"We need more dudes in fleets!", "In Nullsec keeping morale is everything!", "If we believe we can win, we will!" I'm sure you are just as tired of this bullshit as I am. No one has a "morale" meter. They say low morale can be seen from bad fleet numbers. And what causes bad fleet numbers? Bad morale! You got it: bad morale causes low numbers which means bad morale. Also, I've never seen any useful guide to rise morale, that's why there are embarrassing forum topics to "raise morale".
"I'm 1/20th of a shitfit dread. I feel so useful now." This is a quote from the TEST alliance forums from a member who just learned how the DPS of the bombless bomber he is flying relates to Dreadnoughts. In EVE every ship has a role and they excel in it, while fail in other roles, making every ship vulnerable to something else (except for unbalanced supercaps). Stealth bombers are great ships, they can decimate whole fleets in a bombing run. They can move undetectable, they can jump to covert cynos, they can light cynos and they can do many more. Grinding down multi-million HP Sov structures is not among them. Making people fly "siege fleets" has the same effect on their willingness to log in again as making them fly remote-repping Rokhs.
This isn't a problem on its own until you get a Sov war. You can just grab your ship - whatever ship - and find a role for it. You can go on a frigate roam and kill things, having fun. Of course there are fights you cannot take, but frigs are good at running. No one will force you to run lvl 4 missions or attack smartbombing battleships with your frigs. But if you are in a Sov war, you have no options: you must destroy and rep multi-million HP structures. Failing to do so ends you up with no Sov, stations and POS-es. You can no longer choose your way of playing to your ships, you must choose your ships to the task. You can't say "I won't take this fight" without consequences like a frigroamer.
Of course you can choose to run LvL4 missions with 10 frigates. Probably can be done. Probably gives the most horrible ISK/hour one can imagine. Make people do it long enough and they stop logging in. You can of course try to persuade them with social manipulation and it can work for a day or two, but you can't make someone log in again and again and again just to do something ridiculous like running L4s in frigates, remote rep in Rokhs or shoot SBUs in bombers.
But there is more: there is an amount of time one can spend in EVE without failing exams, losing jobs or finding out that his family left him a week ago. No amount of "fight for your bros" tribal drumming can change that. Time is a limited resource and if it's wasted, it will be missing. Sure, you can make surges, typically after a longer period of time when nothing happened in game and people cut back on their playtime. If your exams are fine, you have enough days off work and spent every evenings with your family for weeks, you can afford to go nuts for a day or two and spend huge amount of time in a video game. Welcome to 1-SMEB, where TEST alone shown up in an unimaginable 1300-men force. Fast forward two weeks, your new exams are upon you and you studied nothing, your days off work used up and your wife is packing. You have to cut back on gaming, you have to use that little time efficiently.
"Morale" of TEST is great. People are posting happily, fleet coms are in cheering mood and everyone is having fun. But the numbers are still low because horrible amount of hours were wasted in bombless bombers. People are no longer capable of playing excessive amount, and in the limited amount of time you can fly only a few fleets. It is very possible that TEST members spend more hours in game a week than Goons. It just have no effect as the hours are wasted in bombless bombers. Similarly, look at SOLAR: they lost no members and corps over the year, you can't show better proof for dedication of members. Yet they lost all their Sov. Seems "morale" did no good to them.
The side in the Sov war that is holding capital superiority is capable of saving its strength. Its pilots are participating in useful ops, they don't have to play excessive amounts to get things done, so they can log in when needed, and can even afford to go nuts sometimes like doing a 3:00 AM alarm clock op. The side without capital superiority has to spend inhuman hours grinding structures and will eventually lose. To win, an alliance doesn't need more drumming and even more embarrassing threads, but ISK for capitals.
"I'm 1/20th of a shitfit dread. I feel so useful now." This is a quote from the TEST alliance forums from a member who just learned how the DPS of the bombless bomber he is flying relates to Dreadnoughts. In EVE every ship has a role and they excel in it, while fail in other roles, making every ship vulnerable to something else (except for unbalanced supercaps). Stealth bombers are great ships, they can decimate whole fleets in a bombing run. They can move undetectable, they can jump to covert cynos, they can light cynos and they can do many more. Grinding down multi-million HP Sov structures is not among them. Making people fly "siege fleets" has the same effect on their willingness to log in again as making them fly remote-repping Rokhs.
This isn't a problem on its own until you get a Sov war. You can just grab your ship - whatever ship - and find a role for it. You can go on a frigate roam and kill things, having fun. Of course there are fights you cannot take, but frigs are good at running. No one will force you to run lvl 4 missions or attack smartbombing battleships with your frigs. But if you are in a Sov war, you have no options: you must destroy and rep multi-million HP structures. Failing to do so ends you up with no Sov, stations and POS-es. You can no longer choose your way of playing to your ships, you must choose your ships to the task. You can't say "I won't take this fight" without consequences like a frigroamer.
Of course you can choose to run LvL4 missions with 10 frigates. Probably can be done. Probably gives the most horrible ISK/hour one can imagine. Make people do it long enough and they stop logging in. You can of course try to persuade them with social manipulation and it can work for a day or two, but you can't make someone log in again and again and again just to do something ridiculous like running L4s in frigates, remote rep in Rokhs or shoot SBUs in bombers.
But there is more: there is an amount of time one can spend in EVE without failing exams, losing jobs or finding out that his family left him a week ago. No amount of "fight for your bros" tribal drumming can change that. Time is a limited resource and if it's wasted, it will be missing. Sure, you can make surges, typically after a longer period of time when nothing happened in game and people cut back on their playtime. If your exams are fine, you have enough days off work and spent every evenings with your family for weeks, you can afford to go nuts for a day or two and spend huge amount of time in a video game. Welcome to 1-SMEB, where TEST alone shown up in an unimaginable 1300-men force. Fast forward two weeks, your new exams are upon you and you studied nothing, your days off work used up and your wife is packing. You have to cut back on gaming, you have to use that little time efficiently.
"Morale" of TEST is great. People are posting happily, fleet coms are in cheering mood and everyone is having fun. But the numbers are still low because horrible amount of hours were wasted in bombless bombers. People are no longer capable of playing excessive amount, and in the limited amount of time you can fly only a few fleets. It is very possible that TEST members spend more hours in game a week than Goons. It just have no effect as the hours are wasted in bombless bombers. Similarly, look at SOLAR: they lost no members and corps over the year, you can't show better proof for dedication of members. Yet they lost all their Sov. Seems "morale" did no good to them.
The side in the Sov war that is holding capital superiority is capable of saving its strength. Its pilots are participating in useful ops, they don't have to play excessive amounts to get things done, so they can log in when needed, and can even afford to go nuts sometimes like doing a 3:00 AM alarm clock op. The side without capital superiority has to spend inhuman hours grinding structures and will eventually lose. To win, an alliance doesn't need more drumming and even more embarrassing threads, but ISK for capitals.
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