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 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 Adding, Subtracting and Finding Yourself Happy
 Some things are easily quantified and measured. They can be numbered, totalled, divided, analysed and reported. This is basic maths and accounting, in that you know how much of something there is and how much it is worth in time, effort, profit, etc. These are the things that most people aim for and are more than happy pursuing. More and better ships, profit, ore, isk, research, production, flying, etc.
On the other hand, there are the unquantifiables. The things that defy counting and spurn attempts to wrangle them into mathematical formulae. The time spent teaching a new corporation member the way things are done or walking a newbie through basic scanning 101 can be really hard to put a number on/in/by. How do we assign a value to the logistics pilot that kept several millions or even billions of isk on the field longer in a fight? Is there any quantitative measure for the time spent making sure the POS was set up efficiently so that arrays were easily accessed without flying back and forth all over the bubble? How about the amount of energy and resources put into manning a gate camp?
Still another thing to consider is how much isk is enough? The answer ranges from the PVP pilot who like heroin addicts, just wants enough for the next fix, er, ship to the full-on industrialist/trader who needs all of the isk to be satisfied. Most of us fall somewhere in between where we have a comfortable point, varying slightly by our preferred hulls and fittings. We could all use more and could survive on less.
Orakkus recently wrote about what it takes to be a Solid Pilot, and I think it is just as applicable to the discussion of value [and worth a plug as well]. There is a certain value to a pilot that can fully fit a sniper battleship and the one that knows she needs to stick to something else. It is often immeasurably valuable for fleet commanders to know that the the people in the fleet know their roles and can adequately fill them. I am afraid of only two things in EVE: 1) Logging in and finding that my friends have decided to pack it up and move to some other venue; 2) Idiots.
The first is mitigated by the communication channels that friends share in and outside of New Eden but the second is something that shatters dreams in fits of screaming nightmares. This is another item of value that is hard to quantify. How long do you invest in people that seem to be unable to learn or at least very slow to pick things up? Almost every cost/benefit analysis argument generally boils down into either a he-said-she-said situation or becomes so subjective as to be meaningless.
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 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 Waking Up After Being Deprived Of Your Pod
Ouch. Blinding pain. My ship … is, why can’t I feel my ship. And … um … I can’t … seem to focus … on the present. Station … docked? Sleepy … groggy … slow.
Not unlike post-election interviews with the runner-up, waking up after a binge, stepping in it in the park or waking up in a new clone, the process of recovery is sometimes short and sweet and more often filled with emotion, pain and suffering. How you handle losing it all speaks more volumes about you than the epitaphs shouted in comms, kill board statistics or isks spent on your last ride. From an early age people need to learn some important EVE life lessons.
1) It’s a ride. It does not have emotions. It doesn’t care if you are in, on, afk, logged, asleep at the pod, finger in your nose, smiling or frowning. It is quite oblivious to anything you care about. Pets, asteroids, spouses, corp-mates, local taxes, sovereignty fees – they are all irrelevant to the EVE Train.
2) It is independent. It goes where it will. You are able to affect its direction to some extent, but more than likely it is less Butterfly Effect and more akin to Clear Skies or Carebears Attack in the ability to affect the larger picture. You look out for you and yours and things go swimmingly.
3) You will die. You will lose a lot of ships if you are actually playing the game with any level of interaction. It doesn’t matter if you are in high security, low security, null security or wormhole space – you and your ship will soon be parted. Today’s Headlines: Death Coming. Tomorrow’s Forecast: Mostly ganky with an increasing chance of podding. The only unknowns are when, where and everything except how well you handle yourself.
This is not some HTFU rant about people who can’t hack the harsh, kill-or-be-killed world of New Eden. It’s a realistic gut check for pilots who think the worst thing that can happen is getting your current clone senselessly splattered on the nose-cone of a Terror Assault missile or perforated by Repulic EMP. It’s all senseless and it will continue to happen as long as there are people flying other ships. There is always someone bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, wealthier or prettier who is able to relieve you of your capacity to be in a ship.
I’m not saying don’t be upset about losing a ship. I cry over every last one. Most of them I built. I fit them, flew them, trained them, repaired them, crashed them. All of them I loved. My ships are my life and every last one of them is important to me, from the disposable frigates to the disposable battlecruisers. They surround me, they hold me, they give everything they have to me – could I give them less. And as for my pod – that rather frail hunk of metal filled with snot and keeping my clone from feeling the effects of strenuous accelerations and combat – it too serves its purpose and no more. I have bought several clones. I will buy several more. God willing, I will not forget to buy one when I die tomorrow.
So when an overwhelming force of pilots gank you, get up, get back in a ship and keep going. Or not. Either choice is valid. The people who shot you out of the sky won’t really care one way or the other. Ranting – not likely to get you much response. Wild and derogatory remarks – again not likely to help put implants back in your head. Best case scenario – ask if it was them in the reverse situation, what would they have done. They might offer useful suggestions. The worst case scenario is they might just laugh and say, “Die.” Either way, use it to get better at flying your spaceships.
To put this in more of a personal context – the Wormhole Engineers have been attacked, off and on, since they first started living in wormholes. Mining maulings, hauling hijacks, gratuitous ganks and overt overkills have been the norm and not the exception. We learned important lessons all along the way. We first learned how to hide better and then we learned how to run away better. We learned how to be better aware of the situation not just around us, but beyond our little corner of the world. We began to learn how to resist and tank and eventually even how to shoot back. We learned how to take ammunition from out tower and distribute it more effectively on the hulls of other pilots. We haven’t had a lot of kills and we’re still not afraid to back down. However; if we shoot you, it isn’t personal and we’re not out to bully the pilots we see around us.
One of the lessons we learned the hard way was there are no innocent people out here in the wormholes. Letting an unknown covops pilot buzz around in plain site is a sure way to buy a new clone and it is still worth getting an overwhelming force out to catch and pop them. Sending the pilot back to known space is the only way to assure they aren’t scouting for a larger party. The larger force may still be there, but they’ll have to survive with one less set of eyes. They may only be scanning for exits, but that’s what we were doing until we saw someone else’s probes.
On Killing and Being Killed In A Wormhole
If you are going to fly in a wormhole, you are going to die. A lot. For a good summary of how that can happen, check out miningzen’s wonderful post on the subject. The reality is that you are going die everywhere you fly. Like the somewhat over generalised statement, “There are two types of capsuleers: Those that have been killed and; Those that are soon going to be.” Until Incarna, you are safe in the stations, otherwise, you are likely to have a deep and meaningful relationship with the subroutines that automate the transfer of consciousness into your next clone. As an impartial and biased observer, I can fully admit that I am very good at the whole dying game. As an industrial backgrounded character, my Osprey cruiser was as ineffective at resisting incoming damage as it was at chipping veldspar off of floating rocks. Very.
Flashing forward quickly to the present – I wake up in my pod [AT THE POS - I'M NOT DEAD YET] and am greeted with the news that my corpmates have recently stalked down and liquidated a salvage Hurricane and a Brutix in a nearby class one system. It seems that WHEN. pilots have finally shed any residual carebearistic tendencies and are fully blooded now. Well, with the exception of myself. Remember the part where I die a lot – usually first and before being able to contribute towards a successful attack? I was determined to not let that happen again. Ok, determined not to let that happen, every time.
A couple days before, our good buddies sometimes allies, Revival of the Talocan Empire had managed to screw up their settings for the fourth or fifth time and shot my Drake into tiny, tiny little pieces. Probably could have avoided any real hostilities if I had just idled in the tower, but I was incensed. The cheeky bastards bombed my tower! So I threw wads of flaming isk at them in protest. I had managed to bring a new ship into the tower and was considering how to refit for PVP even though I was well aware the the Core Defence Field Purger rigs that it still had on it were less than ideal for combat against other capsuleers.
In the aftermath of the ‘Cane/Brutix killing and clean up operation, one of our pilots noticed an odd dance of sorts going on. It seems that a couple of stealth bombers from the system’s current occupants were trying to harass a Nighthawk that was out running combat sites. They would warp in, drop a bomb and fly away all the while not doing a very good job at being stealth in either their approach, bombing or running away. At one point, the Nighthawk and a helper managed to catch one of them and quickly pop them. At this same time, a couple of our real friends pop up in chat and ask if we have anything they can shoot at. Bingo.
An ad hoc fleet goes up, and are met at the high sec side of the wormhole. I quickly jump into Shhhhh, a corp-mate‘s Manticore class stealth bomber and after loading the bookmarks am off at all speed to meet them. Two wormholes later, I am able to warp within 100 km of them and maintain my cloak the whole way. I begin motoring in toward them and looking for the best position to provide a drop point for our fleet. They finish up the site and start idling while a friendly Pilgrim and destroyer show up and begin looting and salvaging. Noticing that the fleet’s incoming wormhole is out of range of the directional scan, we call the fleet to jump through into the system and make ready to pounce. I managed to fly under their formation and come up, directly underneath them. Each of them is about 4-5 km from me. My heart is pounding and I’m absolutely sure they will launch drones or twitch and decloak me. Just as we say ‘GO’ they finish and warp away! Huh?
A combination of the locals trying to be aggressive and them finding another site to run, they had moved on. Quickly warping to the next anomaly on the list doesn’t show them and the fleet is sent off to a out of range planet to reform. The other stealth bomber has them and warping to him at 70 km manages to preserve my cloak but put me 105 km from them. I begin the crawl toward them and at 60 km the other SB is in perfect position to have the fleet engage. The fleet warps in, bubbles up and open fires. I drop cloak and start unloading torps as fast as I can, trying to burn toward them. The Pilgrim was just on the edge of the bubble and manages to get away, but the Nighthawk is right in the middle and soon goes up in a small but very satisfying ball of flame. Switching targets to the Prophecy, I am suddenly relieved of my ship and decide that it’s time to get into something a bit more secure than my pod. Before I am able to even reach the wormhole headed back to our tower, the comms light up with the news that the large, brick-like, Amarrian battlecruiser has also gone down.
So I managed to finally get a kill, and a Nighthawk at that. I am very grateful to all of our friends for their help and for flying with us. I still managed to lose a ship in combat, but at least I was able to contribute to a successful outcome. We salvaged the rest of their wrecks and were able to come out a head after replacing the two stealth bombers we lost.
Addendum: It was all a short-lived lie. Three days later I managed to find a Sacrilege, Vagabond, Devoter and a Jaguar waiting for me at a new wormhole. It was one of my shorter engagements. A few days later I ignored a yawn at the tower and flew off to support a couple corp-mates at a wormhole camp. I think I fell asleep mid-warp [it was +120 AU] and woke up in a new clone somewhere else. Apparently we had been ambushed from behind as third group of participants had found another hole into the same system and decided we looked tasty. Well, I did. Fortunately the others were able to get out of harms way.
On Getting To Know The Author
Somewhat in response to Freebooted‘s post about introductions, I came up with the following:
[caption id="attachment_678" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Vestigial Heritage"]  [/caption]
I’m an old Caldari pilot who has managed to fly a lot of ships, visit a lot of systems and learned some of the most spectacular ways to die. I believe in working very hard to be the best pilot that you can. To that end, I spend a lot of my skill points on getting my skills to level 5. This also means I don’t have a lot of skills. I love my Drake and I don’t mind trying to use it in a lot of different situations.
I am that bane of banes for MMOs, the carebears’ carebear. I like mining. I like manufacturing. I like killing rats and Sleepers, setting up towers, plugging different numbers in spreadsheets and seeing what comes out. I like flying with a group of friends more than I realised when I started and I miss them when they are gone. I used to mine Veldspar in high-sec before I started exploring and mining Kernite in exploration sites. I would run missions for extra ore when the macro-miners would strip out whole systems.
I have a whole lot of blueprints and end up using them on occasion. I have been in one fail cascade, one very successful corporation and have most recently started out again on my own with a new venture. We endeavour to focus on solely on wormholes and utilising them for fun and profit.
On Keeping and Disseminating Information
One of the things that I suggested in a previous post was a dedicated list of wormhole blogs. So without further commentary from yours truly, I present the WHole-Pack, a list of informative and experiential blogs about pilots living in wormholes. This list is also available via Google Reader.
This isn’t a static list nor exclusive. If you think your blog should be here [i.e. you post about wormholes], the let me know.
[wp-blogroll catid=386]
On Living And Lasting In Wormholes
In a recent article Star Defender ponders the longevity of wormhole occupants and the preponderance of persons heading back into known space. This is increasingly true, I will agree. One of the other things we have noticed is that even within a corporation, we’ve found that some people who loved the wormhole when they first moved in, decided that it wasn’t really a long term option for them.
After doing this for almost a year, we’ve learned that it is, as much as anything, a lifestyle issue. Some people are looking for isk and have decided that missions or tending their rock gardens in high sec is more to their liking. Others miss the constant flow of traffic and capsuleers that they can shoot at. We look for people who like smaller ops, closer knit groups and slightly neurotic. The people who end up doing the best are the ones who don’t like crowds, love making things work [especially without the right tools], and are used to living on the fringes of society.
In many ways, Letrange’s post on Alliances as they relate to wormhole life is indicative of the issues involved in long term wormhole residency. If you haven’t read it, let me take the liberty of paraphrasing him, “1st, go read Letrange’s Blog Entry. Back. Good.” Basically as it relates to wormhole life, alliances are different. Both alliances and corporations need to start thinking approaching life differently from their counterparts in high-sec, low-sec and null-sec. There are aspects of all of them that apply, but there some things that need to be thought through differently.
The first to be addressed is living out of what amounts to a caravan parked on the Gaza border. You desperately need fuel, supplies and food; however, parties on both sides of you are armed and should be considered dangerous to your well-being. You have to find ways to be self-sufficient while sharing with those also in your RV. One hopes that everyone living in the same place is courteous, thinks exactly alike and doesn’t have any body odour. If you solve this in a manner that keeps everyone happy, let me know.
Other issue that exists after a short amount of time is resource availability. CCP stated that they never intended wormholes to be a long-term residential solution. They’ve set it up so all your fuel and possibly everything else you use up will come from beyond the confines of your home. Couple this with the simple fact that wormholes tend to ‘dry up’ with usage and soon there are a plethora of people and paucity of provender for them. This is the main issue for people that otherwise have the correct state of mind to survive in a hostile environment making ends meet with their own wits. They just need more ‘content’ to be content.
As a corollary to this, the more pilots that you have in a given system, the better equipped the corporation will be to deal with any of the situations that happen to come upon it. Besieged by battleships, bring it. Perplexed by pirates, pulp ‘em. Stymied by Sleepers, sic ‘em. But as above, it takes a lot of resources to provide a lot of resources and all of them chew through it rather quickly.
So we’re left with the phrase, “Lifestyle Choice” that I really think best captures what it means to be a wormhole resident. Things aren’t often grand out here, nor does it all happen with clockwork efficiency. Fleets are often best described as ad hoc and would make most dedicated FC’s cry. Logistics are always a bit of strain and a large percentage of time is dedicated to just making sure everything doesn’t come crashing down. I think it is ok to say that those of us who tend to stay out here in the wormholes are different. There’s a niche out here that we honestly feel blessed to be able to fill and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
My corporate compadres, denizens of Domnion, wanton wormhole wanna-be’s are relentlessly reminding me that it has been a week two weeks nearly three weeks since I posted any information. I’ve been sorely remiss in spending much time posting information here, as I’ve been busy trying to live life in a pod out in the wilds of Apocrypha. Dominion brought some changes, but nothing overly significant to the capsuleers who fly here the wormhole. So then the question I need to answer to myself is, “What has happened?”
We’re still in the same system and we’ve managed to pick up another regular engineer. He really seems to be settling into the opportunities that exist out here in the unknown and is always eager to learn more. He laughs at our attempts to explain that living out of one or more metal boxes powered by a large metal candy cane is a “Lifestyle Choice,” but is excited about the future. We’ll have to revisit the idealism when he’s been ganked a coupled of times, podded and otherwise thrown under the bus [bus being a euphemism for Tech 2 ships with overwhelming firepower and numbers.]
The ability to run sites has picked up some as well with a fairly balanced effort at participation from all involved. We have tried [and been fairly successful] in making everything a concerted group effort, though the industrial side of things is still a bit of a struggle. The new guy has been very giddy about not only mining Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, but being able to be compensated for it without having to worry about the market, hauling, refining, et cetra. We’re excited about his excitement too. Along the way we’ve become very adroit at operating together as a unit and understanding each others’ strengths and weaknesses. In many ways our efficiency is finally picking up and coming together.
The flip side of this situation is that we are also beginning to realize just how isolated we are. Our jargon and vocabulary has shifted significantly and we communicate in seeming nonsense to some of our corp-mates. We haul our “bloot” to market, we talk about our gases and our pre-warps, we know that “@#$@” and “aoliv89#*&” mean someone is about to die. We have reached the point where we know within a few million isk how much a particular site is worth. We can judge approximate time frames for running those sites. We have become fairly comfortable with suggesting fittings and I would go as far as to say know what should work. We have established procedures for scanning, scouting, bookmarking, mining, fighting, etc that aren’t really written down in electrons anywhere.
This is all to say that as we add new people to our endeavor out in the uncharted realms of otherwhen, we’ll be struggling not only to bring them up-to-speed, but also even just communicate.
Technorati Tags: old players, new players
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