Welcome

Welcome
New Members


If you are reading this, and you are a new member of the AU-F, congratulations, you are well ahead of the learning curve. Here at the Aurelius Federation we try to give every member the opportunity to step up to the plate, and knock one out of the ballpark. And it is your turn to bat.



What is this corporation about?
The Aurelius Federation is a group of like-minded pilots trying to make their mark in a virtual environment. Sure, maybe we will not conquer all of EVE, but we will have a hell of a good time trying, with that goal in mind every step of the way. After all, that is the point, right? To give it your all, be the best player you can be given your particular set of circumstances, abilities, and desires? You are not paying $15/mo for each of those accounts of yours, just to shoot pixels in missions and fill a hangar with ships that merely collect dust, are you? Trust me, I tried that, after about two or three months you are grasping at straws looking for reasons to log on anymore. Who wants to earn money for the sake of having money? If you were going to do that, wouldn't it be better if it were real money?

We want to grow with players, power, and influence. To do this, we must expand into 0.0, and learn to sustain ourselves unfettered by Empire space, which has now become a bloated shadow of its former self, ripe with boredom, and monotony.

Here at the AU-F we follow a few simple rules:

• NRDS
• Positive Group Dynamic
• Good Personality
• Cooperation
• Respect
• Participation
• Leadership
  

If you can share these things and honor them as well, among your fellow corporate members, you will succeed here. Everyone here is eventually expected to lead the way for others, thus in the coming weeks and months I should be able to look to you, as an example of one who can lead others, in some way, shape, or fashion. You do not have to be the best you just have to give it what you have got. No one here will give you grief if you are not the best Interceptor pilot in the world, and if they do, come to me. You should always strive to learn and get better however, and we will tell you what you can do to achieve that, especially when you mess up. But do not worry, we all make mistakes, so you should feel free to point out ours too. Just do not comment on my skills in the sack, those are above reproach! Besides, everyone knows I have Sexy Manuevering trained to V. *Cough* Ahem...




What are our short term PVP goals in the coming weeks?
We have now assigned groups of dedicated members to each of our POS and they will be responsible for its operation, planning, budget, and income. Now that this has been done, there should be more time for people such as myself, to lead PvP fleets, regularly, more than once a week.

We are also looking to train specialized fleets, be they bomber fleets, battlecruiser fleets, recon fleets, battleship fleets, or etc. But more importantly we need players to focus on roles. A lot of our members are already there, and they can fly highly specialized builds that make our fleets top notch in terms of capability and purpose.

These roles may include:

• Tackle
• Logistics
• EWAR
  
• DPS
• Scout

You may fulfill these roles in numerous ways including:

Tackle

• Interceptors - Fast Tackle
  
• Assault Frigates - Strong Tackle
  
• Interdictors - Mobile Bubble
  
• Heavy Interdictors - Immobile Bubble
  

Logistics

• T2 Logistics Ships - Basilisk, etc.
  
• T2 Logistics Fittings - Large Remote Armor Repair II
  
• Sniping - Rokh, Cerberus, Eagle, Vulture
  
• Tanking - Numerous Ships

EWAR

• Combat Recons, Force Recons, Electronic Assault Frigates
• EWAR Skills (i.e. ECM, Tracking Disruption, Target Painting, Webbing, etc.)

DPS

• Heavy Assault Ships, Battlecruisers, Battleships
• T2 Weaponry and Weapon Upgrades
• T2 Drones

Scout

• Interceptors, Stealth Bombers, Covert Ops, Force Recons
  
• Astrometrics Skills
• Covert Ops Cloaking
• Navigation Skills
• Tactical Knowledge *KEY*

Now you may be thinking, "Bro I just started playing a month or two ago, I have not even decided what T2 ships to start training to and don't know what kind of PvP is my style yet."

Well, that's the beauty of it, everyone can and should dabble in all of these roles, long enough to know what's to their liking.

You wanna try your hand at tackle? Get a T1 frigate from me for PvP (they are free), and I will fit it for you, and you can come to a roam, and try that puppy out.

You wanna try your hand at logistics? Get a T1 cruiser from me for PvP (they are available at cost of insurance), and I will fit it for you, and you can come to a roam, and see how she rides.

You wanna try your hand at EWAR? Train your EWAR skills up to IIIs and IVs for your particular race, let me fit some modules on a T1 cruiser for you, and you can come try to jam some shizzle out.

You wanna DPS, and burninate some fools? Train to a battlecruiser, they are a staple of all PvP combat, good for all circumstances except very specialized gangs. It does not really take much to hop in your first PvP BC, hell we will sell one to you at cost of insurance and T1 fit it before we contract it over to you. You may not be able to lay down the pain train on some poor unsuspecting reds, but you will get a taste for blood, I promise you.

You wanna scout, and scope out the evil that is in our midst? Fit a T1 frigate with overdrives and a MWD, and come join in the fun with an empty clone. After all, if you die, you are out what... a mil?




These are easy things to accomplish, and I am here to tell you that you should not feel like PvP is a Veteran's Game because that could not be farther from the truth. If you choose to focus on roles, focus on TWO, make sure you mix it up, the last thing you wanna do is get caught always flying the same exact ship in the same way.

So, for instance, for Mendolus I chose my main focus as DPS (545DPS 69k EHP Drake) and scout (all sorts of skills, knowledge).

For Mithos I chose DPS (921DPS 135k EHP Armageddon) and Logistics (3977 Omnitank 915k EHP 1296DPS Thanatos).

These are things I specialize in, and I can always bring something to the table when I join a PvP fleet. So can you, just start talking to our veteran members, asking them about these roles, trying them all out, getting a feel for what you prefer most.

Things everyone should have in the short term for PvP:

Webbing (hours)
Scrambling (hours)
Tracking Disruption (hours)
ECM (hours)
Dampening (hours)
Neutralizing (hours)
Target Painting (hour)
Microwarpdrives (day or so)
T2 Drones (week or so)
Prototype Cloaks (week or so, for deep space gangs)


What are our long term PVP goals in the coming months?
Sovereignty. Sovereignty. Sovereignty. When the Winter Expansion is released and the sovereignty mechanic changes, we wanna be there waiting as the gates lift, so we too can rush to claim our own slice of New Eden. And to do this, a number of us are training carriers as we speak, we have been working hard to divvy up responsibility for POS so that a number of our members get experience with them, and we are building the alliance, one member at a time. It looks like the Alliance will have more than a dozen well skilled carrier pilots by Christmas and that is not counting the ones we recruit either. Folks, that is a capital fleet.

Okay, this has been useful information, but I am new, where do I start, who do I talk to, why does there not seem to be an official PvP schedule?
We spent the first two or three months of the year scheduling roams twice a week into Providence. The unfortunate reality of the situation is that in Providence, we are on the defensive, and the reds that roam around are almost always in covert or speed fleets that are incredibly hard to tackle. Some nights there are not even reds to fight. Between 10pm EST and 2am EST all the European and North American reds hit the sack, and it is not until around 2am EST that the Russians come out to play. So, being that 10pm-2am is our most active time, we are usually best off, if we form response fleets on the fly to hostiles that are actually present, rather than scheduling PvP. Months of bored roaming twice a week just warping from gate to gate hoping some neutral tries some funny business with us because there are no reds to shoot have soured our FCs on scheduled roams in Providence (although we still try to do so now and then to provide training and experience). However! To alleviate this, I am going to be scheduling roams in an NPC 0.0 region once a week or every other week, where we will almost be guaranteed to find or cause trouble every single time. Ask me in game for details on the who's who of the AU-F!

What about Industry?
Well, I cannot discuss this here, as I try to keep the blog to intelligence information that is suitable for public record. Suffice it to say, we are making big strides in this department, and with the Ark having taken its maiden voyage recently, we are more prepared and capable than ever before, to build an industrial foundation to fund our sovereignty goals with.

The Old Ways

The Old Ways
Merely Waiting, Not Dead


So, as most of the people who read this blog know, I have been working myself very hard for the past six months to get this corporation working like a well-oiled machine. And while I have been mostly successful, due in large part to the member's efforts themselves, we are still not at the point that I could log off, come back seven days later, and not be afraid that things were at a standstill without me. Not because people are incapable of progressing on their own but more because we are moving in too many directions at once, and without me laying down which thing we need to work on most week by week, no one knows what to do.

I have tried to make this corporation about big dreams and amazing fun for a long while, but I think in the process we have moved more into the realm of hard labor than fun and good times. As Jacob recently said to me, he wishes things were simpler, and could return to the way it was last fall before we were inexorably thrust into the grand scheme of the game mechanic by the sheer necessity of survival.

By virtue, I am a planner, mastermind, someone who loves an arduous challenge with impossible odds, so when given the opportunity I would rather pit myself with a few good friends against the rest of the world than be a nameless face in a sea of people united in a single cause.

This is how I view our corporation. A group of friends, united by their ideals about what online entertainment is supposed to mean to them, striking out on their own against insurmountable odds, taking the entire game and populous at large by the horns and wrestling with it in a game of total conquest. And while it is never going to be as important whether we reach the finish line or not, the mere fact that we are taking a journey together is all that matters to me. As they say, the journey is more important than the destination. And my friends, you and I, are in this together.

This is also why I cannot fault Varian for wanting to take his real life friends, some of whom he has known for more than a decade, and strike out into the vast unknown to tackle his own demons and wrestle them to the ground. After all, this is what we are already doing, you and I, we just lack the reality of being able to drive down the street, and toast a frosty one together. My only concern is that this is the same person who only six weeks ago had so much work, life, and game related stress that he was barely able to function on a day to day basis, was vomiting from stress to the point of exhaustion on a daily basis, and was under the impression that he would have to quit work, the game, and any and all excitable activities in order to get his stress under control. So be careful out there, my friend, while you were here I protected you from that as best as a caring and concerned friend was able to do so. As a new leader, no one is there to protect you anymore. And I cannot begin to describe to you the personal sacrifices leading a social group requires. While the officers in the corporation, the members, and the like do their best to protect me as well from this, to which I am eternally grateful, I am inevitably lead to sacrificing my entertainment and enjoyment of the game so that everyone else can have a good and worry-free time without having to trouble themselves with the millions of tiny little details, tasks, and daily chores that are required to administrate. Hell, I missed a T3 kill because I was fueling POS while everyone else was roaming around shooting at shit. Do not get me wrong though, nothing satisfies me more than knowing that others do not have to stress or worry about these kinds of things and they can just log on and undock for fun and good times. I hope you are prepared for this, my friend, logging on five out of seven nights a week, and toiling behind the scenes for half a dozen hours or so those same nights, every week, week after week, month after month. If not, we left the door open for you and friends, and your seat is still warm. I am sitting in it now, in fact.

We want to change this obviously, as even as stoic as I am, I have my own personal limits, and as we currently lack the manpower to change it through spreading the work itself around, the officers and I are going to get together Wednesday and discuss how to divvy up responsibility for various divisions such that they are not entirely intertwined and co-dependent on one another. Namely, for one, with certainty, I will be taking over the PvP operations entirely, and scaling them up not down, UP. Whatever we were doing before, we will be doing the same, but I will be taking us on roams outside of Providence, and frequently. Whatever I was doing before, such as fueling POS that I am not even really responsible for, will cease, and either certain member(s) will take up the responsibility if they so desire, or we will liquidate those services. Combat squadrons in EVE on average are half a dozen players, give or take a few, and we can easily field this every night of the week, and I plan to do so, two or three times a week.

The rest, is yet to be announced, and will depend on what we feel is necessary to maintain and what is not. What is clear however, is that we need more focus, and I need to give everyone who reads this blog a more goal oriented view of what we need from them, so they have an idea in sight, a finish line as it were, to work towards.

Do not get me wrong though, I live for this kind of entertainment, in fact, the harder it gets on me personally the more I feel that something is going well, because it means I have something worth the effort; you guys. If it did not feel as hard as it does sometimes, it would mean I did not care. Which is not the case. So thank you for that guys, this group has become near and dear to me since I started playing a year ago. I had a very close group in Warcraft as well but it was not quite like this, not quite as potent and meaningful, as really, how valuable can a purple be, compared to sovereignty, or the ships we fly, or the friends we are proud to fleet with that were earned with every sweat, blood, and toil we took upon ourselves to get there.

So, Wednesday, our main discussion will be centered around, making PvP our priority, and whether or not a select number of our members want to head up the Industry side and be wholly responsible for it.

I see simpler times ahead, as we scale back our grand designs to take on projects that are more readily within our grasp, and begin to enjoy the little things, like fleeting for some random care and/or scare bearing, or just to hang out, drink a pint, and share stories.

We who are about to die, salute you! Let fly the banner of war! Gremlin Squad is back in town. Yes, the boys are back in town.

Compton, in my EVE?

Just Another Day
In A Violent Neighborhood


So, as I am sure most of you know, we lost a couple ships while dismantling one of our POSs last night, mostly due to blind luck, but also one key issue: hesitation.

Throwing up or taking down a POS always hinges on one pivotal period of time, being the point at which the shield bubble is not up and you have hundreds of million in ISK floating helplessly not only in ships but in the tower itself. The trick is to know when the timing is right to take these kinds of actions as a tower takes an hour to bring up or down. For argument's sake let us call this window of time the ante bellum period, or before the war as it were, as besides capital fleets or takedown blobs of battleships, there is only one other time where a POS is quite so vulnerable and you never know when the preceding moments may ultimately lead to total chaos, as was the case last night.

Last night, I spent a majority of the evening taking pieces off the POS, and docking and redocking repeatedly in system with the components. Having taken down nearly a billion in assets, I removed the fuel to a day's worth remaining in the tank, but left some EWAR online at the tower, just to snag any would be opportunists, so a fleet could come dispose of them if necessary.

Now there are two sides to POS management, the violent and non-violent. You can either let every one of your alliance brethren, blues, friends, and the like know you are going to be in the critical ante bellum period soon and need their support or you can sneak it in on a quiet night and let only a handful of trusted confidants know what you are up to. With the violent option, while you let your brethren know your business, you also let every spy, boob, tool, opportunist, disreputable, or just damned careless person know when and where you are going to be vulnerable for an entire hour. Much like blue intel in Citadel, I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to this kind of thing, as an hour is a long time for someone to prepare a hostile fleet and move it to my position so why let the ubiquitous spies have any chance at getting an upper hand on me. So what you get is the second option, you time it right, hopefully, you commit yourself to risking X amount of material assets, and you go for it. This is what I have done since February, without a hitch mind you. I had even thrown a POS up in a system over this past weekend with absolutely no drama. That changed last night.

So, the once research POS, turned reactions POS, has always been a thorn in my side since the first few weeks. Located too close to both pipes, giving little time for warning, and receiving relatively little support in some sense from the residents around us over time, the POS has always frustrated me with its presence. I would prefer it to be a jump deeper, to be perfectly honest. I wanted it down three months ago, but the only reason it stayed was for our reactions project. How I wish I had just taken it down when I had the opportunity to do so, before the area got consistently hot enough to merit me taking the risk I did last night, which in my mind was at the lowest risk point I could have taken under recent circumstances.

Anyways, word to the wise, every time I have lost a ship, and it has been my fault, even if it was sheer luck that landed me in a difficult situation, I have lost it due to one thing, as noted before: hesitation.

What is this seemingly neutral, harmless, somewhat tepid word that can do so much damage? Because when seconds matter, hesitation only escalates the potential for disaster. Such as in fleets, so as in day to day operations, a moment's pause can mean the difference between coming out with the shirt on your back as opposed to hanging onto your frame in tattered pieces.

Quiet. Is the best I can describe the local area when I decided to finally remove the EWAR modules, and offline the tower. Who knew about this? Evidently only myself and the red fleet that would soon make my night one to remember, for better or worse.

At 11:15pm last night I noted three residents in local, one blue, one neutral, and myself. A good start to my plans to take the tower down, right? An hour later, having observed the intel channel for hostile movements, noted the red fleet in the low security pipe was busy camping the empire gate, and still seeing only a handful of people in local, I made the call. Assuming that because the hostile movements in Providence itself were on the outer rim, and that the pirates in the low security pipe where none the wiser, touche, I began taking down the EWAR modules. Bearing in mind I had planned this. So with only a Geddon (120mil), Occator (100mil), Tower (342mil), day's worth of fuel (10mil), and five EWAR modules (50mil) I was playing the odds with well less than a billion ISK worth of things. "Okay, this is not too bad," I think to myself, "I just do not want some random neutral catching wind of this and giving me trouble, the Geddon should be enough for that."

I noted that Devin had logged on a few minutes earlier and was unable to stir the troops into a roam, and thus might be available to give me a little moral support. After all, while I may love taking calculated risks completely solo and unfettered, these were corporate assets I was playing a dangerous but controlled game with. So he came out in his Deimos, and warped to my position, under the jokingly humorous impression that since I would not tell him what he was warping to, that I might have laid some trap for him. In retrospect, I suppose I had.

54 minutes 32 seconds
That was the time remaining for the tower to go down when Devin joined my fleet. As far as I knew no one but the wind, myself, and Devin knew any of this was happening.

45 minutes
I noticed a spike of neutrals in local. I commented to Devin that this made me uneasy. It had been so quiet for an hour or more, why the sudden spike?

38 minutes 27 seconds
There is a spike of reds in local, some seven or eight. I exclaim over ventrilo, "Ah well... fuck me, Devin align immediately." Only here is the key, while I immediately aligned my Geddon, I hesitated on my Occator. I had 400mil floating in space, and this had not once ever occurred to me, what to actually do when it really happened, so I was battling my instincts in this totally new situation, you know, the fight or flight response. Sure, I knew I was going to lose no matter what, so why give it a second thought? Well, like the captain who ponders whether he should stay with the sinking ship or not, I was questioning whether I should just beat it, or if I should align first, and warp away only when the reds arrive, as they inevitably would, my gut was telling me, and that way I could report their numbers and types when they showed their ugly faces. I decided, after only a few seconds pause, that I was in no position to play chicken with a fleet of unknown composition in a ship worth 100mil so I hit the warp button.

38 minutes 10 seconds
Reds begin appearing on the grid as my Occator is in the process of aligning and warping to a station. I warp my Geddon away and dock. My Occator, not so lucky. Devin's Deimos did not fare so well either. This was bad, I made a poor choice, I hesitated for mere moments, and that was all it took. Seconds from warping away in my Occator, and I'm tackled by not one but two HICs with infinite point. So much for Deep Space Transports. The first impression I got after I was popped, and got away in my pod, was that they were after the jetcan of modules I had, any contents within my cargo bay, and the tower itself. But not sixty seconds after I warped away and even before I managed to get to a station to dock my defenseless egg, the reds were leaving system again. "No way that had been enough time for them to scoop and run", I thought to myself. Compton, in my EVE? Was I the homie laid out on the sidewalk after the smoke from the tires cleared or what? I could not escape the feeling I had just been had, for no other reason than that they could do it, and the tower was the last thing on their minds. The only reason I would not otherwise have admired them for such a brazen and well executed kill is if I had not seen them babbling like kindergartners in local only hours before, as if they all shared a single brain cell between them.

35 minutes
Sure enough, as we frantically reported the aggression in the intel channel, I warped to the grid in my blockade runner as valiant men from the alliance began joining my fleet and approaching the grid themselves. I've always liked cloaks better than stabs. Much to my surprise, not only was my wreck, jetcan, and the like still present, but there was a neutral in a hauler scooping my stuff! "Shoot the shit after I warn him in local!" I told our newest member BJ, a friend of HuffDaddy, who arrived quickly upon hearing of our dilemma. *BOOM* the neutral is annihilated after refusing to leave the grid once warned to do so. "At least something is blowing up and it does not belong to myself or the AU-F," I mutter to myself.

33 minutes
I start receiving private conversation requests left and right from fleet commanders of holder alliances, blue alliances, and just anyone you can imagine. They are all on their way. Suddenly fleets of twenties and thirties are being mobilized, I am being asked a hundred questions a minute in private conversations, the intel channel, over audio, in the fleet channel, not to mention the voice in my head going "Stupid stupid stupid, you got impatient and made a poor decision on a relatively quiet night after reds had been active off and on for weeks prior!"

28 minutes
Here comes the cavalry. Blue after blue, neut after neut, are here to save the day, warping onto the grid, making my loss of an Occator pale in comparison to the wealth of ships laid out before me, only in my defense this time. If I were to describe it in any way, it would be to say it was magnificent, just magnificent. Logic had always promised me, and as my members have worried me about from time to time, that this area is well protected, and while minor skirmishes, guerrilla warfare, piracy, and fleet battles may or may not receive universal support from the residents in our space, anything involving a POS immediately becomes everybody's business. How right he was. And so the man with the key to the golden city had delivered on his promise. Our POS was in danger and people were coming out of the woodwork to defend the AOV, and it was glorious. Now I understand, Amarr Victor!

20 minutes
No more sign of our reds, nor our friendly neutral who tried to ninja my wreck and cans. The fleet is on standby, my head is still spinning, and I sit there, tapping my fingers nervously on the desk waiting for the tower to finish going down so I can scoop it and run like hell. Thoughts of red blobs of unimaginable size jumping into local and wailing on my defenders in some epic pitched battle race through my head, which is filmy and hazy from the couple of beers I thought would relax me, that instead now haunt me as I desire to be alert as possible while the weight of a day's work and a few drinks numb my senses.

0 minutes
What an anticlimactic but most fortuitous end to an unbelievable string of events. Not a red in sight, I scoop the tower, the cavalry warps off to pursue my aggressors, and within minutes, what was once our first POS, having stood resolute for five months straight, was just an empty grid, with a few cans floating aimlessly through space, and some of my alliance brethren still hanging around to make sure I made it to the finish line. Now I can take a breath again.


So, in retrospect, what more could I ask for, I got to get rid of a troublesome, hard to fuel, poorly placed POS in a relatively hostile system too close to the pipes, and for all my troubles, I lost an Occator I had owned for four or five months anyways, and a good friend lost his Deimos. But not a single drop of fuel, POS module, nor the tower itself was lost. Amazing. Simply, amazing.

What is the lesson here? Well, I do not think I made an unwise choice to take the path I did as it was quieter last night than it had been in weeks. I simply think that this is proof positive that you can never let your guard down in this game, as just when you thought you had learned exactly how to sneak by unseen, someone snoops you out and all hell breaks loose. My mistake, in all honesty, was simply hesitation. Never hesitate. If you know the odds, but you are having second thoughts, you are going to lose your ship. Thankfully at least the Geddon survived, so maybe I can hop in a fleet with it sometime, and return the favor to our friends, the irksome if not persistent MAVs. I will see you soon, you little bastards.

Big Week, Big Moves

As we say farewell to a good friend, everyone seems to have taken the time this past week to reflect on why there are here, the friends they have made that make all of this virtual tomfoolery matter, and the leadership pool has begun to focus on new changes on the horizon at both the corporate and alliance level. What seemed like it would be the summer of progress has been mostly a lull in the overall game as people desperate for cheap entertainment and escapism spent more time outdoors and about than strapped to a computer and virtual world.

Maybe it was the previous winter and early spring, full of gloomy financial forecasts, tales of near certain doom and tumultuous upheaval of the core fundamentals of capitalism, or just the fact that everyone knows someone who was a victim of the times, but it seems like this summer, everyone just needed a break from it all, even online gaming.

Who can blame us, desperate to escape reality in any way, finding solace in friends, family, and all things cheap and entertaining, we went about in real life and just took in a breath of fresh air around us, enjoying the simple things again for what may have been the first time in a very long time for some of us. But things seem to be taking a turn for the better, both in real life and in the game. Maybe it was news of steadying housing markets, less news about entire countries whose economies are on the verge of collapse, or maybe everyone is just fed up with constant media pandering and talks of doom, but it seems like everywhere you look people are poking their heads up out of the sand to see if its safe to walk about again.

I see more and more people trickling back, online often, seeking entertainment, and the alliance itself sees opportunity on the horizon. EVE is an ever changing landscape of virtual power struggles between blocs of mostly established alliances, thus making it that much harder for us to claim a slice for ourselves. However, with the change in the sovereignty mechanic right around the corner, and the inevitable rush for sovereignty that will ensue, we must act now if we are to be prepared in the future.

What does this all mean for us? We are all here for entertainment, and I would like to believe that all of us, are here to be entertained with like-minded people we can easily consider our friends first and associates second. And so for us to continue entertaining ourselves, we must always move forwards, never backwards.

How are going to do this? Well, I would like to start a recruitment campaign soon, to find more members like you; you know who I am talking about. Mr.WorkHardPlayHard, you are our best friend, and we would not enjoy the game nearly as much without your friendship and constant valiant efforts to make sure all of us benefit from your presence, and vice versa.

But first off, I would like to point to the news list on the right side of this blog, aptly named This Week. As you may note, I have updated the list for this coming week with what we have done since last Monday, or what we are hoping to do, including discussions, planning, and action both individually and as a group.

Some of these events, are pending a description, announcement, or a link to resources, threads, guides, and the like. Please check in before you log in to make sure you are up to speed on the comings and goings of the corporation, its members, adventures, successes, and pitfalls.

We made great progress this past week, but also took a few steps backward, which I am greatly saddened to say. I am sure most of you know to what I am referring. Suffice it to say, I am here as your friend first, and CEO second, so should you find yourself contemplating your responsibilities, entertainment, or future in this game, come to me first, with an honest approach, and I will do my best to work things out with you, no matter where you land when your feet hit the ground. As they say, honesty is the best policy, and I could never fault you for being honest, no matter if it hurts or not.