space, with only 142 kills in Sendaya. By June, a low security system wouldn't even appear on their top 10 systems by kills.You can see this movement of Brave on the LS and the NS charts for 2014--that drop in LS ship kills corresponds exactly to when Brave leaves for NS, which corresponds with a sharp rise in NS ship kills.

That discrepancy of on average 50k less kills in low security space from May to December 2014 is, then, largely explained by the loss of Brave & allies, the loss of the single largest content driver in low security space in 2013 and early 2014.

I can confirm that since March that the war between Caldari and Gallente has gone very cold over the summer (the notable exception being Templis alliance), with CalMil only starting to show more signs of life this past month. However, he continues:

[O]nce you take into account Brave's departure from low security life (not to mention the departure of a number of other major groups in late 2014, including Pandemic Legion), and the general slump of faction war in the second half of 2014, the statistics for low security space do not look too bad, all things considered. Imagine someone at the start of 2014 asked: What would PVP activity in low security space look like if Brave left and faction war got stale? I am pretty sure they would say, “pretty bad,” and one might well expect the statistics to be close to 2010-2011 levels. Instead, though, low security space PVP in the second half of 2014 was still the second best May-Dec period ever, surpassed only by the record-breaking year of 2013.

So, to sum up, the general state of LS & NS PVP activity in EVE online currently and throughout 2014 is this: PVP activity in LS and NS has reminded very close to the record-breaking levels of 2013. Activity was higher than ever in low security space in early 2014, and activity was higher than ever in null security space in late 2014, largely following the movement of Brave & allies and the ebb and flow of faction war activity.

This I can also confirm. While our CalMil enemies have been largely absent for a lot of the time, the mantle of our common opponents have been really taken up by other forces that either live nearby or roam through occasionally. Pirates like Overload Everything and Sniggewaffe and Shadow Cartel, neutral forces like EVE university and Spectre Fleet, and null sec fleets that used to frequent our space more than they tend to now, and the occasional wormhole gang.

And while null sec kills are higher than low sec recently, its worth remembering the terrain involved. Null sec's 300K kills in November compared to 280K kills in low sec represents the PvP in 3000+ systems compared to 817 for low sec. PvP continues to be more concentrated and thus more active in low sec outside of a few flash points in spread out null sec.

And things seem to be heating up again in our neck of the woods as CalMil is getting more aggressive pilots and corporations and local pirates seem to be stepping up activity. For example, this recent blog post on Jakob's Eve Checklist by Aideron Robotics corp mate Jakob Anedalle titled "On the Second Day of Rhea, My FC brought to me...":

On the First Day of Rhea - Bacon and Thera
I log in and Marcel is calling for ships to undock. Vexors with enfeebling ECM. Scramble - I have that mod, I'm in, I'm undocked I'm warping. Enemies in a plex in our home system. This is pretty much as "push button, receive bacon" as I've ever seen. I've barely had time to settle into my chair and I'm plugging away at primaries and finding a Scythe to try to scramble with ECM. Caracals backed by Scythes - as we weigh in we're starting to lose ships. Somehow we balance - I don't know if it's the Logi wing catching up or the Caracal's getting out of sync or just being too fragile, but soon it's a rout. Farewell, CalMil and thanks for the fight. Later I look back and see they were mounting Rapid Lights - so the initial burst started off great, but once we got into their reload cycle it was over.
[...]
On the Second Day of Rhea - Confess your Sins
I hop into the fleet chat and undock to a pretty much immediate fight again. There's someone moving too fast for our Tristans, so I dock back up and hop into my Retribution. We start hunting around and in an unusual situation we have someone up with Skirmish links. I must say I like to look of my overheated Warp Disruptor having a 31km range. We bang around a bit and then head out roaming.
A Confessor is spotted on dscan. It's unclear if the Loki nearby is boosting him, or just hunting him like everyone else. Sard Caid is around in a Thorax, so that's keeping us on our toes since any slip and he'll probably find some way to down a straggler or anyone foolish enough to engage him on a gate. I keep looking for the Confessor, but I figure that I must be pointing my narrow-band D-scan in the wrong direction.
Our fleet is split over a gate and suddenly there is excitement. Scram + Web on the Confessor. Jump, Jump. Am I on the right side of the gate to see the Confessor or not? I think I am, but I can't see the damn thing. Then it dawns on me that my overview isn't updated to see Tactical Destroyers. I have all brackets on, so I start locking, Scorch'd lasers overheated and pre-loaded... but just as I've almost gotten him locked he is reduced to a capsule.

Lots of things happening in low sec. Come join us.

Viva Las Low Sec!

What's up with all the low sec only lotteries being added lately?

In my post on Tuesday called Low Sec Evolution I noted:

More recently we have seen a couple more low sec only features announced. Tags for Sec feature where special rats spawn in low sec belts and drop tags that can be turned in for rapid sec status, and coming this summer there will be special Mordu's Legions rats which will randomly appear in belts and drop BPCs to the new ships. A low sec only lottery if you will.

Then today there is a new dev blog titled Sweeping Death and Chaos: New Exploration Sites in Kronos and it introduces this:

When they've received sufficient data, they are going to launch an all-out assault on a site we're calling the Besieged Covert Research Facility. As we also noted, Mordu's Legion are really not going to want you there; your business with them will be done, and they will react in extremely hostile fashion to anyone who persists in interfering with their operations.

Further on, in the comments CCP RedDawn adds:

Sven Viko VIkolander wrote:

Just to get things straight:
1) The BPCs for the new pirate ships (Garmur etc) drop from Mordus rats in low security belts. (On test server I've yet to see one FWIW.)
2) Contested Guristas Covert Research Facility sites will (only?) drop data that can either be sold on the market or traded at the Mordus station. But otherwise these sites drop no loot? And these sites too will spawn in low sec?
3) Once enough data has been delivered to the Mordus station, Besieged Covert Research Facility sites will start to appear anywhere in low sec and they will drop the new ship skin BPCs, "low-grade" implants, and warp speed modules?
Is all of that correct or am I missing something?
I also have a question about the "Besieged Covert Research Facility" sites. Once they have been "unlocked," are they permanently unlocked such that they spawn all over low sec from there on out? Or is it more of a system where 1 is unlocked as a spawn for every X amount of data delivered to Mordus? (FWIW they are everywhere in low sec on the test server.)

1) Yes that's right.
2) Yes these Contested sites only drop the data you need to unlock the Besieged sites and they will be present in low sec.
3) Yes. The Besieged sites will be over all of low sec and drop what's mentioned in the dev blog.

 So there will be a new type of ghost site in low sec that drop sweet loot, and only in low sec.

Exploration in low sec has always been lucrative for the intrepid explorer but now we have the case where even belt ratting can reap unexpected and significant rewards. Belt ratting used to be the only way besides missioning for making money from PvE content but anomalies and exploration killed that off all over null sec. However, will it rise as a common method in low sec once again?

Moreover, from these data points we can extrapolate CCP's vision for low sec, and tangentially for null sec. Assuming high sec is mostly remaining the commons space it is now,  null sec will be the player constructed (and destructed) place of capsuleer empires where wealth and power is built from processes and cooperation, and low sec will be the "wild west" frontier where the individual finds his way through lucky panhandling strikes while avoiding the mafias and cartels and gang wars happening around them. Random sites and drops means large scale farming will not succeed in harvesting the wealth thus organized and militarized control will not be cost effective for the most part.

If this hypothesis is true, then we can make some (wild) predictions about future low sec content. It seems likely that pirate factions will continue to expand into low sec and destabilze Empire control in that area. It could lead to pirate factions taking over station in low sec, especially non-faction warfare space. Maybe then they would want a capsuleer militia to enforce and expand their control... leading to pirate militias participating in faction warfare mechanics?

What happens in low sec stays in low sec...