Our EvE

In a brief return from being lost in space, our intrepid explorer and CEO of Penny Ibramovic Engineering [PIE] drops by to bring us another of her delicious posts to read after dinner. Enjoy.

The manufacturing division of Penny Ibramovic Industries is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Whilst it is reassuring to check my wallet and see a steady stream of income based on profit from sales, that income is dwarfed by the continued success of the wormhole engineers. Raking in tens of millions of ISK for most wormhole operations makes my market sales look like petty cash. One wormhole operation can plump my wallet up with enough iskies to cover all my sell orders on the market, whatever outrageous profit margin I added at the time, rather than waiting weeks watching the cash trickle in. Production may offer a steady and generally reliable income, but it’s slow.

Admittedly, I am hardly a business entrepreneur at the moment, but nor will I be with my home out in w-space, as I will not be able to commit the necessary time to making a fortune off the market. Indeed, access to any market information is impossible in w-space, hence my need to return to New Eden to monitor prices and make adjustments. If I simply accept that manufacturing and sales is not currently a cost-effective use of my time, maybe I will be better off. It isn’t as if my researched blueprints will disappear or suddenly become useless. All that will happen is I will lose the incremental adjustments to my wallet as my modules sell. But I think I may miss that.

However much I like living out in w-space, my anti-social nature enjoying the solitude, the sell order transactions in my wallet continue to give me a link back to New Eden. It’s not that I want to interact with these capsuleers, I actually quite like that I don’t have to just because I run a business. But w-space can feel very empty. Local channel remains quiet and unpopulated, regardless of who may be in the system. Even if there are others in the system, space remains big enough that you are unlikely to encounter them, except perhaps when passing through wormholes. And you don’t really want to encounter other capsuleers in w-space, unless you’re specifically looking for them.

Tourism In EVE

Not that I pay attention to the local channel when I am in high-sec, though, I actively ignore it. And idly hitting d-scan in high-sec—out of curiosity more than w-space habit—reveals far more activity in the system than makes me feel comfortable. I am sure all that activity was occurring back when I was living in high-sec, I just wasn’t aware of it. But now that I am used to the deceptive tranquility of w-space, appreciating all that is going on around me in high-sec makes me oddly claustrophobic. I need space. But just as much as I need space, I need to feel connected, even a little. Inferring that life continues by the wallet transactions of capsuleers buying my products gives me that connection. I suppose sometimes you just want to look out the window to be reminded of the world you are ignoring.

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2…

In an attempt at trying to remember things honestly, I will try to mention when things went well or failed miserably so as to present as clear a picture as possible of the reality of flying with a random collection of fruitcakes, nut cases and loony birds. We’ve pulled people in from all over the place and from time to time it has happened that they were of a lower quality than we would have preferred. It’s inevitable I imagine as there are all kinds of pilots looking to be all kinds of ship captains involved in all manner of endeavours. It would be extremely naive and a bit arrogant to assume they all thought like we thought, flew what we flew or were interested in the same thing via the same approaches. Oddly enough, just knowing that doesn’t seem to keep it from happening. Many corporations [ours included] often take far to little time to evaluate a potential employee and his fit with the organisation as a whole.

But more about that later, first I wanted to take a closer look at some of the potential recruiting methodologies and comment on their relative effectiveness. The first method we’ll dub the “Passive Method” and requires the least amount of effort and energy on the part of the recruiter. This can usually take several forms and can be a combinations of vectors. Some of the possible implementations include placing a note in your corporation’s information window to the effect, “We are recruiting,” or “Sign up now,” to let passer-bys know that you are open to members. Some slightly more involved passive recruiting efforts might be a forum post on EVE Online or some of the other frequently populated sites. And finally there is the recruiting advertisements within EVE itself.

All of these passive methods rely on the individuals seeing and responding to your information. The motivation and initial moves belong to the other pilots and are theirs to make or not.

The second type you might guess is the “Active Method” where you are going out of your way to target, engage and draw specific individuals into your corporation. This can be an intense and involved process with multiple personnel working to illicit a favourable move from an already known pilot. This involves ongoing conversations via both public and private channels; overt recruiting and posting in the forums; targeted EVE mails to the pilots in question; active referrals and contacts with other pilots of the corporation and alliance. This targeted, active recruiting is all about going after either a specific individual or a specific skill set that your organisation realises that it needs.

All long the spectrum from Passive to Active is any combination of the two. Often experience, necessity and effectiveness will require a combination of the two methodologies.

Finally, a quick word about making sure the “new prospects” and “potential recruits” are the people that you’ll want in  your organisation long term. In addition to any thoughts and dreams you might have about a role and the people that will fill it, so to do the people who are possibly coming to work for you. They see themselves as gaining something out of the transaction and rightly so. If they can’t learn, grow, build wealth and generally prosper in the position and corporation, then they really need to be  somewhere else. It’s not rude or arrogant to show someone the door, offer suggestions about other places they might flourish or generally pass them over and keep looking for the right person. It would however be wrong to stuff them into a role that was antithetical to who and what they were and where they were headed. And while it may temporarily solve a staffing issue, it isn’t going to help your corporation out in the long run either.

Happy Head Hunting.

In continuation from the previous article…

Recently I found myself discussing the bygone era of naivete with regard to flying ever bigger, faster, deadlier, efficient, specialised and ultimately more expensive ships. We have all come a long way since our Ibises and Velators. The time since we’ve used civilian weapons [if ever] is far away and mostly gone are the days when the fittings and ships are limited by the skills we haven’t trained or isk we haven’t earned. We still flounder a bit on the first few times we do something new [ship fittings and how to effectively use a Stealth Bomber], but by now we know where to look for the information and make fairly educated choices and decisions based on that information.

Given that we are now what I would consider Intermediate level pilots, we are probably prime for various and sundry problems brought on by our decent into madness [Is linking to your own posts rather akin to talking to yourself? If so, I also have posts whereby I comment on my own posts thus creating a dialogue. Sadly, I'm probably going to end up posting a comment on one of my posts about a link to a post or comment of my own thus degenerating into complete insanity. I apologize to myself in advance.]. Having nearly gone off the deep end one too many times, it occurs to myself [and others, I'm far from unique or inspired], that fresh meat is needed to halt the rapidly encroaching madness. Either that, or we’d like to begin drafting some people so that we at least statistically reduce the number of insane pilot actions.

Actually, we’re debating bringing on a few newer members that we can ultimately train into effective capsuleers according to our own images while exploiting their current skills for our gain. We’re probably going to start with some dedicated salvage/mining personnel to help offset our tendency to let the mining sites in our wormholes degrade to uselessness as well as help accelerate the speed at which we can work over the various anomalies and signatures there-in. Having employed all manner of recruiting means in the past, I thought we might also benefit from some of the other blog readers/personalities out there who might like to take a chance on wormhole mining and salvaging.

I am hoping to wrap this up with a segment on some of the other recruiting methodologies and their relative effectiveness.

I’ve never been around to see my blood. Residing in the insular world of my pod, I can scarcely recall a cut, scrape or wound. There tend to be two extremes with regard to the health of which ever clone is currently in my pod. Either the pod is whole and I’m as sound as a space whale in a gravimetric anomaly or I’m out there, quietly floating and bumping into your pod. Unlike my ship, and to some extent my mental state of being, there is no shield, armor or structure on my clone. When the pod finally cracks, I am a corpsicle.

Given the relative lack of hematological comprehension, it could explain some of the trouble that good corporations have recruiting quality employees. Though certainly not the only issue, it has an effect on how a corporation views its staff and how it might view potential recruits. Those corporations that operate with the majority of their membership being older players may have lost some of the visceral implications that getting destroyed engenders. These old blood players are good, solid, reliable and for the most part trustworthy members of the corporation, but they ultimately can’t remember what it was like to see ten thousand isk in their wallet and think that whatever they did to get it was worth it. It happens to everyone, despite attempts to “always remain young” and to “keep it real” the older members simply have a different outlook. Not good or bad, just different. Thus there are two issues: the offerings of the corporation itself and what the individual pilots bring to the system.

With respect to recruiting, it is important to understand [or at the very least be cognizant of] this difference in approach, philosophy and even bankroll for a new pilot. Jaded and older players may see less use and appeal in free frigates and jump clones. They may not be willing to fly with people that just can’t fit a T2 armed and armored ship. It is outside of their preferred play style and comfort zone. They aren’t against offering helpful advice or helping with various activities on an ad hoc basis, but it is not their primary focus or feel. It may be hard to get them interested in recruiting, even in the face of overwhelming decline in numbers or attitudes.

Several different approaches to recruiting exist and all of them have merits and problems. In the context of getting your existing players on board with the programme, it is even more necessary that goals and directions be clearly defined. Expectations need to be established [and met] before there will be corporate buy-in. There have been several good articles written on teamwork, corporate organization and procedure. There are also several good articles about finding a corporation for pilots, old and new alike. This is all well and good, but often I’ve noticed that corporations themselves don’t have a clear plan for recruiting. The clarity of purpose, expectations and drive are often limited, confused or unrealistic. They don’t know how to properly interview candidates for applicable fit. The interview with a prospective is as much or more concerned with how the corporation fits the prospective pilot, and not about what the pilot can bring to the hangar.

While it is important to help a prospect understand what the corporation is doing, where the holes in membership currently are, what other pilots are flying, it is more important to seek out what a future member’s needs are. What are they interested in doing and is that something your corporation can commit to? Do they need ships? Income? Community? Stability? Low-sec/high-sec/null-sec? Power and prestige? Skills? If they have a hard time finding purpose in EVE, they are likely to be unsatisfied with everything until they do. People tend to gravitate toward a comfortable niche. Your corporation either needs to find out what their niche is or be the corporation to increase their understanding of their niche.

It seems that one of the great things about keeping a blog is the ability to look back and try to objectively review “how it’s gone” for whatever time period you care to arbitrarily select. Some folks take a monthly snapshot while still others look at a week or a quarter or a year. I’m choosing the end of the calendar year because I can and wanted to.

I’d like to have a full break down of the monthly page views or unique visits or bits transferred, but for some reason, my stats got wiped at the end of August and so really only have the last third of the year to make comparisons from. Having said that, we can make wild, sweeping extrapolations and expositions of what it must have looked like were the numbers still in the database.

You likely see something similar show up again later with better numbers as more time has been captured by the statistical tracking software.

Hot Cha, where are you?
Everybody’s eyes are closed
I can’t see why I miss you so
So Hot Cha, where are you? -(TMBG)

I’ve previously written about the immortality that capsuleers have to face on a day-to-day basis. Our own longevity is both a boon and bane and is a topic I’d like to pursue and review in depth more later. Several others have also mentioned this and how they have dealt with the issue. The good folks over at Galactic Water Cooler have even dealt with the issue on their wonderful podcast [specifically episode number 176]. If you don’t know who GWC is then I recommend you do something drastic. Stop reading this and go visit them right now. I’ll wait.

Right then, welcome back. Although immortal, many times the capsuleer is just not jacked in. The lights aren’t on and no one is home. The neurons just aren’t firing. This is completely different from the previous entry about not being in a coherent state-of-mind when danger come calling. This is when the pilot just isn’t plugged in at all. Recently the little jack at the back of my head where the pod jacks fit has been loose. It just doesn’t work right all the time. Seems intermittent and somewhat random, which makes the whole issue harder to diagnose. I’ve been in and out of the local fix-it shop several times and seem to have it fixed until the next time that I need

I once had a dream of a gleam, of a gleam in my eye
And I’ll have it till the day I die
I had a thought bubble of trouble, of trouble and strife
And I’ll have it for the rest of my life -(TMBG)

The warm fluid surrounds me. The merest thought engenders actions that serve only to indulge the slightest whim of my fancy. The only thing missing is euphoria of human contact – and that is easily overlooked in lieu of the near omnipotent control available via my synaptic pathways. I am the capsuleer. I am immortal.

And good thing too – when a capsuleer falls asleep in their pod, bad things™ happen. Take for instance the most recent escapades while harvesting gas. It’s not a difficult job and sometimes your mind wanders. This time it hasn’t just wandered, my mind has set out on full scale expedition to calculate the inertial energy involved in blinking. My mind was gone, Gas Gone, as it were. Fortunately, my partner, the estimable scanner extraordinaire and EFT mogul, Mick was along with me, happily sucking in his own share of gas. [With his Tech 2 harvesters and the ability to mount 5 of them, his share is larger than my share.] So at least one of us is on guard, paying attention to d-scan, watching for probes/ships and generally preparing for anything.

Um, no.

Ripping a hole in fabric of time and space, two cocky jockeys in significantly powerful ships step appear right next to us, locking us down and shredding what little is left of our ships, pods and dignity. I know they had to have cheated because sure an alarm would have went off in my head [if I had been paying attention] and no one can sneak up on Mick. Unless of course we happen to be mining gas. I am more convinced that some of the fullerenes either leaked from the cargoholds into our pods, or messed with our sensors.

In a heart and frankly hull pounding few seconds, I am relieved of a small Gallente cruiser with 4 gas harvesters and some expanded cargo modules. Mick is in a similarly equipped Dominix and well insured. In the interminable few seconds that it takes  for the foes BS to lock our pods, we are desperately and simultaneously trying to exit the warp disruption bubble the Onyx has thrown up, spamming the ‘warp to’ button and praying that something would go horribly wrong with their systems in the meantime.

The last thing I happened to see before waking up somewhere else is my pod flying through Mick’s wreck and thinking, “It should be bigger for a battleship”. I honestly feel a bit dazed and confused, not unlike waking in an unfamiliar room after traveling and having to remember that you even made a trip. It begins to filter back in bits and pieces. Gas. Exequror. Onyx. Domi. Megathron. Pods. Flash. At first it seems strange to be in a station, having flown so long without docking. And where is my ship? My pod? “Oh, look, someone left a selection of ships for me to chose from. How thought of her.”

So now I get to start over. The ship and modules were relatively cheap and no great loss. I have other. I lost some expensive implants, but frankly I considered them lost soon after I plugged them. If I was worried about losing them, I would have never undocked, let alone fly around in a wormhole. I managed to somehow remember that I had a jump clone somewhere in the universe with some old ‘plants in her head and after running into every conceivable error managed to repeat the whole unpleasant wake up in an unfamiliar place routine of a few minutes ago.

This station turns out to actually be quite far away from anything, which I think maybe why the clone was out here to begin with. I have also neglected to leave a ship in the hangar resulting in a hurried search of the market for an appropriate shuttle or frigate to get out of the system in. A few moments later I am busy flying a Gallente shuttle across seventeen jumps back home, 11 through low-sec. Why choose the low-sec route? Well, I just lost my ship and several million in implants, who really cares if I lose a few more low level implants. Besides, the 29 jumps through high-sec was more likely to kill me.

In a final twist of irony, I had been trying to get out of the wormhole for a couple of days to get some manufacturing jobs installed for some of my corp-mates. Using this fortuitous depodification, I zip over, put the job in the oven to bake. Carpé Diem.

Sensing that enough adrenaline has finally burned off to allow an attempt at sleep, I decide to call an end to flying and dock up for interim. I am immortal, yes, sleepless, no.

When the hands that operate the motor lose control of the lever
When the mind of its own in the wheel puts two and two together
When the indicator says you’re out of oil should you continue driving anyway? -(TMBG)

Turkish Gas Rooster

I’m not sure what to make of the fullerene gasses that we harvest in the wormholes. They are by and large fairly low revenue items, plentiful to locate and annoyingly mundane. I have to admit upfront that I am a compulsive miner. I didn’t start mining because it was a “quick revenue stream” early in a missioning or PVP career. I’m a miner because I really hate rocks. Or because I am good at it and like to keep track of rocks and what is going on with all the systems in and with my ship.

Gas on the other hand in mundane. Even for an especially hardcore mining carebear. The cycles are blessedly short, but so is the yield and the satisfaction of filling your cargo hull is just not the same. The effect is compounded by the amorphous cloud that you are working it that varies from too bright to look at to obscuring your view of the heavens around you. I feel like a waitress at a very stodgy gentleman’s club full of cigar smoke and nearly dead investment bankers hoping to die before they have to go home.

Having said all this, I’ll continue to harvest gas and clear out ladar cosmic signatures.

Ok, I admit it. I am in awe, struck dumb by the sheer enormity of what has transpired. In case any of you missed it:

Dominion has come.

And it is good. At least every little bit that I have seen from with in our little part of the unknown space we live in. With all the little things that have happened in the client, it really does feel a lot like EVE 3.0 instead of just an expansion. The marketers missed the opportunity to really push this as a major update to many of the parts that make EVE feel like EVE. With all of the updates to the UI as well as the actual graphics used for the systems, it is much more apparent that things have changed. And after one measly day in, I think it’s wonderful.

I’m sure there are a lot of little things going on around 0.0 involving sovereignty changes and support/logistics for them. There are some nitpicks, glitches and annoyances [hide windows?], but on the whole, I think it is a great update.

And finally – I can easily update this from inside my pod. Beware.

Posted from J130554, deep in the heart of nowhere and using the browser in EVE.