Pandora's Box

Dominion released a veritable bounty of unsavory issues into the game as I am slowly beginning to come to terms with over time.  Prior to the expansion, you had a system that had grown stale and redundant, its participants forced into destroying dozens of towers over the course of what could be weeks just to drive out the current residents from space they wanted to claim.  You had the equally redundant task of spamming your own towers into the constellation in order to contest the space, which again, took time, what was it, a whole week for it to fully update the contested territories after each DT?

Now what we have is the following...

• Bring large conventional fleet
• Knock out Cynosural Field Jammer
• Jump in capital fleet
• Anchor SBUs
• Kill iHub, TCU
• Anchor TCU
• Profit

It takes what... 8 hours?  I may be slightly sketchy on the ins and outs, but the basic point is, sovereignty is now measured in 24-72hr blocks, rather than week(s).

Here today, gone tomorrow, now the little guy has a chance, this so-called Emergent Theory, sovereignty now costs so much to maintain and defend, the large power blocs could not possibly hold it all themselves, thus giving rise to EVE Online: The New Guys, right?


Well, we would all like to think so, and our previous alliance would as well, along with a number of its new affiliates up in Pure Blind.  But what is really happening?

The rewards are becoming less and less appealing, and now that the only region in the game to welcome any influx of newer players is long gone and never to return, we have a perceived net loss of initiative out in the plumbs of space.  What does the little guy, i.e. a smaller alliance with few assets and even less leverage or influence, gain from going to null space?

Let's face it, not much.  Sovereignty can be stripped away by a fleet of as little as fifty battleships in a matter of a day or two against smaller groups incapable of fielding half that many pilots on a good day, let alone in all T2 fit battleships of the close or long range variety respectively.  I have watched it happen in Wicked Creek, and I am sure I will watch it happen in Pure Blind too.

What it boils down to me for me is the same conundrum I found myself staring at in Warcraft when I came back after a six month break to find the guild of hundreds I had fostered as a mix of all types, be they casual or hardcore, slowly degrading, or so I thought at the time, into an atmosphere of fanaticism and hardcore mentality.  This was about half way into the Burning Crusade release, and I could not have been more aghast and shocked.  How could they do this to what was formerly my precious guild of people from all walks of life, I would say to myself as I watched on from a spectator's viewpoint for the first time, unable to change a single thread in the puzzle to my liking.

Looking back, I should have known, it was not the people themselves, but the game, always the game, catering to the bottom line, those who play the most.  It makes sense right?  The people who have all the time in the world to devote to the game should get the most enjoyment out of it correct?  Well, not true, my friends, not true, and it seems Blizzard, and now subsequently CCP, are either already aware of this or slowly being charged with it over time.

Casuals.  MMOs are such a dime a dozen in some sense these days that a development company has to follow one carrot with another as the subscription base devours them like so many skittles on a hot summer's day.  As we see CCP continue to release content, alterations, and changes to the game that seem geared entirely towards making things faster, quicker, more fluid and dynamic, changing course at the slightest breeze, we see two things.

1.  EVE null security was never meant for casuals anyways.
2.  EVE null security cannot support a casual mentality so long as everything in the game, theoretically if not literally, is consumable including the skillpoints in your head.

What the developers at Blizzard have figured out, much to my chagrin after years of believing it myself, is that the hardcore player base is like a gnawing hunger, never satiated no matter what you give them, it is never enough.  They are now effectively doubling back on the trend I saw when the Burning Crusade was halfway through its life cycle, they saw what catering to only a hardcore mindset does to an MMO, it creates an insatiable hunger that never ends and only exponentially escalates into absurdity, the more you say to people, "You can have it all if you just spend one more hour in the game," the more they spend two hours, or three, but not all of them, only some, those inclined to have the time, energy, and wherewithal to be hardcore players in any MMO they subscribe to.

Blizzard has been backpedaling on this, to my knowledge, quite literally for years now, inventing new and easier ways to gear out or experience all the game has to offer right out of the box after every new content release.  This is the best of both worlds for Blizzard, their hardcore players can devour new content as always, being the best of the best, flaunting the fact that they have little to no real purpose or lives outside of the monitor, while the casuals, slower but determined, will eventually catch up, at least until new content is released.  Blizzard has done it, they have finally found how to hook all players, not just some.

Okay, so I've been talking about that other game for awhile now, do I have a point?

Yes.  My point is, in EVE, everything is consumable down to the training you do, in theory.  What this means is that the only way to compete is to have as many or more assets than your competitor, and to lose yours slower than they lose theirs until one of you keeps going and the other is forced to retreat.

Think about it.

Do you see a way for casuals to succeed in the player controlled regions of the game, i.e. null space?

I sure as hell do not myself.

Now the ironic part is, I can be, often are, and am a hardcore player at heart.  I am obsessive in the sense that, I pick one particular pursuit or passion at a time, and I mindlessly, in some sense, pursue it until I accomplish the goals I set out for myself.  But I am the exception I have found, and not the rule.

In order for smaller groups to succeed in EVE, every contributor has to be like me, in principle, and insofar as it concerns their commitment level.  You want a few systems to claim sovereignty in 0.0 and to prosper and hold said systems?  You better gather up at least as many people as required to field a conventional fleet of heavy hitters up to and beyond fifty people at once, if not more.  Consistently, night after night, not a one time deal, I am talking, whenever it becomes necessary, and it will, you field fifty or more ships, every, single, time.  This is not a casual mindset, and if you have ten casual players, and only one is online at any given time, you multiply that factor to 3000 players, and suddenly the most you could ever hope to muster at any given time is 300 people, and that's if you're lucky.  300 people is barely enough to fight a moderately sized alliance with high participation levels.  And our previous alliance had at its peak about a thousand people, and we saw just that, maybe a hundred people online on a good night, and if we were lucky, twenty people ready and willing to participate even if Rome was burning.

Look at Systematic-Chaos, a short while ago they had almost three thousand people, but they could not route their opposition, alliances with numbers in the ballpark of 700 or 300 total members.  Why?  Because Systematic-Chaos was full of casuals.  Their own members have reiterated that again and again on the CAOD, trying to vindicate themselves in light of their alliance's complete and absolute meltdown in a matter of weeks.

How, could the combined forces of one alliance with +2500 members, and another with +2000 members (Primary.) not overcome the meager forces of one alliance with 700 members, and another with 300?

Consistency and participation.  C0VEN and Stain Empire, so I am told, had +90% participation levels, and everyone who showed up, showed up in the ship they were asked to, and nothing else.  Vastly different from the account that members of Systematic-Chaos gave of their own alliance, lack of numbers, people unwilling to fight for their own space, poor fleet composition, poor leadership and initiative, more carebears than not, etc.

Without trying to sound too much like a jackass... hearing people in Systematic-Chaos talk about why their alliance had an epic failcascade reminds me all too much of the reasons I pulled my own corporation from our previous alliance.  The writing is on the walls folks.  It is an unfortunate reality that casuals do not a null security sovereign holder make, and even more unfortunate that the only way to ensure long term survival and prosperity is to do one simple thing: get rid of them.

Now, those who know me well, know that I am a champion of people's rights, I work hard to make sure all my own corporate members know that they are more than welcome to be who they are, feel comfortable with who they are, and enjoy the content of the game in their own way while within my corporation, so long as they do not interfere in any other person's ability to do so themselves.  This little caveat has served me well and I stick to it tooth and nail without exception.  However, my corporation made the choice to remain a mix of casual and hardcore elements, as it allows me the luxury of upholding said caveat.  But as I see the numbers dwindle away in the corporation, I wonder to myself, has it been naive of me to dream the dream that I could maintain a mix of casual and hardcore players all the while attempting to help alliances establish themselves in null security?

Probably so, but I never shy away from allowing myself to be labeled as a dreamer, as half the joy of life in my opinion, is being able to imagine all the possibilities out there for oneself and those who one surrounds oneself with.

But, remember the lesson, null security is for hardcore elements, the casual life died with Providence, and so little else remains but to succeed by shucking off and sacrificing the ability to champion people's rights in lieu of a more restricted right to be, or continue living the impossible dream, as you watch friend after friend slowly fade away over time, unable to compete in an environment where the hardcore elements, struggling to accomplish the goals they desire, continually prey upon the casuals, who will never be able to supply those goals, as it is their nature, being a casual player, you cannot very well expect someone with three kids, two jobs, and a bad back to sit at a computer six hours a night pelting TCUs so you can claim sovereignty over pixels on the internet.  And to be honest, in my opinion, it is morally reprehensible to try and prey upon them by peer pressure, coercion, guilt, or malice, to do so otherwise.  These people rightly put their families first above all else, and members of the alliance who thought to change this, should be expelled faster than I can finish typing this sentence.  If it were up to me, either the decision would be made to go hardcore and expel the casuals, or to go mixed casual and hardcore, and resign oneself to the reality that sovereignty is unattainable with such a platform.

Does this make me a hypocrite, on the one hand lauding the rights of people to be themselves in an online environment, to feel safe, secure, and nurtured by caring and genuine leaders who put the people's interests above all else, and on the other shake my fist at those same people because they are the very reason why a group based on said environment can never succeed at sovereignty and they need to either commit to being hardcore or leave?

Of course.  But I never claimed to be a simple man...

What does any of this mean for my own corporation, the Aurelius Federation?  It means I have some tough decisions to make in the next six months, I grow older every day, and while nearing on thirty may seem like a fairly trivial milestone as it concerns age itself, as certainly thirty is undoubtedly young and brash to others, I find myself wondering, I am almost thirty years old, do I have the luxury of dreaming anymore, or do I consign myself to reality, and make the kinds of choices an adult would make.

As I told the executor of our previous alliance, and/or his close associate, if I had merely been given the power to eradicate insubordination, by force, and to expunge all the... unfortunate dead weight that were and are the casual players, as much as I abhor myself for contemplating such a thing, I would have fought to my last breath in game to do so.  But having had my hands tied by neither being bequeathed nor denied said power, I could do nothing but sit idly by, shaking my fist and roaring at others around me, who were destroying the very thing I was trying to protect.  To protect the right to decide, do we choose people over content, or content over people.  The choice is at present, yet to be made, and I no longer desired waiting around for it to happen, as again, I grow older every day, and my patience to sit around as people wring their hands trying to figure these ^ things out wears thin with me quicker than ever before.

I am and always will be a lion at heart, and those who know me best, those few friends I have had with me along the journey of the past few years, know well that my fervor knows no bounds, and if unleashed, I am a frightening person to list as one's enemy or antagonist.  If only I had been given the chance to use that fervor, passion, and spirit to compel the kinds of change that although unsavory would have produced results given the goals and intentions of the alliance as a whole, maybe I would not be sitting here pining at the abysmal losses I see day after day, and the continued fail fits, of the very kind I and many others continued to decry, day after day, night after night, but would instead be leading fleets of dozens and dozens of battleships, all properly fit to the teeth, roaring through space, letting our enemies hear that we are not few, but many, each hell bent on their annihilation.

Sharks swim alone, they die alone, whether in a feeding frenzy in which they devour one another, or from starvation when there remains no prey, but lions, a pride fights, lives, and dies together, and if any one lion questions the authority of the leader, he is eliminated or driven out, without question.

I find myself feeling less and less inclined to be the nice guy in MMOs anymore, and more inclined to be who I really am, but that is something for another time.

EVE has been under quite a load bearing stress for six months, and with the most recent loss of some net $30,000 USD worth of assets in a single day due to a poor and broken game mechanic, it seems like things are going to get worse before they get better, much worse.  There is no room for casuals out there in null security anymore than CCP would have liked there to be, as they have somehow managed to make it almost impossible for casual life in null security, when their every intention seemed to be the exact opposite of that.

Oh the best laid plans of mice and men...

Lions And Sharks

There are a couple things you do not do in a player group.  One of them is lie to people when things are not going so well.  It cheapens their sense of value and integration and costs more in loyalty later once things hopefully get better and you suddenly lift the curtain and reveal that it was all smoke and mirrors.  People deserve the truth, be it obfuscated to protect them or not, they deserve to know when things are not working as intended, because they are the only ones who can change it.  Leaders only provide the path, it is the people who follow it.  The second, is you do not take one format, and replace it with another.

There are as many types of corporations and alliances in this game as there are fish in the sea, but one thing remains true, if you recruit casuals, the chances of them becoming hardcore through their own volition or your persistence, is about as good as the chance I'll land a hot date with Katy Perry and find myself messing the sheets up with her an hour after posting this blog, wish as I may.

For every ten people the AU-F itself has ever recruited, maybe, maybe one of them has persevered and become a regular fixture and consistent presence in the game, let alone grown into a veteran player, capable of holding their own entirely, independent, self-supporting, and experienced, as is always my goal, I do not need followers, I need brothers.  The rest, well... if they do not quit the game, they simply fade away over time, leaving the corporation, and flitting from place to place, and as far as I can tell, never really doing much in this wild game of ours.

So, what happens when an alliance made of mostly casuals with limited experience, solid experience, in combat tries to change the formula?  A whole lot of nothing.  You can make casuals into fighters, but you cannot force them to it, that's why they are casual, they did not sign up for an account to this game so you could be their overlord and they your serfs.  But members of the alliance we were previously in, save the executor himself, who all my members, myself included, are convinced is the best alliance leader any of us have ever seen, these members were convinced they could force casuals to be hardcore, with little to no leverage, to boot.


Leverage, it is an innately hideous thing, that lets you pretty much dictate terms, to just about anyone who has any stake in it, that's why it is called leverage.  Well, how exactly do you force casual players, who are just here to yuck it up and have a good time, to pit themselves headlong into battle night after night, week after week, making little to no income of their own, having little to no real entertainment because they and the FCs are so inexperienced that it usually means a quick and expensive death?


The answer is, drum roll please, you don't.  But oh will people try, and try they may.  When a vacuum in power opens up, the hounds move in, and what you find is, the people who left, were the ones who deserved the power, because they were also willing to give it up when it became clear their positions were compromised for any reason, and the ones who snatch it up in their absence are the last people you'd ever want to have power over others.  I call it, personally, though I have no idea if it has been coined already, The Caesar Complex. Successors, in general, are a bad lot, all the work to get the great machine churning has been done, and they come along, and lack the awareness and hindsight to know and actually understand what came before them, they have a point of view disparity, and eventually over time you find out that the Prodigal Son is in fact the Infernal Son, lusting for power and influence, convinced with a grandiose sense of entitlement that they are the only ones who deserve the power, having done so little of the actual work to get there in the first place, etc.


Well, before I ramble on about stuff that probably only interests me anyways, that is, the way the old phrase, absolute power corrupts absolutely is such a morbidly true cliche, let me say this, when you give people an environment like the internet, where there are no rules, and you give them power, they could be a living saint in real life, but on the internet the moment the world's laws and consequences disappear, you find out what is lying dormant in that saint's heart, their true nature.  The old excuse that nothing matters here, is true, it does not matter here, but it matters out there because if these same people were to make their way into CEO positions of multinational corporations in real life, and the like, what you find is what you would expect, the limitless power and sway they find themselves with, and the feeling of invulnerability and being above the laws of society, turn these otherwise caring and genuine people into monsters.  I think all of us with any interest at all in the world at large have seen plenty evidence of that in the clear light of day in the past few years alone.

As a philosopher, I find it exceedingly interesting and poignant to watch these things play out.  Sometimes I interfere with the natural course of things to see just how much it would take, if anything were enough, to change the inevitable outcome of giving someone who is not prepared for it, absolute power over others, or even the illusion of it within an illusion, having not been given any actual power, but not having the semblance or notion of it taken away either.


This probably makes little sense to anyone but myself as it is really my own grand experiment, but suffice it to say, I am always, always curious to see whether the will of one person can hold at bay the will of the hounds that constantly lurk in the corners, waiting for their opportunity to fulfill their own sense of entitlement and grandeur at any to cost to those around them.


Hundreds, hundreds of people in our previous alliance, deserved a lot better than they got from a select few members of the alliance, who decided that it was their job to speak for people, when they understand people the least of anyone else.  If the alliance had started with a hardcore platform then the sharks would have been right at home, and no one would have any reason to say they weren't justified with trying to use people up like Kleenex, but the alliance was more of a large extended family, the same as the AU-F itself, which is what made it such a breath of fresh air when we first joined,  and a family needs lions, not sharks.  I am afraid to say, our previous alliance has only a handful of lions left in the fight, and the sharks are winning.


What happens to a pride of lioness and their cubs when the lions that protect them are killed by hyenas, I wonder?


I will be waiting, and watching, to find out, as always.


One of my favorite passages in all the literature I have read, sums all this drama up entirely, in what I hope will be a final chapter on our corporation's eternal struggle to help build something from the ground up, as I think we have all given up on that notion and are instead going to seek an established alliance the next time around where there is not, hopefully, an eternal power struggle over scraps and bits.  Even if there is a struggle over actual vast wealth and assets, that I can live with, but this never-ending struggle over what to me is a parched man slowly dying in the desert, is folly and I will not be a party to it any longer, whether I was trying to prevent it or not, it is like watching strays fight to the death over a discarded apple core.  There are so many more entertaining and amazing experiences the alliance could have had but instead an unfortunate number of its members decided they would rather fight amongst themselves over scraps.  So this passage, for me at least, coming here to play this game not only for entertainment but also camaraderie and brotherhood, and if only more could really understand it, especially those who would benefit from it most, means the world to me in a situation like this:

The old man said, 'I see around me here
Things which you cannot see. We die, my friend,
Nor we alone, but that which each man loved
And prized in his peculiar nook of earth
Dies with him, or is changed, and very soon
Even of the good is no memorial left.
The poets, in their elegies and songs
Lamenting the departed, call the groves,
They call upon the hills and streams to mourn,
And senseless rocks - nor idly, for they speak
In these their invocations with a voice
Obedient to the strong creative power
Of human passion. Sympathies there are
More tranquil, yet perhaps of kindred birth,
That steal upon the meditative mind
And grow with thought. Beside yon spring I stood,
And eyed its waters till we seemed to feel
One sadness, they and I.

The Ruined Cottage
William Wordsworth

You cannot take the game with you, folks, so be sure those arduous endeavors you take upon yourself will result in fond memories, rather than self gratification or validation, as no one ten years from now but you will honestly care whether or not you conquered an internet game and lorded over hundreds of people like a despot as the right arm of an entire alliance or more.  If I told you that I led a guild of almost fifty people when the original Diablo came out and that at the time it was a wildly new phenomenon for me at the tender age of 16  and for the time itself in '97 to do so would it really mean anything to you?  I didn't think so.  So remember, you will be alone with your memories, so make sure they count.  Personal thrills are a dime a dozen and you can just as easily get them by popping in a Halo disc and shooting some grunts or laying the pimp hand down on some tool with an online moniker like xXKillYouDeadXx, but having fond memories of experiences, meeting good friends, and achieving amazing things together is by far the most precious of commodities.

Runs Like A Charm, Feels Like A Job

I like to believe that I am surrounding myself with, and constantly seeking, friends first in this game, and corporate members second.  I know it is naive of me, and given the fact that I am looking for friends in of all places, EVE Online, it means that I am already at a distinct disadvantage.  EVE is not a nice, warm, fuzzy place where you sit down and drink a glass of cognac with your favorite companions on a quiet winter's night.

However, for that very reason, I run the AU-F like I would a social club or as the head of a family.  You get in on looks and personality alone, whether you're the most skilled pilot in the game, or you can't find your undock button on a good night.  And based on that personality, you are accepted with open arms, and expected to uphold the family environment I maintain internally within the corporation.  On the outside, it is all business.  On the inside, I would rather talk about booze and women, than be ultra serious and hardcore about the game as a whole.  These things lead to a fairly pleasant dichotomy where on the one hand, the corporation maintains or attempts to maintain the strictest sense of professionalism, business, and diplomacy, and on the other, when it is a quiet night, we are in our corporate channel talking about booze, women, body parts, and the kitchen sink.

But, sometimes this backfires, as we have found in the past week, when tensions ran high, and words were spoken that a few people seem to not want to take back.  Having quit the Senate, raised a fair amount of ruckus at both the corporate and alliance levels, and then retreated from participation in general as if to add insult to injury, members of this corporation have done everyone around them a great disservice. 

Now, the elephant in the room is that everyone involved both at the corporate and alliance levels made some sort of mistake, whether it be pride, assumptions, apathy, disrespect, overzealous nature, or etc.  The problem I see is that everyone but the people in question, continues to be willing to work these differences out, like mature, independent, and responsible adults.  So what's the problem?  I ask for everyone to act like an adult, that is not really much to ask to be honest.  In fact, it is relatively little.  Certainly mistakes were made by all parties, but only a few were absolutely unwilling to resolve these conflicts at all, and instead chose to retreat into the shadows.

Before I myself say things I will regret, I want to clear the air, from my perspective.

I work to the betterment of ALL parties equally, and so long as I feel those parties understand that this is my role here, I will work for them, even if they are in part or in whole responsible for the circumstances that cause me to need be involved to begin with.  I make no judgments, I make no grievances, I make no agendas, I simply try to resolve.  But I have limits that I set, and those limits have been crossed, and once they are crossed, that is the end of it.  Just like the Kematian's, the Zee's, and the Mark's of the corporation, these people who cross that invisible line with me, are never given my faith or confidence again, whether they choose to stay or not and regain it themselves in the eyes of their peers, it will still never again be from me.  In fact, I implore them to do just that, to stay, regardless of whether I myself lost faith in them, as this is my way, not the only way, and I am certainly not whom the only opinion matters.  But they never choose to remain, never.  So, with my usual foresight, that I typically keep to myself, I would like to say now, that they were given every consideration by myself, every possible consideration, and they refused to yield to my role as mediator, and instead I find myself feeling insulted, by being thrown in with the lot as if by association I am no better than the slander thrown wildly against all others.  I am sorry, but I am the last person that one wants to take for granted.  Do not mistake me for someone who bends, I am unbreakable.  This is a family affair, and if you do not want to be part of a family and work your problems out like one, this probably isn't the place for you.

The Divine Comedy

We are about to embark on what I believe will be the grand journey that most of us have been preparing for in this game for years.  Though I wish it were under vastly different circumstances, we have been compelled beyond all other reason to initiate a mass exodus from what was the most unique and wonderful place in the game.  Providence was rife with good, bad, and everything in between, and although our time there seemed to be at a close this past fall, as the Apotheosis of Virtue alliance struggled to find it's place in the game, we inevitably found our way into the Fatal Ascension.  Fatal Ascension was quite literally on the verge of greatness, and we were extremely fortunate to have been granted permission to participate in their journey.  However, the best laid plans, are often the first to be dispelled.  Fatal Ascension, is leaving Providence.

Why, you ask?  Not for lack of wanting to defend, uphold, and support our CVA brethren with every dying breath, but because of circumstances beyond our control.  You will note that I have been using a unique signature now for a week or two.  When I am feeling particularly inspired, I turn to poetry, art, literature, and music.  These are the trades I ply in, my ultimate passion, and something I am hoping to aspire to at some point in my life when the time is right, if you had not noticed my penchant for the English language already, that is. 

Let me explain the imagery you see, and maybe that will help explain, why I have so many abject fears for player driven 0.0 content in this game, and who I think is only making it worse, and not better.  The image is a popular piece that depicts a scene in The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.  This particular scene occurs in the fabled eighth circle of hell, the one directly before the pit containing Lucifer himself.  The eighth circle is reserved for those who commit various forms of fraud, and in this particular scene you are witnessing the fraud of the corrupt politicians, assailing Virgil and Dante by leading them in false hope, to a bridge that goes nowhere. 

To me, this is powerful metaphor, for how I feel about the state of the game at this time.  The winged demons in the foreground, with the true red icons, are the Titans of -A-, assaulting the righteous forces of the CVA and its affiliates.  In the background, the vast swarm of nameless demons, circle and approach, coating the skies with their numbers.  In the relief, to the lower right of the imagery, are the malicious, but meager forces of the UK, biding their time, waiting for -A- to finish their work, so they can move in and assault CVA from behind.

Now, you may ask yourself, okay, so Mendolus obviously has some deeply entrenched hatred for -A- and UK, what's the big deal there?

It is not that I dislike them, per say, it is that I am ultimately disappointed in the depths of their hubris and lack of foresight, to see that the game is going to suffer by their actions.  CCP introduced this lag issue with the new more fluid sovereignty mechanic last December.  Not only did sovereignty get a dramatic makeover but it became terribly more fluid than ever before.  Couple that with a new lag issue that favors the aggressor and you have a serious problem on your hands, especially where it concerns the most populous power structures in the game, and their own self control, or lack thereof.  What this boils down to me, is a game.  And like any game, where more than one person plays, there is some underlying competitive nature to it, regardless of the content of the game itself.  Now, pit that with a game like EVE that is almost solely based on competition between players at every turn, from the market system, to the capital engagement and sovereignty mechanic, and you have a game that relies on the entertainment value of its opportunities for conflict and resolution.

What happens when that conflict no longer amounts to a fair challenge, and instead amounts to whomever has the best timing, adequate numbers, and will?  You need all of five hundred pilots, most in capitals, some in conventional ships, to completely lock down an entire solar system.  There is no way for the defender to provide adequate defense if you maintain that presence.  Sure they may jump a fleet in, but the grid will not load, and you will simply shoot them, defenseless ships in space, with no pilot actually controlling them.  This is not a game.  This is a space simulator.

What does this say for the reputation of player driven 0.0 space as the richest most diverse and affluent content in the game, in the long run?  Not a whole lot.

EVE is based on the rewards of taking calculated risks whose potential reward outweighs said risks.  If that changes for player driven 0.0 content, because the most populous power blocks in the game cannot exercise a little self control long enough for CCP to fix the lag issue, then player driven content is going to take a serious hit.  All the veterans from at least Trinity forward, saw this happen to low security space, slowly but surely, over the course of twelve months, once the reward of going there no longer outweighed the risk.

So yes, I think -A-, UK, and others, who abuse a mechanic just to win the game as it were, and drive all the competition out, are the fraudulent politicians, forever manipulating the public, with espionage, subterfuge, word play, coercion, and yes, brute force.  There are few enough players in 0.0 as it is, for them to be playing a cheap parlor trick, and driving an entire region of thousands of people back to Empire.  It will give 0.0 space a reputation for futility and once it acquires that reputation, it will only degrade from there, regardless of how coy the power blocks try to be in encouraging people to come rent their space;  space that is still smoldering with the fires of war that drove the previous residents out against all possible odds, with floating, lifeless, macabre corpses silently drifting through the frozen reaches of space, heralding the futility of player drive content in 0.0 space, if the players themselves, ruin it for everyone.

I have more words to say on this issue than I could ever put to a keyboard, and suffice it to say, this is only the tip of the iceberg with me, as usual.  However, I will say now, that if CCP does not come up with a hotfix, patch, fix, or resolution to this lag issue within 4-6 weeks from now, I predict that player driven content in 0.0 will be in serious decline by the time the summer expansion comes.  I would almost go as far as to say that the game itself may peak in subscriptions at this time, after being on the rise for so many years, slowly but surely, and that we may actually see a deficit for the first time, because people who had a fond and unrequited love for player driven 0.0 space, will no longer have any reason to believe it has entertainment value for them anymore, and will simply wander off to other games and other adventures.

Let us hope, that the more populous power blocks in 0.0 space, come to realize, before it is too late, that winning the game, is not nearly as important, as having fun, and you can only have fun in a game, if the competition is fair at the most fundamental level.  Otherwise the losing team will simply quit instead of continue to play another round, and then you are left with a game board that has only your pieces, and no competition, and that, is no longer a game.

Where this leads us, the Fatal Ascension, is something only time will tell, but it looks like it is going to lead to even more opportunities, for us to stake a claim on a little corner of space, just for ourselves, and call it home.  That in and of itself, is the best good that could have ever come from this tragic turn of events, that almost resembles a real Divine Comedy, with all the irony, and metaphor, and lessons.

Stories

I miss the people we have lost along the way.  From the ever studious Tishlin who went off to sea on the west coast to become an ocean surveyor for the US navy, to the Vox who was such a unique and flavorful individual with an incredibly rich personality who just one day, was no longer with us, to the Surianna with her sweet and compassionate personality who was dragged away from us by her fiance, Rishal, with the penchant for glory who thought everything comes easy, to the Kematian and Zinger who were such a wonderful, lively, and interesting couple, until he made it clear the game was nothing more than a plaything to him and whether he hurt people or not was less his concern than whether he got be wild and carefree, to the GNO1 with the hilarious name, who was such a witty personality, and never ceased to amaze us with his vast knowledge of modern technology but in the end did not seem satisfied to be playing a game with what must have seemed like a bunch of immature kids to him in some respect, to Darko who was as suave as he was industrious, ever striving for more and more fiscal glory ingame, but never quite having the time in real life to devote to it as his acting career took him away more and more from the game, to ZeeOhSix who was at one moment the most jovial aerial stunt and race pilot, having led such a rich and wonderful life in his nearly 50 years, and then at the other the most angry and volatile person you could imagine, lashing out at everyone and everything around him, to Cyto Brixe who was the pirate you loved to hate, a fierce woman who on the one hand pushed and compelled our pilots to greatness, and on the other recruited more pirates into the corporation on a whim, claiming they were reformed, to Jaxon who was easily the most charming, considerate, and wise man I ever met in this game, full of the most wonderful ideas, hopes, and eternal optimism, who just wanted to experience this grand space opera for himself, and was grateful to find friends to enjoy it with, as an older man in his fifties, and not apt to typically be understood or considered a valuable personality, by younger more foolhardy generations, but someone whom I wish I could be friends with for life even to this day, though real life has taken him away from the game and email correspondence is just a tiresome burden in the end, to GRI3V, Achilles, Ajax, Shaun Tsue, Northwind, Kurobane, Sexah McGoo, Ravenor, Johnny, Troyd, Blurtie, Nlor, Koner, Riikar, and to the others, not named but certainly not forgotten, I wish you could all come and see and experience and journey with us once more.

MMOs are just games, but it is the people that make them mean something to me, and you are all fondly remembered, either good or bad, whether you know it or not.  Memories are the best kinds of treasures, and only the fortunate figure this out at such an early age as I have.  I feel grateful to know that I will remember the lessons I learned from each person, and the stories I can tell about each and every one of them.  Grateful to know that pixels mean nothing to me compared to the people I share them with, a hard fought lesson to learn, but one that sets me apart from other gamers, ceaselessly trying to conquer a world full of intangibles at any cost to themselves or those around them, intangibles that one cannot even touch in real life.

Capital Fleets

Capital Fleets
Scout's Perspective





The Client
Can't See Can't Fight

It is absolutely imperative you setup your client properly before a capital battle. You may be using a NASA supercomputer in some basement in a government complex in Florida, but that still does not mean you are going to have the bandwidth to function in a capital engagement with hundreds and hundreds of ships on the grid at one time.

• Turn off ALL effects.
• Turn down ALL graphics.
• Zoom out!
• Close unnecessary channels.
• Do NOT play in windowed mode.

The Overview
Holy Brackets Batman

You can easily find yourself lagged out for thirty seconds if you so much as flip over to a new tab in your overview that has all brackets showing in space. In addition to that, without a proper overview setup, you'll play hell even finding the primary target regardless of whether it has been broadcast or not.

• Turn off ALL brackets on ALL tabs.
• ONLY reds and neutrals on your primary tab.
• Create the following overview settings*:
  
  
  
  • Planets, Stations, Sun, Control Towers, No Ships
  • Only carriers
  • Only dreadnoughts
  • Only battleships
  • Only interdictors and heavy interdictors
  • Only super capitals

*Note: It is assumed that you will have stargates, cynosural beacons, mobile disruptors, etc. on all overview settings listed above.

The Mechanics
Here's Your Memo

CVA and holders use a spider chain setup for their carrier fleets that is and should be required of all capital pilots in the future. I will post that setup here later tonight.

That being said, one of the most important things to know as a new capital pilot are the following:

• Flying a capital in a large fleet engagement is a lot like being a forward scout, you are going to be alive one minute and dead the next, so get used to it, and do NOT panic.
• As per the note above, pay attention to who the FCs are, and do exactly what they say, and nothing else. If they tell you to eject from your ship, you do it, no matter how crazy it sounds. Anything short of this can wipe an entire fleet. Never panic.
• Know your POS mechanics:
  
  
  
  • You must change your shield harmonic BEFORE initiating a warp sequence to a foreign POS bubble. Not during warp, not while aligning for warp, but BEFORE you click Warp To...
  • You must set your capital ship to KEEP AT RANGE of the control tower to stay within the bubble and avoid drifting or being bumped out.
  
  
• Do NOT activate needless modules before a cynosural jump as it takes a majority of your capacitor to initiate your jump drives.
• People are going to die, you may be next in line, so shake the nerves, and make sure you align, warp, fire, disengage, retarget, cycle your modules, move, stop, or whatever else the FC says the moment they say it lest you get trapped in a sling bubble and are relieved of your ship. Do not think, do. The FC does the thinking.
• Know your fleet window and how it works:
  
  
  
  • To change squads in a free move fleet right click your character portrait and navigate to the fleet drop down menu.
  • To jump to a cynosural field easily, watch the broadcast history for a new cynosural beacon, right click it in the broadcast window, and jump. You may also find all active cynosural beacons available to you through right clicking your character in any channel and using the menu.
  • Carry extra topes in your corporate hangar, you will not be able to jump to a cynosural field farther than your range, and may be forced to take more than one jump to reconnoiter with the fleet. This may or may not cost you extra fuel.
  
  
• Know your game mechanics. There are too many things to emphasize here, understanding that your ship will warp even at 0 cap, or that you cannot jump to a cynosural beacon while scrambled are some but certainly not all of the most important things to know. Without this basic knowledge, you are more liable to go down in a fiery ball of flames undocking from station or getting separated from the fleet, than going down in pitched battle in some epic engagement. We all wanna have fun together, not die alone and miserably.

The Lag
Syrup With Your Pancakes

Lag is the most important part of a capital engagement. Knowing how to operate your ship under these adverse conditions is the difference between idly sitting by as the rest of the fleet pelts hostiles, and watching your own guns light them up at the same time. The fleet commander of the engagement in D-GTMI could not stress this enough. If you know anything, know how to cycle your modules properly.

• Turn off Auto Repeat on ALL modules.
• Remove all weapon groups.
• Engage targeted weaponry and logistics in the following fashion:
  
  
  
  • Target ship; once a lock is acquired, a target box appears on your display.
  • Activate weapons or support modules
  • Double click all module icons next to the target box to deactivate the cycle.
  • Verify you did not double click space and have begun to drift.
  • Rinse and repeat.
  
  
• Engage self modules at will, bearing in mind that they will deactivate after one cycle and you will have to continually repeat each cycle manually.
• Be patient. Just because you cannot see anything happening, does not mean it is, or that it will not start shortly.
• Add your squadmates to your watch list.
• Watch your broadcast window for who needs what. It will be too confusing to watch some channel for squadmate X to announce he needs shields, a message which he may or may not be able to even send with lag.

Wrapping Up
Yes, You Have A Dirty Mind

I had never flown a capital into an engagement prior to D-GTMI nor would I say I jumped into the system knowing what the french toast I was supposed to even be doing half the time. However, knowing basic game mechanics, listening attentively, not talking out of line or spamming fleet chat with frivolous questions, and being patient, calm, and collected, pretty much allowed me to catch up with the veterans the entire time and run with the best of them. Do not be nervous or apprehensive, your fleet commanders are seasoned veterans who will and can explain all the subtle nuances of the engagement to you before you actually cyno into the fight.

It is not the most complicated thing in the world, nor is it really much different in some sense than any other encounter. Just remain calm, listen carefully, and do not over analyze things during battle, just do what you're told and do it right. Most of what you will be asked to do is no different than piloting a rookie ship. It is just on a grand scale. If you ignore the price tag on your ship, and resign yourself to losing it, as it is just pixels on a screen after all, you will be a boon to the fleet, not a burden. I cannot say the same for the few dozen pilots who cyno'd out on our fleet without orders when things got sketchy at the POS in D-GTMI. If I were their FC I would woop some serious ... for how selfish they were. The capitals were being reimbursed by CVA, and those pilots needed to grow some.

Judge, Jury, And Executioner

Judge, Jury, And Executioner
Sometimes Your Choices Are Made For You

We have been cast off, expelled as it were, from the proverbial pool that spawned the corporation we are today, no longer a member of the Apotheosis of Virtue, but still pursuing that long term goal, finding a place to live, be it by the flag over our corporate banner and the people that it entails, or the physical space we reside in, that every member of this corporation can thrive in. Because this corporation was founded on the platform that every person gets their shot at all things EVE, and we do not restrict ourselves to solely PvP, PvE, or Industry endeavors, it makes it rather tricky for us to achieve this lofty goal without an alliance of brethren to make it happen.

For us AOV no longer supported this goal if in practice not if in principle. Content to chase hostiles in small roaming fleets night after night, declare war on neutrals in Empire with some history of hostilities against Providence residents, and play it safe politically, while dreaming of greater glory, the alliance executor offered us every opportunity to rise to our own occasion, wholeheartedly, but unfortunately little incentive to do so in the end. What with half a dozen burgeoning capital pilots, members aching for frequent fleet activities involving more people than you count on both hands, and for strength in numbers, it become more and more of a burden for us personally to support long term goals that we so often felt were all on our shoulders alone , whether this was merely our perception or a reality, which in some sense is one and the same. Our alliance numbers dwindled over the course of a full fiscal year while our goals remained the same. The formula was simply not working.

Four weeks ago when we met with the alliance leadership to discuss plans to move North because the AU-F was struggling under its own weight and it looked like were going to lose a good enough portion of the members that make this corporation what it is that I simply had no choice but to take action, at which time we were told by the leadership a lot of "You cannot do this. You cannot do that." insofar as it concerns gaining ground with the powers that be up in the North. It was not that this was right or wrong, it was the principle of it. Here the AU-F was gasping for breath living in an environment, the alliance, where we were struggling to find reasons to even log on at night, and I was being told we should not do what is best for our corporation, and should instead consider moving everyone in one fell swoop out to NPC 0.0 and make a stand. The ubiquitous chest pumping campaign, as it were. It confused me to be honest. Our corporation, burned out and frayed around the edges, was gasping for relief, to be able to enjoy the content of the game again and be a part of a larger whole not the larger part of a whole as far as activity levels are concerned, and we were being asked to pick up all our stuff, jump into the gaping maw of hell, and fight to the death. We needed relief not fire and brimstone.

Thankfully, we came to an agreement, given that everyone just wanted what was best for the alliance, which in turn meant best for the AU-F as well, that we would continue to pursue a campaign in the North because AOV was not nearly large enough to make any further progress in Providence under its current platform and approach, and too small to entertain and sustain itself and moreso its lofty goals in the ever more bustling and packed Providence systems.

Due to factors well beyond our control, the Northern campaign had to be scrapped merely three weeks after it began, and we started trickling back to Providence. Now, I had told the officers, there would only be two reasons why I would return to Providence and ask them to come with me.

1. The format or environment of the alliance drastically changed in a way that I felt was conducive to the growth we needed to survive as a corporation while maintaining residency in greater Providence.
   
2. The environment of Providence vastly changed so that it became apparent a corporation or alliance of our size and with our particular goals could begin to flourish once more OR would be better off by comparison to NBSI 0.0 space.

Well, we never got a chance to meet with the alliance leadership to discuss the first point, and the second point as you all well know, has come to fruition even if merely by the fact that NBSI 0.0 itself has now deteriorated to the point that I believe our best opportunity to participate in the grand scheme of things and throw our lot in with good people, is now in Providence ever more so, and in some sense, specifically because we are now a free agent corporation, which vastly changes the potential we have to join an alliance that has the numbers, environment, and goals we have so dreamed of ourselves for six months or more. An alliance comprised of corporations like our own; a family environment where everyone knows your name.

Aside from this, because it is all behind us now, and while we wish our former alliance brethren the best of luck in their own endeavors, we have ourselves potentially been given the golden opportunity to join an alliance that is on the verge of everything we have dreamed of, has a wonderful power structure, and a leadership that strives for everything we have in the past six months. Meaning, all things EVE, and all things Providence. It was only when I felt like our alliance could never achieve these things with its present approach in Providence that I had to consider getting out, and finding NBSI, which would be more appropriate for an alliance of AOV's size and activity levels. However, Providence is more than amazing for this potential alliance of more than six hundred members, and by joining them we add to the whole, both bettering them, and being bettered ourselves in return. We will make our own difference, be it small or large, but that difference will not weigh heavily on our shoulders alone, it will be a shared burden.

Though I have interacted directly with the leader of this alliance only a few times in the past, I can tell you right now, if you have ever extended your trust to me as a friend and not just a CEO, you should extend it to him as well. This I can assure you, by my word.

To Fatal Ascension and to Raven Shadows, executor of Fatal Ascension, the AU-F extends its utmost offer and pledge of unity, camaraderie, and resources to better support, defend, and expand upon the interests, principles, and faculties of the greater Providence region, its holders, and its residents.

We who are about to die, salute you.


Disclaimer: Do not toss in the victory towel or start partying and getting excited about a wealth of opportunities opening up to us just yet as I will be formally applying for our membership in the Fatal Ascension alliance this afternoon at 23:00 EVE time pending we are granted final approval of the move. Nothing is as of yet written in figurative stone.

Veteran's Curse

Veteran's Curse
It Can Happen To You

So, I have been milling about since my vacation in October, desperately grasping at straws to figure out, as I say to myself often upon logging on, "After more than twelve months in this game, what the hell am I supposed to do now?"

• Logon
• Undock
• Shoot Stuff
• Drink Beer
• Make Merry
• Share Stories
• Entertain Friends

It sounds simple, right? Well, I had been told previously by a number of old timers, that there would be this wall I would hit, with the scope of the game suddenly laid out before me, and having experienced enough of it, I would then wonder, is there anything left, and why do I keep logging on anymore. This sounds ludicrous right? EVE is a huge sand box, there is no endgame? But at a personal level, there is. We all set long term goals for ourselves in EVE once we have had enough experience under our belts to know how to plan ahead six months or more, and when we finally reach that place we had hoped to be, and are then faced with even more planning, we start to wonder, is enough enough? Now, amazing friends to keep me entertained nightly and vice versa aside, I had always assumed this would not happen to me. There's a wealth of wonderful content to experience in this game, so surely I would not run out of steam right?

I did.

So I decided, I guess it was around the middle of November, or so, that the corporation as a whole should just take a huge load off, as we had been going hot and heavy for almost ten months straight at that point, trying to conquer the world, as it were. This was right about the time BEOR, GRIEV, and friends came on board to the AU-F. Unfortunate for them, though I could not really explain at the time, that half the officers were feeling and acting burned out and needed a nice long break from it all. So we lost them. Okay, shit happens. I can live with that, sad as it may be.

Then Dominion drops, and everyone comes back bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to take on the world, and toss their lot into the grand scheme of things. Oh woe is the pilot and group of players who discovers all that glitters is not gold, quickly, and drastically. Dominion brought change alright, but not the kind of change we can believe in, to be cliche.

However, after mucking around in Dominion for almost two months, and having launched our immense Northern Campaign and seen a rejuvenation of corporate incentives, energy, and motivation, I personally feel as refreshed and ready to take on the game as ever before. Maybe it helps that I just purchased, fit, and dazzled at my very first capital ship in the game, my Thanatos, named Simulacrum, because I still have a hard time believing I can now pilot one, let alone that it is physically sitting in a station with my character on board, even though I have been training towards it since September of last year. Maybe it was seeing everyone rush forth to pursue the campaign up in the far reaches of space more than well enough across the entire universe from where we have lived, breathed, and died for a year or so now.

So, I am back, and I am hungry for all things EVE, but here is the catch...

You are sitting down, right? You did not have a big lunch and you do not have a mouth full of milk at the moment with which to conveniently spew out of your nose?

The Northern Coalition is evidently going to turtle their primary assets, RAZOR and Morsus Mihi space, and retreat from Geminate, in order keep at bay the hounds of Triumvirate.

Our Northern Campaign? Poof.

I already shit my pants, don't worry about me.

So what now? I really do not know, I do know that I am continuing with my own project, the empire project, which I am now calling, the Gremlin Campaign, as I am just enamored with that term militarily, merrily dreaming of a some amazing ship model ingame named the Gremlin. This campaign will base out of Caldari high security space so no one needs to throw up their hands and pick up all their PvE or mining ships and mingle back to Domain or anything. And Varian's VERSA project, being a glorious success in my opinion, will continue as planned, but the scenery may change, though I am not certain on the details as it is all being hashed out still.

So what is the bottom line? More change is on the horizon but no one should panic and pick up all their stuff and retreat en masse back to Providence. However, it is in all likelihood that we will have to regroup there, and figure out what to do next, as far as a corporation goes, esp. since we will have to consider the alliance as a whole in the grand scheme of things too. I will be meeting with the heads of the alliance this weekend hopefully, to discuss options, etc.

The next post, hopefully later tonight, or tomorrow, will detail the various competing factors we may or may not have going for or against us, as it concerns gaining access to NBSI space, or taking what we can get and being happy with it. It will help me solidify my sense of the patterns laid out before me, and with any luck, ease the concerns of anyone who is thinking:

What the french toast? We just spent four weeks on a huge campaign only to have it disappear before our very eyes! Mendolus, your untimely death shall be by my hand! Have at thee!

Hopefully to ease those concerns with calming talk such as:

Well, the campaign was only meant to last 6-8 weeks anyways, succeed or fail, so we simply had to cut it short, due to factors beyond our control.

In the end it seems Dominion has opened some doors to us demographically but closed just as many if not more.

Crossroads

Crossroads
A Fork In The Road


The Path Already Traveled...
There are not very many times either in real life or an online environment where things really matter so much that it is almost palpable in the air. Sure there are tumultuous sometimes violent encounters between opposing forces, ideals, or peoples, but I am talking about times of pivotal decision making.

Last night the corporation convened for a rare but important meeting to talk about what we want out of this game not as corporate or alliance members but as individuals. Though most of the leadership suspected as much, we were all pleasantly surprised and overjoyed to hear that the sentiments were largely unanimous. We want to have fun, and we want to have fun together. Wherever it is, whatever it is, as long as its fun, and we are adhering to our ideals as a group, then we go for it. This is what the AU-F started with, and if I have my scruples, that is what it will continue with. We are here to enjoy an online game and the friends we choose to play it with. It is as simple as that.

The Pause...
Now, the lingering question in everyone's mind is, why are we not doing this now and why did we stop doing this in the past month or so? As per the last post made here an unfortunately long time ago I implored everyone to take a much needed breather in anticipation of a flurry of activity after Dominion dropped. The former happened, the latter, having something to do after Dominion actually dropped, did not. Not because of us, but more so because of the content of the expansion itself. Things did not pan out like we had all hoped they would. So since then we have been trying to apply this same formula (having fun for the sake of fun) to the alliance as a whole. Sparing you the gory details, this has been easier said than done. Our idea of sacrifice versus personal entertainment differs greatly from others, it seems. However, we are giving it everything we have got within reason, without sending the lambs to the slaughter, so to speak.

So because of this, the corporation has voted to not take on the Stain Project after all. And by corporation, I mean, we asked for volunteers to go out to Stain, and got no more than we could count on one hand, and with room to spare at that. This is the AU-F as a whole that has spoken on the matter. And I take very seriously what the majority of the corporation desires as a group at one point or another when opportunities are presented to us. What does this mean? I do not know. But we hope to find out soon after meeting with the leadership pool of the alliance. One thing that is clear, however, is that at this time Providence has gotten just a little bit too crowded for our tastes. CVA itself, sovereign power and one of the most respectable power blocks in the game, have no part in this, per say. They set forth on this path years ago, and could not have fathomed that the changes in the game mechanic and the player base would yield such a relatively inhospitable environment financially, rather devoid of the means which we all need to maintain our personal levels of entertainment. When I can squeeze out an L4 and bank more in fifteen minutes than I can in an hour on any average night out in Providence, then you know it is time to look to the horizon for a time and find another herd to track.

The Fork...
Now, CCP is talking under their breath about looking into adding NPC agents to player controlled space, and I think the reason being, is exactly what has happened to Providence. Providence is like a thermometer for all of EVE. It has both elements of Empire, low security, and null security all wrapped into one. And so you get this sort of massively complicated dichotomy with which if you were to take educated samplings of, you would get an idea of what is and is not working in the game itself, except for capital engagements of course. And so I think at some point in the next six months Providence may be viable again for pilots in our position, loyal to Providence, but unable to make a day's wage out there, so to speak. But I no longer have the patience personally to waste away another six months waiting for something to happen, to give me purpose out here. I want to have fun sooner rather than later, especially after spending the past few months wondering what we are supposed to really be working towards out here in the end.

Bearing this in mind, it behooves the Alliance to take up this initiative and find us space to live where we can prosper and flourish but not directly oppose or risk harming our brethren in Providence space. The AOV leadership has taken up this charge, which is what the Stain project is about. And the charge is, gain standings with the north. The north, comprised of the power block known as the Northern Coalition, with such alliances as RAZOR, Wildly Inappropriate, and Morsus Mihi, are not directly at odds with Providence residents or sovereign powers, and are the most logical choice of a place for us to go prosper and flourish and maybe maintain a long term and permanent residence should we find ourselves liking the space so much that we do not want to return to Providence. Not only this, but in the two years I have been gaming in EVE, I have only seen good from these alliances, rarely bad. In fact Morsus Mihi has always had my utmost respect, because they fly incredibly professional PvP fleets that are awe inspiring the few times I have seen them.

The Decision...
Now, the elephant in the room is, that the Alliance has chosen to take on the Stain Project, but we have not. So what does this mean? I do not know. I want to go back to the drawing board, but I want decisions to be made in days, not weeks, as this has already gone on long enough, the confusion, and lack initiative that is. We are going to convene with the alliance leadership at the earliest convenience, and bring these issues to light. The first order of business is we are temporarily and/or permanently leaving Providence. The second order of business is we do not wish to pick up our pilots, drop them into inhospitable space, and tell them to fight tooth and nail for survival. The third order of business is we want to primarily live in an environment that is conducive to wealth and progress first, and an environment that is target rich for combat fleets second. We had the former for the first six months we came out to Providence. Now we seem stuck in perpetuity with the latter, which is not good for the bottom line. Wars are waged with the dollar not with the soldier, in a philosophical sense. If we cannot fund our operations, what does a target rich environment give us? A whole lot of nothing.

The Path Yet To Be Traveled...
So before us lies two paths. One path leads to compromise between what the alliance thinks it needs and what we think we need. The other path leads to compromise between what we need and what the alliance thinks it needs. Which comes first? I am apt to believe after having devoted twelve months to alliance initiatives thus far that we need to make a few decisions for our own benefit that do not hinge solely on whether or not it benefits the alliance first and us second. I am trying hard to include the alliance in the grand scheme of things nonetheless but only time will tell if I am able to maintain this particular initiative.

The Rock...
So, times are changing and with those changes comes uncertainty. But to give everyone a rock to lean on I would like to announce the advent of the long awaited Empire Project. I have tried, unsuccessfully, for more than half a year, to get a project rolling that provides all pilots, new or seasoned, with a consistent, stable, safe, and lucrative environment in which they can prosper and flourish in every way. So far I have been largely unsuccessful because my time is so micromanaged that I rarely had more than a day every other week to devote to this end. Now, however, having come to the realization that things are not going to get done unless I have help doing them, I have a tactical director, Varian, able to take over the combat responsibilities that I have tried so hard to also maintain over the past six months, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. This leaves me much more time for administrative responsibilities and for infrastructure development, such as the Empire Project. So for this reason, regardless of what we do or do not do as a corporation or alliance, you will find, someday soon, in a system near you (if you live in Caldari High-Sec) a wealth of PvE opportunities with which to pursue both in missions, exploration, and industry. I have little to no details at this time because I have been unable to make a move on the project with all the uncertainty lately, but I can tell you it will happen regardless of all else.

So, if you are uncertain about what we are going to be doing in a week or two, as am I to a degree, one thing you CAN do is start pounding out Caldari missions to gain standings, or moving your mining and exploration ships to The Forge region. As early as tonight. Or sooner if you are bored.

See you in space my friends!
Mendolus

In The News Vol. #3

In The News
Vol. #3

• Taking that big leap.

PvP. I know a lot of people will not PvP without a group to back them up. But it's been my impression that most kills outside of blob warfare stem from small groups of 1-3 players who band together to pound on another similarly small group that literally just entered their area. If you are still apprehensive about your knowledge base or experience in PvP game mechanics not measuring up you need to do one of two things. Get out there and do it, or get on the test server and let a veteran show you. Fear keeps us at bay, but knowledge and experience set us free. I want to see more groups of 1-3 members out there living it up gangsta style in the coming weeks, with or without an official AU-F or AOV Fleet Commander at the helm.

• Longevity, tough job.

There is a hurdle in this game, that most people reach about three or four months in which peaks at around twelve months. If you have ever seen that amusing diagram on the learning curves in popular MMOs, you are likely to know what I am talking about when I say that the cliff face is indeed as high as it seems. I would like to call this hurdle the T2 Slump. About three or four months in you start to think to yourself, "Learning skills, check. Core skills, check. Can fly up to battlecruiser, check. Stable income, check. Now what?"

Well, for some, you start looking at one of two things as I've described at length on the forums. You either go T2 in BC or lower, or you go hog wild in battleship or larger, and whether that means T2 or not depends on your choice in ship. But that Cruiser V, that stupid skill is +20 days! What maniacal bastard designed this game anyways? Okay, well in all honesty, let's look at it this way, what T2 cruiser are you going to be using in anything other than PvP? Maybe an Ishtar or Zealot for ratting, okay, or a Logistics ship in PLEXs or L5s, okay. Is there much else? Not really. So while you wait for that agonizing skill to complete, nothing much changes for you, and nothing much changes in some sense when you get it. So relax, do not dwell on what will be, enjoy the fact that you're still going to be lining your wallet just like you always have, and while you wait on being able to fly those pricey T2 ships, it is business as usual.

What happens when you get into that ship? You get to have more fun, that's about it. It won't make or break you ability to adequately participate in small to medium sized gang warfare, nor will it make you unstoppable, but it will be one more shiny ship you can be proud to fly and learn to utilize. Looking down the line you realize that a lot of ships are like this; one more shiny tool that goes on my belt, along with all the rest I already have. So when you get to the place, where you are like "Why am I spending months training all this junk? I could go play FPS and just find fancy stuff laying around, pick it up, and start blasting folks with it," just think to yourself, that all this training, does not MAKE the game more entertaining for you by somehow making you more capable than you were before. Only your perspective, stance, experience, and effort do.

• Diplomacy paramount.

We recently had a diplomatic incident with a friendly corporation who had been hanging out in our public channel for a week or two. Nice, personable, congenial people can still sometimes take things well out of context, however, as it seems they have done. For some reason, it appears that their sister corporation, built for combat, had a member who fired on blues down the pipe from the PN4 corporation and the Einherjar Alliance. Said corporation was then reported as hostile for the remainder of the day in the security channel. Our alliance executor thus set them red as a KOS was pending at the time.

Let me clarify at this point. That's his job. And he's very good at it. Maybe, maybe once every month or two I will report a red I see in local only to be rebuked for them actually being neutral. So our members take this at face value. If you're red, you're dead. Members of our alliance, other blues, and the Providence residents at large thus began actively hunting, eliminating, and podding our new friends because they were now considered hostiles. Suddenly I am logging onto the game to watch my public channel filled with griping for six hours straight, asking us "Why why why?" over and over. Not my responsibility. Nor the alliance executor's, nor the people who fired on those pilots. Neither do I want to be forced to turn blink off on my own corporation's public channel because it is nothing but complaining and questioning for something that is not even our responsibility. PN4, Einherjar, and said parties should have immediately presented their case in the CVA-Diplo channel and sorted it out right then and there.

Diplomacy is a gentleman's game, and it requires one of two things, transparency or erudition. Our alliance executor is a man of transparent motives. He will tell you to your face what the problem is, regardless of whether you spill your coffee in shock or not. This is transparency, diplomatic relations are immediately out in the open, and the problem is rooted out. I myself use erudition, the artful measure of learned knowledge to the extreme. I will kill you with the facts, and let you come to your own conclusions after you have already been burned beyond recognition in light of the public sphere. Combined, these diplomatic measures ensure A) We always have a clear voice and B) We always cover our asses while laying it on you thick like butter.

I saw none of this in the public channel for hours which creates a sour taste in my mouth. If such a small relatively benign situation causes such upheaval, what of truly momentous events and disasters? If we are already at our peak for something so trivial as a common misunderstanding, how much more volatile can it get for when it really matters? Thankfully our members were gracious enough to explain that it was not our responsibility and if said corporation had diplomatic issues to raise them with the parties in question at the representative level, aka our executor, and the executor and/or CEO of the other corporation and alliance. Not our public channel where we relax and enjoy casual conversation and camaraderie. Do not barge into a poker game, waving a political flag crying foul on everyone in the room for something none of them were involved in while they are smoking cigars, drinking vodka, and dealing cards. You are likely to get shown the door very quick and in a less than gentle manner.

Where is the respect these days? I understand it is an online environment and people are free to mouth off all they want, but from a veteran CEO I would expect much more. I guess I am mistaken.

• Doing most by doing nothing.

Dominion. This expansion seems to be the greatest upheaval in game mechanics yet, so much so that I am not sure that the majority of the EVE gaming populace even has a solid opinion or has even had the chance to gasp yet at the idea that sovereignty will become much more solvent in a few short months.

However, while people begin to suffer egregiously from sovereignty fever the alliance executor and myself have deliberated on the subject and come to a firm conclusion. We are going to sit on the sidelines, not angle or negotiate for sovereignty of any kind, watch as the expansion drops, and we are going to protect CVA's interests first, and our own second. Why? Let's face it, every luxury, ISK, and good time we have had out in Providence has stemmed from CVA members who spent years cultivating, maintaining, and defending the space they worked so hard to conquer. My own gaming experience has been wonderful because they provided an open forum for me, the corporation, and people at large to grow on their own terms without the proverbial ball and chain to restrain us. So let us toast their blood and sweat with some of our own, and ensure that others who decide to try and take that which is not theirs, are stamped out, ever so quickly, when the Great Sovereignty Rush occurs. Trust me, it's in our best interests.

• A few good men.

While it may seem that we are vastly outnumbered when blobs of more than a dozen ships roam around Providence and we are floating around in half a squadron, I would like to point out that we are honing our combat skills to a fine degree, unlike those in large blobs who have the luxury of strength in numbers where whether one person or the next is as skilled as he can be matters little. Be proud of your combat experiences, as a skilled pilot is worth ten who are not.

• SiSi, your fine friend.

In line with the first topic in the news this week, I would like to encourage anyone who is unsure about the basic capabilities of their PvP ship and has not had as much experience testing that ship in real combat situations, to come onto the Singularity server, and test their mettle against any of my combat pilots. I can fly pretty much every ship type battleship or smaller except Logistics, so game on!

• Change is brewing.

Our format is working, we have 95% of our members living in low and null security on a daily basis now, and our combat fleets continue to excel in every encounter. However, we need to continue recruitment. We need combat pilots who are ready to help foster, acquire, and maintain sovereignty if and when we do find ourselves with it. We need 0.0 combat pilots, lots of them, just like the good people we have now who are rich in both skill and personality.

• AU-F Public goes stealth.

The Aurelius public channel has been set to Blocked operation which means it only admits those who have been manually entered into the Allowed list. A corporate mailer has been sent detailing the process to get your friends, our blues, or other miscellaneous people into the public channel.

• Jay (Mia) sells/looks for new char.

Jay is at it again! He has sold his Gallente character, Mia Dandoro, and is pursuing a set of characters with which to ensure he is able to maximize his limited time in the game. With a newborn only a few months old, even as he wraps up the harvest in the next week or two, he will have a baby in one hand, and a mouse in the other, on various occasions. Thus he is acquiring two Hulk pilots, and of course a combat pilot, and merging them onto one or two account. This way he can mine ore to fund his blood thirst, but will be able to simply walk away if his wife or son need his immediate attention. Look for him showing a new face in the next week or two. Let's hope his new character is named Inigo Montoya!

• Vacation nearing for Mendolus.

I am going AFK on October the 2nd and returning the 11th and I will likely not be taking a computer with me. However, the officers and managers know how to reach me in the event of a complete and catastrophic emergency such as Jacob nearly stepping on a bee and getting his junk stung when it flies up his pants in a fit of rage and burninates him.

• Providence space grows some.

Blobs. EVE Online: The Blobby Blob Age. Blobs. The slumbering beast has awoken in Providence, and fleets of dozens spring up everywhere in sight at the drop of a hat whenever there are reds inbound to an area. Providence residents are no longer content to play coy with our enemies and casually form up fleets to take them out as they have overstayed their welcome in the past few months. The fighters are scrambled the moment the blip hits the radar panel and I have seen some amazing response times in Providence in the past week or so. Blood for the blood god!

• War!

Well, we are at war. The reasons have been discussed at length both in private, public, and ventrilo, but suffice it to say, our war targets are carebears and scammers and we are not likely to get much of a fight out of them whatsoever. In fact, to my knowledge, not one of those muggles has logged on since the war went live. Shameful.

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.