Horizon's Edge

Tournaments and Pew Pew!

2011-10-05T11:55:00.000+11:00

I know, I know... My blog has been quiet lately. There are reasons. Some RL, but most in-game. I'd rather spend my EVE-related time working on making the corp better, than this blog.

It is commonly known in Quantum Horizons that when we go roaming in a fleet, because of our odd timezone (Australian) the places we roam are rather quiet. We joke around in fleet that if we don't find anything we'll end up shooting each other just because we want the explosions. You might think this sounds rather crazy, but lately we've been doing just that!

We figured if we couldn't find targets we'd just make our own. Quantum Horizons is a rather large corporation of about 115 members, which are all quite active. So we have started shooting each other instead. Corp leadership has been planning for weeks, and last week we had our first tournament in quite a long while.

The first of the tournaments was a frigate free for all (which we have run successfully in the past) where each contestant has 3 frigates they can use and the aim is to score the most number of kills. The match turned out quite well, and although the big bad downtime cut the tournament short by a few minutes (and a few kills) there were lots of satisfied corp members coming away with over 1 billion ISK worth of bounty money and prize money. Prizes were awared to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, in which 1st prize was split between two pilots, 2nd prize split between 7 pilots and 3rd place going to a single pilot. Turns out that 3rd place got more prize money than 2nd place pilots! Congratulations to those winners! Well done.

Either way, we had an absolute blast. You can see here in this image* of the in-game star map:

If you are in Quantum Horizons, there will be some interesting times ahead, both encouraging more tournaments and more pew pew. I hope our corp members enjoy it as much as the leadership enjoyed planning it.

*Thanks to the QH corp member who provided me with this image - you know who you are.

New Meme: First ever lossmail

2011-09-15T11:38:00.000+10:00

Kirith Kodachi (the now king of starting new trends in the blogging community) has started a new meme amongst EVE pilots. Tracking down your first ever lossmail. Battleclinic lists this as my first ever lossmail:

2007.03.03 03:44:00

Victim: SuicidalPancake
Corp: ANZAC ALLIANCE
Alliance: Southern Cross Alliance
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Osprey
System: Aunenen
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 0

Involved parties:

Name: TerminusX
Security: -1.0
Corp: Divine Retribution
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Maelstrom
Weapon: Maelstrom
Damage Done: 0

Name: Jolinar Malkshur (laid the final blow)
Security: 2.5
Corp: Divine Retribution
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishtar
Weapon: Berserker I
Damage Done: 0

Destroyed items:

Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 29
150mm Railgun I
Large Subordinate Screen Stabilizer I
Medium Converse I Deflection Catalyzer
50mm Reinforced Crystalline Carbonide Plates I
10MN Afterburner I
Flameburst Light Missile, Qty: 511 (Cargo)
Lead Charge S, Qty: 66 (Cargo)
Small Shield Booster I (Cargo)
Cap Booster 100, Qty: 15 (Cargo)
Precious Alloy (Cargo)
Condensed Alloy, Qty: 4 (Cargo)

Battleclinic link: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=1697772

Seriously! What was I thinking!? Not only was my Osprey dual tanked, but I didn't fill all my module slots. And I only have one gun fitted, a small one! And to think, today I am a CEO of a rather successul Australian/New Zealand corp. My early days were obviously not so successful. I have come a long way since that loss over 4 years ago.

Can you find your first lossmail?

Blog Banter 28: The Clock is ticking...

2011-09-08T14:15:00.000+10:00

This Blog Banter Freebooted brings us a topic related to the ongoing CCP vs CSM battle.

Blog Banter 28: The Future of EVE Online, CCP and the CSM
In recent months, the relationship between CCP and it's customers has been the subject of some controversy. The player-elected Council of Stellar Management has played a key role in these events, but not for the first time they are finding CCP difficult to deal with. What effect will CCP's recent strategies have on the future of EVE Online and it's player-base? What part can and should the CSM play in shaping that future? How best can EVE Online's continued health and growth be assured?

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Expected release date: 2011
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online - Expected release date: 2012

These two Sci-Fi MMO titles alone threaten to destroy the 8 years worth of community which is EVE. EVE might have several years worth of development time over these other titles, but let's be serious, the last few expansions from CCP don't really count.

CCP is, again, turning the CSM into a joke. I hope the CSM's recent strategy of going public to provoke CCP into providing what the players want works. EVE players are generally smarter than your average gamer, and if the players want CCP to do something, it is well within our power to make it happen. The players can quite easily "blob" CCP - we have more power than CCP because we pay their wages. The recent "monocle-gate" episode proved this point, along with the Jita protests.

Example: Goonswarm's political propaganda power could be utilized in the real world via the internet aimed directly at the gaming industry. And I hope this is what Mittens has in mind - at least CCP will take notice then.

On a side note; the Mittani is doing a great job with the CSM. I didn't vote for him, but I wish I had. I will definitely vote for him next time. Thankyou Mittani.

As for EVE's health, the community is keeping it alive now, despite it's seriously unhealthy state. CCP are stupidly allowing DUST 514 and World of Darkness to leech the life out of EVE, and I would hate to see this great community of ours dissolve as other MMO's are released. Abandon the community, and you kill EVE. Want to save EVE? Cancel World of Darkness first, and even DUST if you have to. We just want to fly spaceships.

All eyes are on CCP for their "Winter" expansion. Both Star Wars and Warhammer 40k have epic universes full of lore and have a much richer history than New Eden, plus they have been around for many more years. CCP has their work cut out for them over the next 12 months, can they handle it?

The clock is ticking... tick.. tick.. tick...

EVE Blog Banter: A Quick Solution for Quick Combat

2011-08-31T15:13:00.006+10:00

Following on from Kirith Kodachi's post here, and Seismic Stan's post here, the newly reincarnated blog banter covers the topic of casual combat in EVE.

Kirith Kodachi recently discussed the idea of what a World of Tanks style quick-match element would bring to EVE Online. Would the opportunity for a quick combat interest you? How could it be implemented? Could it be done without having a negative impact on existing gameplay elements? Or does such a concept have no place in EVE?

After reading several other EVE blogs out there with different ideas and opinions on quick combat in EVE, I agree that casual PvP does not fit in the EVE universe. However with more and more people becoming casual gamers or preferring the casual playstyle, it would be silly to ignore this demand. Personally I would like to see more casual ways of engaging in PvP in EVE, but I would not like it to break the game universe. A loss should still hurt you wallet balance, and the winner should be able to loot your wreck and receive a killmail like he normally would after a fight.

Many blogs have thought up ways where Arena style combat could be introduced that have been rather complex in situtations. But the answer is simple and the technology is already within the game; Kill rights.

Currently when someone destroys your ship, you get kill rights on them. These kill rights last for a period of time and allows you to destroy their ship just once as payback. What if kill rights were able to be toggled on and off, and for certain periods of time, to a certain player or certain group of players? That way both parties are required to consent to PvP in high sec areas. Just pay CONCORD a small fee to ignore your combat in a certain system, constellation, region, or the even entire universe.

The combat stays out in space, rather than being hidden in a virtual in-station environment, and the ships/fittings being used come straight from the market. Obviously there are still issues with docking/undocking games, and neutral logistics ships. But these are other issues that need dealing with anyway. And worried about the kill rights timer running out during a match? Use agression mechanics to keep it extended until fighting stops.

I'm an engineer in RL and I work by the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Further Reading:

See Seismic Stan's blog at Freebooted where the latest updates for the blog banter are linked.

How NOT to Stay in a Wormhole

2011-08-30T09:39:00.005+10:00

Part 3 of Rymmer's wormhole story.

Read part 1 here, and part 2 here.

If you were expecting a bunch of action today in this blog post, you may want to think again. This is more of a wind-up and "what did I learn" post.

So, I logged on today, full of optimism about all of the anomalies I would be able to run and found two new things. The first was this:

and the second was an eve-mail basically saying "That was a warning shot, get out of my wormhole".

It seemed I had no choice. I had no way to get rid of their POS and staging position. We were on majorly different timezones, so I wasn't able to harass their fleet while they were doing whatever they were doing, and I was also by myself with no backup. So it looked like I had only one option left, get out of Dodge. Let's see how badly I can screw that one up.

The static lo-sec exit today went to a very convenient system, right next door to a high-sec system, and it had no pilots in local, which meant logisitics would be quite simple. Just get the shit out of there. To be honest, if it wasn't I was screwed. Three or four regular hauler loads of cargo, and four or five regular ship jumps later, and everything was out. Considering all of my past performances, I was surprised that there was not a thing to be seen the whole time. The last hauler load even took all the fuel so I wouldn't even leave them with a shield to shoot at. Eventually, they did make good on the warning, and removed the POS and it's still anchored Corporate Hangar Array, and Ship Maintenance Array by violent means.

And that was it. No POS left, the mission over and all I had to show was the drops and minimal salvage from 3 of the easier anomalies. I suppose I should be happy I didn't manage to lose it all on the hauler runs to get the stuff out. A pretty poor effort, but hopefully what I would take away would be worth more : Lessons!

Lesson 1:

Wormholes are not really solo content. Sure, you can run some of the sites with only one ship, and you can probably make a fair amount of money doing it. Sites aren't the only thing you can make money with by yourself either. Planetary Interaction can make a bit, as well as Gravimetric sites and both are pretty easy to do Solo. All of this stuff is made more fun with more players though, and more efficient. Well, except for Grav sites, but mining is boring anyway. With another player or two, you can "spider tank", and gear your ships up with much more combat ability. Or you can have a seperate player do the salvaging, and you don't have to spend time switching ships. With more players it means you can run escorts with the hauler ships, and they will be a lot less likely to be caught by random prowling pirates. And most of all, doing this stuff with other people is what makes MMO games fun.

Lesson 2:

If you do go against Lesson1 and go solo, take a large tower, and possibly an Orca. The tower I brought was only small and had no hardeners. This made it a very easy target, even for a bunch of Battlecruisers to take down. Along with that large tower, bring mods to make it annoying to take down. In a class 2, it is unlikely they will get a lot of battleships (but not impossible). Hardeners and ECM modules will make it even more annoying to prospective combatants, and most will likely just not bother.

Lesson 3:

There are very likely better solo ships than the Harbinger or Zealot. There is a reason why the Drake is so popular, and there are plenty of fits around that should be able to tank C2 sites easily. If you're prepared to spend a bit more money, then likely all of the Strategic Cruisers will have fits that will perform better in a solo situation. I'm also sure in the coming days people will probably also point out to me a bunch of other ships and fits which probably would have done better than what I brought.

Hopefully you'll all have learned a few lessons from my mistakes. Fly safe everyone, but don't be afraid to take risks as long as you're willing to learn from them.

How NOT to Farm Anomalies in a C2 Wormhole

2011-08-23T14:29:00.003+10:00

This week brings us part 2 of Rymmer's story in wormhole space. You can read part 1 here.

So I get up in my newly claimed wormhole, and get to actually making some ISK. My plan had been to not risk expensive ships in this venture, so I had only brought a Harbinger for trying to run sites in, so that if it was lost, then no big deal, only a comparatively cheap ship anyway. This has been pretty much my plan the entire operation as well : Go cheap, that way if it fails, then no biggy.

I fit up the Harbinger with as big a tank as I could manage and found a couple of the easier anomalies and warped in and started blasting away. To be honest, it was pretty hard going trying to track the frigate sleepers and tank the battleship sleeper in each of the sites. Every now and then I'd be needing to warp out and back in again to let my tank rep up to full again, but managed to get through the site slowly. And I don't think I was going to be able to handle any of the harder anomalies, and definitely none of the signatures. So I had to fix that. If I was spending (at least) 30 minutes doing one C2 anomaly, then I could be making more money by just doing Level 4 missions.

So I went and fitted up a Zealot similar to this guys loadout, but with a little less faction candy than his, seeing as this was only Class 2, and his was intended for Class 3 soloing, and brought it into the wormhole with no issues. With the web and AB, this worked much better for tracking frigates and tanking as well. Most of the time, I'd only have to have one repper going, only needing to pulse the second one when I got webbed or with a full wave of spawns. The heat sinks also meant I was able to get through the Battleships quicker as well.

After powering through a total of 3 sites with the new ship, I got out the salvager destroyer, and salvaged and looted all of the sites. Dammit, not a single Melted Nanoribbon to speak of. With the purchase of the Zealot, tower and fuel, this operation is now in the hole for at least 500 million ISK, and these sites today had only made back a fraction of that.

I still had hope that maybe with the Zealot ready to go tomorrow I would be able to get through a bunch more anomalies. Though little did I know what was in store for me. Join me next time when we get our first communications from the other people in this wormhole...

How NOT to set up a Wormhole POS

2011-08-17T10:41:00.001+10:00

This week we step off the ordinary path and have a guest blog post from a corpmate of mine, Rymmer. He has written a previous post; Operation Hurricane Hewing. This weeks blog post is the first of a multi-part series of how Rymmer ventured off on his own to setup shop in a Class 2 Wormhole... alone. Enjoy!

So, I had an opportunity to make a bunch of ISK. I had found a Class 2 wormhole with approximately 40 or 50 anomalies in it and another half a dozen Magnetometric and Radar signatures, but that wasn't the real money maker. There is also a Static Class 2 wormhole here, which should bring a steady flow of new ISK making opportunities. The kicker here is the three stupid mistakes I made setting this up, two that nearly resulted in me losing the POS and the hauler getting my stuff in, and one that actually let the hauler get out safely. A comedy of errors, but at least the the final dance ended with a happy flourish.

I had been scouting for suitable wormholes for a while, trying to find something with a Class 2 or 3 static. Eventually I found what I was looking for, and even more ideally, not only did it have a Class 2 static, it also had a Low Security static. I parked a scanning alt in here, and waited for our Corporations current operation to wind down. The only problem is that the next time I scanned out it's LoSec static, someone else had exactly the same idea and moved in their large Control Tower, and set up shop. I had originally thought that my opportunity had been missed, and had just left the alt in there and forgot about it for a few months. When I came back and checked on it, I noticed that the other setup in here didn't actually seem to be doing anything apart from keeping their tower fueled, and possibly some Planetary Interaction. There was always the same unpiloted ships parked in the shield and the anomalies were piling back up again. Right then, gotta risk ISK to make ISK, I thought, and gathered together what I would need to set up a Small POS in here.

Why a Small POS, you ask? Two reasons. First, this is only supposed to be a fleeting visit. I hope to only be staying for a week or two. Second, my character that is going to be doing pretty much all the hauling has only really been focused on Combat till now. The biggest Industrial he can fly is a Bestower, which can carry just over 22,000 m^3 worth of equipment. A small POS, Corporate Hangar, and Ship Maintenance Array and a weeks worth of fuel takes up a little over 20,000m^3, so looked about just right. The moving in operation went well and had no issues, but the moon I chose pretty much at random, just happened to be the moon right next door to the current other POS. Whether this will make things "interesting" only time and future posts will tell.

POS anchored and all modules online, what I need to now is bring in my scanning ship, a salvaging ship, and a few combat ships, and possibly a corpmate or two to make things go quicker. I jumped out in a pod and went to the nearest market hub to start buying some of this stuff. I bought a Cov-Ops scanning ship, and fortunately for me, a corpmate was available who could fly an Iteron Mark V, and could haul in for me the salvaging ship, stealth bomber, another couple of weeks of fuel, and a load of strontium and some other items for "keeping myself busy" in the wormhole.

This is where the trouble started. I used my scanning alt to find the static LoSec exit for today, and drop the bookmarks for it in a handy station for my main to get when he was on the way to the nearest market hub. There were no stations in the current system to drop the bookmarks in, so I flew one system and dropped them there. First stupid mistake : I had forgotten to bookmark the way back into the wormhole. Second really stupid mistake : I had actually forgotten which system I came from where the wormhole was, and there was only an hour left before downtime. I had to find the way back in, and before the servers went down, as downtime is my bedtime.

Only a couple of minutes into panicking I realised that the star map could tell me which systems I've visited, which should tell me which system I came from and that could at least narrow it down from 3 systems to scan down to one. Unfortunately it seems there is some sort of delay on this stat and it doesn't actually show this on my star map yet. Queue up a couple more minutes panicking and my corpmates laughing at me rather hard. Then I remembered there were no stations in the system I popped out in, and the star map shows number of stations as a statistic. Brilliant, only one system next to me with no stations in it. I go there and start scanning and and the second signature I scanned is my wormhole. I get back to my POS in the wormhole with 40 seconds to spare before downtime! I call that a night, and go to bed and think about what I did and should have done.

The next night my corpmate is actually still willing to jump onto this wagon careening down the stupidity track. Bless him, I dont think he actually knows what he is in for. I get on a bit earlier today, and my wormhole is still open to the same place, and this time I make really absolutely sure I bookmark both sides of the wormhole, and jump to that next system again to contract the bookmarks over to the main. I get the alt back in the wormhole and hide him away. I log into the main and buy all of the stuff I'm going to need and stuff it into my corpies hauler. There are 3 losec systems on the way, but with me scouting ahead for traffic in a cov-ops we should be reasonably safe. It is only when we are halfway there with the fully laden hauler that I realise I've actually contracted the wrong bookmarks. I'm going to need to scan down this side of the wormhole again. At least there is a tiny highsec island two jumps from the wormhole where the hauler can temporarily wait while I scan. This time my first guess at the signature is the correct one and my scanning skills on my main are a lot better, and the wormhole is scanned down in a couple of minutes. The hauler comes in and drops off all of my stuff without issue.

On the way out however, it looks like there is some activity starting. The LoSec system holding my wormhole now has an extra 3 or 4 people in it that weren't there before, and there is a Drake battlecruiser sitting on the exit gate. I had warped to 0 on the gate, so I jump through the gate because my cloak was going to break regardless. After waiting the timer I jump back through and the Drake is still sitting there, so I break my gate cloak, engage the ships cloak and slowboat away from my original position, while looking for a different exit for the hauler. While trying to figure this out though, alarms start to ring, it looks like the Drake has somehow broken my cloak, or, more likely, I think my double click in empty space was ignored as it has been wont to do in the past, and the Drake just rammed my last known position. My relatively weak frigate is quickly despatched, however, this moves the drake away from the gate, and gives it an aggression timer. My sacrifice may not be in vain. As the Drake can no longer use the gate for a little while, my corpie in the hauler uses the confusion to slip his ship through the gate while everyone else can't use it and gets away safely. I get my now unshipped pod back into the wormhole and hit the hay, to wait for this seemingly cursed wormhole to disappear.

Join us next time, when I'll discuss how not to farm profits from this wormhole.

Large Scale Invention

2011-08-09T14:47:00.000+10:00

After getting little feedback from miners after last week's post, I guess I'll just have to stick with my old methods of purchasing minerals for the corp. I'm still looking for mining corps though.

This week I'm now looking for inventors. Invention jobs are a good way to make ISK and that's where several billions of my ISK came from over the years. Invention is now more competetive than it used to be, and likewise trading (particularly in Jita) has reached a more steady and stable market for most popular modules. However, sell elsewhere and you'll make tidy profits.

The main reason I got out of running my own invention was because at the time I had 2 characters, each capable of 10 research slots, going at full capacity every day. Sure I was making heaps of money, but there was just so much clicking involved, and 50% of that clicking would result in a failed job. Sounds a bit like Planetary Interaction I guess (well at least before the improvement).

Anyway, now that my corp is doing invention on a large scale. I'm getting back into a bit of invention, but the load is shared between a few of us meaning we don't have to click like crazy to get things done. Either way, because of the time involved, the high level skills needed, and the clicking involved, invention in Quantum Horizons needs more pilots with good skills to create the t2 BPCs which are needed for our production. We can handle the production just fine, it's the t2 BPCs we are lacking.

I now embark on a more difficult quest to find a 3rd party (corp or individual) who sells t2 BPCs in bulk. Any ship or module will do, the more profitable the better. If you or anyone you know does this, please contact me. There will be large sums of ISK involved =)

On a related note:

Since it's inception, Quantum Horizons' Manufacturing Wing has built over 2.6 million items, coming from over 1,800 individual jobs. 1,556 of those were invention jobs. All profits go towards expanding operations and funding our ship replacement program. A big thankyou to those pilots who are part of the team.

Calling all Miners!

2011-08-05T10:29:00.001+10:00

Something a little different for this post. A bit of a discussion about miners in EVE. Don't get the wrong idea about this post before you start reading, you must understand two things:

I do not look down upon miners
I am not a miner

Many people throughout the EVE universe look down upon miners, mainly because it is "boring", but also because generally miners are not well known for the combat abilities. They fit into the "carebear" category. But so what? There is nothing wrong with being a carebear - people are welcome to play the game as they want. As for those who grief miners, that's their way of playing the game. As long as they do it within the rules of the game, so be it. There are many ways for miners to escape griefers, and continue their activities. That's just part of EVE.

"You are not a miner, how would you know?" you ask... Well, my first career was mining. In fact, I was a miner for quite a long while at the beginning of my EVE life. I have flown Hulks and Orcas in large mining fleets and managed the ore output and paid members their share. Why do I not do it anymore? Because I find shooting people more fun now, plus I'm managing a large corp.

Back when I was a miner, I always dreamt of seeing mining corps in large numbers stripping systems bare of ore to provide minerals for their prodution facilities. And when required, security forces guarding them depending on what systems they were mining in, or if they were currently at war. Surely this happens somewhere in the EVE universe - why have I never come across it?

Most of you will answer; because nobody likes miners, and everybody wants to kill them and make them cry. But I think it stems more from that fact that current war dec mechanics make it too easy to grief mining corps, and at a minimal cost per week. And this results in those miners out there being solo players (often with multiple accounts). The mining game has been split up into too many small fragments.

In managing a corp, and managing/funding our corp's ship replacement program, I find that minerals are always in short supply. I have gone on a (so far never-ending) quest to find a mining corp who can supply minerals regularly. I've advertised on the forums for people, and they cannot help me for one (or more) of several reasons:

They cannot meet our high demand for minerals
They price themselves out of a job
They live on the wrong side of the universe
They are unreliable
They get war dec'd and cannot deliver

Even if I offer my corp to provide protection to them, they still cannot deliver. I'm not entirely sure what is to blame here, but my guess is the war dec mechanics which favour the attackers too much, like I said. Hopefully they get changed (eventually), or mining becomes more profitable somehow that it suddenly becomes profitable for people to mine in large groups with paid security.

I believe there are no professional mining corps out there - please prove me wrong. If you are a professional mining corp, I have a job for you.

Ship Replacement Guide

2011-07-28T12:10:00.002+10:00

Both I and other people have noticed I'm posting blogs less. This blog will follow less of a regular schedule than it used to, and I'll be posting blogs when they are done (kinda like the Blizzard approach I guess). I aim to get a few out each month. On to this weeks post!

No corp (or alliance even) is complete unless you have a ship replacement program. Ship replacement programs allow your members to fly ships with much less financial risk, meaning they can fly bigger and better ships in combat situations. Once you get a good profit happening along with solid production lines, your corp can open up a ship replacement program and get the trusted corp industrialists to hand out replacements for people who've managed to get their ship exploded!

Obviously you have to place limits on what ship hulls can be replaced, otherwise you get people asking for replacement Tengus or even replacement Dreadnaughts! You're also going to need a way to check that the loss was legitimate and what better way to check than by using the corp API (or the API fed killboard). Your method should also consider checking for duplicates.

It is too difficult to replace the modules on ships, as even though you might have authenticated corp fittings, people will always tweak them to their personal preference. It's best left to the insurance money to pay for a pilots new fittings.

Quantum Horizons has had a ship replacement program for quite a while now, and we have just shifted to a new system for people to claim replacement hulls. I will outline the new and old systems below and compare the differences:

The old system:

We had an in-game mailing list which had a welcome mail that outlined what ships were covered by the replacement program, if they had any subsidised cost (or were just free), and how to go about applying to get one delivered to your hangar. If someone lost a ship they would write a mail with the name of the ship hull and a link to our corp (or alliance) killboard. Those who managed the ship replacements would make a contract up for that ship to the shipless person, then send a mail to the other managers telling them which replacements have been honoured. The result was lots of spam for everyone, doubly so for the replacement managers. Also, there were a few issued with duplicates if a officer forgot to tell the others about it, or if they didn't see the mail about it.

The new system:

A simple Google spreadsheet with a form. Corp members can go to the form (also works in the IGB), and fill in the boxes. It needs information such as: character name, ship type, killmail link, and extra notes. This form then puts the information into a spreadsheet which officers can view. Next to the form input data, are two extra columns that only the officers can edit. One to say if the ship has been replaced, another for additional notes. Ship Replacement Officers make out a contract to the relevant pilot in our manufacturing station, and once accepted they are free to fly again. The newer system also benefits from the KISS principle, of which I've talked about before.

Overall the new system is hands-down better than the old system. The only drawback I've had so far is remembering to check it. Other teething problems we had were people submitting actual killmails into the text box rather than the killmail link - some wording changes fixed this. Another was allowing corp members to view the spreadsheet to make sure they weren't claiming something they had already claimed. So far the new system is working quite well, and the notes section is invaluable if people wanting something out of the ordinary, ie: replacing a Drake for a Hurricane (good swap methinks).

One more thing; make sure you keep stock of the favourite ship types and don't let those stock levels get too low, you don't want people waiting to re-ship. I hope I have given people some good ideas on how to implement a ship replacement program within their corp. It always bothered me how corps will offer ship replacement, but getting one out of them was always a hassle.

Turning a Profit

2011-07-18T14:46:00.002+10:00

In order to do most things in game you need ISK. ISK is the fuel of life in EVE. It gets created and it gets destroyed - but it flows through the system and gives New Eden life. Although great power in EVE mostly comes from influence, ISK is a big contributing factor. Everything and everyone has a price.

How do you get this ISK you ask? Good question - when you find out, let me know. No, seriously making ISK in EVE is relatively easy. Go ratting, mining, missioning, trading, building, researching, extracting, stealing, looting, shooting or working for people... - there are countless ways to make ISK. All of those things are easy to do solo and some give solid streams of income while others less so. The hard part comes when you reach your potential by yourself, and you need an extra hand. Sure there is the Buddy program so you can get another account, but who wants to play with themself? ...don't answer that...

The aim is to do the above things to make ISK, but on a larger scale in a group. Dirt easy in some cases, but much more difficult for others. Some examples:

Mining and Missions:

Mining and missioning is relatively simple to do in groups. Bounties and mission rewards/bonuses are split equally by those who participate, and whoever gets the job of looting salvaging can simply sell the loots for profit and split between all participants. Similarly with mining - extract as much ore as possible, refine, split. Making ISK for the corp is generally done via taxing these operations so the corp gets a cut of these money making activities. Like I said, easy.

Looting/Salvaging:

Either from missions or from your enemy's wrecks - fairly straight-forward. Alternatively you can loot from wrecks you discover which are untouched.

Ratting, Trading, Planetary Extraction and Stealing:

These are generally solo activities. Although the high end portion of PI materials could be managed amongst a group of pilots, but is not really something I have too much experience with. Trading, though generally a solo activity, could be managed by one or two people. Give them a huge lump of cash, and let them go nuts. The more cash they have, the more leverage they can get (especially with the addition of the Margin Trading skill). The only issue with this is trust - these people could easily walk off with billions of ISK. Stealing things from people is a legitimate method of earning ISK in EVE - however, getting into a corp with enough wealth to steal is time consuming and usually only for solo players (most likely alts). Making ISK this way is not guaranteed, nor is the cashflow great. However, doing so might give you an insight to how others manage (or fail to manage) corp security.

Research:

I'll cover research seperately to building things, because it has two parts. Firstly allowing members to research in the corp POS can bring in cash for the corp via the fees associated with using labs. Generally this cash should go towards paying upkeep on the corp POS, but depending on usage could give small profit to the corp. And secondly, getting teams of people researching/copying specific blueprints to sell for profit. Both of these types of making ISK are relatively easy to manage.

Building:

Doing this as a corp activity requires much more dedication. Before you even build stuff, you're going to need to source the materials. Either mine them, or build them, or buy them, they need to come from somewhere. Decide how you're going to source your materials, and stick with it - you can expand operations later if you want. Focus for now. Likewise with the size/number of your jobs, stick to what you know works. Use spreadsheets to keep tally of what your doing, whether it's profitable, and what materials you need to buy. There are plenty out there, find one that suits you or build your own.

Shooting:

PvP, although there are success stories out there where people make lots of ISK from kills. Normally, PvP will cost you much more than you gain - particularly whilst still learning. This is probably not the best way to make money. Not unless you gank some poor highsec carebear in his faction/officer fit missioning ship. Half the reason we want to make the corp ISK is so it can pay for its pilots ships they use in their daily activities.

These are just some of the main methods of making ISK in groups that I can think of right now. Mercenaries is also another big one, but one I little experience with (except for being on the receiving end). There are countless other ways to make ISK in EVE. If you can find a niche, take advantage, just remember who wrote this blog advising you on group money making activities =)

Location, location, location!

2011-07-06T23:07:00.001+10:00

My blog posts are going to be less often these days. I just bought a house in RL, and will be moving out over the next few weeks.

The location of your corp will determine many things in the future of your corp, and could help or hinder your corp depending on your decision. If you are aiming to be heavily industry focused, shifting your corp to a distant region will be a very large task, particularly the larger you grow. Whereas if you are PvP corp, moving will be much easier. Combining the two, such as we do in Quantum Horizons, will still leave you stuck between a rock and a hard place because of the heavy industry - however a larger memberbase allows you to setup secondary bases and use jumpclones without the fear of people being left by themselves on the wrong side of the universe for too long.

Assuming you've been following the majority of my blog and are starting/running a corporation starting out from the industrial side of things, I'm going to assume that you'll begin your corp in high sec. I recommend getting a POS setup (either grinding up standings yourself, or paying someone else to), perferably a large Caldari tower due to the additional CPU available. Perhaps avoid a faction tower, sometimes they just yell "Shoot me!"

If at first you can't afford to run this tower, leave it offline and try to keep it's location secret. But generally, starting a corp will cost a decent amount of ISK to start with. You should be turning some sort of profit either yourself, or via the corp (more on this in a later blog post). But people will be interested in labs to do their research in, because labs in NPC stations always have really long queues. Having a POS will be a key ingredient in getting new members interested - particularly industrially focused ones.

I've left this blog post until after the (controversial) Incarna patch has been released to talk about choosing an ideal location for a corp to start when you factor in mission systems. Prior to the Incarna patch, many people desired to be close to decent Level 4 mission agents. However after the patch, not only are all agents now classified as Quality = 20 and their categories much more simplified, but they are easier to find using the new Agent finder - which almost replicates the EVE-agents website methinks (although probably with a few less options). Therefore it doesn't matter so much anymore where you base your corp in regards to L4 missions as pretty much any agent will do as long as there are more than one and they're in the Security Division.

Eventually, like all corp with dreams, your corp will want to move to nullsec. And if they don't it's because they all want to grow up and be a pirate in lowsec. As your members are the ones who decid the future of your corp, you do not yet know which of these two options will gather a larger following. So when you choose a high sec system to base yourselves in, make sure it is close to some low sec and some nullsec. When choosing which nullsec region, you may want to take into consideration the current Sovereignty warfare mechanics and the amount of SuperCarriers you have - because right now, my opinion on Sov warfare is: don't bother until you have more SCs than the other guy. Therefore, choose somewhere that has access to both NPC and Sov warfare areas - better to leave your options open. Choose stomping grounds which border all of the above allow you to be as flexible as you like.

Trade hubs... Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens. You don't want to be too far from these otherwise you and your pilots will be paying top dollar for ships/modules. Plus the industrialists need somewhere to buy/sell their products.

As to what faction's area of space you choose to live in, will mostly depend on the standings you have to anchor a tower (if you choose to grind them up yourself). Otherwise it will only matter if you are a role-play corp. And RP is the only thing I haven't covered in this blog, because I'm not much of an RP'er. But in Quantum Horizons, we live in Amarr space and our Amarr and Caldari pilots look down upon the Gallente Federation but we tolerate the Minmatar Republic, but only because we like their ships so much =P

I think I've covered the main areas of choosing a location. But as any real estate agent will tell you "Location, location, location!" - this is the key ingredient to a successful corporation, other than the actual members of course.

I'm back... Oh my god what did you do!?

2011-06-27T12:09:00.003+10:00

Well I'm back from holidays, and whilst I was downloading the new EVE patch I decided to check up on the news both in-corp/alliance and out. Oh My God... WTF happened!? I go away for 1 week and... I don't even...

Not only is my alliance now at war (meh, I'm looking forward to that part), but CCP broke everything, pissed everyone off, and added a very uneccesary patch that most of us could have quite happily gone without.

I walked from my ship hanger to my captain's quarters a total of about 2 times, clicked on all the buttons I could find, then disabled the loading of station environments because my framerate was 30 or less instead of the regular 60+. Some people can't even load the game! And the worst part about CQ is that I can't drag my ship onto the screen to board it, nor can I double-click on the screen to open my cargo. I am going to miss those two things the most.

Other than that, the Noble exchange has only 8 items which are stupidly priced. The real money part is $15 for 1 PLEX = 3,500 AUR = ~1 pair of pants, I think I'd rather go out to the movies. But even if you spend ISK, which is what many will be doing, I'd still rather buy 2 battleships or half a dozen battlecruisers. Getting them blown up will be way more fun than showing off my new pair of pants to... well, just myself. I'm trapped in CQ for now.

Although I missed them (I would have gone if I was here), I heard the protests in Jita/Amarr managed to break CONCORD, lag the servers, and allow capitals to freely cyno into high-sec. Plus the leaked CCP newsletter... CCP has lost the plot. I hope the CSM beats some sense into them at this emergency summit.

/rant

Forums!

2011-06-17T13:44:00.002+10:00

Jacabon Mere. Shall we agree to disagree on this forum argument? I fear we may start a war if we continue =P

Quantum Horizons has been run for about 18 months during which we have had no forums at all - and we do alright. It's entirely up to the corp itself whether they use forums - my blog just outlines my opinion.

Speaking of forums, CCP just opened testing of their new forums... again. Let's hope they are so awesome we forget about their last forum incident, tsk tsk tsk

In RL news: I'm going on holidays next week and plan to spend the whole time away from a computer and the internet, so don't be too worried if you don't hear from me. I'll be back, stay tuned...

Corp Management Tools

2011-06-14T09:13:00.002+10:00

Although a little late in doing so, I couldn't help but post a response to Jacabon Mere's well written blog post over at Dying in Lowsec (one hauler at a time).

As some may know, Jac and I are good mates in game and out. We both have office jobs, and often email each other talking about EVE. Although I don't work for the government (and actually do have work to do), I still find some time to respond to EVEmails, organise spreadsheets for corp benefit and (of course) write this blog.

As Jac mentions, better corp management tools for CEOs would be very appreciated by many EVE players, even those who are not actually CEOs. Let me explain. Although many CEO and (Alliance leaders) spend much of their time organising things for corp, and often don't get to pew pew that much because they spend the majority of their time docked, better tools would go a long way towards reducing the time it takes to get these management things done.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ranting about the lack of corp management tools from CCP, I'm merely agreeing with Jac and highlighting the fact that more in-game corp management (and even alliance management) tools would benefit the entire population of EVE.

The introduction of EVEgate was probably the most useful tool for a CEO. It means I can respond to mails whilst at work, leaving time in the evenings to undock and enjoy the game. People often send me mails whilst I'm online in the evenings, but I won't bother responding until the next day - they can usually wait.

Although I disagree with corp forums - alliance forums are useful due to the timezone differences most have.

Having my own spaceship empire sounds pretty cool, but what is more important to me is the friends I have in-game. We often can be found playing other games when there is little to do in EVE but spin your ship. Or when CCP is breaking the game with a new patch. Not to mention I am really looking forward to our 2nd annual EVE-meet.

I found out a long time ago that ISK isn't everything. I had my billions, and could make billions more, but found that it got boring watching the numbers count up. Some people get their kicks out of bigger and bigger numbers, but not me. It just wasn't fun anymore, and I wanted to play with other people to acheive something grand - and not just in terms of more ISK.

More corp management and CEO tools would benefit everyone in the game. The older players create content for the newer players. Without the veterans of EVE, the new players lose interest. EVE University is a perfect example. I could name quite a few people in my corp who would probably unsubscribe if it weren't for Quantum Horizons. I too would probably lose interest for a while if Quantum Horizons failed. I like to think that Quantum Horizons has gone past the stage where it could fail (because we are friends in RL too)

Some of these management tools I would like to see:

Clearer recruitment advertisements for new players
More intuitive corp window user interface
Better search tools to aid with corp asset management (including faster load times)
Improved clarity and explanation of member roles/titles
Roles to anchor a single POS without giving them full access to all corp towers
Ability to lock/unlock corp blueprints in batches rather than individually
The list could go on...

Although my blog tries to help new CEOs and current CEOs manage their corps better, CCP's in-game tools and corp management window will eventually become the key to keeping older players around longer, and therefore keeping newer players interested.

POS Security

2011-06-10T08:56:00.003+10:00

First of all read this, then look at this killmail. It's difficult to manage POS security, and there is very little you can do to stop it. Let me elaborate...

When you've setup all the titles and roles that you plan to have for your corp, they are easily applied within a station. But when you go outside into the dark depths of space and you want to secure your stuff at a POS, think again. Everything at a POS, including the tower itself, is never safe. And my corp-mates will never let me forget that after the time I decided it would be a good idea to modify the Strontium timer on a wormhole POS - unfortunately the timer was a little short and we lost the lot. A story for another time perhaps...

For simplicity, I like to assign the same access to everyone globally (as opposed to giving specific people a base of operations). This way it keeps things simple for everyone to understand (including yours truly - see my KISS blog post). This also means that the access privileges that pilots have in station apply at the corporate hangar array too. Provided you've set the structure access to Corporate in the tower's Manage window. Setting up the hangar array is fairly simple - except that everyone has to live out of that, and there is no room for "personal" hangars. And sometimes this can lead to bickering between corp-mates as they may accuse others of taking "their" stuff. Annoying, but there is no way around it, and corp-mates will have to learn to work as a team when living out of a POS.

When it comes to the Ship Maintenance Array it becomes even more difficult for security because you don't have several different hangars available with varying levels of security attached to each. Everyone's ships go into the one hangar - meaning that everyone else has access to all ships stored there. The only way to increase the security of a maintenance array is to anchor a second one and not set its structure access to Corporate. Therefore only pilots with POS manager roles can access it. Generally these are the more trusted members who are online more often, and they will be able to shift the more expensive ships to the more secure hangar for others to store, therefore less chance of them getting stolen. The only downside to this method is that it required POS Managers to be online and in system if another pilots wants to retrieve their ship from the secure maintenance bay.

The only other way to keep a POS secure is to never reveal it's location. Again, this is easier said than done, because control towers always need fuel, and it's easy for someone to follow you. Plus the POS Managers within corp will know where your towers are, and who's to say they haven't mentioned their locations to anyone... As a pilot once told me: "The best way for 3 guys to keep a secret is if 2 of them are dead." Doesn't work in EVE with cloning technology.

If anyone out there has better methods for POS security, let me know. I'd be interested to hear your methods. In the past I have managed up to 7 control towers at once, and it gets a little hairy sometimes.

Yoink!

2011-06-06T09:41:00.002+10:00

Everyone hates the corp window interface. Especially me. It is very difficult to navigate and very un-intuitive. Many CEOs find it very difficult to navigate their way through the tabs, and due to the minimal explanation of the corp roles many corps find themselves victim to a corp thief (correct spelling this time Rymmer =P). Although my blog post is not about which roles do what and how each of them works, you will find information regarding each of the roles either in this old EVE Tribune article, or here on the EVElopedia. Although both of these guides won't tell you certain specifics, the rest can only be found out by trial and error - test it out using a trusted corpmate or your alt.

In order to make things easier for myself, I like to group access roles into groups, or titles as they are referred to in-game. That way you can easily check to see what roles someone has, and make it easier for corp members to see a clear path of progression up the ranks of the corp. I don't generally apply roles to anyone, because it's easier to manage their titles. With just a right click > edit member, I can see what titles a pilot has, and quickly assign and remove titles on someone. The hard part is setting these titles up.

Before I get into how you should be setting up titles for access to hangars, I'll give a general overview on how I setup my corp's hangar security. I read something on the EVE forums (or somewhere EVE related) a long time ago about a CEO who setup his corp's hangars so that each one would have an ISK value associated with it. For example: Hangar 1 would have roughly 50mil ISK worth of stuff in it, Hangar 2 would have 100mil ISK worth of stuff in it, etc. These are only arbitrary numbers for demonstrative purposes. If a thief were to steal everything in a hangar they had access to, the theft would have limited effect and minimize collateral damage. Obviously you only give pilots access to 1-2 hangars to maximize security both in terms of fighting theft, and fighting hackers. The same ideas could be applied to wallet divisions too. Believe it or not, I have had more trouble with hacked accounts of corp members than with actual thieves. More account security please CCP...

In the same guide, the author also mentioned that you could require pilots to pay 50mil ISK to gain access to to the hangar worth 50mil ISK. That way, if they did steal anything it would have come from their own pocket in the first place anyways. And the ISK they pay can go towards helping the corp in one way or another. I don't quite agree with requiring members to pay to gain hangar access (because I believe that a corp should be able to make it's own ISK), but I very much agree with setting an ISK value on a hangar and minimizing the number of hangars pilots have access too.

Getting back on track with corp titles, it pays to sit down and work out what you want to achieve with you 7 hangars, and similarly with your 7 wallet divisions. I suggest making one hangar fully available to everyone in corp - it just makes things easier. If you have corp blueprints, make a dedicated hangar just for that, and lock it down completely - ie: view access only. If industrial pilots want to use these BPOs, give them a title which includes roles to use a single wallet division (with minimal cash in it), and has view access to the BPOs. If you want to separate industry from the Common hangar, give them another hangar to work in also. You might want to have a POS fuel hangar with an associated wallet division to buy fuel with, available to the guys who look after any control towers. Perhaps a corp engineering hangar/wallet division. And an Admin Hangar is good for directors who manage corp assets and need a secure hangar. It's up to you how you set up your hangars and wallet divisions, and it will be based upon what sort of corp you are.

Giving an example; In Quantum Horizons, we have the Recruit title and the Capsuleer title. There is no difference between both in terms of hangar access, Capsuleer is just more of a status symbol saying that a pilot has been actively involved in corp ops more often and has been in the corp for a while longer (plus they are eligible for ship replacements). A regular pilot who joins QH can only expect to reach Capsuleer title, unless they have the urge to build things for corp. Even then only basic roles to use the research labs, construction facilities, and corporate blueprint library doesn't give access to any more hangars, only a single wallet division (to pay for jobs) which is member funded anyways. Unless you're supplying things to corp members like modules or ships, that need to live in a hangar somewhere, there is little reason to setup any further access for the regular pilots. Only corp leadership and trusted corp members will really need access to anything greater.

The less stuff you have in your hangars, the less likely you will be to tempt thieves. I bet there has been quite a few pilots who have joined Quantum Horizons with the intention to steal, learnt that they won't get much access, then left.

So my main lessons are these: Titles make life easier. Take your time to setup them up properly, test them, then double-check them again. It may take time to setup but trust me, it will save your neck later down the track.

P.S: I'll write up another post in the future regarding security at a POS - it's a different ballgame out in the cold dark depths of space as opposed to the safe interior of NPC stations.

Packing on the Pounds

2011-06-03T11:53:00.002+10:00

So in many of my previous posts I've spoken about recruiting people to join your corp. Easier said than done right?

There will be a few things you have to setup in order to get your name out there where potential recruits can see you. The in-game corp recruitment in the corp window is useless, and I don't think anyone uses it. Nor have I ever had anyone apply for my corp having found out about us via that medium. Set one of those up if you want, but it's probably not worth it. CCP is meant to be fixing in-game corp recruitment in the Incarna patch - let's hope it's a good fix.

Anyways, I suggest doing some or all of the following:

- Start an EVE-O Forum Recruitment thread and bump it daily. Get current corp mates to post in the thread about what they like about the corp

- Create a public channel for your corporation and get trusted corp members to idle in there

- If you are spinning your ship in station, and not doing much, spam the recruitment channel in-game

- Get a killboard (see griefwatch.net or eve-kill.net) - there are free services out there, or you can pay with ISK

- Get a Twitter account and join in the conversation with the #tweetfleet

- Start a blog (hint: Quantum Horizons is recruiting!)

- If you are able, make a webpage with recruitment info on it. Preferably something that comes up on the first page of Google when you type in your corp name. You don't need a fancy website, just a single page that is Google-able

After having done lots of recruitment throughout the life of Quantum Horizons, I've found it's easiest to setup a standard response to someone who is interested in joining so you can mail a copy of it to them to save yourself time. The standard response should ask them for information about themselves, such as their in-game interests, what sort of skills they have and ships they like to fly, what previous experience they have, their corp history, and even their limited API key. You should be able to tailor your canned response to each individual in case you want to know more about something in particular about them. Once they respond to that, you can go and do some basic checks on their character, ie: check their API info and Google them to see what comes up. You'll find some people never bother to respond to your recruitment questions. They will be either too lazy, not really that interested, or just not active enough to fulfill your requests. You didn't want them anyway.

But like I mentioned in my previous post, The Birth of a Corporation, when you are small just recruit anyone. Make it really easy to get into corp, and only ask basic questions. It's not until later that you want to start checking up on recruits to make sure they really are who they say they are.

Having said all that though, if a spy really wants to get into your corp, they'll do it. You've just got to assume that your corp is riddled with spies, and get on with it. If you create an atmosphere within corp that people enjoy, they will be less likely to stab you in the back because they actually like flying with you - and what good is it flying around in a social game (MMO) without any friends?

To Ally or not to Ally

2011-05-30T11:19:00.002+10:00

If you have already read my post titled Primary Target! you will easily be able to follow my logic when it comes to signing your corp up to an alliance.

When you're small and still such a young corp, being part of alliance will only serve as protection. You will gain benefit from being in the alliance, but the alliance will gain little from your corp other than numbers, and perhaps people to chat to. The main protection you'll get will be that corps/alliances that want to war dec you will have to pay a base cost of 50mil ISK per week instead of 2 mil ISK. PvP pilots aren't generally known for having lots of cash and this 50mil ISK per week can often put them off.

Some of the advantages of being part of an alliance:

- Protection from war decs whilst you are vulnerable and in the growing phase

- More people to talk to and fly with

- Easier to make contacts with other pilots. It's not what you know, but who you know

Some of the disadvantages of being part of an alliance:

- You often get told what to do. Your corp must do this, and must do that. You are not independent

- You may possibly have to pay fees in order to stay in the alliance

- Alliance leadership will take much of your time trying to do stuff, when really all you're there for is the war dec protection. Time which is better spent organising your corp, and recruiting.

- Many recruits you get will only join your corp because it is part of an alliance and it means they are less likely to get war dec'd. They are just using you for protection and they are not really interested in flying with you. It's difficult to convince people who are "single-players" to join the rest EVE.

Because your corp is still starting out, you have not carved out a name for yourselves nor defined the activities which you enjoy the most, and do not yet know where you corp is heading. This can be difficult to define when you're part of an alliance, and it's much easier when not part of an alliance to define yourselves.

My advice for joining an alliance during the early stages of your corp is thus:

Only join if it's to dodge war decs, and then you've gotta keep an eye on the inactive and "single-player" pilots in your corp - they are of little benefit to the corp. Sometimes it's better to follow the method I outlined in my previous post titled Primary Target!, and go without an alliance altogether. It allows you to both be independent, and also kick all the inactive pilots that are taking up space. Plus you dodge the "single-player" pilots who just want to get out of wars and dodge the 11% NPC tax rate.

Make sure you always put your corp ahead of your alliance. Alliances will come and go, but corps are there for the long term.

Operation Hurricane Hewing

2011-05-26T09:35:00.003+10:00

Today I have a guest blog from a good mate of mine. His name is Rymmer, and this is his first blog post (hopefully there will be more). He'll most likely be blogging about general day-to-day activities he participates in with Quantum Horizons.

A little about me in-game:

Character name: Rymmer

Race: Amarrian, the only race properly condoned by God.

Corporation: Quantum Horizons [.ANZ.]

Alliance: Veni Vidi Vici Alliance [V3]

In-game activities: Corp Officer, Being annoying, and giving lengthy lectures to people on subjects I know bugger-all about.

Been playing since August '09

25 Million Skillpoints

Mostly concentrated around combat, but a fair bit in Industrial as well.

A little about me in real life:

I live in New Zealand.

I'm 30 years old

I'm in IT

Situation :

Two Hurricanes had been spotted in a nearby lowsec system on the way to harass some wartargets. These hurricanes weren't affiliated to anyone we know, so they were fair game.

Response :

A fleet was quickly formed up, and to start with we had two Hurricanes and an Ishkur of our own. We were unsure of if we had enough firepower to take them on, considering my awful skills with Hurricanes and Autocannons, so after a couple of minutes, we managed to get a Rook in-fleet with us, just to make sure. By this time, our Ishkur also had to bail, but I was sure we had enough to deal with our targets.

One Hurricane, who was the one who spotted them in the first place and had already been seen by our targets, was dangled as tasty looking bait waiting to be taken. There were no others with the rest of the fleet in the next system over, so they couldn't have known we had backup ready. While our bait was dangling, we saw a Legion jump into our system and I got a little nervous, could possibly have made things quite different, especially with the fleet split as we were. However, just as I was getting ready to deal with the addition of the Legion to our equation, our bait announced one of our targets was on grid and he had a point. The orders to jump and join in were given, but our Hurricane's shields were going down fast. It turned out he had forgotten to fit the rigs to his ship and his tank was somewhat more lacking than usual. Uh-oh, better hurry then.

With a quick warp ahead of us, we were on grid, and the first target Hurricane had been joined by his buddy in another Hurricane, and the game was on. As soon as our boys landed though, it looked like the other Hurricane thought better of the situation and decided to leave his partner to his grisly fate. He quickly warped back out, and we were left with 2 Hurricanes and a Rook versus 1 Hurricane. It looked pretty promising for us, but as they say, it's not over 'till the fat lady sings (or explodes).

I got point as soon as I could after landing, but noticed that our target was trying to bail on the fight as well, and his range was quickly increasing. He was already out of range of our bait's point and it wouldn't be long until he was also out of range of my 24k point. I adjusted bearings to close as quickly as I could, but somehow I was already facing the wrong way with my MWD on. Our other Hurricane was already out of range, so I was the last thing holding our opponent here. Furiously double-clicking in the direction I wanted to be going, I somehow fooled myself into thinking the more times I clicked, the quicker my ship would magically turn. My range reached 23k before it started to go down again, and my sigh of relief was followed by the remaining target's shields, then armour, then hull being shredded more quickly than I had thought it was going to be. It was only afterwards I realised I should have also overheated the Warp Disruptor to get a bit of extra range too. No such luck with grabbing the pod considering the ships we had and their locking times though.

GFs were proffered in the local channel, but no responses to be had. Our opponent elected to just die silently in the night.

Lessons Learnt?

My first time flying a Hurricane in "real" PvP has taught me that flying Battlecruiser-class ships is definitely different from flying Frigate-class vessels. There is a much longer wait on turning around especially after you have reached some of the speeds you can reach with the MWD on. I think I need to zoom out a bit from my fights and keep an eye on exactly where our opponent(s) are in relation to me and my direction. Although they can be helpful, you can't tell everything from columns on the overview.

Oh and don't forget to overheat.

Last note:

As this was my first write up, I wasn't prepared to catch a screen-shot of the explosion at the end, but I will see if I can do better next time.

The KISS Principle

2011-05-25T10:48:00.003+10:00

A big thanks to CrazyKinux for adding me to his epic EVE blog pack. And a big hello to a new lot of readers to my corp management blog *waves*

KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid

I studied Engineering at university, and this is one of the main priciples that widgets and/or procedures should be designed to. It is easy to make something really complex that nobody can ever figure out how to use. And your widget/procedure is no good if no one else can use it. The KISS principle can be applied to many things in life. I won't go into what these other things could be, but I will apply it to EVE, in particular I'll apply it to corporation management and communication.

Communication is the key ingredient to any sort of project with multiple contributors, especially running a corporation in EVE. If your members see that things are happening, they will be content to stay in an active corp. Even if they don't always get to participate, they can still see that things happen. But people are lazy - particularly us gamers who spend quite a lot of our time on the computer. People are not bothered to login to yet another website to check the forums, or spend time searching for information that is lying all about the place.

I'm talking about corp forums. Perhaps it's because of my dislike for forums in general that I'm a little biased when it comes to this, but corp forums are not needed. Back in the early days of Quantum Horizons, we setup corp forums and put some information on there. But only about a dozen people even bothered to sign up to them, let alone check them regularly. And I'm seeing the same sort of thing happen with our new Alliance forums too... but don't tell alliance leadership I said that... A forum is useless if people don't post useful information there, or even check them. You could even apply Metcalfe's Law to a forum, much like you can apply it to market hubs both in the real world, and in EVE.

"Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system." - Wikipedia

And what's wrong with the EVEmail client anyways (not to mention EVEgate!) - particularly since the update a while back. It actually has some decent functionality similar to regular email clients (compared to before the update). But where do you store your corp information, your corp fittings, your guides and your corp discussions? Easy... in-game. With the EVEmail client and the corp bulletin board, you can store what you like all within the EVE client. You can keep all your information in the one place - seems logical to me.

Corp information (such as your voice server details, or weekly ops, or names of those in leadership), short guides, guides specific to your corp and links to external guides can be kept on the corp bulletin board. Corp fittings can be saved where everyone can view them, and even come with a description tab to make sure each fitting is used for it's purpose and allows for modifications due to skill or ISK limitations. And corp discussions can take place via EVEmail - either by sending mails to corp, or making a specific mailing list (perhaps one for corp leadership, or one for corp manufacturing, etc.).

As for a corp website; what will you put on it? The only thing that won't give away too much intel to your enemies will be a quick description of the corp providing them with no more information that what's in your general recruitment advertisement and corp show info page. I'd only recommend it for a recruitment advertisement, but make sure it comes up on the first page in Google, otherwise it's no good. It might only be good to have one if you have web-hosting freely available and is easy to setup, but otherwise it's not that necessary.

Scalability may become an issue the larger you get, and the more timezones you cover. But for a single timezone corp with around 100 members, my experience tells me that a forum is unnecessary. The setup of the forum, getting people to sign up, finding useful information to post, all whilst continously encouraging people to check it regularly... I think I'd rather be out flying my spaceships.

Corp Forums... why bother?

The Core Pilots - part 2

2011-05-23T09:17:00.000+10:00

So one of my avid readers wanted to know more about the Core pilots of the corporation. Since this reader is a good mate of mine, and also a well established CEO with plenty of experience I thought I'd delve a little deeper into what defines core pilots and why they are the backbone of your corp.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, the core pilots generally have good communication skills and are regularly online a lot. This means they are able to take up the slack whilst you are away from corp. Everyone has RL stuff they have to do; work, sleep, family, partner, whatever it may be, but the core pilots will fill in that gap of time when you are unavailble to the world of EVE. They will probably do it without even noticing. Get your core pilots to sit in your corp's public channel and have a chat with whomever passes by. Potential recruits will hop in the channel, and if it is empty they will often not bother with you and continue their hunt for a corp. Your core pilots will fill this void, and answer a few of their questions to get them more interested in your corp. And if they like what they hear from your core pilots, they will often hang around until you have time to get online and speak to them.

Because your core pilots are online reguarly, they do the same sort of thing with corp chat too. They populate the void. If new members login to EVE and find that corp chat is rather empty, they often get disappointed with their choice of corp, and may gradually drift towards that never-ending hole that sits at the bottom of your corp. Core pilots keep the casual players entertained, and the snowball effect is at work everywhere. More active pilots = more fun for everyone.

From my experience, the best way to create an effective core group of pilots is to get to know them a little outside the game. It especially helps if you are already friends outside the game, but let's look at the worst case scenario and assume none of your RL friends play EVE. You signed up for EVE because it is an MMO and it's a social network of intrigue - hence your aim is probably to make friends and be social. EVE has one of the best, if not the best community surrounding it - mainly because of the single-shard nature of the game.

So like I said, get to know your pilots outside of the game. Learn a little about them, what they do for work/uni and perhaps where they live. Start with small talk like you would if you were making friends anywhere - they are real people too. Once you are comfortable in the company of the core pilots (assuming you have a decent group of them by now) organise an EVE-meet. Start inside your own city and invite those who live there. The EVEmeet will be small, but will allow you each to place a face to a name (even if it is probably a character name). Then later, perhaps organise a bigger EVEmeet which may require some people to travel interstate (or to a different country if you live in Europe I guess).

Quantum Horizons had its very first EVEmeet in February 2010 (which was just for those living in my city) with a total attendance of 5 people, and then a larger EVEmeet in October 2010 where myself and a couple of others travelled interstate to join. It was a very enjoyable evening and we are all good friends now, and each look forward to next year's event.

On a side note, I would like to point out the corp description of Body Count Inc. [BDCI], a 200 strong corp led by Seleene which has been part of some of the best alliances in-game namely; Mercenary Coalition [MC], Against ALL Authorities [.-A-.] and currently Pandemic Legion [-10.0]. The description reads: "This corp is a family. You cannot break us." This is something I strive to create within my own corp, and highly recommend for any corp to aim for.

But EVEmeets are great fun, and I recommend them to all EVE players. EVE is a unique game so complex no single person can ever fully understand it - it is a game that can change lives, and that is something worth celebrating with your fellow capsuleers. Go on, raise your glass for EVE Online!

The Core Pilots

2011-05-20T11:22:00.003+10:00

Wow... so apparently I'm bad a posting blogs. My first post was a test, and people still tell me it shows up their readers. Apparently my "Birth of a Corporation" post was duplicated (I suspect this may be due to the issues blogger.com was having the other day), and my last post I forgot to put a title. Oops! I'll get better this... anyways, on with the blog.

Many people will throw the term around a lot when talking about their corp members; the core players, or the core group. These pilots in your corp are the ones who make the corp. They are the members who have been there the longest, the ones you can place your trust in, and the ones who generally have good communication skills and are online lots. They do not necessarily need to be the leadership or the ones that help run the corp - they are just the main players who make the corp.

Everyone else will make up the numbers of the corp. They are more casual players. Some will come and go, others will stay. If many of them stay, then you know that you must be doing something right. If many tend to leave it means you are doing something wrong and you need to change it before you get an exodus happening - remember the "snowball effect"? It works both ways.

Now don't read too far into those pilots who just go inactive, EVE is a hard game and many people just can't handle the commitment. Sometimes their inactivity can be due to minimal corp activities, but usually it is because of the game itself. Don't worry yourself too much with these pilots - just kick them and keep recruiting. Inactive pilots will always be falling through that hole in the buttom of the bucket.

Your aim is to keep the core players and the casual players entertained. Not by playing the game for them, but by providing a helpful, friendly, fun and enjoyable corp for them to fly with. If they enjoy their time in your corp, they will come back. A few people have left Quantum Horizons to join up with the big alliances so they can participate in massive fleet fights that lag server nodes. But they come back after a few weeks for 2 main reasons; A: EVE is not as fun without their mates, and B: the biggest fleet fights usually happen on the US/EU timezones. Living on the wrong side of the planet in Australia means EVE is usually quiet while the rest of the world is either at work or asleep.

There's a hole in my bucket...

2011-05-17T09:54:00.003+10:00

Populating a corp is like filling a bucket with water, but the bucket has a hole in the bottom. There are people joining when you recruit them, but there are always some who are leaving. This is especially true within my corp, Quantum Horizons, when you make a corp policy to kick anyone who hasn't logged on for 3 months (trimming the fat, as I like to call it).

Because you may have already re-created your corp you will now find yourself at that vulnerable size again where small PvP corps will eat you alive. So it's time to expand. Fast. The original pilots who you are still flying with will make up the "core" of your corp because you already know they are the active ones. These are the guys you should start putting a bit of trust into and getting them to help out with corp stuff. They are the guys who want to stick around because they think this corp is going places. Embrace their positivity and let them help grow the corp. Because you have a core group of pilots who believe in the corp (because they re-joined after you re-created), give them tasks to do that normally you would be doing for corp. This allows you to spend more time recruiting people so you can reach a good size where small PvP corps are less likely to war dec you because of your numbers.

Aim for a few new pilots each week, and try to hire anyone who sounds like they won't quit tomorrow, and also doesn't scream spy or theif. Once you get past the stage where you are vulnerable to small PvP corps, you will become vulnerable to thieves. Why? Because the corp is in a fast growing stage, and roles and titles will need to be handed out. If a good theif can get himself into a high enough rank - he will take everything. Roles and titles are something for a future blog post though...

Aim high. Aim for 50-60+ members. Once you get past this size you won't be considered small anymore and the small PvP corps will leave you alone. This size is usually a good size and depending on your playstyle or available free time. Spend some time sitting around this size until you are comfortable managing this many people. But remember a little recruiting here and there always helps, because people will slowly fall through that hole in the bottom of your bucket. Your aim is to find a size where you are not overwhelmed with managing too many people - but where everyone is active. There are plenty of corps out there that have 60+ members on paper, but are lucky to see 5 people online at any given time. You might as well kick most of them.

Looking at what other guides on the internet have to offer regarding corporation management, a quick search on Google revealed an inactive blog at eveceo.blogspot.com (which wasn't too bad) and an awful 2 year old guide on MMORPG.com. Which makes my blog rather unique, and based on a rather niche topic.

To quote from the "Making a Successful Corporation" guide on MMORPG.com:

"One of the most important things you can do for your corporation is to actively recruit at all times. No matter the game, guilds, clans and corporations will always lose members. A study earlier this year actually estimated that as much as 2/3 of your membership will not remain a member for longer than a year. That means if you begin with 30 members, the chances are that only 10 will remain after 12 months." - Sam Guss, December 23, 2008

Apart from the absolute fail that is the rest of the guide (even taking into account it is over 2 years old), this quote was probably the only useful thing that had some kind of research behind it - and I mostly agree with it. But I believe with a little work you can quite easily reduce this amount quite substantially. If you recruit older members, this generally won't apply because they can already survive the harsh world that is EVE, and if they like your corp they will stay and fight. But when talking about newer members, this quote is much closer to the truth.

The trick to keeping newer players is to encourage their activities in-game, encourage them to ask questions, and not to put them down when they don't know something - easier said than done. Try to remember back when you were at their level - it was a hard life. Their limited skillpoints will be their big disadvantage for a while yet, but every ship has it's purpose in a fleet - and any ship can be utilized by a good fleet commander and/or CEO. Combine this with allocating tasks to corp members (without forcing them to do them) encourages more corp members to login, and continue playing EVE. And more players is good for EVE - it means there are more people to shoot!

Primary Target!

2011-05-15T16:51:00.001+10:00

Continuing on from initial corp creation...

Assuming you're not part of an alliance. You'll find out the hard way when you reach 20-30 pilots in your corp (and are mostly industrial/carebears) you will be the perfect target for small PvP corps, starter mercenary corps, and even 1 man PvP corps looking to score some easy kills. Large corps or alliances have little to gain in declaring war against you - you are too small a target for them.

However if you are part of an alliance, your chances of being war dec'd are greatly reduced. The cost of war decs involving corps has a base cost of 2 mil ISK per week compared with wars involving alliances which has a base cost of 50 mil ISK per week. Although I don't recommend being part of an alliance whilst still so new, it does have its benefits in terms of avoiding war decs. You may think that avoiding war decs whilst being an industrial corp would be beneficial, but honestly war decs are good at this stage because they will weed out the non-committed players. War decs are a great way for CEO's to discover who is prepared to fight for their corp.

Being part of alliance will help to alleviate these problems of being a new corp, but the alliance will benefit very little from your membership. Your corp won't have enough experience flying together, nor will it have guidelines, corp fittings, or fleet doctrine yet.

However, getting stuck in continuous wars will ruin your new corp unless you do something about it. And there really only is a few options that you have left:

Ragequit EVE:

This is the stupidest idea ever, who would do this!? But surprisingly, many players (particularly newer players) stop playing because they are stuck in continuous wars and dislike getting ganked every time they undock.

Sit in station:

Can work in the short term if your agressors have short attention spans, but you will lose pilots over it and get bored. Really bored.

Fight back:

A good option if you can PvP - but most likely the pilots you have recruited are carebears and industrialists. Sure they might have lots of cash, and you would think this would allow them to spend up big on PvP ships - but no, the reason they have lots of cash is primarily because they DON'T PvP. If you go down this approach you'll end up with several pilots leaving your corp, particularly if you force them to fight.

Forcing people to do stuff never works. It's a game, they want to have fun and enjoy themselves. Unless you have several PvP experienced pilots this option may actually work, and bring some of your pilots closer together by working as a team and result in increased morale plus the carebears might learn a thing or two about being at war. But honestly in high sec wars the aggressor will have a superior advantage - and probably more experience.

Bail:

Surprisingly, not such a bad option (providing you're still only small). Make a new corp (I suggest anchoring a high-sec POS if you have standings or pay ISK for someone else to), then get all your pilots to quit the first corp and join the second.

Although it sounds cowardly, re-creating your corporation has many benefits. Firstly you'll find that not everyone will merge across to the new corp, but they are the inactive pilots - you didn't want them anyways. Secondly, it allows you to anchor a high-sec POS (assuming you didn't have one before). A high-sec POS has huge benefits, and every corp should have at least one large tower. Make sure it's in a good location that is future proof.

Now that you have a new corp formed with ACTIVE pilots who are willing to fight for your corp, you are ready to roll!

The Birth of a Corporation

2011-05-12T08:49:00.000+10:00

So everyone should know how to create a corp in-game using the (complex) Corporation interface - it's outlined in the EVE wiki. My guide is not focused on the actual "click here, now click here, select this, blah blah blah" kind of guide - it's more of a "ok I made a corp. I'm the only person in it. Now what?" kind of guide. Your first challenge will be getting people to join.

The first steps in recruitment are by far the hardest. Convincing someone to join an empty corp is difficult, I mean what gain do they get from joining? But you can use the "snowball effect" to help get people to join. By this I mean sign up your alts, and sign up everyone you can to your corp to pad the numbers. Once people see you have some numbers within the corp, they will be more likely to join - not because it's a good corp (yet), but because joining a 10 man corp looks better than joining a 2 man corp. As you get bigger more people become interested, and they join the "snowball."

At this young stage just recruit anyone. No matter who they are - industrialist, PvPer, carebear, theif, spy, whatever. It doesn't matter at this stage, you have no assets to steal, and you have no strategic value for spies. You don't even really need to ask people what they do in-game, just accept them - you can figure all this out later.

Once you get to about 20-30 pilots in your corp, it's time to organise ops for them to make sure they don't get bored and leave corp. Organise anything from mining ops to missions - just get people flying together and getting to know each other. Talk to people, make conversation. Find out what their likes, dislikes and their general activities in game. Once you get to know them a little more, you can start to gather their ideas on what they want to see from the corp. Remember, it's their corp just as much as it's your corp - let them have a say in it too. You should not be dictatorial. Ever.

Telling people how to play the game is never going to work. And the reason is because they play EVE because they like to relax a little and enjoy themselves. The number 1 thing to remember is that EVE is a game - if people don't like it because you a forcing them to do something they will either leave corp or worse, leave the game. All your in-game activities and corp ops should focus around having fun. Happy pilots are the best pilots.

As you get to know people you will find out what their interests are, if they are willing you will be able to get them to help out with corp stuff in order to progress the corp and make ISK to fund bigger projects. Give people jobs to do; like building things, hauling things, mining ore, or even shooting things. Set achievable goals, and aim to meet them. Goals such as building X item(s) to sell for profit, or grinding standings to a particular level, or mining asteroids to get Y amount of minerals to make X item(s) for profit, or even saving up for something such as a freighter to help with larger tasks.

It is important to keep people active and give them a purpose to login. This is particularly true with newer players as many new players to the world of EVE give up because the game is too much of a sandbox and they don't know what to do next - there is no linear storyline like many other games out there.

Having fun is the main thing during the beginnings of creating a corp (and in fact in all parts of running a corp) - afterall, EVE is a game.

History 101

2011-05-10T11:18:00.000+10:00

Before I get too deep in describing different aspects of how to run a corp, I'll give a brief history on myself, and the eventual creation of my current corp Quantum Horizons.

I joined EVE on recommendation of a RL mate, and found that I loved it so much that I skipped 7 out of the 14 days worth of free trial and paid for my subscription upfront so I could train skills for a decent ship. Not long after that I joined ANZAC alliance, because it sounded like it was a corp for Australians. Anyway, I was so noob at the time I had no idea what was happening in that corp so I did my own thing. I soon heard about EVE University, and joined them to actually learn more about the game. Although they were on the wrong timezone for me, I found lots of useful guides on their forums.

After EVE-Uni, I joined a few corps who I thought would get me into 0.0. Turns out I had no idea how to play in 0.0, and didn't last long out there. I really ended up being a solo player for a couple of years. I made my first billion by trading t2 modules in Jita by buying low and selling high. I started an alt with 10mil ISK and a bunch of mission loot/salvage, and within a couple of months I had 1 billion ISK. Then I did some harvesting of moon goo with a mate in lowsec, and made a bit of cash from that (until the market for Cobalt died). After this, I joined another corp based on the edge of highsec and nullsec. The Torrinos system is a massive mission hub for Caldari missioners, and my CEO was Alaskan and had no job. It was great when he had no job because he would be online heaps. But as soon as he got a job, the corp died.

Then I created the Deep Thought Research and Development (later The Hindsight Institute) and I was inventing my little heart out - and made a couple more billion ISK there. Then I reached a stage where ISK was of little concern because I had so much of it and had nothing to do with it all. Although I did consider buying a dreadnaught, filling it with ISK and swimming in the ISK just like Scrooge McDuck. This was the stage of my game where I realised that it was time to make friends and be a part of something on a larger scale.

Again, I tried joining a corp with active players. And managed to find myself red dwarf industries (recommended by Jac, a guy I met at a LAN party who also happened to play EVE). Although this was an all Australian corp, there was little activity and it wasn't enough for me. So Jac and I decided to create our own corp for Australians and Kiwis, and this is where the real story begins...

Once upon a time...

2011-05-09T22:40:00.001+10:00

ok, so I'm going to start a blog. I figure I have enough spare time here and there to write up bits and pieces of EVE related stuff, so I might as well. I would like to share some of my experiences of creating a functional corp in EVE where people enjoy flying together. I would also like to share some of my experience with the wider EVE community from what I've learnt over the years. I might even get a few guests in to post about various topics.

A little about me in-game:

Character name: SuicidalPancake

Race: Caldari (but secretly wishes he was Amarrian)

Corporation: Quantum Horizons [.ANZ.]

Alliance: Veni Vidi Vici Alliance [V3]

In-game activity: CEO - Corporation Management

Been playing non-stop since Jan '07

70+ million skillpoints

Heavy industrial/trading background, but now more interested in PvP and corp-management

A little about me in real life:

I live in Sydney, Australia

I'm 25 years old

I'm an Engineer

I have a busy social life (surprise!)

I read a huge amount of EVE-related blogs everyday, and although my blog will probably get lost amongst the multitudes of EVE-related blogs that already exist, hopefully mine will reach out to someone and help them enjoy the game they love so much. If you are this person, let me know.

Because of my industrial background, I'll be writing about how to start off as an industrial corp and later shift towards more PvP. I mean, you've gotta have the industrial strength to provide your corpmates with ships first before you can go get them blown up!

The first few posts will be about myself, then about my corp and the creation of it. Later I will go into more recent details and write about current experiences I have as a CEO of a large Australian/New Zealand corp. I aim to go into aspects related to corp management, and detail certain things which I have done and are successful in Quantum Horizons.

A quick shout-out to Jac who "encouraged" me to get my blog going.