The Old Ways

The Old Ways
Merely Waiting, Not Dead


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compton, in my EVE?

Just Another Day
In A Violent Neighborhood


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Big Week, Big Moves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sovereignty

Well, I got your attention, right? Hehe. No, we are not getting it... yet. This is not a dirty trick though, I really need your help.

The Alliance is setting its sights on sovereignty with respect to the winter expansion that CCP has said will contain updates to the mechanic. Basically, the moment the sovereignty mechanic changes, it will become a virtual land grab. You might as well call it the Great Sovereignty Rush.

And we want to be prepared for it. To do this we need one thing, POSs. Sure we can hope that with the new mechanic, there will be less POS spamming, but that will not change the fact that the backbone of any 0.0 alliance is its ability to support and maintain permanent infrastructure, esp. moon mining and capital production.

To do this we need MINERS to participate in weekly ICE mining operations both in Empire and 0.0 space.

This coming week there will be an alliance sponsored ICE mining operation to get fuel stockpiled for POS we presently have and those we will have in the future. Please read your corporate and alliance mailers for the dates and locations of these weekly gangs.

Do not just join some alliance that has already done all the work, making you a mere afterthought in the history of the game, help us make it happen so you can be a chapter in that history. You may not become the next Chribba, but to your friends you will always be a hero.

AU-F Tournament

AU-F Tournament
Saturday August 1st 2009


DATE Saturday August 1st 2009
TIME 02:00 EVE | 10pm EST
LOCATION Test Server
FORMAT Team Deathmatch
SHIPS Mixed
RESTRICTIONS Podding
REWARD Medals, Bragging Rights, Grab Bag
SPECIALS First Blood Prize

Instructions on how to connect to the test server will be posted here after I go through the steps myself tonight or tomorrow.

Team Deathmatch

Teams will consist of 1-3 pilots
Teams may only have one officer*
Each team sponsors a Squadron Commander
Team Commander may be anyone
Audio communications optional during the event
Fleet audio only is advised
Fleet may comprise of any mix of ships
Podding is not allowed
Pods must dock and stay docked
Last team standing wins
Deathmatch timer lasts 20 minutes
Timer starts when first player is eliminated
First to lose ship announces in tournament channel
Timer resets when teams are eliminated
Last team standing with the most kills wins
Commentary will consist of a tournament channel
Commentator will be Mendolus
Mendolus will announce minutes remaining 20,10,5,4,3,2,1
Commanders announce when their team is eliminated
Commanders do not reveal who eliminated their team

*Officers: Cmdr GAT, Kuroda Tsu, Mendolus, noldevin, Mia Dandoro, Varian Knight



That's it. Those are the rules. Start looking for teammates now. Prepare for the bloodletting!

The Soldier

The Soldier
At Heart And In Mind


What makes a person a soldier? What type of baseline personality leads to traits, qualities, actions, behaviors, and values that lead to a person who has the wherewithal to jump into the fray, guns blazing, cigar smoldering, and lips curled?

After Zee's recent exit from stage left, searching for something larger and greener than what we can provide in his eyes, am I curious to explore the notion of the soldier. What is this notion that human conflict, domination, and competition are somehow bred into people or born from the start? I am a philosopher, hell I am even majored in it, though the slip of paper means relatively little to me. The things I ponder when these questions come to mind lead me from one vast extreme to the other of the collective notion of human hubris and valor both.

What is a true soldier? I am a true soldier. Plying my secret trade in small, miniscule, and calculated steps one foot in front of the next, I am the epitome of one who by nature embodies the hunt. Though I may not seem it, the ultimate bloodsport to me is the hunt itself. The kill is a hollow easy thing. It is the anticipation, the hunt, the great divide between predator and prey. I am always calculating, everything I do ingame is a calculation, I even make mistakes on purpose, for my own reasons. Sure, no one is perfect, I mess up plenty, hell I never intended to get podded like I was, though I knew I was taking an action that had a higher degree of risk that I would be. I woefully assumed that my targets might have their overviews improperly setup. Wow, was I wrong. But I learned more. But some of my mistakes are an experiment of their own put into play for a reason. This is about learning, taking calculated risks, to better understand your opponent. Pushing the envelope.

What I am hunting though? Am I on LSD or something or is this some sort of sick joke? No.

I used to love the hunt in Warcraft. PvP in Warcraft was a dying art. You had to really search for it. The best PvP? Solo.

I would go to Stranglethorn Vale, stealth up, and just hunt. No, killing lowbies is easy, you are right. What is not easy, is hunting them, nurturing that animal in your breast that has thousands of years of hunter instinct built into its every fiber. Learning to channel that instinct is the key to nurturing an effective competitive spirit in nearly any virtual or real competition or actual conflict. Tapping into the understanding required to manage the fear, anticipation, apphrensive, situational decision making, critical thinking, and the like in sometimes ridiculously complex and dynamic situations where there are mere seconds to make the right choice. What do you think they do to train the Navy Seals? They train the instinct out of them, amplifying the fight response, and numbing the flight response. They train Navy Seals to manage or negate fear. And that is the key. Clear and critical thinking.

So, right now you are thinking, okay so you went to a lowbie zone as a level 60 and hunted easy prey, this is the biggest slop of shit I have ever heard, how does that make you a hunter?

Did I not follow my prey for ten or fifteen minutes, observing their patterns of movement in a zone known for constant hostilities? Did I not kill them once in a situation where I could quickly dash behind objects to belay my actual presence and encourage them to lack a full understanding of what was going on? Did I not follow them again after they returned to their body, not killing them, but simply observing their next move, how far would they run, would they stay, would they hearth, would they call in help, would they stand and wait for my inevitable return? Again, and again, and again I tested them, learning how they reacted, putting a pattern to their behavior. And I did not do this just in lowbie zones, I did this everywhere. This is not the mind of a gamer, this is the mind of a hunter, slowly categorizing, profiling, and analyzing his intended prey to perfect the hunt. I used to wait in crypts, stealthed up, for a half an hour, just for the one lowbie who wandered down there solo, busting his way through 10-20 mobs that were 2-3 levels higher than him, finally getting to the bottom level, and then I would gank him, repeatedly, again and again until all the mobs respawned, then I would simply stealth up, leaving him abandoned, alone, deep inside a crypt with mobs that were too tough for him to begin with, just to see if he hearthed, or was emboldened by the conflict to fight his way back out. And you know, I would let him, all the way to the top, and I would not pursue him further. Yes, yes I was an ass, but I was learning, perfecting my understanding of what the average player would and would not do in the game, from the bottom to the top, from the lowest to highest level. I would even form packs with a few trusted friends and go into the starting zones where the lowbies were not flagged to us, just to see what we could accomplish. Just how many 60s would show up, how many lowbies would flag themselves, how many would run back to their town, how many guards would we be able to take on and for how long. How did they behave, what did they do, how could we most effectively dispatch them. We were hunters. The point was not to drive them out, or overpower them, that was easy and to be honest I consider it a base and lowly initiative to simply gank lowbies or defenseless players for the sake of it alone, without some driving force behind it. The point was to hunt, and perfect the hunt. To learn about our prey.

One time in particular comes back to me when I think about it.

"I'll never forget the one time that I convinced my friend Candwe to come out to STV to see this solo hunting I kept telling her about. I made her follow me while I stalked this lowbie for 15-20 minutes, just watching him quest and shit, no interaction whatsoever, but I went and I ganked 2-3 people right in his area, then I stealthed up again, and waited for the inevitable, someone reported in alliance local that a 60 was ganking, so this guy gets scared, and he runs back to the town right."

"I follow him there, and I sit there, and then I start /wave /greet /grin at him and stuff"

"he can't figure it out, he's like ???"

"finally after about five minutes of walking around the town trying to see who was waving at him, he musta realized he should do a /who, then he figured out it was me (because the opposing faction does not register with a /who), the 60 that was reported, so he runs into the inn really quick "

"I stealth into the inn, top level, and I gank his ass and dash out of the town and run off into the night"

"Candwe was o.O o.O o.O o.O o.O"

"I think I honestly scared her, she refused to go hunting with me anymore, lmao, I mean she thought it was hiliarious how the guy couldn't figure out who the hell was waving at him, but I think she was like 'oh wow this is too evil for me' HAHAHA"

So, yea, big deal right, again, I have a point I hope, you're thinking right?

Well, my point is, I'm tired of losing members every month or two because they think we do not have enough opportunity for competitive gameplay for them, or that the grass is greener somewhere else. I can assure you, you will find few people capable of the levels of depravity I am ingame concerning human conflict and PvP. You should have seen some of the sick things I did to people in Warcraft in the name of the hunt. There are a few people like this already in the alliance as it is, I am not unique in this respect. Uriella for one comes to mind, or Psyclone, Maximus, Logic, Varian, or Staigor. We are all depraved f*%ks who love to strike out on our own
randomly into the depths of space and just pound on a f&%ker because we can, and learn how to do it better the next time.

So, people want PvP, and I am going to give it to them, but this may be one of those be careful what you wish for situations, because up until now we have been fairly straight forward in our approach to PvP. We bring out a gang, we go out, we try to find a solitary or small group of hostiles that we either out match or are on the same level as and we give it our best, otherwise we make best speed in the opposite direction.

No more.

At least, not in my fleet, the Gremlin Squadron. Our fleets serve a very specific purpose that is critical to our residency in Providence space. We are the guard patrol that goes out at night, checking the fences and the tree lines, ensuring there are no lurkers in the bushes, and chasing out or destroying anyone who does make it across the fence. But this is not the entirety of the PvP experience, and far from it. And I am all for turning us more into a soldier's outfit than sentry duty at the fences or border cops.

You know all those reds that float around in Providence in small stealthy or swift boats that can easily escape a situation that goes south, slowly moving from one system to the next, waiting for just the right moment to strike, those are hunters. We are prey. Blobs in Providence are an anomaly of a broken mechanic. EVE was never intended to be nothing but a Primary Fest but it is. You join a large fleet, all you get is a numbers game. Who gets off the first few rounds of shots and knocks out half a dozen crucial ships before the other blob can. It's simple.

But the hunt, the hunt is not. And I am going to train hunters, not prey, nor cannon fodder. Big fleets are fun, but after awhile it dawns on you that big fleets are for big politics, and unless you have something at stake personally or within your organization beyond the principle of the matter like us, there is really no reason to participate.

Competition is a fickle unforgiving beast. One minute you are about to hammer the nail in the coffin and the next minute the coffin is laying on the ground with the lid busted off and you are dead in a pool of your own blood. This is the reason we hunt. To learn about our prey, perfect our mastery of an art that has been bred into our bones for millenia. This may all sound too abstract, too over the top, too tongue-in-cheek to you, but after I'm through training the Gremlin Squadron, you will be grateful for the experience it brings.

What does this all mean?

I have decided to help us both financially and structurally at least in respects to PvP as it continues to be a flash point for our corporation. The next member we lose will be because we have TOO much PvP, and not the other way around.

I will be privately funding the fuel, operation, and progress of the manufacturing POS myself from now on. I will be using the Ark to ferry goods to and from low security space. I will be ratting. And I will be PvPing. That's it.

You are talking to the guy who when he made the decision to get into PvP the first thing he did was go straight to Syndicate 0.0, the shithole of the universe, and run around for a week, busting gatecamps, and following people around, observing how they operated and lived, learning about my future prey. I don't mess around.

Anyone who joins me, will be trained to be a hunter, and nothing else. You want to be a hunter, you come to me.

Where will the Gremlin Squadron go to train in the hunt? Where won't we go?

I am tired of hearing about PvP, so we are going to go find some. Better grab your sack and clench your teeth, because it will be a sleigh ride in hell. Just ask Jacob, I took him out there last summer, to Syndicate, he got podded. Heh.

Chris (Varian) once told me that he had never quite seen someone fly a ship like that in EVE when it came to our corporate tourney that we had in February; the one I won by the way with a Kestrel of all ships all the way to the last round when I had to sacrifice it to pop Varian, and then was forced to hop into my Caracal. He was being sincere, and though it is rather obscene of me to pander my own compliments or the fact that I won the tourney, if you have something to share, you should share it. And I have something to share with anyone who flies under my banner in PvP. I have been so long in the administrative role since I formed this corporation that sometimes I forget that I am a sonofabitch when it comes to PvP and I know a thing or two. Heh. Time for me to share. Hope you have a strong stomach.

Btw, we are going to start the tourney system up again, it'll happen every other weekend. The first tournament will be Saturday the 1st at 02:00 EVE on the test server.

See you there, prey.

:)

We Will Rise

Transmogrification

Some weird stuff is coming down the line in Providence and I am a little more than apprehensive about what I am seeing. I am a particularly good watcher when it comes to things like this, and even with the limited amount of searching I do, the information still seems to trickle down to me one way or another, whether from a close associate or just an itch on the back of my neck that I have to go out and satisfy.

I just wanted to make everyone aware that some flak is zinging about out there and that I am making sure we do not get hit with any of it. I am a little concerned about the null region we have come to depend on so greatly. Good thing we are getting an Ark in thirteen days, eh? It will allow us to have options, if and when things go south out there in the promised land. I adore Providence space, but... there is some weird stuff floating downstream.

SO, who likes Frenchie space? *coughs*

Impetus

Impetus
Laissez-Faire Versus Imperial

So, without going into too much detail, I am asking that everyone goes to the corporate forum and votes on one of two financial directions for the corporation to take. But first, you must read what is at stake as listed below:




Casual Hardcore
Laissez-Faire System

As a casual first, hardcore second corporation we would continue much as we have thus far, relying on group participation on a mostly voluntary basis to ensure that corporate services, progression, interests, and integrity are best served when members themselves have an interest in these things at the time. This system means that we will frequently go through periods with a lull in activity levels which result in economic, social, political, and structural deviations from the normal day to day run of the mill. But this system also means that members themselves dictate at just what pace the corporation moves day in and day out, and that members have the freedom to participate to whatever level they feel appropriate without fear of repercussions for their personal activity levels or lack thereof. This system progresses in stages, sometimes forward, sometimes backwards, and requires the meticulous attention, observation, maintenance, and regulation of a greater majority of member players, as a system that fluctuates over time must be constantly monitored for downtrends or changes in overall momentum and corporate services, and the like will frequently go through periods of downsizing or inactivity.

Example: A structurally transitive, voluntary flat tax, and publically traded system.

Structurally Transitive - Subject to random unpredictable change in relation to the changes in interest, focus, and participation within the corporation as a whole.
Voluntary Flat Tax - You want a corporate service, you pay a flat tax per month to have unlimited access to that service while the corporate tax is raised to 20% to guarantee that as long as majority of players pay the voluntary tax, the corporate tax will attempt to compensate for those who do not. The many suffer the few.
Publically Traded - The members, regardless of their participation levels, by majority, decide what they want, whether it be living in Empire for months accumulating ships and dust, or diving into deep hostile null and pitting ourselves in bloody battle against the powers that be. This would be a democracy, the common majority rules, with no regard to individual level of participation or contribution .

Positives: Relaxed and mostly casual gameplay
Negatives: Sovereignty, Capital and T2 construction, large member base, are all virtually impossible.




Hardcore Casual
Imperial System

As a hardcore first, casual second corporation we would take on drastic changes that focus on rewarding those who reward themselves. The focused, diligent, impetus driven players would reap the greatest rewards from a system that directly reciprocates every ounce of energy that they put into it. This means that corporate services, progression, interests, and integrity are served by only those who have its interests in mind whether at the public or private level. This system means that the corporation itself will remain active, persistent, and progressive at no slower than its most productive member group. This also means that those who are not able to keep up with the most productive member group will have little to no access to the benefits that lie therein. However, the spoils of productivity will be greatly amplified by an imperial system as the productivity of the corporation's most active members never stalls for lack of initiative the way it would in a laissez-faire system. Whether publically or privately funded, corporate incentives and initiatives will always be moving forward so long as the most active member group or core impetus of the corporation moves forward.

Example: A quota, involuntary flat tax, and private venture capitalist system.

Quota - Same as what has been done already for months behind the scenes, individual corporate services are available depending on how much aggregate income the corporation is generating as a whole.
Involuntary Flat Tax - You pay a monthly flat tax, regardless of whether you use a particular corporate service or not, but on the bright side the corporate tax is only 10%. The flat tax guarantees the corporation receives an exact stipend every month regardless of participation levels. The few suffer the many.
Private Venture Capitalist - The members in regards to their participation levels, but regardless of the majority, decide what they want, whether it be living in Empire for months accumulating ships and dust, or diving into deep hostile null and pitting ourselves in bloody battle against the powers that be. This would be an oligarchy, the uncommon minority rules, with every regard to those who participate and contribute the most.


Positives: Sovereignty, Capital and T2 construction, large member base, are just a stone's throw away.
Negatives: Intense and focused gameplay that requires a great investment of personal time.



Cast your vote here!

Sharks & Kneecaps

Sharks & Kneecaps
Butter Versus Guns Debate
For The Modern Age

So the discussion on the corporate forums this week has been finances. After posting a fairly straight forward plea to my brother's in arms here in the blog, the response has been resounding. Everyone wants to pitch in with a little bit of what they have so that we are all a little better off than were before.

The catch? Figuring out how to do it and not send anyone to therapy in the process. So here goes, quotas. Yep, one magical word to save all the kneecaps, hehe. How does a quota work in an MMO? The same way it does in real life. The quota is met, services keep running, the quota falls short, services are postponed until the next period.

So, what will the quota be, and what services will hinge on it? Here's a list, and some explanation to go with it.

Quota: Aggregate income generated by the corporation from taxes, donations, and sales.
Frequency: Weekly
Gradations (in millions of ISK): Class 1 (25), Class 2 (50), Class 3 (100), Class 4 (200)


Group Services (by overall performance):

POOR
Frigate Program
(ESC)

AVERAGE
Cruiser Replacement, Public Research, Manufacturing,

EXCELLENT
Battlecruiser Replacement, Chemical Reactions


Personal Services (by overall and voluntary performance):

POOR
Member Rank

AVERAGE
Limited Intelligence Roles, Soldier Rank

EXCELLENT*
Medium Intelligence Roles, Senate Roles, Starbase Roles, Manager Roles


*Note: These roles assigned to eligible parties only.


Divisional Layout
by Class Performance Versus Weekly Quota

Dynamic quota for set performance assigned by projected income in tandem with present estimated net worth in solvent assets both liquid and structured. Dynamic quota calculated once every two weeks or on the first and third week of the month. The quota must be met weekly, but it will remain in effect for two weeks. Thus a Class 2 quota of 50,000,000.00 ISK/wk set on the first week of the month will not be evaluated or changed until the third week of the month even if the quota is not met on the first week but is met on the second week.

Estimation of group services rendered based on dynamic quota as well as the service goal. Quota met means service goal remains in place; quota is set to meet a projected goal results in designated services remaining in place.



EXAMPLE
Overall Performance

Corporate net worth is estimated at 200,000,000.00 ISK and the projected base operating cost for the coming two week period is 250,000,000,00.00 ISK.

Battlecruiser program is short on minerals by an estimated 50,000,000.00 ISK worth and cannot continue to operate without an influx of mineral stuffs or liquid income.

Class 2/3 quota is set at the corporate level with an EXCELLENT performance projection of services available as the stake.

Scenario A: Corporation fails to meet Class 1 quota on one or both divisions of the two week term meaning the corporation has received less than 25,000,000.00 ISK in taxes, donations, or indirect income of any means. Mendolus is driven to drink, GAT goes postal, and Varian's capillary on his forehead explodes. Corporate services basically shut down for the next two week term.

Scenario B: Corporation reaches Class 1 quota on one or both divisions of the two week term meaning the bare operating cost has not been met at all. POOR performance evaluation means that the battlecruiser, cruiser, reaction, public research, and manufacturing services are shut down for the following two week term.

Scenario C: Corporation reaches Class 2 quota on one or both divisions of the two week term meaning the bare operating cost has been met but only with an AVERAGE performance evaluation. The battlecruiser replacement program shuts down for two weeks as well as the chemical reactions program available at both the public and corporate level.

Scenario D: Corporation reaches Class 3 quota on one or both divisions of the two week term meaning the goal operating cost has been met and all services remain in effect.

Penalties: Failing to meet a quota will almost always result in a loss of service as some of these things like the ship program simply cannot operate without meeting a quota and I cannot fudge or forgive a failed quota as there is nothing to fudge and forgiving will not put minerals in the assembly array, hehe. But for example, if we are at war and no one rats for a week straight, I am gonna try to squeeze every last drop out of the minerals we have, rather than shut the program down, etc.

EXAMPLE
Voluntary Performance

Personal services are eligible on a voluntary basis. Obviously this corporation is a place where anyone from the casual player with a family and kids to the hardcore teenager in his mother's basement can experience, enjoy, and explore the game with a group of like-minded individuals.

That being said, if you want to be casual, log on once a week, shoot a few tools in 0.0 with us, and then disappear into the night again, we will miss your ass when you are gone for the next six days but it will be no skin off our back. If you want access to performance related services you must meet a voluntary quota per two week period to do so. These are soft requirements. Think of it like the IRS, as long as your math adds up we just ignore the discrepancies, but if the math does not add up we break out the enormous magnifying glass and determine just what you are really up to. For instance, Falgoria rats all the time, when he logs on, he logs on in the same 0.0 system a majority of the time. I will not even bother to scrutinize whether he donates ISK to the corporation, or count the junk loot he donates, or suppose that he is not meeting an EXCELLENT performance rating every two weeks. Others, who may play once a week have what may be a POOR performance rating, thus I will need to take a closer look at their participation.

This is how voluntary performance will work. If I come to you and say, "Hey, look, everyone likes you here, you are never going to have to worry about your place in this corporation, but I am just not seeing the kind of participation out of you that leads me to think we can continue to offer you the services we currently do. Please step up a bit more if you would like to continue receiving these services at a personal level."

What does that mean in practice? Factors. Divide Class performance by a factor of five and you have what I expect from everyone in the corporation for them to be eligible for services and roles. If you wanna be a member role, get free frigates, and have me haul your shizzle with my Ark, I wanna see 1,000,000.00 ISK out of you every week if the current quota is Class 4 meaning we are really strapped for income as a corporation. How do I figure? Well, you want to meet a POOR performance rating, to be eligible for corporate hauling, but you could care less about any other services, so you are really telling me that you want to meet a Class 1 performance quota when we are at Class 4, so I say fine... 25 a week by five by another five is a million a week. If I am hauling your ratting loot out of 0.0, you could have popped all of 10,000,000.00 ISK worth of rats in 0.0 that week to have met that quota via taxation. You are good to go. But if you want a battlecruiser at cost of insurance, I expect Class 4 performance on top of the fact that we are already at a Class 4 quota, meaning I expect 200 by five by a quarter which is 10,000,000.00 ISK into the corporation per week. This ship program is not a one time deal, if you buy a battlecruiser at cost of insurance and lose it the next day it gets built again, and you get it again at cost of insurance. So a higher quota is not really that bad since the quota is lower than the cost to build the ship anyways.

I do not care how it gets there, taxes, donations, your sister's phone number, etc. I just wanna know you are earning it. If you do not want free frigates, or secure hauling because you do not think you want it, so be it, just let me know, I want to know, and there will be nothing further for me to worry about. You play casual, I have less to worry on, easy. You have become eligible for the role of a manager (like Meatay) and that means you have volunteered for a role of responsiblity. That means I expect to see 40,000,000.00 ISK out of you in some fashion every week. That is in anyway shape or form. If you lead a single mining operation that yields 400,000,000.00 ISK worth of minerals, and taking into consideration that the corporation buys those minerals at 90% market value, making a 40,000,000.00 ISK profit, guess what, there could have been ten people mining and it may have taken you all of two hours to mine that ore, but you just met your voluntary quota, and you are still a top notch manager.

Math. Personal quotas are an agreement between you, me, the officers, and the wind when it comes to deciding if you have met it each week or not. It is an honor system more than something you need to worry about day in and day out. If I have to do the math, there is a problem, you know what I mean? So do not worry above the above statements wherein the math is just kind of sprinkled over each paragraph rather than laid out in stone. I am not anticipating I will ever once have to break out the calculater to determine if someone is asking for services that they have not earned the right to utilize. I will know right away if they have or not, in what I am anticipating will be 95% of circumstances.

Penalties. Well, I am going to assume I will not have any problem whatsoever with people meeting the quota both overall and on a voluntary basis since I have laid it out but in the rare event I do, I will play it by ear. Pretty much, you can assume that if you miss the quota, I am going to either just ignore it the first time, or let you know, and if I ignore it the first time I may let you know the second time, or ask you if you do not want the responsibility anymore, or I may even wait for the third time. If I know you are motivated by other things have come in the way, you are gonna get the benefit of the doubt.

Real Life. Hey, this entire post is just a way for me to reciprocate what YOU guys all deliberated on in the thread on the forums. You guys said you are willing to chip in more, and I developed the only way I think we can do it without breathing down people's necks or tightening up control over your free time both ingame and out of game. Not only that, but this is a game, and you have a life outside of it that is more important, at least I hope you do, so if you find out your sister has the clap and you need to go give her some emotional support for a few days and miss that quota somehow, you are off the hook, promise. Just please remind me to throw her number away now, after you bartered it to meet the last quota. *wink*

So, the basic idea is, yes, some of our core members are extremely active and may very well account for half our corporate income over time, but they will also receive the most benefits. And if you do not want to help carry the torch yourself for whatever reason, no one is going to fault you, as you may have real life commitments or priorities that take precedence, or you may simply not care whether you get battlecruisers at cost of insurance or not, and that is your choice. If you want that service in the future, it is available to you pending various factors both of overall corporate performance but voluntary performance as well.

Please also keep in mind the reason quota remains in effect for a two week period while it is measured on a weekly basis is so I can decide whether or not the quota from one week offsets the quota from another. If we only pull in 50mil the first week during a quota period of 100mil a week but 150mil the next week, then I may consider it a break even rally factor.

Capice?

ESC

Empire Service Courier (ESC)
Final Rendition - The Promised Land

The ESC program has a rich history going all the way back to last fall when we first arrived in Domain, with our griefer WTs nipping at our heels the whole way, having already planned this exodus before they even declared war on us, we found ourselves out in low security space a majority of the time, nervous, apprehensive, and unsure of how to get materials from Empire to low security safely. This was when I began training towards Transport ships on Mendolus. Shortly after Christmas last year, I dinged Transports I. The rest is history.

Seven months later after working myself to near exhaustion doing well over half a billion cubic meters of hauling every month in the recent past with a ship that can only carry 12,000 m3 per trip, I am looking towards the future, where goods are jumped back and forth with relative ease, and I can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Okay, so in less than twenty days, our corporation is going to be capable of jumping goods from Mista to Misaba and back at a cost of around 8,000,000.00 ISK round trip via the Ark, a Jump Freighter.

What does this mean for all the massive amounts of painstaking, debilitating, infuriating hauling that we have all had to do time and again? A majority of it will go up in smoke! Yes, you may rejoice. We will soon reach the Promised Land of hauling.

But, what does this change, per say? Everything.

From the moment the corporation acquires an Ark the following guidelines will replace all previous ones for how the corporation handles hauling jobs:

All goods for PERSONAL COURIER you need jumped from Mista to Misaba or vice versa, originate in these two systems ONLY. That means if you want goods delivered from Empire to Misaba, go out and purchase them, haul them to Mista, then set a courier contract from Mista to Misaba at the corporate level. 50,000,000.00 ISK collateral is still the rule. If ten people set couriers at max collateral, it will cost me 500,000,000.00 ISK to jump them all at once, I think you see where I am going with this. I may be relatively loaded, but go easy on my wallet okay? Thanks! If you want goods delivered from Misaba to Mista, those goods need to be contracted at Misaba. Yes that means you now have to haul your stuff from H9-J8N all the way to Misaba. Do not worry, there is a silver lining listed below.

All goods for CORPORATE COURIER will be handled at the corporate level and you will probably only know about how the process works if you are somehow involved in either the acquisition of those goods or facilitating the hauling of those goods.

Here comes the best part:

Cost: FREE!
Schedule: Weekly
Volume: Up to 50,000 m3 per courier
Collaterial: Up to 50,000,000.00 ISK per courier

If you notice, the volume limit will allow you to have packaged cruisers and battlecruisers delivered straight to Misaba. In addition to that, please also notice the schedule, it is going to start out as a weekly thing, one jump per week. If demand increases for this service, there will be two jumps a week, or three. If it really gets to that point, a small service fee will be taken out of corporate taxes to pay for my fuel, so you will NOT have to pay directly yourself for a courier.

*PLEASE NOTE: This service does not go into effect until the day the Ark hits my ship hangar and Maduin is able to pilot it.

AU-F Bazaar

AU-F Bazaar
Solar Ships

The ship replacement program is taking on a more streamlined form and function. Details below.

Okay so you want a ship built by the corporation? I thought about making a detailed, formatted, and professional list of all the options available to you, but I think I will just word it out. Here goes.



You want a frigate, guess what those are FREE! So you fly to MISABA, you post a contract at the corporate level at the only station in the system, and you make that contract for an Item Exchange, add the frigate you desire, and set no prices.

You want a cruiser for personal use, guess what those are AVAILABLE AT COST! So you fly to MISABA, you post a contract at the corporate level at the only station in the system, and you make that contract for an Item Exchange, add the cruiser you desire, and set that you will pay the same cost as the ship is in Empire.

You want a cruiser for corporate use, guess what those are AVAILABLE AT COST OF INSURANCE! So you fly to MISABA, you post a contract at the corporate level at the only station in the system, and you make that contract for an Item Exchange, add the cruiser you desire, and set that you will pay the cost of platinum insurance on that ship.

You want a battlecruiser for personal use, guess what those are AVAILABLE AT COST! So you fly to MISABA, you post a contract at the corporate level at the only station in the system, and you make that contract for an Item Exchange, add the battlecruiser you desire, and set that you will pay the same cost as the ship is in Empire.

You want a battlecruiser for corporate use, guess what those are AVAILABLE AT COST OF INSURANCE! So you fly to MISABA, you post a contract at the corporate level at the only station in the system, and you make that contract for an Item Exchange, add the battlecruiser you desire, and set that you will pay the cost of platinum insurance on that ship.



Rules And Guidelines
Oh hey look, there is fine print!

Personal Use - Fly it, ride it, smash it, sell it, lend it to your buddy, do whatever you want with it, it belongs to you, you paid for it after all.

Corporate Use - Do not take it out of low or null security, do not package it, do not insure it yourself, do not let anyone borrow it. This ship is corporate property and you have received it for cost of insurance. This is a company car dude, take it out and get it demolished, but only if you are the one driving!

Contract Duration - You need to set that contract to last for two weeks, I ain't a friggin magician, I need time to work this kind of magic, it is definitely not easy like Sunday morning.

Role - We are going to have T1 fittings out the turd launcher any day now, if you want to have your ride pimped be sure to list a role in the Description field of the contract you issue, such as PvP, PvE, Ratting, Salvaging, Womanizing. I will try to throw on a good fit for any role you list.

Cost Of Insurance, WTFBBQ? - It's easy, pop open EVEMon, open a plan, go to the ship browser, look at the first line on the ship description, oh base price! Platinum insurance is 30% of base cost. I am gonna leave the ball in your court on this one. Have fun!

Eligibility, I can haz? - Well, I hate to be a curmudgeon, but some of these ships eat up a lot of minerals to manufacture even with perfect manufacturing, so only certain people will be eligible for them. Who? Anyone can have frigates from day one, even that bug-eyed stranger lurking in the shadows who somehow slipped by Varian's screen of impenetrable interviewing! Cruisers, only those with the Member role. Battlecruisers, only those with the Soldier role. Do not fret, roles will be updated soon, as at the time this blog was written few people had the Soldier role.

The Culling

The Culling
A Time For Blood


I have given some serious thought in the past week to Providence space. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot fathom living in any other space. Why? I mean, these boundaries were founded on unsavory roleplaying terms of a storyline involving religious zealots who plied in human trade. How could I want so badly to live here? Let's be honest, EVE is a rich storyline, full of vast ever farther reaching and encompassing plots that are meant to entertain not preach morality. Much like any good novel, there is always a mixture of grays, and few true black and whites. By making our own way through this region, we are simply playing and entertaining ourselves, in a way we sit fit as well. Let Ushra'Khan and CVA roleplay as they desire, if they even still do so by majority (more by proxy now I am assuming from the evidence I have seen), we are here for our own reasons, and none of them involve roleplaying or storyline tales.

So, that being said, what does keep drawing me to Providence space? It is the NRDS, or at least, the semblance of it, given recent events that have given most of our veterans a rather sour taste in their mouths.

Nowhere in EVE can you exist in null security with relative freedom to grow and develop as you please, within a few mostly benign parameters, that the NRDS dictates, or as CVA doctrine says, concerning POS in 0.0 space and such.

Giving much credit to the irony of it all, CVA has provided a wonderful means by which alliances, corporations, and players such as ourselves can have the freedom to experience 0.0 space ourselves and make what we will of it. They want Providence to act as an extension of Empire space, only we the players, we are the CONCORD of Providence. We have a freedom here that is unique in a sense that we are not beholden to any particular power bloc. While UK may do their damnedest to convince Providence residents that they are merely pets to CVA, the reality of the situation is that so long as we do not have any sovereignty in this region, we are a free agent, answering to no one, except the NRDS itself. Isn't it grand? I think so. Ajax gets to do his research, HuffDaddy gets to do L4s in Mamet, Sarah Tuttle gets to mine sweet ice in 0.0, Rayth gets to utilize our PvP trained members to pursue a Wormhole project, Cmdr GAT gets to dabble in reactions, members get access to ME/PE research at no cost, members like William Amato get access to manufacture their own goods, we get to explore ratting, 0.0 combat, PLEXs, the wide expanse of player policed space, the deep roams into hostile regions where we are constantly on the verge of annihilation and pitched battle against overwhelming odds, where our members can both do missions in low security, bring out their new ships and test their mettle in PvP combat, and in general get to live as they please, experiencing every aspect of the game that they choose (besides piracy obviously). Isn't that great?

But what if anything is required of us in return for this grand scheme? That we protect it. And we shall.

So what is the point? Well the point is Providence is going to the dogs, the dogs of war, in particular guerilla warfare. There are reds, everywhere. Every night. And it does not seem to be getting any better. What are the reasons for this? I cannot say here, too many intelligence and security issues that I keep to myself to protect Providence. What can we do about it? A lot. And when I say a lot, I really mean it. What would we have to sacrifice in order to do this? We would have to begin relying more on each member's individual will to expand their gaming experience on their own two feet than what we have now which is a system based almost solely on collective efforts towards multiple goals. We would have to have one goal, that goal would be to clean up Providence. Will it come to this? Only time will tell. I can tell you that if Providence remains as blast oven hot as it has been for the past week or two, by the time I get my Ark, that we will likely have to make some tough decisions about what we want to do. I can guarantee you that the newly reawakened Gremlin squadron will get kills though, and frequently, but it will require some sacrifices. How will it get these kills, and how can I guarantee something when I so infrequently lead PvP gangs of my own? Trust me. I'm an old salt when it comes to leading operations. Been doing this since '97. I just do not make a big deal out of it because I like to see others excel and make their own way to the top without me hovering over them wagging my finger like a doting father.

There will be a culling, and it will either be us or them (the reds), and I am certain you can guess which one I am going to choose.

Is it not strange how for the first half of the year our PvP operations suffered greatly because we so rarely were able to find hostiles to engage on a nightly basis and now we cannot go two or three systems in any direction without finding hostiles bearing down upon us? My how times change. In a morbid sort of way, I hope this trend continues, Providence is much more entertaining when there is adversity and challenge than when we roam in fleets of half a dozen or more for hours only to find ice crystals of condensation and fading ion trails from hostiles who have long since moved onto other regions.

The first half of this year was so quiet you could hear a pin drop in most systems between 8-12 EST every night of the week. Things are so vastly different now. While the notion of driving these hostiles back to the rock they crawled out from amuses me, it will require a lot of focus and attention from alliances just like ours to do it.

Synthesis

Synthesis
Mind & Body

So, I took a miniature vacation from all things MMO this weekend and dabbled in a bunch of console games I have not yet beaten or just wanted to experience again. I was probably encouraged to do this since I got podded for the first time on any character in the game since I started playing last April. Pretty good record there I think, especially since I have spent the past nine months floating around in PvP gangs out in low and null security. But it was a good experience, now I am not so soft on the idea as I was previously, thinking podding was some horrific experience, when in reality it was just a huge nuisance; lost 120,000,000.00 ISK in implants, but I had them for nearly a year and I had a spare body with a full array of +4s anyways prepared for just this eventually, so money well spent. Providence has been a death trap for a week, our Empire war was a joke yet I did not have the energy to expend doing L4 missions while anxiously watching local for any bruhaha coming my way, and corporate administrative duties were weighing heavily on my mind as I realized, we're not making money.

Staigor (Jay) has generously donated 500,000,000.00 ISK towards our Ark project and I found myself dipping into those funds last night to purchase Hydrogen Isotopes for the Minmatar POS. This means we are scraping the barrel, literally.

This summer has been vastly different than last summer was, and we had less members then. I guess that is the way it goes though, I should probably be spending a bit more time outdoors myself as I think it scares the cats when I turn on the light at night and all of a sudden there is this huge pale monster looming above them. Hehe. I think people are having fun though, both in real life and ingame, and that to me is a story of success. At the same time, it leaves me feeling like we are on a rollercoaster with no arm guard and we are holding on for dear life hoping it does not toss us off at any moment.

I had a bunch of bullet points of how we can address this issue but I think what is likely to happen is that when we acquire the Ark in twenty days, I may have to turn around and use it to ferry out a few hundred million ISK worth of minerals, and we may have to take down one of the POS until we can afford to fuel it again. I do not like this idea, but I think at this point we may have to do this in order to keep two of them operational. The people who have stepped up to the plate to assist us in acquiring minerals we need for production, isotopes we need for fuel, hauling fuel and goods for me so I do not go insane, and etc. have been thus far invaluable in keeping this train moving forward, but I am afraid given the level of activity right now, we cannot keep up with our expenses unless more people step forward.

I may be jumping to conclusions just from the nervous apprehension that rolls over me when I see we have hit empty on the fuel gauge, but I think given the circumstances it may be our only choice for now to scale back our operations for a bit. Logic and the alliance as a whole keep gearing up for more and more wars constantly without cessation and I keep looking at our fuel tanks and tapping on the gauge hoping there is a fume or two left. Not a good outlook in my opinion. Hard to fight a perpetual war when our war machine is rubbing the E on our fuel gauge like it's a hot prom date at the after party in a secluded hotel away from the chaperons.

So what do our POS do for us at present, and why are they so important?

The first one is our Research POS, undoubtedly the most valuable project we have at the moment, it is able to generate consistent income with little overhead.

The second one is our Manufacturing POS, able to produce any goods and materials we would ever need up to battlecruisers. This POS may not seem as valuable to you at present, but when you imagine a war to end all wars where there is a No-Fly issued for all of Empire and you are stuck out in Providence with little access to the Empire market, you will be grateful for a POS that can spit out not only a battlecruiser for you, but a complete T1 fitting for it, so you can utilize it from the moment it pops out of the oven.

The third is our Reactions POS, able to take simple and complex materials and mix them up, and cook up some amazing materials. Now, these materials may not really mean much to our corporation at the moment although they do generate consistent income, but in the longterm, when we want to produce complicated ships, especially T2 or Capital ships, these resources will be invaluable beyond belief. Take Capital Armor Plates for instance. On the open market, you can only find them for 3-4mil a piece, yet they take only regular minerals to produce, and they actually cost more like 500k-1mil to produce a piece. That is a staggering price difference. The only way we can get a hold of some of these T2 components required for T2 ship construction is to make them ourselves. Reactions have an invaluable long term yield once a majority of our members are using T2 ships regularly. Just ask Logic how he supplies his members with cheaper T2 ships by reacting some of the build components on his own, and having an engineer build the ships for him.

Now, which one is likely to be taken down in a few weeks? I do not know... all I know is that I would prefer not to take any of them at all down.

How could we make it so none of the POS must be offlined?

1) Rat more.
2) Mission more.
3) Use corporate ships more.
4) Ice mine more.
5) Recruit!
6) Market PvP!
7) Switch Minmatar tower to Amarr tower (connects to point 4 above)
8) ...and last but not least, participate more in general.

HuffDaddy, is a Mission monster, he listed the bulk of salvaged materials he has accumulated in the past few weeks or more and it was a staggering amount. Staggering. If you see him online, go help him out! It cannot be that fun to do L4s on your lonesome absolutely all the time, give the man some company, the L4s will go faster, the corporation will get more tax revenue, and those scrap modules he refines may even end up at our manufacturing POS, fueling the war machine.

Night Theifs, is a PvP monster, the Night Theifs corporation could never satiate their lust for blood even if they wiped all of Catch clean with a vengeful hand. They do roams nearly every night, so grab one of those cruisers contracted (soon to come fully T1 fitted) at the corporate level and go out and blow shizzle up with them or be blown up trying! Seriously, if we throw hundreds of million into insurance on these T1 cruisers and battlecruisers only to have the insurance run out on them cuz no one uses them, we have lost that money when those ships are blown up. Your tax money, up into thin air, with no more money to replace the ship you just lost. A horrible fate.

Mendolus, (Hey that's me!), is an Administrative monster, but is still struggling to keep up the pace with all the corporate duties he has taken on, so please do not take offense if I seem to forget a conversation we had an hour before, or log on the next day and you see virtual ?s floating above my head as you inquire whether I took care of what you had asked me to do. So please EVEMail me! Spammy spam spam that inbox of mine to remind me that you need something done. I think half the reason I feel stressed out every other day ingame is that I cannot remember all this stuff off the top of my head, and I have partial photographic memory, so you know it has got to be bad. Not only EVEMail me, but READ THE MAILERS, BLOG, FORUMS, ANYTHING! O-M-G, I feel better now. Hehe. But yes, I spend hours writing these blogs, and editing them, and worrying over little tiny phrases to make sure they make sense, so that you can find the answers at will, and I do not have to repeat myself 75 times, because I have dozens of other things I need to do as well. I know it sounds stupid, and a few people may question whether or not it is elitism (though I highly doubt it) for me to request you read here first before just talking to me directly, but I mean, sometimes I am hauling on two characters at the same time through low or null security space, and then someone in chat is like "We haz war?" and I'm mumbling to myself incoherently, "Please don't hurt him please don't hurt him please don't hurt him!" I know it is not really that bad overall, but sometimes it can be, so please, if it is something basic like, what did we do last night or what is new with the corporation, check here first, because I may be neck deep in doodoo hauling priceless baubles or administrative stuff and if I stop to type out a paragraph I die. Now, this is not to say in the least that I do not like being privated and asked a quick pertinent question, but try to check the information available to you first.


So, I guess that is it for now, and I know I am probably overreacting as I see our funds hover around the bottom of the tank, as thanks to the invaluable and endless efforts of some of our members, we have made a blazing comeback on our mineral reserves, and our logistics hauling is nearly perfect save the remaining contracts that I have marked as Priority that are not quite done yet. Hey, it was a nice weekend, I am glad people went out and did stuff in real life, but last night I looked at the fuel levels on our POSs and a brick dropped in my pants. Hehe.

You guys never let me down though and when things get rough I just remind you guys we are struggling a bit and it seems like people start coming out of the woodwork with good deeds and assistance of all kinds. I cannot thank you enough for that, it is such a vastly different experience than I have had as a leader in any other MMO. When things get really bad, everyone in this corporation seems to take a step up to the plate and come to bat for what we have going here. That's priceless in my opinion.

I think the most crucial point is that the Ark project is completed (twenty days until I can fly it). This will add an entirely new dimension to our corporate operations and capabilities, and I think that it will be best for me to wait to form a general synopsis of our projected future goals once I know more of what it is going to be like for us in the fall with the ability to jump goods in and out with relative ease. Should the Ark provide me with the leverage and freedom I so desire to devote more energy into other projects, I may very well do a 180 on my opinions thus far on how much our present member base can support in terms of projects, goals, and investment. So for now, I wait, and watch.