BM2 Update
It's been a long time since I've written about what's been going on in EVE. I'll back up to August.
Back then, things were going smoothly. Project 2 was using 3 dedicated POSs (Player Owned Stations) in our wormhole to run reactions on moon materials and sell the products at a pretty good markup. Billions of ISK (the ingame currency) were going through the reactions every two weeks, and large dividends were being paid to the investors on a regular basis.
We were in a solid alliance with nullsec access, and reasonable dues. Then we started having issues with that alliance. We decided to leave, as things generally fell apart with them. One of the leaders of that alliance got us into the alliance he joined. This was a pretty sweet deal. With the blessing of the Russians (the Russians are a serious power bloc in EVE), this new alliance had a nice spot in nullsec. We had to pay 350 million a month in rent, but it paid off. This gave BM2 access to three of the major parts of EVE: hisec trading, wormhole operations, and nullsec operations.
But, as usually happens, the alliance got upset with our laid-back play style, and decided we weren't paying enough rent. Nominally they wanted 20 million a month per member. But our corp has a lot of "alts" (secondary characters owned by players with "mains" in BM2), and a lot of casual players for whom this is too much to pay. The 350 mil per month we were willing to pay more than covered 20 mil per month for the people who used the nullsec space. So we left that alliance as well.
Right about then, a member in good standing who was acting as recruiter got mad, got involved with some mercs (not sure why they got involved) and decided to rip us off. This person (we'll call them Blend) was given the task of fuelling our POSs. They pretended not to get the notices about low fuel, and other members who did were taking care of it at the last minute. Their plan was to have the stations power down so they could steal everything. Fortunately, when Blend asked to have permission to remove fuel in order to "rebalance" the stations (a common practice), I said no. They would have then had the power to remove all the fuel and shut them down immediately.
So they settled for stealing everything they could access, which turned out to be a lot of expensive ships and some BPOs (Blueprint Originals). Total stolen probably totalled over 15 billion ISK. But BM2 is a classy organization, and we just muttered under our breath and moved on.
Also around this time, World of Warcraft released their Cataclysm expansion, which lured away some of our veterans for a while. So for the last six months, it has been another Dark Period for us. But we came through it. Some players from a few years ago have resurfaced, security has been tightened, but we still are casual and have a friendly atmosphere.
In light of all the trouble we've had over the years with alliances, I decided to form my own. So now we don't have to worry again about our alliance complaining about our play-style. The alliance will insist on tolerance of casual play, and that what happens in Real Life always comes first.
In the middle of all this, we had a few scares. Some scary looking pirates dropped by our wormhole and demanded two billion in cash. They threatened that if we didn't pay, a big alliance would sweep through and destroy everything we had in there. This would be a loss on the order of 20-30 billion. So we moved important assets out, shut down a lot of the useful POS modules, and equipped hardeners, which would make the stations really annoying to destroy. A really solid station can take a full day of pounding to destroy, if not more. Especially since we're in a wormhole and it's impossible to get capital ships inside. You would have to build them in there.
But some random corp set up a station in the hole. This worried us a lot, because if they intended to fight us, setting up a POS to build capital ships could be a first step. But they claimed that they only set up because they saw our stations set up for manufacturing and the combat sites all untouched. They said they figured we wouldn't mind. I might have believed them had they asked first before setting up. After a tense time, we found out they really were nice, and they have since joined our alliance.
Now things are running smoothly again. Project 2 has started paying dividends again, and there is chatter in the corp channel. Just before all this mess started, I was starting to wonder if maybe it was time to leave the game. But the leadership challenges presented during this time of turmoil reminded my why I have kept playing all these years.
Back then, things were going smoothly. Project 2 was using 3 dedicated POSs (Player Owned Stations) in our wormhole to run reactions on moon materials and sell the products at a pretty good markup. Billions of ISK (the ingame currency) were going through the reactions every two weeks, and large dividends were being paid to the investors on a regular basis.
We were in a solid alliance with nullsec access, and reasonable dues. Then we started having issues with that alliance. We decided to leave, as things generally fell apart with them. One of the leaders of that alliance got us into the alliance he joined. This was a pretty sweet deal. With the blessing of the Russians (the Russians are a serious power bloc in EVE), this new alliance had a nice spot in nullsec. We had to pay 350 million a month in rent, but it paid off. This gave BM2 access to three of the major parts of EVE: hisec trading, wormhole operations, and nullsec operations.
But, as usually happens, the alliance got upset with our laid-back play style, and decided we weren't paying enough rent. Nominally they wanted 20 million a month per member. But our corp has a lot of "alts" (secondary characters owned by players with "mains" in BM2), and a lot of casual players for whom this is too much to pay. The 350 mil per month we were willing to pay more than covered 20 mil per month for the people who used the nullsec space. So we left that alliance as well.
Right about then, a member in good standing who was acting as recruiter got mad, got involved with some mercs (not sure why they got involved) and decided to rip us off. This person (we'll call them Blend) was given the task of fuelling our POSs. They pretended not to get the notices about low fuel, and other members who did were taking care of it at the last minute. Their plan was to have the stations power down so they could steal everything. Fortunately, when Blend asked to have permission to remove fuel in order to "rebalance" the stations (a common practice), I said no. They would have then had the power to remove all the fuel and shut them down immediately.
So they settled for stealing everything they could access, which turned out to be a lot of expensive ships and some BPOs (Blueprint Originals). Total stolen probably totalled over 15 billion ISK. But BM2 is a classy organization, and we just muttered under our breath and moved on.
Also around this time, World of Warcraft released their Cataclysm expansion, which lured away some of our veterans for a while. So for the last six months, it has been another Dark Period for us. But we came through it. Some players from a few years ago have resurfaced, security has been tightened, but we still are casual and have a friendly atmosphere.
In light of all the trouble we've had over the years with alliances, I decided to form my own. So now we don't have to worry again about our alliance complaining about our play-style. The alliance will insist on tolerance of casual play, and that what happens in Real Life always comes first.
In the middle of all this, we had a few scares. Some scary looking pirates dropped by our wormhole and demanded two billion in cash. They threatened that if we didn't pay, a big alliance would sweep through and destroy everything we had in there. This would be a loss on the order of 20-30 billion. So we moved important assets out, shut down a lot of the useful POS modules, and equipped hardeners, which would make the stations really annoying to destroy. A really solid station can take a full day of pounding to destroy, if not more. Especially since we're in a wormhole and it's impossible to get capital ships inside. You would have to build them in there.
But some random corp set up a station in the hole. This worried us a lot, because if they intended to fight us, setting up a POS to build capital ships could be a first step. But they claimed that they only set up because they saw our stations set up for manufacturing and the combat sites all untouched. They said they figured we wouldn't mind. I might have believed them had they asked first before setting up. After a tense time, we found out they really were nice, and they have since joined our alliance.
Now things are running smoothly again. Project 2 has started paying dividends again, and there is chatter in the corp channel. Just before all this mess started, I was starting to wonder if maybe it was time to leave the game. But the leadership challenges presented during this time of turmoil reminded my why I have kept playing all these years.
posted by Almo at 6:27 PM
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