At first, the amount of people shown their interest in my supercap corp idea is astonishing and above all of my expectations. About half of them are new to EVE. Not so surprisingly 90%+ of those who wrote powerblock preference wrote CFC-HB. The "e-honor", "killboard is important" and "20M+" is strong with most alliances outside of them. About 80% of them suggested (or already in) one specific alliance. This may have something to do with the fact that the No1 traffic source of my blog (after google.com and direct traffic) is reddit.com (the second is blessingofkings.blogspot.com, the third is somethingawful.com).
Before I actually start the negotiations I'd like to clarify what we can offer and what we need. "Clarify" doesn't mean "I break it down to you" but "we discuss until I'm capable to understand the needs of a nullsec alliance". I have blurry visions that are limited by my limited knowledge of null.
First, what can we offer that makes us valuable assets:
ISK. A lot. While most of our members will be EVE-newbies, being on this blog assumes that they like the money-making aspect. While EVE-players tend to look down on other MMOs (just because other EVE players who are not them made awesome things), the economy of MMOs isn't different at all. Selling EMP S isn't different from selling Saronite Arrowhead.
I'd like to mention a common nonsense argument flooding my comment moderation section "your income is nothing compared to an alliance budget". This is stupid beyond measure. The income of an alliance is moon mining material income + income from members. So multiply the money you donated to your alliance with the number of alliance members. I'd guess for 99% of these commenters the result would be zero + moongoo. While moon income is significant, especially for Goons, it's not a game-breaking thing. Even if the Goons make 2T/month from Tech, counting with 10K members, that's only 200M/member/month. Sure, it's not nothing, but a bit off from my 50B/member/month. In other words: the alliance cannot provide significant funds to an average member. Sure they can replace a lost drakefleet and pay their sov bills, but they can't give out free supercaps to every Tom, Dick and Harriett. Otherwise they would. Of course we hear of market wizzards in alliances, but they fill their own wallet, not of the alliance. Please note that in the FW-exploit issue, 5 players were negwalleted and not their alliance.
Another, more very recent info about alliance wealth: Nulli Secunda moves to faction warfare to get T5 to be able to get lot of Armageddon Navy ships which will be their new doctrine. If I'm correct, you have to provide a normal Armageddon to buy a Navy for LP. A normal Armageddon is 85M, a Navy is 300M. So by capturing the whole FW zone, they save 215M/ship. So the average nulli pilot works about a month to get his ships with replacements. Want to know how many Navy upgrades (Navy-normal) could I get? 100 from my wallet right now, another 400 after liquidating my stocks. So either Nulli orbits over empty FW-plexes for hours because it's fun or the average (not GSF) alliance isn't at all rich compared to a good trader.
The real selling point however the source of this ISK: mostly highsec trading. This activity doesn't compete with existing moneymaking schemes of the alliance. We becoming rich doesn't mean making other alliance members poor like they were if we'd just mine the whole region dry. Rather we pay them ISK to mine the region dry for our supers.
The second thing we can offer is genuine newbies. I can't emphasize its importance. Poaching players from other alliances has a serious problem: they left because they were unhappy where they are. However the rats and rocks are the same in every region, and the drakefleets are surprisingly similar too. Those who had problems probably hold the problems in themselves and won't be happy in their new place either. The guy with the 3 pages long corp history is a common sight among wannabe recruits. Of course there are people who leave because of valid reasons and will be satisfied in their new place, but most of the corp-hoppers keep hopping. A genuine newbie who joins the game has much larger chance to make home in the place that nurtures him.
Now the things we need. I'd like to emphasize "need". They aren't fluffs we want but things that we can't operate without. It's not sure that it's the job of the alliance to provide them, feel free to tell that X need to be found by ourselves.
An integrative alliance (or corp). We'll be total newbies to null and many of us to the game. Left on our own devices we won't be achieving anything besides making ISK in highsec. An alliance where corps are more or less independent and just flock together for sov war fleets would be a terrible place for us. We need a place where the interaction between members is strong, there are active forums and chat where questions can be answered. I'm not sure that it's the best idea to have a corp of my own, maybe joining an existing industrial corp of the alliance would be better idea. If we have our own corp, the alliance must be the kind where players of different corps mesh and do things together. Currently we can't do anything alone besides hoarding highsec ISK.
The sector we need the most tutoring is fleet PvP. The alliance we join must have joint fleets which are large enough to survive the unavoidable messups of newbies. We can of course make up for our fails with ISK to replace whatever we lose (and whatever others lose because of our fails). The joint fleets are also necessary to keep those pilots who won't make it to the supercap. I'm not naive with the success rate of "great" plans. Out of 10 newbies who go for a titan, 1 will get it, 2 will settle at a supercarrier and 7 will quit before 5B. If we are alone, these 7 players will be lost. If we are in an integrated fleet, these pilots can stay in other corps and the alliance gained 7 new Drake pilots.
I'd like to emphasize that I see the corp only as a tool and consider the alliance (powerblock) to be the group level. Corps won't make difference on the large-scale, alliances will. I'd also point out that managing a corp is just a necessary administration to me and not at all something I desire. If the alliance have a trusted wannabe leader, I gladly let him be the CEO and I do what I'm good at: making ISK and teaching it.
Availability of intelligent theorycrafters: we'll have lot of questions. But we are not apes who settle with answers like "we do it this way", "everyone does it like that" or the generic "lol, fail". Few things wastes my time more than the "experience" trolls, the ones who don't give any useful info just parrot what they heard during the time they spent in null. They are often right, but only because someone who actually has brain told them the right answer and they have no clue how and why. I want understanding of things since only that can seed new ideas.
To see what I mean, let me present a real problem. No matter how much time I spend with EFT, titans seems to be best use with gang links (not all of them, just 1 for fleet booster and 1-1 for each capital/supercapital wing). For the example I grabbed a random ship with 13225 shield HP. I set as fleet booster a Tengu with siege warfare gang links and mindlink implant. The shield HP jumped to 15209 (15% increase). Then I set a Leviathan titan with siege warfare gang links and mindlink implant as fleet booster, receiving 18184HP (37.5% increase). The difference between the Tengu booster and the Leviathan booster is 20%. Assuming a supercap fleet has 100x the EHP and 100x the DPS of one normal titan, adding this titan increases both by 1%. Adding my fleet booster titan increases them by 0.3% (doom) and 20%. Could anyone rationally explain why 1+1 is better than 0.3+20?
Note: Leviathan is an example, Erebus does the same for armor, Avatar for cap recharge, Ragnarok for signature radius decrease.
The point isn't that I'm right. I can be wrong. But do you know why? Or do you just parrot what you've heard from some guy?
The will to field supercaps: there is nothing more demoralizing than flying the most powerful ship and not seeing battles. Supercaps are tools and not valued prizes. If you afraid of a supercap lossmail, I'm not interested in you. I don't mind losing a titan. I happily use my titan as bait. Hell, my Ragnarok design is made precisely to fleet boost a subcap fleet, (-50% signature resolution at your service). I'm happy to field it for the purpose of making the enemy doing stupid things in their "OMG supercap killmail! Go for it lololol" lust. If you mind losing my titan more than I do, then something is seriously wrong with you. If I had to point out one reason why SoCo was roflstomped without any resistance is their care for killboards. Don't be like that!
Of course we won't do stupid things like going on a supercap roam. We only field them when the alliance FC want them to be fielded. We understand that sometimes escalation is not a good idea (for example out of the alliance prime time when most of the supercap pilots are unavailable). We understand that it's often structure shooting/repping is the supercap job and we will do it happily as this is what makes the change on the sov map. We understand that there are times when the enemy has to be baited out, let them go bold and stupid. We understand lot of things. But not fielding supercaps ever is not something we understand. If you just want to gather supers because they are cute, we aren't for you, and I can guarantee that the disgruntled pilots will disappear, either jumping to other alliance or simply stopping playing.
Understanding the necessity of trading profit: We will most probably haul things from highsec to the alliance null. We can haul things for other people. We will definitely manufacture things so we can do it for others too. But expecting to do it without "profit" is nonsense. Every action has risks and opportunity costs. If you demand to give something for free, people will not give it at all. What is better? Having ammo for sale at +20% Jita price or having no ammo for sale? Please note that most alliance members do exactly nothing on the trading front, otherwise there wouldn't be profit at the first place. Why should we do something that others don't? We will probably build a "trade hub" just for our own needs. This hub will be at the benefit for everyone in the alliance. But to make it work and serve everyone, you must be able to explain the murmuring economically challenged ones that they are free to learn to drive jump freighters, use their own 8B to buy one, risk it with cargo at every jump and then they can undercut us, otherwise STFU.
A clear declaration of goals. "What we fighting for" is what keeps intelligent people loyal. We share a common goal and leaving the team would mean leaving the goal. The alliance must have some declaration of ideas, what they believe in, what they fight for. A generic "for fun lol" or "for the team" doesn't fly, simply because these are available everywhere. Let me put a good example: "We trash the game of everyone else" is a declaration of the Goons. Clear, definitely separates those who believe it's a good goal from those who don't. The alliance must have something like that to survive in the long term. No point joining a band of bored guys who are fighting because ... they don't have anything better to do on Saturday evening. I also ask commenters to link such declarations or summarize it for their own alliance even if they don't want me anywhere near themselves. Just the list of ideas people fight for is interesting on its own for the readers and myself.
Wednesday morning report: 108.7B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
Before I actually start the negotiations I'd like to clarify what we can offer and what we need. "Clarify" doesn't mean "I break it down to you" but "we discuss until I'm capable to understand the needs of a nullsec alliance". I have blurry visions that are limited by my limited knowledge of null.
First, what can we offer that makes us valuable assets:
ISK. A lot. While most of our members will be EVE-newbies, being on this blog assumes that they like the money-making aspect. While EVE-players tend to look down on other MMOs (just because other EVE players who are not them made awesome things), the economy of MMOs isn't different at all. Selling EMP S isn't different from selling Saronite Arrowhead.
I'd like to mention a common nonsense argument flooding my comment moderation section "your income is nothing compared to an alliance budget". This is stupid beyond measure. The income of an alliance is moon mining material income + income from members. So multiply the money you donated to your alliance with the number of alliance members. I'd guess for 99% of these commenters the result would be zero + moongoo. While moon income is significant, especially for Goons, it's not a game-breaking thing. Even if the Goons make 2T/month from Tech, counting with 10K members, that's only 200M/member/month. Sure, it's not nothing, but a bit off from my 50B/member/month. In other words: the alliance cannot provide significant funds to an average member. Sure they can replace a lost drakefleet and pay their sov bills, but they can't give out free supercaps to every Tom, Dick and Harriett. Otherwise they would. Of course we hear of market wizzards in alliances, but they fill their own wallet, not of the alliance. Please note that in the FW-exploit issue, 5 players were negwalleted and not their alliance.
Another, more very recent info about alliance wealth: Nulli Secunda moves to faction warfare to get T5 to be able to get lot of Armageddon Navy ships which will be their new doctrine. If I'm correct, you have to provide a normal Armageddon to buy a Navy for LP. A normal Armageddon is 85M, a Navy is 300M. So by capturing the whole FW zone, they save 215M/ship. So the average nulli pilot works about a month to get his ships with replacements. Want to know how many Navy upgrades (Navy-normal) could I get? 100 from my wallet right now, another 400 after liquidating my stocks. So either Nulli orbits over empty FW-plexes for hours because it's fun or the average (not GSF) alliance isn't at all rich compared to a good trader.
The real selling point however the source of this ISK: mostly highsec trading. This activity doesn't compete with existing moneymaking schemes of the alliance. We becoming rich doesn't mean making other alliance members poor like they were if we'd just mine the whole region dry. Rather we pay them ISK to mine the region dry for our supers.
The second thing we can offer is genuine newbies. I can't emphasize its importance. Poaching players from other alliances has a serious problem: they left because they were unhappy where they are. However the rats and rocks are the same in every region, and the drakefleets are surprisingly similar too. Those who had problems probably hold the problems in themselves and won't be happy in their new place either. The guy with the 3 pages long corp history is a common sight among wannabe recruits. Of course there are people who leave because of valid reasons and will be satisfied in their new place, but most of the corp-hoppers keep hopping. A genuine newbie who joins the game has much larger chance to make home in the place that nurtures him.
Now the things we need. I'd like to emphasize "need". They aren't fluffs we want but things that we can't operate without. It's not sure that it's the job of the alliance to provide them, feel free to tell that X need to be found by ourselves.
An integrative alliance (or corp). We'll be total newbies to null and many of us to the game. Left on our own devices we won't be achieving anything besides making ISK in highsec. An alliance where corps are more or less independent and just flock together for sov war fleets would be a terrible place for us. We need a place where the interaction between members is strong, there are active forums and chat where questions can be answered. I'm not sure that it's the best idea to have a corp of my own, maybe joining an existing industrial corp of the alliance would be better idea. If we have our own corp, the alliance must be the kind where players of different corps mesh and do things together. Currently we can't do anything alone besides hoarding highsec ISK.
The sector we need the most tutoring is fleet PvP. The alliance we join must have joint fleets which are large enough to survive the unavoidable messups of newbies. We can of course make up for our fails with ISK to replace whatever we lose (and whatever others lose because of our fails). The joint fleets are also necessary to keep those pilots who won't make it to the supercap. I'm not naive with the success rate of "great" plans. Out of 10 newbies who go for a titan, 1 will get it, 2 will settle at a supercarrier and 7 will quit before 5B. If we are alone, these 7 players will be lost. If we are in an integrated fleet, these pilots can stay in other corps and the alliance gained 7 new Drake pilots.
I'd like to emphasize that I see the corp only as a tool and consider the alliance (powerblock) to be the group level. Corps won't make difference on the large-scale, alliances will. I'd also point out that managing a corp is just a necessary administration to me and not at all something I desire. If the alliance have a trusted wannabe leader, I gladly let him be the CEO and I do what I'm good at: making ISK and teaching it.
Availability of intelligent theorycrafters: we'll have lot of questions. But we are not apes who settle with answers like "we do it this way", "everyone does it like that" or the generic "lol, fail". Few things wastes my time more than the "experience" trolls, the ones who don't give any useful info just parrot what they heard during the time they spent in null. They are often right, but only because someone who actually has brain told them the right answer and they have no clue how and why. I want understanding of things since only that can seed new ideas.
To see what I mean, let me present a real problem. No matter how much time I spend with EFT, titans seems to be best use with gang links (not all of them, just 1 for fleet booster and 1-1 for each capital/supercapital wing). For the example I grabbed a random ship with 13225 shield HP. I set as fleet booster a Tengu with siege warfare gang links and mindlink implant. The shield HP jumped to 15209 (15% increase). Then I set a Leviathan titan with siege warfare gang links and mindlink implant as fleet booster, receiving 18184HP (37.5% increase). The difference between the Tengu booster and the Leviathan booster is 20%. Assuming a supercap fleet has 100x the EHP and 100x the DPS of one normal titan, adding this titan increases both by 1%. Adding my fleet booster titan increases them by 0.3% (doom) and 20%. Could anyone rationally explain why 1+1 is better than 0.3+20?
Note: Leviathan is an example, Erebus does the same for armor, Avatar for cap recharge, Ragnarok for signature radius decrease.
The point isn't that I'm right. I can be wrong. But do you know why? Or do you just parrot what you've heard from some guy?
The will to field supercaps: there is nothing more demoralizing than flying the most powerful ship and not seeing battles. Supercaps are tools and not valued prizes. If you afraid of a supercap lossmail, I'm not interested in you. I don't mind losing a titan. I happily use my titan as bait. Hell, my Ragnarok design is made precisely to fleet boost a subcap fleet, (-50% signature resolution at your service). I'm happy to field it for the purpose of making the enemy doing stupid things in their "OMG supercap killmail! Go for it lololol" lust. If you mind losing my titan more than I do, then something is seriously wrong with you. If I had to point out one reason why SoCo was roflstomped without any resistance is their care for killboards. Don't be like that!
Of course we won't do stupid things like going on a supercap roam. We only field them when the alliance FC want them to be fielded. We understand that sometimes escalation is not a good idea (for example out of the alliance prime time when most of the supercap pilots are unavailable). We understand that it's often structure shooting/repping is the supercap job and we will do it happily as this is what makes the change on the sov map. We understand that there are times when the enemy has to be baited out, let them go bold and stupid. We understand lot of things. But not fielding supercaps ever is not something we understand. If you just want to gather supers because they are cute, we aren't for you, and I can guarantee that the disgruntled pilots will disappear, either jumping to other alliance or simply stopping playing.
Understanding the necessity of trading profit: We will most probably haul things from highsec to the alliance null. We can haul things for other people. We will definitely manufacture things so we can do it for others too. But expecting to do it without "profit" is nonsense. Every action has risks and opportunity costs. If you demand to give something for free, people will not give it at all. What is better? Having ammo for sale at +20% Jita price or having no ammo for sale? Please note that most alliance members do exactly nothing on the trading front, otherwise there wouldn't be profit at the first place. Why should we do something that others don't? We will probably build a "trade hub" just for our own needs. This hub will be at the benefit for everyone in the alliance. But to make it work and serve everyone, you must be able to explain the murmuring economically challenged ones that they are free to learn to drive jump freighters, use their own 8B to buy one, risk it with cargo at every jump and then they can undercut us, otherwise STFU.
A clear declaration of goals. "What we fighting for" is what keeps intelligent people loyal. We share a common goal and leaving the team would mean leaving the goal. The alliance must have some declaration of ideas, what they believe in, what they fight for. A generic "for fun lol" or "for the team" doesn't fly, simply because these are available everywhere. Let me put a good example: "We trash the game of everyone else" is a declaration of the Goons. Clear, definitely separates those who believe it's a good goal from those who don't. The alliance must have something like that to survive in the long term. No point joining a band of bored guys who are fighting because ... they don't have anything better to do on Saturday evening. I also ask commenters to link such declarations or summarize it for their own alliance even if they don't want me anywhere near themselves. Just the list of ideas people fight for is interesting on its own for the readers and myself.
Wednesday morning report: 108.7B (2B spent on main accounts, 1.3 spent on Logi/Carrier, 1.0 on Ragnarok, 1.0 on Rorqual, 0.9 on Nyx, 1.3 on Avatar, 2.6B received as gift).
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