The future of nullsec fleets after B-R

While a lot has been said about the political effects of the great titan fight I think it's worth looking into the changes in ship v ship meta.

More than 70 titans died at B-R

Before B-R to most Eve players being a subcap pilot was a perfectly valid playstyle choice. After B-R many players will have shifted their thinking towards eventually becoming a titan pilot.

Before B-R for a lot of players titans were considered boring ships where you got landed with the chore of bridging other people around, the risk of accidentally and disastrously misclicking, but no compensating fun unless you were in PL doing drive-bys.

Now they're firmly, and probably rightfully, established as the king of ships, the top dogs.

It's not just titans - CFC held off reinforcements and crucially dictors with very effective subcap fleets that covered the local staging systems and gates into B-R. I was down there in Kurator's inty fleet but we were ineffective because of a much larger inty fleet ran by Alphastarpilot that controlled the way into B-R.

Now the shift in meta also requires a shift in playstyle to a much more economic one. It was pretty easy to get into a Domi or Battleship Of The Month and once you owned one, if it died your alliance paid for a new one. So after the initial outlay you got to pvp for free and didn't have to worry too much about isk.

Developing a titan capability is a huge grind for an individual player and is best done by what Gevlon's started calling a "fleetbear."

A fleetbear is a pilot who comes along to the very important ops but ignores all less significant pvp ops. Essentially they're renters who pay their rent in participation instead of isk. Typically CFC alliances will have some kind of minimum pvp participation measured by pap links (participation links) which allow players to fleet up and click the link to accrue measurable participation statistics that allow them to rat or mine in peace for the rest of the time.

Paplink FC? Paplink?

While this both amuses and bemuses the rest of Eve to see a sizable part of the player base joining fleets they don't care about to do pvp they're not intereted in just to "clock on" it does allow all of these players to potentially rat their way to titans and supers.

So Eve is shifting to become more of an economic game because of the shift in meta resulting from B-R. And this meta feeds back into the political meta where the key aim for alliances will be economic prosperity, and alliances that don't keep up financially can't compete.

The accountants have won Eve!