Interesting parallels

Uni exams done! My first year of uni and my first year of EVE, and I think this blog will tell you which one took precedence. 😛

Struggled through the exams unnecessarily, I certainly could’ve avoided it with constant work instead of cramming, but enough about that, the year’s over now. Besides, EVE is going to teach me how to be organised, won’t you, EVE?

Downloaded CCP’s fansite kit… perfect for livening up a wordy article!

So, what have I been doing when not doing boring real life stuff? Reading Praxis Astra’s The Technocrat and Neurotechnicon, finishing up my EDU speech (SORRY EDU GUYS! I’m feeling self-conscious about it… >.<), sending more alliance mails, more trading and supplying Gamis on Imogen (more on my progress soon!), still stuck on how to begin for the EVE Fiction story. Also, more and more, there are more people in the alliance wanting to talk to me, it’s scary. I did say I wanted to be a leader~ish figure, but I’m not a social butterfly and all this chatting is worrying. I keep thinking about what to say and how to say it to multiple people at once, I’m just not like that, I prefer to be open about things. Yet, being that kind of person, lots of people are happy to confide to me, and hence someone might tell me they don’t like another guy, but I have to interact with both of them, and watch them converse, knowing that.

Strange.

PvP nowadays frees me from these…responsibilities, if you can call it that. It’s a little retreat where I can run to, and feel in control. I don’t know when I’ll ever get sick of it, to be honest. Hopefully not for another 3-4 years, until I have enough SP and am rich enough to run BATTLESHIP fleets. (Oh yeah, I’ve been watching videos of people solo PvPing in Marauders too. So awesome to watch!)

So forming a fleet and taking off to find fun kills is starting to become exactly how I want it to be in the alliance. People are coming along when they want to, and more importantly, able to decline when they can’t. This I am still hammering in, but PvP isn’t a chore. We shouldn’t behave like every roam is a call-to-arms, and shun those who don’t participate. What sets this alliance apart, what will set it apart, is the attitude we have to PvP. It has to be a part of everyday life, as normal as running missions for ISK or hauling stuff around. If we manage to instill this sort of behaviour into our members, we will be able to get everyone in a battle-ready state at all times, without them even trying. It starts, as Praxis Astra constantly repeated, the standing fleet.

It’s importance is probably not overstated. Random events that we chat about, like “hey I found a cool wormhole leading into x system.” or “anyone want to help me with this combat site in low?” can evolve into one of these awesome fleets, which progress seamlessly into a fun roam, without even calling for people to come along. It is integral in developing the kind of atmosphere I want in the alliance.

Which is why I’ve been starting them up every time I log on. In fact, it’s starting to feel natural for me, to be leading fleets. Beginning, mind you. I have a long way to go, but as I was staring at the alliance killboards, I drew some interesting parallels to my own killboard when I started solo PvPing.

That is, it was absolutely covered in red. A whole bunch of losses of every kind, every day, wasting ISK all over the place.

But when I started grasping the basics of PvP, and the more I heard Aura say “Skill training complete”, I picked up a kill here or there alone. Then I joined FW, and died a whole lot more, and picked up a whole lot more kills. The one regret I have with leaving FW and started getting involved in all this alliance and corporation stuff was that I felt it was the perfect place for me to continue honing my skills whilst maintaining a solid wallet balance. And it’s true; my wallet is disintegrating quickly, but it’s okay! It’s okay because we’re having fun.

Recently, green has begun to pop up, here and there, on the killboards. The red curtain is broken by splotches of success, the fruits of such bloody labour. It’s slow, the killboard is still horrid, but it’s there. Many people will laugh at our efficiency right now, but to be honest, their are methods that are easily accessible to make it positive, but I feel like it’s just cheating ourselves.

I wish I could say we will reach a green efficiency without the help of suicide-ganking and high-sec wardecs. It won’t be the case, we will most likely get involved in this, and find easy kills. We won’t have a green killboard full of good fights that we won because of skill, and to be honest, I’m quite indifferent as to what it looks like. All I care to see is constant, frequent PvP. Whether that be because we’re getting killed or not, it’s PvP.

Back when I started getting kills on poorly fit FW pilots, or newbies, or AFK pilots, I realised something. I didn’t PvP for the killmails. I PvPed for the fight. And I want it to be the same for the alliance now. I want us to be able to look back on an ISK-efficient killboard, and be able to see the battles they fought flash by their eyes, not miners they popped. I want them to remember the scars of dozens of scuffles, not the easy pickings of a few well chosen industry corporations we wardecced.

And so, chapter 2 of my EVE career is shaping up to be starting very similar to my first months. If it continues this way, the next stage should be discovering a way to keep the alliance’s PvP funded. Exciting!