Honestly, still not fond of it. I originally just moved some freedom fighters, viral weapons and armaments to Chakaid's home system with the intent of mostly just having it vague and private. Just an in-game representation of Miz occasionally having some influence on the Network, providing them with some funding, logistics etc. This grew a bit out of control when certain CCP folk were told and subsequently news articled that apparently Miz, Samira and freedom fighters in general find it a lovely trade to throw dozens of lives away to successfully sneeze on a clone vat.
This changed the rules. For the worse. They're no longer clear and they've opened up for significant abuse and unequal treatment by CCP/ISD etc. Now we can apparently do things that frankly open up some serious cans of worms, because we have no clear limitations on it nor a way to measure the effect reliably compared to effort/isk put into it, etc etc.
So x amount of Freedom Fighters and y amount of armaments and viral bombs got z result. Now, what happens if I empty a few freighters' worth of the same? It's well within my financial and in-game capabilities to do this. What happens if I do it in Amarr? What happens if someone does it in Pator? Etc etc. The rules have gone out the window and it's now all in the very subjective hands of a particular CCP employee, and there's absolutely no fucking way he is capable of responding equally to different such player initiatives. It'll get biased, it'll get unbalanced, and it'll be massive plotholin' going on.
... but he
did change the rules the first time he did it. The precedent has been set. You can't really go back from that, and as I said before when the subject of dumping marines or whatever in cargobays came up: If it was possible, Miz would be dumping millions in Amarr etc. Fortunately, the news articles have kept certain things vague, thank fuck. The numbers, the effects, the actual mechanics of what's going on are somewhat obscure and this allows for limitations to be in place.
Several Minmatar capsuleers, including Mizhara Del'thul and Teinyhr, have publicly claimed responsibility for deploying operatives to the system.
It is unclear just how many ships have made it through. Imperial news outlets are denying that any unauthorized craft have survived, but reports from the surface have suggested several ships of Minmatar and SOE design were successfully able to penetrate aerial defenses.
Here for instance, there's even the deniability built-in. There's not even confirmation that it ever worked in the first place. Just indications. There's even some denying it worked at all. Fantastic. This keeps things where it can be limited or even removed. It still lives in that actually viable headspace of "this is primarily baseliner organizations doing things, and getting some capsuleer support in the limited ways capsuleers CAN support them." rather than "capsuleers can now wage entire baseliner wars with their private ISK Market Armies."
If it wasn't, you'd now have to take for instance Vlad's ridiculous edgelord over the top bullshit post
seriously. I wish they hadn't changed the rules on this. It's too vague, too unclear, too open for abuse and it severely changes things In Character to the point where you
have to be doing these things because it'd make no sense at all NOT to since it's apparently entirely possible. I just hope that particular dev pulls back a bit and sets some very conservative rules in place about just how much of an effect capsuleers can have there, because otherwise there's really not much stopping a few wealthy of us from just dumping huge freighterloads of armies around the place.
I'm sure the problems inherent with that should be readily apparent to anyone.
... for now though, as he
did change the rules, we just have to play under the ruleset as it now is, or we'll not be 'competitive' as it were. The Queen now has a machinegun in chess. Gotta adapt and hope either that rule gets reversed, or balanced.
Edited to add: Not that I want to shit on his willingness to respond to player activities. This is a step in the right direction and it massively adds to Eve as a whole. It's a great initiative etc. It's just... that step was a REALLY BIG step and it kind of landed in a mire, and now we need to figure out a way to get that boot out of there before it's swallowed up and everything goes horribly wrong.