Corp in Flux

What a wierd place to be, in flux i mean, how does one reach flux? one never really knows, how does one get out of flux... well thats a question that has several answers, so too does the first question really, but the path is different for everyone who arrives here, and the roads out are equally traveled, though not nearly as diverse.

The Road To Flux!
Take one part - Gameplay
Sprinkle in a pinch of broken mechanics
Add a good dose of friendship and fun
Stir Liberally and pour into a low sec container to sit.

Once the mixture has risen... or fallen , either way. remove it and place it into a high sec window sill to cool.

Now add full manufacturing, copy, invention,material efficiency and time efficiency slots, stir in a liberal helping of Carebear, mining ops, mission running and let stew.

now in the center of bowl, open a small narrow nook, pour in: can flipping, mission salvaging, high sec gank and a whole smattering of killmails and loot.

set entire mixture to idle three weeks, and Ding! your corp is now in flux.

The path to "Fun after Flux", or as we call it, "Fux"

So the corp is in flux, you have different elements pulling in different directions to meet different goals. you have billions in blueprints not being used, researched or even looked at, you have millions coming in, and are spending billions on combat ships. you have corp ops that are 8 people once, 0 people the next time, and 2 people the time after, being followed by 8 the next again. You have more than 2 members of "active standing" that are logging on to check skills and then gone again, and you have no desire to recruit, knowing that you are only a shade away from doing the same thing... must be summer time eh?

So what do you do ? You find your calling, go the above recipe, and remove anything that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, do that ... rinse.. repeat.

As I've mentioned before in my posts.. my corp is very special, we are so close, and there is a level of trust that cannot be compared to, and is rarely rivaled on a scale of similar size.So when one or more of us reach this point... the group suffers like no other corp for it... that is the trade up, people didn't know there was one.. but thats it, when you have a group this close when one of them stops playing for a few weeks, the shock-waves are felt by all. Is it a flaw? should the corp be structured more loosely?

No, the answer is no, if we were structured more loosely, we wouldn't be ale to play together at all, too diverse a selection of play styles. this is the current structure:
CEO-
Director of Imperial Operations - Mining Director- Combat Director-
Logistics and Support Director- Faction and Exploration Director- Director of PI-
Member-

The CEO and the 5 Directors are all Local- they all live in the same city, and some even work together, others live together, CEO and Mining Director (live together) CEO and Faction and Exploration Director (Work Together) Faction and Exploration and Combat Director (Live Together) Logistics and Support Director and CEO and Mining Director (All live together) and Five members also live with Directors. so yeah , we are a close nit bunch.

We have a monthly meeting where 10-15 of us meet, the directors talk about their plans for the corp, and what it is they want to do, find solutions to problems and basically talk about Internet spaceships. Then we come back to the game, and usually a corp op, with a sense of teamwork and direction, knowing that everyones problems or concerns are addressed and the corp is seeing a measure of results and teamwork. All the members are represented by their Directors at the monthly meetings, there is also an open door policy with directors, and weekly voice meetings to go over details. each of the six departments of operation have their own corp hangar, and the directors give supplies and equipment to their members as needed, with a full replacement policy, corp sponsored ops with 100% corp funded events, and corp organized and sponsored contests and projects.

Each Director puts in the equivalent of 100M into the corp hold each month, which is then dispersed in free corp assets and materials, though this is a voluntary tradition, as most of us work and have limited online time, this donation is made with a 5$ bill at each monthly meeting, used to purchase plex and fund corp operations.

I really like this corp model, and it works really well for commitment and communication. but it also forces that symbiotic relationship i explained earlier where the direction of the group are affected by the directions of its members. Of course in all groups this is true, but i think its more confining or restrictive in this type of example...

anyway, I hope the flux ends soon .. I want to get back to playing eve.

Ammo type is king

Alright, so we start the night off with some innocent can flipping fun, as i previously posted about .. thanks for the killmails :)
But we followed that up with some ninja salvaging and looting, always a popular sport. we parked our orca, cloaked her up and set about scanning missions and shooting corpies off to them one by one.

I managed to nail down a hard to find thorax, 6 scans, and sent a cormorant in to loot and salvage, the cormorant lands, and sees the thorax immediately stop engaging the rats, and start looting, so naturally i assume some ninjas have been in the area recently, and send off a salvage thrasher to loot faster.. but the cormorant reports "no time" and starts looting what he can, and sure enough is yellow boxed right away.. then red, he calls out the engagement and warps to the orca for a swap to a very well fit caracal. I switch to my scimitar and wait for word. "hes gone" is the report.

"get the thrasher in there and salvage the mission then i guess?" I considered the possibilities, and replied.. "no, let him finish fitting his combat ship" so the caracal warps to the next mission scanned, and i leave a single probe on the that mission, and start scanning anew. Thorax hit! "hes back"

The caracal speeds off to the mission and lands on the thorax all flashy red, and opens fire, the fight is long: the caracal was packing only sabertooth fury's and was chewing through his stock fast. so the scimitar picked up another batch , but it was like shooting a wall with an paint ball marker.. the damage wasn't happening.. ill make this long story short.

the caracal was packing to little ammo, and only the one type, the Thorax, knowing he was dead, started in a direction, and hit his AB and faction repper, and LOGGED! about a minute later the caracal was down to 3 missile launchers and the thorax was healing ... the ammo run took a while, but I dropped a few thousand missiles as the caracal fired its last one, and very soon the tank broke again, slowly the caracal rattled through the armor with em missiles, and at 2% structure... the thorax disappeared.

MOAR missiles of MANY types is the lesson of the day, the ship would have been a very juicy kill, and easy with the right equipment.. score 1 for bad planning, but score 2 for lesson learned.

When Bears Attack!!

People Die...

When CareBears Attack.. people die ... laughing.

I have to ask the question.. what is it your thinking? you out there mining away, watching some TV maybe while your hulk mercilessly crushes rocks, just making some isk to buy that new shiny ship, or maybe your going to build that new ship, and your topping up your ore stores.. when SUDDENLY ! Flip, some guy comes outta no where, and tosses your can, the eve equivalent of running across the street, jumping over your fence and kicking your garbage can over, then digging through it and taking stuff!

you see him go flashing red .. you think i think ill shoot at him , and then warp away, as you slowly align your ore barge... and then fire a single drone.. bap! and warp away.

you figure.. what a jerk, well i'm going to get my ore, so you grab your industry ship and head back to your can so you can flip it back and take your goods right? wrong, when you arrive he is sitting there, flashing red, and in a different ship ... wtf, a CARACAL? i shot at a Cormorant... BOOM you explode in a ball of pretty lights, and warp off... thinking.. A caracal , i have a caracal ill show him! So you get back to the safety of your station, and grab your missioning cruiser, thinking better you refit .. with fof missiles, just in case, and undock , head back to where the fight was.. and oh good! he is still there! you'll show him!"

Guess how that ended... don't get me wrong, im thrilled you people do it! but seriously? you don't come out in a BC or a T2 Cruiser variant? you dont have a ship fit for pvp on standby just for this sort of occasion? if your answer is "i dont have the skills for one of those" then my advice to you is just to soak the losses and mine in another belt for a while... we do this for a living... your killmails fuel my ship much like your tears fuel theirs

Some Boots were made for Walking!

So now that we have that move out of the way, it was time to dip out toes in the water as it where, and we spent a couple days just looking around, checking local mission avenues for the mission runners, scoping mining for the miners etc. and of course burning through low sec to have a look around.

My first night found me running through the now infamous Amamake system, and yep, found someone to shoot more or less right away, it was a destroyer, about 250 km off a belt, i expect he had a warp in marked on a wreck, and was waiting for unsuspecting frigates and the like to warp in on the belt at 0. I was of course cloaked, and moved quickly to get a warp in at 10. It wasn't to be however as an unsuspecting frigate warped in and a fight started. when it ended, the destroyer warped off.

But I returned to our home system with a light heart none the less knowing what this new area promised. so we spent the next night sorting out peoples stuff and getting the corp hangar organized. Then it was Wednesday again, Corp Mining, now bear in mind that attendance is not mandatory, there are 4 corp events a week, and attendance to any ONE is mandatory. mission madness Monday, Wednesday's all mine! event, Thursdays PI throw down and Fridays Combat OP. some of us only go to one, but as the CEO i try and make it to all, though my sec rating is too low to attend on Diamond, they all know i have an orca alt, and a hauler alt... so I don't get off so easy. Unlike our combat director who just turns eve off on Wednesday's and finds something else to do.

Don't misunderstand me, I understand the importance of a corporations need for logistic and manufacturing support, its why i have the alts, and my orca alt is also a major industrialist with billions in BPO's that he uses for the betterment of the corporation. But that character was from a different age, before i discovered PvP. However now, I just consider that play style eye gougingly boring. So the mining thing happened ok, and as much as i hate mining, i love having holds full of ore to build with, so i get over it.

Friday is what I really want to talk about now though, I take Thursdays off of Eve, spend it with my family, Tuesdays mostly too just so you know, and Friday I come back ready to eat some unsuspecting pilot. Lately, as you can tell if you have been reading me for any length of time, we are not having the best experience in low sec combat ops. We can set up a pipe system camp pretty well, and snag our share of kills, but we have been trying to move to a more mobile model. At heart we are actually a griefing combat team, we are out looking for mission runners, and hulks, and unsuspecting noobs to gank into oblivion. But lately we keep running into the same thing... other roaming low sec fleets, usually more of them, in bigger ships. Don't get me wrong, I love small fleet combat, and if I had a fleet i would totally be into those fights, but i don't have a fleet. "huh?, you ask?" I have the Director of Imperial Operations, the Director of Support and Logistics, The Mining Director, the Combat Director and Me, or some equally mixed pot of skills and roles. In a mix of ships and fittings. This is a fleet looking for a gank opprotunity, not a skirmishing fleet that we should warp in on a huggin, an arazu and a hurricane with our 2 destroyers, a stabber and a kitsune. Fortunatly we had the hand in that fight, and we simply walked away, however most other times lately we haven't been as lucky.

The Solution! If there is one, I hope to find it soon, we have an awsome corp as far as personality, willingness, attendance and the ability to function as a group but we have a mixed set of interests, and that is ultimately going to hurt everyone, the combat folks feel it first because of the nature of combat we have already lost some members because of combat losses, but the mining and mission running wings will feel that they are not represented, or not getting the play style they want eventually.

We are already sponsoring Agony Unleashed classes for all corp members who want to go. We are considering recruiting, we have already voted for it in fact, and decided to recruit but Eve is a harsh mistress and we are reluctant to let spies in, as invariably, that is what you do when you recruit.

The Move

So we haul ass, 17 man corp (smallish i know) but only 2 freighter pilots, two orca pilots, and only 1 of each ship... hmm... we haul loads back and forth for 3 days, my freighter/orca alt... man im glad i have one though ! and our mining director and Director of Imperial Operations spend long hour hauling, and chatting in voice... we arrive at our staging point, as we need to make several low sec jumpt to get where we are going, and i zoom off ahead in Diamond, and get right into the action in our new home, i check stations, look at belts, check activity in neighboring systems and make a quick jump into the nearby curse region... yay! im right at home and excited as hell... !! woot curse roams, low sec camps, and a nice .5 for the non -10's of us who are looking for a place to store warships..!! couldnt be happeir, not to mention that it cheap office space, and not a single science and industry slot is in use in our home station.. so we have full reign on the whole sector... sweet.

*cough* so .. there was a miscommunication... the Director of Imperial Operations spends a few minutes running through the nearby high sec systems, as our DIO he is responsible for our tax rate and organizing and maintaining a mission running fleet, and a weekly director mandatory op, usually level 4' 10 at a time, with tax cranked up to 80% to generate corp cash. He is Minmatar, and we are in Amarr space.. hmm... he searches high and low, but nowhere is a mission to be found that he can take...

Our Faction and Exploration Director scans, "no worries, we will scan enough stuff to do, don't need missions per say, we will do plexes and anomalies..." all the adjoining sectors are scanned, mostly empty of people, but no so much as a low level anomaly... not a single hit at all in 3 systems ... not a good sign. It quickly becomes evident that the only thing to do here will be high sec mining and the stuff that I want to do , low sec 0 space stuff.. *sigh*
An emergency Directors meeting lands us in another 6 hours of moving and hauling.. we did decide on a spot ultimately , and i don't want to get too excited but it looks like everyone will be happy here. I will miss curse.. but the corp just isn't there yet. maybe next year we will be ready and large enough to commit to a move like that.

Eve is a Harsh Mistress

Combat op fell on its face, we took a destroyer gang with a kitsune as support. The gang was fast moving and we were training a new scout, who was a jump or two ahead in a cloaked hound. Not alot of action at first, just moving, training the scout. but a few jumps into low sec, we find a battle site, a handful of wrecks in an asteroid belt. we set to work immediately and loot and salvage the field, hauling away about 40Mil in fittings and salvage. Paid for the entire load out of destroyer destroyer kitsune stabber. We picked up a vagabond and warped in on him, at 30km but he bugged out when he saw us land.(I don,t Blame him)but it wasn't long before he came back into system with his buddies and started baiting. a Huginn as bait with an Arazu and a Hurricane. a brief tussel and some bad warp ins led us to the better part of valor. we beat it, calling the day a win isk wise, and deciding that any loss at this point would be gratuitous, so we went to re-ship and deal with this group properly.

Though it wasn't meant to be, once we returned to HQ, we lost most of our fleet 3 of 5 and it left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Good money for the op, better than losses anyway, but no explosions. So The Combat Director and I reshipped into gank cruisers, and sailed off into low sec looking for some easy prey to satisfy the gank and get a good nights sleep.

More on that later

He who makes fewer mistakes ... wins

So the cruiser refit .. i love my cruiser, i think i will take this opportunity to tell you that, the cruiser is by far my favorite class. It has no form or function to be honest, anything it can do, the battle cruiser can do better , or a frigate can do better, or a hac or a hic, or any number of options..and the cruiser is a sadly left behind fleet option. however that doesn't deter me from my mad quest to get kills in my OMEN. so the OMEN and CARACAL head off to the Roniko Gauntlet just looking for an easy bestower kill or 5, heavy mission running region of low sec. and we sat at our favorite gate.. for a while, eyes on the other side.

Republic fleet firetail.. doesnt stand a chance i say, we lock.. too long he's gone... fine.

Cyno open ... wtf, i move eyes into system, and warp to the cyno, my compliments to the cyno launch, looks like a near perfect launch outside of a POS shield... i suspected so anyway, but i wanted to mention how awsome it is to have a perfect launch, practicallly dropped the ANSHAR inside the shields, took it like 8 seconds to get in ... thats aswome... ! anyway.

Eyes move back into the next system and here come the RFF pilot but in a Cyclone.. he sits at 0 on the gate and locks us both... I take a deep breath and engage. the omen and caracal start in on the shield, drones go out, and he is dropping sloooooow... but we are both heavily tanked and we are dropping slower, he looses his drones and i lock them up, assigning my warrior II's to pop his.

his take breaks, and he starts going down fast, dual medium neuts ftw! i survey the ley of the land, he has a point on me , but his cap is dropping fast.. his shields are crumbling, and his drones are dying..

suddenly ... a few seconds later, i look and his tank ... is back, nearly full again? im out of orbit, and my neuts had powered off, and now he was neuting me, turning off my mods... wth? how did i get out of range... not a rhetorical question im really not sure, but i am, and now im dropping fast, and he isnt, i move back into range and turn on a neut, hoping to break his point.. no such luck though, i pop and warp my pod out.. wth?

I drop him a GF in local but i spent the rest of the night cursing amarr ships, and wondering hth i got out of range ... Combat awareness is THE deciding factor in every single loss mail i have earned myself... This is my weakness, this is what i must make better, i took a simple EASY kill and turned it into an ALARMING loss. This is unacceptable... Every loss has taught me something.. that is the most important thing, but damn I'm sick of losing ships for no reason.