Storytime: 2. New neighbours and noughty ghosts

<<Last chapter

A offline tower, solitary in a wh, might tell a story of someone having been there. Once upon a time that tower was online and had ships in it. But now it doesn't. Its just a shadow. A ghost of something past.

Moving into a new home brought back something I had been missing from EVE for a long time. Excitement and the sense of taking on something new. Something unknown. Grand was the hope of the promised land. The land of capital escalation and c320. And us few adventurers took on something we didnt know if we would manage or even if it would last. But better to risk and enjoy the fun than to be bored to death in a c4.

(Now I have to be honest. We were in no way hardcore pvpers or masterhunters.  We liked to hunt but also to mine and make isk. But we didnt mind taking risk for a little adventure. )

When I came home from easter holiday a new frontier laid before me at my computer. Brewing a fine cup of coffee, and settling down while the baby was sleeping brought on a new dimension to eve. First step when moving in: bring in ships! And so began the haul. Having towers already waiting for me made it rather easy to start heading into our new Home. We mined gas like crazy and decided to pull down that offline tower and kill off the poco's. At about the same time ceo of ENNE sold off the c2 and the rest of what was left of the corp moved into our new c5 aswell. The guys we sold the c2 to however seemed like a really nice bunch of guys. So we invited them to join us in alliance and come along to the c5. A new entity born. We called it Shadow Politics (couse we had that alliance just laying around anyway :P ). So two corps living togeather in a wormhole create some challenges that need to settle. Especially since one was doing a pure communistic economy and the other a light tax but mostly individual economy. Lets just say shortly that after some heated forum discussion and a very interesting incident we found a way of working that we all agreed on. This cooperation worked eventually so well that we later formed a new corp togeather. But thats a story for another time

But all was not as easy as we thougt. Remeber the mention of ghosts?  Normally the dead stay dead. And one would think a dead POS taken down would maybe blow some dust from a forgotten evemail on a long abandoned account. Maybe someone would even lift an eyebrow while being annoyed at something they had forgotten. But not for us. 

Some might call it Bob's blessing. Others would call it bad luck. For us now, after so many months, we call it content. We call it adventure.

Within a few days after taking down the dead POS and setting up our own poco's a new cry was heard on coms: "Capitals on dscan! Dreads and carriers! And wrecks!"

Our adventure had just begun

Continue to Part 3>>

Ramblings: Trust and Security

One of the most interesting aspects of playing EVE is the level at which we interact with other people. Its at a much more advanced relationship than you get in any other games.

As artisticly illustrated by Tim Buckley at Cad-Comic recruitment processes in most corps in eve goes a lot closer than any real life job interview is even allowed to go. In wormhole corporations this is even more so. And for a good reason. With a corp management tool that may finally be fixed (as announced on fanfest 2014) it is not easy to aid your members in keeping their stuff safe. If the corp leadership doesnt know how to deal with roles and titles the entire corp can easily fall prey to a ill intentioned new member. I feel however we got this nailed in ORLY. Got a nice divisional system with several layers of access at each pos. Also specialised titles providing just the right access needed to do i.e. manufacturing in our wormhole aswell. Combine that with a full api check on applicants and you got the most secure setup you can atm for recruitment.

 But I dont feel thats really a good solution. Being a CEO I have a responsability for the culture we build in corp. To create a framework where our members can flourish and build friendships and enjoy the game. In wormholes one of the biggest challenges for any corp is content creation. People solve this diffferently. Some do lots of planned ops while others fill their alliance with hundreds of members where 1-5 drive the content for the rest. However, I wish to enable people to be creative. Living in a c5-c5 has a lot of opportunity for those who care to move beyond the lazyness most gamers are plagued with. But I refuse to hold peoples hand doing it. So how do one stimulate creativity? I think much can be attributed to having just the freedom to do stuff. Aswell as the inspiration of other players being creative. But how does this relate to the topic of this post? It relates to trust. It relates to having room to do mistakes without being taken for a awoxer or a idiot. Want to afk mine in a orca? Np. When you die I'll tell you to fit neuts, drones and xlasb. Maybe next time you afk mine in orca you can kill something before you die :P But I want my members to feel they are trusted to take desicions and make mistakes if they want to. A member who feels he constantly is under monitoring grow afraid to do mistakes and will rather just tag along what someone else is doing. A member who feels trusted have greater freedom to be creative.

Now how to translate this into practice? One of the biggest stumbling blocks I feel is often in the little things. In how leadership or other members react and talk in game. This is one of the reason I really dont like "elite pvpers" as their attitude to anyone not on their level destroy any room for creativity. Also leadership need to be consious about this. And I also think this is why so many corps in wormholes is stressing the "no f*cks given" attitude. To help people be creative and dont fear loosing or making mistakes.

What areas do you feel is important in building a good corp culture? And how do you handle building trust while maintaining security?

Storytime: 1. Feeble beginnings

It was around easter last year (2013). I was away visiting family on the other side of the country. Spring hadn't yet fully come tho winter was definatly over. I dont drive over the mountains unless winter is over. Hate running the risk of getting stuck up there. For those living in sunny countries unfamiliar with the turmoils of winterdriving, let me elaborate shortly: During winter many of the mountain passes are closed due to snowfall or wind and snowfall or just wind blowing the snow already there. When its not horrible and completely closed they have these huge snowplowers clearing the road. Thing is the road doesnt stay cleared. It fills up again with snow. And fast. So what they do is run the plowers (and they drive fast) and then a qeue of cars follow them at same speed. Now if you are one of those cars there are some things you have to avoid. You cant stop. Not at all. If you stop you are left behind and your car will get stuck in snow and you have to call emergency service. Another thing you have to avoid is driving off the road. This might sound like a joke but its not. Your driving fast on a slippery road (with cars behind you pushing the same speed) and the road is anything but straight.
 So winter was over. And spring was on its way. But what came sooner caused me to smile. A text trickled in on my phone: "We found it". And so begins a new adventure. This was how it started.

At this time I am just a ordinary corp member. We had in the previous years enjoyed life in a class 4 wormhole (short: c4)  with a c2 static. Life in a c4 is nice. But for a few of us it wasn't enough. We wished to progress. To take on bigger challenges. But not everyone felt the same way. And so me, MD74 and Jeraadhetnoit chose to leave the safe harbour of the c4 and move on. And so in february we left Axial Tilt (who had been our home in c4) and joined a friend in a c2 and his corp No Self Esteem. Here we set up to roll the static c4 to a c4-c5 and then scan out the chain in search for a new home. What we were looking for? A c5-c2, preferably Wolf Rayet, with decent PI.

(In hindsight we should have gone for a c5-c5. Just saying to anyone who might read this and want to set out to c5 space themself. A c5-c5 doesnt give you HS (highsec) every day but it provide a lot more content even for a group of 3 people. However you need to have wh experience and know what your doing)

So now you probably guessed what the text was about. What had been found. But to be fair it was more it who found us. What had happened was a k162 opened up in the c2 we were camping in. And it lead to the system we would later come to know as Max, by brutal force. But to us it was just a new home. And thats what we called it. Home.  It contained a offline tower but otherwise it was empty. So MD and Jeraad grabbed a tower and setup base in this new home. While I was on holiday and spring had not yet fully come.

Continue to Part 2