15/05/11 08:39 AM
| Arkonor | 285 |
| Bistot | 217 |
| Mercoxit | 192 |
| Crokite | 187 |
| Hedbergite | 171 |
| Hemorphite | 168 |
| Jaspet | 152 |
| Dark Ochre | 147 |
| Pyroxeres | 118 |
| Kernite | 106 |
| Veldspar | 99 |
| Scordite | 93 |
| Gneiss | 90 |
| Plagioclase | 88 |
| Spodumain | 82 |
| Omber | 81 |
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On Reaching A Point Of Change
There are sadly, times when your world changes. While changes are fresh and often refreshing, the are also all about things being different and even the most positive of changes still carries with it a high level of stress. Take for instance some of the most stressful events available to humanity: slipping into your first pod; getting married; plugging in +5 implants; flying your first interceptor; having children; upgrading your medical clone. These are all positive events with great rewards attached to them. We learn, grow and become more than we were through them. And still they give us stress and often force us to re-evaluate our position.
This eustress as it were is a cumulative process in the body and pod pilots are not immune. It is a function of our terrestrial origins and comes ‘part and parcel’ with the biological fleshy sack of bones that we stuff into our pods. This is for the most part a good thing. However – like all stress it needs an outlet. Some people find their relief in mining, other from running missions for various corporations and still others from trying to stop other pilots from completing the first two.
[caption id="attachment_966" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="What We Saw From Outside"]  [/caption]
So to has been the move to a new home in a higher class wormhole. We came into the new home with isk in our eyes and the sun aft. There was great excitement, motivation, participation and preparation. The transition from a class 3 to a class 4 wormhole carried with it an added set of challenges that required adaptation, innovation and adjustments in how we perceived and pursued the profits around us. So too does the shift from a class 4 to a class 5. Here also is the need for adaptation, innovation and adjustment. The rewards are potentially much greater, but also the dangers. There is the ever-looming threat of better pilots with bigger toys coming to visit. The concentrations of enemies and the requirements to face them are both higher. If there is one other thing that remains constant in moving from class to class, it is the progression of difficulty.
[caption id="attachment_967" align="alignright" width="150" caption="What We See From Inside"]  [/caption]
As we have set up our operations and began to prepare for the future, several things have become apparent.
- Change generates a lot of excitement and activity that is not necessarily reflective of ongoing reality.
- Perceptions are based in reality but do not always reflect the whole picture.
- The progression of difficulty is not linear and iterations on a theme are less likely to be as effective.
- While loss can be a motivator and tool for education, it can also and often is disheartening.
- Losses are always painful. Even the small ones.
- Sometimes you can simply be unlucky. Other times it is sheer luck that makes things go great.
So in the end we are having to wrestle with our own perceptions and expectations of what we want out of the whole experience. We are each coming to terms with how we will cope and for some it means more changes. Some have decided that the best way to deal with it is to move on to something else. It is not unlike the earliest of starts when we learned how to die very well and what to watch out for. While we are no longer the idiots in the neighbourhood, we still have a lot of learning to do.
On Making Decisions
In the life cycles of corporations and alliances, there are decisions that have to made and choices that have to be faced. There are often as many or more choices and decisions that need to be ignored and left to wither and die in the desert of inattention. Member pilots are all [or were] human and as such have opinions, ideas and speculations that they feel is necessary to share and express with the leadership. Sometimes these are viable options that need to be considered in the light of the ever changing space-scape, while others are valuable tools and nuggets for future use. Some things that they share are sadly just simple thoughts that they opine at every possible moment. To both groups I say thank you. It helps to know that you care enough to at least speak up and often to put actions to words and make things happen.
There are other decisions that fall into the “Critical” category. These include things like setting standings/treaties, war declarations and responses, recruiting, moving and policies. If the CEO or executor manages to screw a decision like this up, the results can and often are disastrous to the rank and file, the corporation/alliance and can even have a fallout affect on other seemingly unrelated entities. As CCP tries to present in their Butterfly Effect and Causality videos, there can be far reaching consequences to all the choices made in New Eden.
Now is the point where WHEN and GREAT are facing decisions about the future. We have been enjoying our time in the class four wormhole that we call Home. Home is where you anchor your POS, as they say. But lately some of the challenge has been leeched away as anomalies become routine, cosmic signatures are done without concern and – hold on to your hats – combat pilots are even mining and harvesting gas for diversions. Thus we contemplate a shift to a class five wormhole to create more opportunities and potentially more conflict. We are scanning around for systems and will settle on one in the near future. We have some competent pilots and I think personally think we are up to the challenge.
On Doing Things Together
As part of an ongoing series of posts about corporation life, one of the issues that I have wanted to discuss for some time is the concept and process of being a team and cooperating. There are many pilots out there in New Eden and many of them want to be left alone.
- They are running missions and hoping Ninjas do not suddenly appear to steal their salvage.
- They are quietly mining ice with the desire for Battleterons V’s to be bothering others in some distant system.
- They are changing their sales by 0.01 isk to keep others items from being the best price.
All in all, they are not doing anything wrong other than missing out on the single biggest reason to keep paying a subscription to an online service, namely, interacting with other pilots. The single shard [Can you still call a system without other "shards" a single shard?] universe with all pilots interacting in the same temporal dataspace is essentially the paramount momentum behind being in New Eden. Even the aforementioned solo pilots rely on the rest of the universe to make their activities have meaning. They need others to buy and sell goods, power POSes full of arrays and even explode in fiery bursts of atmosphere and essential fluids. Without all of that, their activities in New Eden quickly become Sisyphean in nature.
[caption id="attachment_945" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Moar Droan Plz"]  [/caption]
For the rest of New Eden, the whole of the experience my best be paraphrased by Kirith Kodachi’s re-occuring motto, “Do Things…. With People” [though I am also sure he would like the rest of New Eden to chant, "Fix The Rokh"]. Whatever it is you like to do, I am positive there are others out there who would like to do it with you. There is always something more to do in EVE and someone new to do it with. It is an almost limitless universe with pilots constantly searching for new ways to beat the house, break the bank and burn the barns. If you constantly find yourself flying your ship solo, then you need to seriously ask yourself, “Am I doing it wrong?”
[caption id="attachment_952" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Sharing is Caring"]  [/caption]
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating against solo PvP or saying there is not a place for flying a mission or ratting by yourself. There are always times when you have to step to the side and get something done. No one else can raise your security status for you as well as you can. No one else wants to solo PvP with a partner [though two-man roams are wicked fun]. I AM saying that even all of those activities are better done in the midst of a group of like-minded pilots who both want to see you succeed and are trying to accomplish similar goals. It does not really matter what those goals are as much as your agreement and participation with them.
[caption id="attachment_953" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Rep or Die"]  [/caption]
In the end, you really have to ask yourself, “Am I doing stuff with people?” and for some people the question looks more like, “Am I supporting the group of people around me, doing the things we love?” Sometimes this can mean doing things differently and even expanding your horizons to include new activities or ones that you would normally not do. I do not mean to imply that you need to do things that you do not like, but rather there will be things that must be done, and the people that you have surrounded yourself with will likely find them just as burdensome as yourself. The more you do stuff with people, the more stuff that you can do with people.
Another pilot made the point that sometimes there are people who, for whatever reasons, prefer not to be around other people. Believe it or not, but there are other people out there like them. The reality is, we all have a need to belong even if we do not want it. As much as we might hate to admit it, we do need the next person [with the occasional exceptions, but you can just pod those pilots].
On Getting Bigger, Better or Bagged
There is a natural tendency towards entropy. Universally, stars die, systems decay and heat dissipates. It is the order of things to become less ordered. Therefore, it takes energy to even just maintain things, let alone change something. This is also true for players, corporations, alliances and coalitions. They do not tend toward activity, progress or profit without work and energy being put into them. As I mentioned in Brass Tacks, WHEN relies heavily on its directors to maintain these levels of activity, progress & profit. It is not a pretty job [at least if you look at Riyu or Mick], but they do it well. In WHEN we face entropy on several different vectors and often at the same time.
 A base-level of entropy is found in the POS tower that we live out of. Without a regular infusion of fuel, it has a natural tendency to burp and die very quickly. This takes a certain amount of effort on the part of various pilots to insure that there is fuel in the tower, spare fuel in the wormhole system and ongoing procurement for fuel from various sources [markets, players/corporations, private planetary interaction]. It is not a significant level of activity, but it does exist and is a posteriori to our continued existence.
[caption id="attachment_936" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Downward Trends"]  [/caption]
Another item of concern that need to be kept up with include pilot attrition. While I would like to claim that 100% of WHEN pilots are online and in ships every day or even week, that would be a bit of a stretch. We do try to keep our active membership roles current and in any given week, close to 80% of member pilots are online and actually doing stuff [With Others - Kirith Kodachi]. Part of this has been that WHEN was a small family corporation that worked together on everything and the core active members were also the only members. As we have grown, it has been encouraging to see a high level of member interaction on a regular basis. We still have a few that are more occasional in their activity levels and we are very accommodating of their situations if they let us know.
Recruiting is another answer that we have applied to attrition and recognise as a sword that can cut both ways. While it is necessary on the one hand to have new pilots in the corporation in order to grow [and by extension do more things with more people], it can also introduce additional issues to deal with. Things like training/explaining, ship/supply logistics, storage space and organisation all become more complex as additional wetware is added to the mix. As Penny so eloquently wrote in Applicant Security last week, it is also necessary to be ever mindful of players that want to join/infiltrate the corporation with an intent towards nefarious purposes. Be it theft, sabotage, espionage or just drama, a new corporate member can make it difficult for everyone involved to enjoy their time in their ships.
In the discussion of entropic entities with corporate effects, there is also perhaps the most devastating: Complacency. What do you do when you have reached your goals and become everything that you intended? Or perhaps you are still working on the first steps and things are going very smoothly. You need to be prepared to have the next step in mind and be willing to cast the vision necessary to keep things moving forward and keep pilots engaged and excited about what is happening around them. There will come a time when success is also the very thing that can bring you down and start to erode the corporation more than just natural loss.
On Scanning, Shooting, Salvaging, Harvesting, Hauling and Helping
In a whirlwind rush, the list of things to get done piles up and begins to look like a impending avalanche. There may be fields of ore just floating out in our system patiently waiting to hear from our barges. There are definitely wormholes that have yet to be found, surveyed, catalogued and stored. There are gases dispersing, hoping to be harvested and stored until processing. There planetary resources to extract, refine, process and export. There are reaction to be run, research to be installed, POS arrays to be unanchored, moved, anchored, onlined and utilised. There are resources to be exported, sold, contracted and traded. There are fuels, modules, ships, ammo and skills to be imported. There are possibly neighbours that would like us to alleviate their shields, scour their armour and generally remove their hulls from them.
And none of that even begins to include the number of people that need to be thanked, congratulated, hailed, ignored, watched, befriended, shot, reshipped, berated and/or bereaved. Throw in some ongoing conversations about the nature of the universe, whether ships really fly in space or swim through it, who did what to whom and where to go to get some good, hard spiked Quafe.
The world we live and fly and fight and engineer in is rich, deep and very, very personal. It takes more than just a passing interest in spaceships and spreadsheets to appreciate it fully. This is not to say it’s perfect. The interface confounds me on a regular basis, my ship seems to occasionally have a mind of its own, the drones only respond 100% correctly on the second Tuesday of each week and occasionally my overview tells me I’m somewhere else.
We are busy little Wormhole Engineers. We like our part and the jobs we do. If you are looking for a stable source of income and relaxed, arm-chair piloting – keep flying. There is none of that out here.
On Moving Slowly And Taking Notes
[caption id="attachment_813" align="alignright" width="309" caption="Sisters of the Guardian"]  [/caption]
We managed to scan out our static and a connecting class 5 wormhole with some nice gas and anomalies. The static was a class two, which no doubt affected the desirability of said wormhole. After some random dithering and discussion, we decided we had sufficient fleet strength and numbers to check out some of the combat opportunities. It helped to sway us that the system contained a Cataclysmic Variable spacial anomaly that works heavily in favour of our chose remote repair strategy. In fact, it means that the large remote armor repair modules mounted on our Guardian logistics ships are 85% more effective!
The Vital Core Reservoir is known to have a couple of Sleepless Keeper battleship sized drones in it and we haven’t faced this particular kind before. Our initial plan of attack involves a fleet of Mr.’s Maelstrom, Scorpion, Dominix and Rook, and finally the Sisters of the Guardian2 for the first encounter. Since the person who scanned down the site had warped to it previously, the enemy was right at hand and waiting to be studied and evaluated. The Guardians quickly set up their logistics lock while Mr.’s Scorpion and Rook began to jam the two battleship class ships. Someone somewhere was writing all this down and making notes about comparable lock times, ECM resistance levels and initial alpha strikes from the ships. Once the initial observations were made, first one and then both battleships were allowed to regain locks and incoming damage assessment began. We were pleasantly surprised with our results and proceeded to just pummel the poor ships after gaining our data.
After gathering some basic intelligence reports from this Ladar, we opted to do the same with a combat site. The results were similarly enlightening and led to some nice discussions about the prospects of future class 5 wormhole colonisation. One of the things we noticed was the slight change from a higher alpha strike to a more sustained DPS. Whereas when we moved from a class 3 to the first class 4 site was the noticeable increase in the first wave of incoming damage. This was probably due in part to our slightly lower skills, unknown expectations and difficult fleet composition. The intervening months have taught us a great deal about how to operate together more efficiently. We were later joined by our Ms. Abaddon pilot and Mr. Frigate Ganking Harbinger. The increased DPS mitigated some of the ECM needs, so Mr. Rook flew off to expedite the salvage operation.
While not an overall cake walk [buy ticket, listen to music, note number, pick up cake] it was certainly an enjoyable exploration of a possible future direction. Little Mr. Harbi took one in the chin as without an explosive armor hardner, even the 8 combined, staggered, drone-assisted, Cataclysmic Variable boosted remote repairs from the Sisters of G2 could help survive the incoming damage. He ping-ponged in and out of structure [full armor, then 95% structure, full armor, 80% structure, full armor, then still lower structure, full armor, 25% structure, full armor, 5% structure] until finally entertaining us with a nice puff of atmospherics and some light. It helped that it was a highly profitable evening with the combat portion of the exploration hovering around 1 billion in revenue for a couple hours work and research.
To cap off the night, a couple of ran back and harvested the 300 million isk gas cloud as there are some friends who would like those polymers. Good deeds and all.
On Friends Coming To Join Us
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="128" caption="Bandits In The Hole"]  [/caption]
This last week or so has seen our good friends and alliance-mates the Fearless Bandits come out to play. They are mainly the Greater Realms’ highsec mission and PVE corporation but they are looking for some diversion and adventure so they have trundled out to the wormhole to set up shop. They have already proven their worth on multiple occasions previously, have been a part of the alliance planning and development from the beginning and we are thrilled to have them along for the ride. It is always a good thing to have more friends around.
While they are primarily focused on mission running in high security, Empire space, they have very quickly adapted to life out in the ‘holes. There are still questions to be considered and answers to deliver, but it’s still a pleasant addition. They now have their own tower up and happily living from it as they join us for several combined operations. Initially they packed light and so we’ve loaned out a few of our now standard fits for them to use. It has helped to know exactly what they are flying and how it should perform in integrating them into our “well-oiled machine” [insert laughter here].
In addition to FEARL coming out to play, we’ve added several new faces who are old faces come round again. Some former corp-mates from long before have finally rejoined us and really stepped out mining/refining game. Hats off to them for helping to capitalise on the resources we just had floating around for lack of more barge pilots.
On Being a Frog in Well Stocked Pond
The wormholes have been rolling by us at a rate of 2-3 a day. With our static Class 4 exit lasting at most 16 hours we usually have time more than enough time to harvest anything we roll across in the adjacent wormhole systems. If those systems are empty and their connections not holding any prospective targets to hunt down, we’re more than happy to roll the exit and see what else pops up. We’re easily running as many sites as we can possibly squeeze in between pilot availability, wormhole collapse and outside interference. It’s good on the wallet and fun for the participants – so who could want for anything more?
Time – as I posted above seems to be the limiting factor. Were there more of it in the right places, we’d accomplish even more. As it is, I’ve let the posts slide for the last two weeks. I’m behind on keeping up with not getting farther behind. The reasons are all good and I don’t regret them in any way. The first issue that demands more time is the burgeoning role of maintaining the new alliance. Hats off to Letrange on the way he’s managed to even stay sane let alone manage to get some play time in. And he even manages to post regularly. The second is some impending travel that is coming up for myself, and that means a lot of loose ends have to be tied up first. And finally, there are some issues with EVE and CCP that needed to be dealt with.
So, while having loads of fun, I’m a bit tired and looking for whoever it is stole my last billion isk. I’ll be coming for you…
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