Lost In EVE

Back in the mists of time, when I first joined Z3R0 Return Mining Inc., the corp was primarily a PvE
corp. To a certain extent we had teeth we would bare at times, but our primary activities revolved around running sites, sucking gas, or building things. Fast-forwarding through the years we have moved back and forth between becoming more PvE focused or more PvP focused, but never fully dived into either camp.

A couple of years ago when I thought the time was right I tried to position us as a PvP corp who did occasional PvE to pay the bills for ships. The problem with that is people would join the corp, realise we weren't always wanting to form fleets to go out hunting, then log off and/or quit the corp due to doing too much PvE. Conversely, off the back of that, I positioned us as a PvE corp who like to shoot at people and the exact opposite problem rises up. People who don't want to PvP get upset when we want to shoot at other folks.

As it stands, with a new year underway, I'm having a think about how to position the corp in the obligatory EVE-O forum post. I've tried honesty and it didn't have much truck with people. I've detailed my stretching of the truth and that just leads to disappointed people. It seems that EVE players just don't get the concept we play the game with, namely we'll do whatever Bob presents to us. Be it shooting people, running sites or sucking C5 gas, so long as we can do it while consuming plenty of alcohol and having hilarious conversations we're happy. Hell, the perfect night brings in all of those options.

EVE players seem to expect a focus on a single aspect of the game. Large nullsec alliances get the luxury of creating silos of player activities so people take part in their favourite aspect. I have no intention to go to Nullsec. More powerful wormhole alliances occupy multiple holes with each member having a hole to 'Krab' in and not pollute their main pewpew home. I prefer the idea of not gaming the system, but to have each pilot (or family of pilots, as I see alts) truly earn the ISK 'at home' to enjoy New Eden. So I sit here contemplating a recruitment drive but have no idea how to position it. Saying "We do all the things" appears to be worse than lying.

Resolutions

I don't make New Year resolutions. In the past I used to and would invariably break them. Possibly somewhat ironically the only resolution I ever kept was one year deciding I wasn't going to make another New Year resolution ever again. The danger I always found with them is you make a resolution to try and change something, e.g. going to the gym three times a week, and when you break that commitment one time it's all too easy to give up entirely. This year is no different and I have nothing planned. That's not to say I don't use the start of the year to make changes. The month of January is supposedly named for the Roman god Janus. Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions and upping the number on a calendar seems as good a reason as any to get stuff done that I've been parking my arse on for too long.

For ages I've run a website I wrote to help me with corp management. It started as a site where members of my corp submit loot, ore, gas and PI to the corp buyback scheme. We used to use a Google spreadsheet but that was incredibly time consuming to process twice a month. My solution was to write a site where people can copy'n'paste the contents of their hanger and tick the names of people the loot or whatever should be shared between. I wrote about it here a long time ago so feel free to go back and read that. More recently I started to merge another spreadsheet I use to track corp members, their API keys, hangers allocated to them and, of course, whether they've paid their dues. I had gotten partly through that but stumbled with Real Life™ getting in the way. With January rapidly looming I decided to draw a line under the half-finished extension.

January started with the completion of the member tracking. Not only do I now have everything I need in one place the corp members can also log into the site and see how much ISK the corp owes them in payouts. The site also automates taking corp dues to pay for POS fuel and publicly lists (shames) the people who didn't yet pay. As a final piece of functionality I also broke the login system away from our forums and introduced EVE-SSO so my corp mates and I can use the one password to log in to even more things EVE-related. In truth this last part was needed to allow the balance display but it's a nice feature in itself.

Having completed an outstanding task from last year it was time to look forward. It's been ages since we actually had a new recruit who stuck around. The most recent new member of the corp came across as part of an agreement we have with our friends in The Bastards. I'm largely terrible at recruitment, either being too slow to talk with people or just plain can't be arsed with it. So with a new year on us it's time to work at getting people in the corp and dragging our fleet sizes up a little. Our first new member joined yesterday. We've got space for three or four more people who make the grade. I'm not going to beat myself up if it doesn't happen. I'm not making a resolution to recruit n people every month. I just decided to get with the program and try and get more people in the corp to spout nonsense with on Teamspeak and maybe get around to making a little ISK each month.

Want to fly with us? Join the IOS Recruitment channel and be fun and interesting. With a bit of luck I'll still be in the enthusiastic mood and get you signed up real quick.

Recruiting yet again

It's been a long year and as with any game people online slowly atrophies towards zero. This means it is recruitment time again.

Z3R0 Return Mining Inc., proud founding member of the Illusion of Solitude alliance, is once again recruiting. Formed over five and a half years ago we have a wealth of experience gained from years of living exclusively in wormhole space. Our current home is a class 4 wormhole with class 3 and 5 statics which provide us with many opportunities to take advantage of. Mainly active in EU time with some East US coverage we do not focus exclusively on any one area of wormhole life. We prefer to take advantage of what we find each day, be that people to shoot, sites to run, or just sitting on comms talking nonsense to each other.

If you are interested in joining us you need to be a mature and relaxed player who doesn't take things like killboard efficiency too seriously. You must be able to warp cloaked and should have decent scanning skills. You should have reasonable shield and armour tanking skills and we can help guide you on your training. Whilst we try to avoid dying too often you should be comfortable with ship and pod loss, accepting this is normal for EVE. You should also have Teamspeak available with a mic and headset although you are not expected to use this every time you are online.

We are not generally active enough to PLEX your account each month so players expecting to do so will be disappointed. There is an expectation that you will spend the majority of your time basing out of our home system. You will also be expected to do your fair share of scanning. In return the corp makes it as easy as possible for you to earn ISK with corp buyout of PvE loot and all PI generated in the hole. This removes any necessity for you to haul loot out and sell it in order to be paid. We are not somewhere to park an ISK-making alt whilst you spend all your time on another character elsewhere in EVE.

If you are interested please fill out our recruitment form or contact me in-game for more information. The recruitment process involves an API check and Teamspeak 'interview'. Please do not apply directly to the corp until this process has been followed.

So what are you waiting for? Fill in that recruitment form today or add me to your watch list and ping me when I log in.

Recruiting Again

Z3R0 Return Mining Inc., proud founding member of the Illusion of Solitude alliance, is once again recruiting. Formed over four and a half years ago we have a wealth of experience gained from years of living exclusively in wormhole space. Our current home is a class 4 wormhole with class 3 and 5 statics which provide us with many opportunities to take advantage of. Active in EU and East US time zones we do not focus exclusively on any one area of wormhole life. We prefer to take advantage of what we find each day, be that people to shoot, sites to run, or just sitting on comms talking nonsense to each other.

If you are interested in joining us you need to be a mature and relaxed player who doesn't take things like killboard efficiency too seriously. You must be able to warp cloaked and should have decent scanning skills. You should have reasonable armour tanking skills and we can help guide you on your training. Whilst we try to avoid dying too often you should be comfortable with ship and pod loss accepting this is normal for EVE. You should also have Teamspeak available with a mic and headset although you are not expected to use this every time you are online.

We are not generally active enough to PLEX your account each month so players expecting to do so will be disappointed. There is an expectation that you will spend the majority of your time basing out of our home system. You will also be expected to do your fair share of scanning. In return the corp makes it as easy as possible for you to earn ISK with corp buyout of PvE loot and all PI generated in the hole. This removes any necessity for you to haul loot out and sell it in order to be paid.

If you are interested please fill out our recruitment form or contact me in-game for more information. The recruitment process involves an API check and Teamspeak 'interview'. Please do not apply directly to the corp until this process has been followed.

Always Recruitment

Recruitment seems to be a pretty constant task and one that I don't particularly feel comfortable doing. I have a general 'fear' of the unknown in that I like to have a rough idea of how a conversation will go. Obviously this is an unlikely event when chatting to a total stranger so I just have to swallow my apprehensions and get on with it. Know what, it really isn't that bad.

Most conversations are just about getting a feel for the person you are chatting with, finding out if they've been in wormhole space before or have seen enough action that wormholes shouldn't be too daunting for them. Most of that comes down to personality - are they going to log off when the wormhole is quiet or are they going to go do some scanning and find something to do (kill sleepers or kill capsuleers, either is fine). There is a whole other side I keep in my head while this conversation is ongoing. One of my directors wrote a fine post on what should be paid attention to and how a conversation should be managed. This adds to my tricky feelings when handling such chats as I sometimes feel like I am being devious or deceitful.

Assuming all the chatting goes well there is also the API check to go through. I am much more at home doing that. It's pretty straight forward to make sure people have basic skills to survive in wormhole space: can they cloak? Can they scan? Can they remote rep? Do they have a decent tank to survive? Even beyond those points, where things of interest become a bit fuzzy it is still enjoyable to research backgrounds and prior associates.

At the end of the day, though, it all comes back to the person and actual interaction with them. This is the most important aspect really for any corp like ours. I want people who are fun to hang around with, not people who are solely driven to earn ISK or people who complain there is nothing to do but never actually try and find something to do.

Not sure where I was going with this blog post, just a bit of a brain dump I guess. Bottom line is, our recruitment is open and we've had a small number of people join us already. You should come join us too, at the very least you get a chance to make me feel uncomfortable in our public recruitment channel for a bit.

A Year In Wormholes

Today marks the first anniversary of my journey into wormhole space so I thought I'd try and do a little recap of that time. I find it most amusing to think that just over a year ago I was in a fairly unsocial corp living in Solitude running L4 missions and thinking I was making loads of ISK. At one time there had been a small group of us who chatted in the corp channel, and even a couple of lowsec roams, but not what you'd expect for a corp boasting 300+ members. Also, we kept being on the receiving end of wardecs and there weren't enough members willing to go out and fight. I was also not so inclined to go fight, but was starting to get to a point where I was fed up either not playing or dying to a war target gate camp after foolishly running missions thinking I would be okay.

I had started getting more interested in the community aspect of EVE. I was listening to a couple of podcasts including Jadecougar's Lost In EVE podcast. This meant when Splatus, one of the few people in corp I actually spoke to, mentioned to me he was considering leaving and trying out wormhole life I decided to accompany him. There were a couple of wormhole corps we considered. I can't remember who the first corp we chatted with were but they sounded a bit too militaristic for us. There was talk of timelimits on running Sleeper sites and ridicule should you fall outside those times. We decided that wasn't for us. Next up was Jadecougar's Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. and they sounded much friendlier so we submitted APIs and agreed to the interview. The interview was probably more intense than many job interviews I've been to. I'm sure it lasted at least an hour and then Splatus and I were in.

Moving in day was fun. I had been on a shopping spree fitting an omni-tank Myrm so I didn't have to fly Caldari. I had been practising my scanning with a lovely helios. I also took in a Covetor and a 'ghetto-Noctis' Catalyst salvager. I then went nuts and filled a bunch of GSCs with random ammo and modules to haul in my Itty. With some trepidation and what I perceived to be outstanding levels of organisation on the part of Z3R0 I managed to safely get most of my shopping into our POS. I was heading out to get the last ship when there were reports of some combat ships on our route. I jumping into my Nemesis and managed to help kill a Typhoon thus allowing Splatus to move in and me to fetch my last ship. My first taste of wormhole combat.

I quickly settled into a life of running my PI setup efficiently and making a stupid amount of ISK. I had the option of dropping out to lowsec through our static to go run missions when the wormhole was quiet but I did that fairly infrequently. I very quickly realised I needed a second account with a cloaky alt to make it easier to run Sleeper sites with only a couple of people on. Life was good, then came the management 'crisis' which resulted in an opportunistic corp theft.

At that time, Z3R0 existed in two wormholes - a C2 and a C4. When Jadecougar decided to take leave from New Eden, potentially permanently, there was an assumption by the person who ran the C2 that he would become CEO. This didn't happen so he quit one night leaving us helpless. There were two ways the corp could have went at that point: sink or swim. A small number of people chose to flee the corp (at least one taking other people's 'canes with them) but for the most part people stayed. The new CEO appointed some directors then wasn't heard of again, but quite quickly we were happy with that.

There was a little concern when Jade came back from hiatus and announced Z3R0 was moving to the C4. How would we cope with no direct access to K-space? How would we survive in the significantly more dangerous space that a C4 presented? Jade was adamant that the dangers of C4 space had been greatly exaggerated to us during our time in the C2 and moving would be simple. So we found some nice guys to buy the C2 from us and we moved. Funny thing we learned was that C4 space isn't actually any more dangerous than C2 space.  As long as you run proper intel you have exactly the same chance of a wandering capsuleer popping you back to hisec in either class of space.

Moving wormholes is a logistical nightmare. It's amazing the volume of stuff you acquire in there. We lost several Orcas due to people being silly on the move out, including one containing a Tengu - oops! The move into the C4 went more smoothly and it was at that time I finally abandoned my principles and started flying Caldari. I moved into the C4 as the proud owner of a scanning Tengu and an omni-tank Drake. Subsequently I replaced the Drake with another Tengu due to the peer pressure of greater range.

In the last six months since moving we've been forced into greater displays of teamwork. Scanning is much more important now than in the C2 as we are always at least two jumps to K-space and usually more. The big change for me is I am now the CEO of Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. as Jade has left to chase a dream of nullsec. Z3R0 probably has more active members now that it ever had and we are still recruiting. Not only that, we also helped create a wormhole academy with Splatus taking the lead there. The aim of our corp has always been primarily to enjoy the game in good company and that is what we continue to do. While the corp buys PI and Sleeper loot and takes a cut from the proceeds, the proceeds of this are used to keep us out here and ease the life of everyone. Not a tactic for the corp to become space-rich but, hey, it's not like we have any shareholders to answer to.

Here's to another year of Z3R0 and Wormholes.

Still Recruiting

It's been a couple of months since I last posted that my corp was recruiting. We've taken in a decent number of people in that time but the summertime slowdown has started already. Someone tells me this is normal around now due to exams but it's the first time I've experienced it as CEO. There is something very frustrating about logging into find almost but not quite enough people to go raid our neighbouring wormhole for sleeper sites.

Fairly recently we had an ace scanner pilot return to active service. He'd been with us in the old C2 wormhole days. From memory, he was the Security team leader - the team I was placed in when I first joined Z3R0. Each day he's on he's doing a fantastic job scanning down our constellation and bookmarking the sigs for all the sites around us. This makes the reduced numbers all the more frustrating.

So, if you're interested in wormhole life and would like to come help us plunder the riches of our neighbours. Maybe you would even like to mildly terrorise people who find themselves briefly living next door to us. Join the "Z3R0 Return Mining Recruitment" in-game channel and come hang out with us. All we insist on is that you can fly a ship capable of warping cloaked and (to quote the Recruitment Director) "aren't an asshat". If you don't think you're ready for life in a C4 then still come and talk to us. We have plans...

Oh, and the forum link might be useful too.

Recruiting

It has been an interesting time in the corp recently as we've been recruiting. Recruiting is always an interesting time as, for me, it gives equal measures of intrigue and trepidation. Are the new people coming into the corp genuine? Do they want to steal all our ISK (not that we have vast sums)? Are they just wanting to mess with us? It's all the fear of the unknown, of course, and completely irrational (maybe).

This time we are being very aggressive. We normally only recruit between three and five new members, expecting only two or three to stick around. This time we are going for closer to 30. I imagine that we expect about 20 to stick around and this represents a significant increase in corp size.

So with this in mind I shouldn't be too concerned when I turn on comms and don't recognise a few names. At least getting chatting eases my concerns as these new recruits seems nice enough. I really don't spend enough time socialising with everyone recently due to other commitments so I guess I shouldn't be too hard. Well, maybe just my normal level of taking the mick - no point giving a false impression now. Anyway, I should have an evening of drunken piloting coming up real soon so they new guys will get to know me better then...

So, interested in wormhole life? Join the "Z3R0 Return Mining Recruitment" comms channel and come chat with us. We're almost at the end of this round of recruiting but it's always better to come find out about us in advance.