18 January 2015

Another New Year

For many, the start of the year is a time of reflection, renewal and change. Some mock the arbitrary nature of this but, as humans, it is good to re-evaluate your activities and decisions from time to time. However, as humans, we are all inherently lazy so require something to prompt this behaviour. Putting a new calendar up on the wall is a pretty good prompt to start the changes you might be thinking of.

On the last day of 2014 my wife and I decided to buy a new house in a new area currently at the start of a massive redevelopment of a small town. I've never fancied buying a newly built house as I much prefer old houses with history and character. In this case I surprised myself greatly when we went to view the various show houses on the 2nd of January. One day later, after a second viewing, we were committed to buying. What's not to like: I get a garage and there are talks of converting the attic into a man-cave for my guitars, books and Scalextric; the kids get a good sized room each and we get a guest room; my wife gets the kitchen of her dreams (apparently that's a thing). The downside is getting from where we are today to being moved into our new house is going to be a very busy five month journey which will inevitably eat into what EVE time I currently clutch on to.

Thankfully, almost pre-cognitively, I had already started putting plans in place to reduce my personally-perceived workload in EVE. Last year increasingly I was feeling it was my fault when nobody had been on to scan our constellation or when someone complained that there wasn't anything going on fleet-wise. In truth it is my fault but the 'fix' as I saw it was for me to spend even more time trying to do these things. Time wasn't something I had in copious quantities (see above) so I was just getting frustrated and annoyed at the fact others weren't taking on the responsibilities of scanning, etc. Over the holidays I put out a call for help in the form of job adverts. Dedicated scanners and people to run fleets. The reward was getting their share of the corp fuel bill paid as well as a bit of kick-back from PvE tax when we run sites.

After a slow start I've filled all the slots and have been able to relax as I've mentally passed some of the responsibility over to the people who've volunteered for the roles. A bit of responsibility placed on others rarely hurts anyone and a healthy dose of delegation should definitely help me. Thankfully, and as expected, the people who tend to be on most took on the roles. This pleases me because the most active people should be the ones rewarded for their efforts.

Of course, my mind has shifted on to what is next for my corp. And to be honest I don't know. Last year I pushed for us to move our PvE vs. PvP balance more towards the PvP side of the equation. This has been somewhat successful and we fly a more combat-ready fleet whenever we are out and about. We've also went on a lot more lowsec roams than we used to and met with limited success. We've had fun, which is important, but there is still some way to go to. However, I feel we've definitely reached a hard limit and I'm not sure how to progress further. To become even more PvP-oriented I need more people who are confident at and able to FC. Unfortunately people who want to FC PvP don't seem to want to join a relatively quiet wormhole corp which does PvP and PvE in equal measure. If you're focused enough to have the skills to FC well the chances are you like playing in a target-rich environment where pewpew is the primary activity.

Anyone have any ideas how to bridge that gap and move my corp closer to an effective but not exclusive PvP force?

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