The Kali Forecast
We currently have a few threads going on in FIX in relation to Kali. Honestly, I can't imagine a self respecting alliance that isn't looking on with great interest to the changes that are coming our way. There are a lot of changes coming our way, and as such there have an abundance of topics we can pick apart.
An area I haven't seen yet, is the long range forecast of Kali on alliances. It's unfathomable to think that CCP hasn't put some thought in this direction themselves, for several reasons. CCP is opening up 8 new regions for our exploration, pleasure, and conflicts; but this is just the icing on the cake of what they truely have in store for alliances.
Having been around Eve for a while, I've had the time to realise that when CCP institutes changes, there can be a considerable pause before the changes they have envisioned take effect. This is due to us, the players; it simply takes a given amount of time for us to first recognize the changes for what they truely are, and secondly for the amount of time it takes us to evolve as a universe into their projected vision.
Case in point; when Eve kicked off, the market was an aspect of Eve that required evolution in order to come to fruition. Early on, players were able to sell minerals to NPC's for set rates. There were limits in each system and station for what NPC's would absorb in the span of a day. Prices for these minerals didn't fluctuate either; going from tritanium to megacyte, they were 1, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, 4096. New players might be saying 'Huh? Zydrine was only worth 1024 isk per?'
It took time for the market to evolve... when the server first started up, nobody owned a single BPO, there was nobody manufacturing anything. You can be sure that a great many of us were in a rush to start however. That left us with three immediate sources of income, mining ,ratting, and agents. The very beginning of Eve was a time period that I doubt any of the people there for it will soon forget. Of course, people sold minerals to NPC's, collected bounties from rats, and earned their agent rewards. Many of these people reinvested their hard earned isk into buying BPO's, and then production began in earnest, undercutting the NPC market, and creating a fledgling dynamic economy, which has continued to grow into the complex animal we have today.
So why is this important to us now, and Kali? Because CCP are doing it again it appears, but most people aren't going to realise it for several months, and perhaps not see the trickle down effects in many areas for over a year. 0.0 is about to get a lot bigger, and I'm not talking about the eight new regions either. Welcome to Eve Economics 102.
If the theory held that alliances only claim what they need (in some cases that theory holds, in others it doesn't), then alliance claims to space would be objectively based upon the earning potential of an area for it's members. Now, let's jump past the question of territorial control in regards to routes, because while it does effect arguments regarding claimed space requirements, its is for secondary purposes to an alliances need to be self-sufficient.
The needs of an alliance are based upon the membership and their activities. Basically, the more guys you have in your space trying to earn some cash, the more area you need for them to make that cash without treading all over each others toes. In comes Kali, and some rather fundamental changes. What we're being told at this point, is that each system post Kali, will have a minimum of 10 available 'encounters'. Now this can range from shifting plex's, mission-like settings, to hidden belts, and whatever else CCP has cooked up for us. You can take all that, and squeeze it down to it's base component though... money making capacity per system is being increased dramatically.
More people will be able to 'work' a single system than we've previously experienced. Let's take a couple of constellations, and a fair sized alliance as an example, and go from there. For this example, we'll say we have 12 systems within these two constellations, and we have a peak of 120 online characters at any given time within the alliance. Now, we already know that each system will have a minimum of 10 encounters per system, so we know from that, that these two constellations have a minimum of 120 possible encounters available at any given time. Obviously, some of these are going to have greater potential for earning cash than others, let's say half are crap, that leaves us with 60 decent money makers. Now, out of the guys you have online in the alliance, how many are doing their own thing, how many are out pvp'ing, doing corp business etc, and how many are looking to make some quick cash?
Odds are very much in your favor, that you have an abundance of extra encounters available for the people that are making use of them. So what is the direct impact of all this on an alliance? For one, it means that people aren't forced to queue up to run a complex, or moving from system to system in the hopes of finding a spot they can go ratting in, or finding a spot to mine peacefully (a rare breed, but I heard they do infact exist). Here is the immediate result from this; we'll find a greater concentration of players in the same systems, because they can work there without stepping on each other. Space, just got larger.
Quite suddenly, if the money earning potential holds out that is, an alliance of 1000 people, only needs a couple of constellations to be very comfortable in, whereas before it required at least 1 region for that many players to maximize their potential. Most of us remember the Exodus expansion, CCP was trying to move people out to 0.0.... didn't quite work. Half the reason why it didn't work, is because if some poor empire dwelling soul stuck his head in there, the alliance inhabiting that area would very likely remove his head for his troubles. My space, we earned it, get the fuck out. Limited resources creates a backdrop for conflict, the strong rule, the weak get podded back to empire.
Eve however, is beginning to get just a tad more populated these days, and doesn't really show signs of slowing down if CCP can keep overcoming the various server issues that come with having more players. At this point, a few questions are likely popping up about the logic and reasoning I'm using. I don't expect that alliances will suddenly say to themselves 'Oh hey guys! Check it out, we don't need 4 regions anymore, let's dump 3 of them!'. Which brings us back to the example of the evolving economy that CCP created.
Kali isn't like throwing a switch, and the mass exodus to 0.0 occurs, it's going to be an evolution over time. Alliances are forged, they live, they prosper, then they die. It's a cycle that only a few manage to avoid. I know I've been picking on ASCN lately, but by far they best serve this example I'm about to provide. Let's say it is a foregone conclusion that ASCN will die. Those people who were members of ASCN will splinter into smaller groups, based on politics, friendships, past actions etc. Some will leave the area forever, going to different pastures. Those that remain however, will forge new alliances; smaller alliances, with smaller territories.
What they'll find is, that their small holdings are enough to sustain their alliance members needs, and then some. Well, small alliances may not want to remain small, so they recruit new corporations and they grow their existing corporations. Not so suddenly, you have a much greater population density than you did before. Aha you say! What is to stop the natural predatory imperialist expansion that we know to be coming? In two words, constellation sovereignty; it requires three outposts in a single constellation, and then from there by the time Kali 2 rolls around, we'll be seeing outpost upgrades, system defenses, and all sorts of neat things that will increase an alliances hold on it's claim... and cost a heck of a lot of isk besides.
Wars will still happen, this sure as hell isn't the dawn of the carebear age. People will still piss off others, tread on toes, and be percieved by their neighbours to be an easy target. The greater the level of conflict in an area, the faster the evolution will occur, up until the poor mapmaker has a fit trying to keep up with all the alliances and changes that pour in every week. I half wonder if I have actually figured out what CCP has planned for us... or if I'm completely off base... or if I'm seeing things that CCP didn't even realise they were building into our futures.
Kali will be interesting, and will remain so well into future patchs due to the changes that are being wrought.
Hey... what's that sticking out of your Closet?
Halloween has come and gone, like many people that will be reading this, I got rather blizted that night. Normally my memory is pretty sharp the following day, but a few details have become slightly blurred however, like how I got home, or why there is a rather shapely bra stuffed into my coat pocket? You'd think I'd at least be able to remember that part, but it seems even the friends I was out with that night can't seem to come up with an explanation.
Anyways, the recent revelry and spirit of Halloween made an old phrase pop into my head this morning as I was once more pondering the mystery bra, 'skeletons in the closet'. FIX have plenty, as do the majority of alliances. The longer you've been around, the more time you've had to toss some bodies into that dark enclosure. An interesting fact is that while the bodies tend to be biodegradable, if you stuff enough of them into close proximity, bacteria doesn't have the room to breath and get the job done, so the body count mounts up and remains pungently fresh.
Well the damn closet is full to bursting, which only leaves one option; take out some of the fresh ones, cut them up in the bathtub and submerge them in acid. At least, this is what Hollywood tells me is the proscribed method for these situations. The body in question today has a toe tag labelled CODA... he's a fat bastard, and is taking up way too much room, so this may get a little messy with the chainsaw.
Many folks in CODA like to see themselves as being responsible for creating a split within FIX, where we saw half our membership leave the alliance in order to form a new one that goes by the name of Pure. It's held up as a sure sign by others that FIX was defeated by CODA in the war. Now... FIX was defeated, we were near broke, short on ships, and were about to lose our last station. As I've said previously, FIX wouldn't have fallen apart at the seams due to this, it would have pulled back and regrouped, and whoever held those stations would never know a moment of piece within the space of a few weeks from that happening.
But FIX did split, and it's very easy to come to the conclusion that this was fully due to the war and the internal tensions that such a prolonged siege can create in an alliance. Well the fat bastard is going to be put to rest today.
FIX was split internally well before the CODA war started, but Fixians past and present are a stubborn lot, and showing an internal weakness to the outside just wasn't going to happen. Good communication is the bedrock of a solid alliance foundation, and our communication across timezones between different corps sucked, really sucked. There was also the problems of ideologies, there were two competing schools of thought in FIX, and it generally fell across timezones where this seperation in opinion occured. Difficulties had been resulting from this for months.
Here is the thing though, I think it's safe to say that everyone was loyal to the idea of FIX, but there were disagreements in exactly what FIX was, and how it should operate. Several attempts were made on both sides of the ideological divide to sort the situation out; what was obvious was that our current form of government wasn't up to snuff, and couldn't provide the solutions FIX required, what we needed was a rewriting of our structure. With FIX having 22 or so corporations in it's roster, things were very unwieldy.
What a number of us felt, mainly coming from a North American timezone, was that the ideological differences were too great to overcome with simple measures, and that a degree of seperation was required, and a filter to the level of 'noise' in FIX. Valhallan, who is the CEO of Band of Builders, and FIX's current Chairman of the Board, came up with what I believed to be a viable solution and I was happy to put my support behind.
What he proposed, was to create states/provinces/counties/workgroups (term it how you will) within FIX. Those corporations that already worked closely together would continue to do so, but look after their own immediate affairs. Oversight on the workgroups would be overseen by the broader FIX government. It was basically the creation of a middle management, current FIX measures couldn't handle the affairs of 22 corporations, and way too many corporations concerns were falling through the cracks. The military side of things wouldn't change, nor would direction on overall FIX policy, and the FIX government as it was in the day would retain final say in all things. That is it in a nutshell.
The other side of the fence really, and I mean
really, didn't like this proposal in the slightest. One term they latched onto was 'Balkanization', they stated that we'd end up in a competition for resources, that the workgroups would try to claim areas for exclusive use, that pvp'rs wouldn't help out other workgroups that were being attacked, and we'd all end up at war with each other. I admit, the first thought that came to my mind when reading these responses on the forums was 'Are you fucking mental? Did you even read the whole thing?'. Disappointment was quite prevalent among the proposals supporters at how it had been shot down, and how dead set against it the other ideological group was.
It's worth noting quickly where we were all at during this; at the time, our current form of government was based on the JCoS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) at the top making the day to day decisions, and direction and final say coming from the Council, who was made up of all corporations representatives. Now the Council had been hamstrung by the three point plan that had been created by then JCoS Nez Perces, and had no power at all, which left all the work to the JCoS. We were supposed to have eight of them, but we never seemed to have more than three at a time. So three people were responsible for running all of FIX. I thought it was bullshit, and so did many others, many of us felt like our concerns were permanently on the backburner.
Well, the other side of the coin was that a proposal came back in our direction. They wanted to setup a cabinet government (The Board, which we currently operate with now). The Chairman of the Board would choose his own cabinet. There were just three things that we had slight technical problems with...
1. We had concerns that this kind of government wouldn't be able to overcome, and fix, the current ideological divides we were experiencing.
2. The person who had made the proposal, Gritt Pebbledasher (JCoS at that time), had attached his own name to be the first chairman to the proposal, as well as who he would choose for his cabinet.
3. Representation from our 'political party' in the cabinet, was very damn thin. Valhallan was on the list, and that was about it.
You can imagine the uproar, it was huge. I could see the writing on the wall for FIX though, my greatest fear was that my own members, and those alliance members who were of similar ideology as myself, would in essense become 2nd class citizens of FIX. It went up for vote as is.
The corps that had invested in the Easter Egg, and were all a part of the one 'political party', ended up all voting no, or abstained, with one exception. The exception was my own corp, I voted yes for the proposal. I've said it in the past, yet quite a few people refuse to believe me when I say that I put Alliance first, Corp second, and my personal desires third. I've been sorely tested on that over time, but I felt that if this didn't pass through the vote, we were simply going to lose a whole bunch of corps over it. I put my money where my mouth is.
I was pretty much willing to be a second class citizen in FIX, because I'd hate to be responsible for the breakup of FIX, I had said as much in the discussion thread in the FIX forums. Well... I was strongly disliked, or in the very least, considered untrustworthy, by the other side due to the accusation from earlier that I had attempted a coup. However, it seems they were willing to overlook this for my 'services' and due to the choice I had made in the vote.
Without much time passing, I was approached by Gritt, his CEO, and a CEO for one of the other corps that was aligned with them. We had a short discussion, just before they were all going off to bed. They basically told me this: 'You have one night to go to the other corps that voted no, and get them onboard. If you don't succeed, we leave FIX.' It wasn't exactly early in the day either. That meant I had 6 specific corporations where I had to get hold of their leadership, and convince them to swallow their pride, and go along with the deal without further complaint... not fucking easy by any stretch.
Over the next 10 hours, and well into the early morning, I hammered away in conversations, tracking down CEO's and directors, conducting TS meetings, and using every ounce of persuasion and logical arguement in what I believed was to avoid the breakup of FIX. Out of the 6 corporations, I talked to and convinced 5 of them; the last corps leaders simply weren't online that night. At the end of it, I sent out emails and forum PM's to all three of the people who had approached me regarding this, letting them know that I had succeeded, and there was only one corporation left to talk with. At that point, I turned off the computer, called in sick to work, and went to bed tired as hell, proud of my night's achievements, worried about FIX's future, and hoping I was making the right decisions.
I woke up and went to read the FIX forums.
One day into the new government, Gritt had resigned the position of chairman, his corp and the other main corp of that powerblock (who also held positions in the new cabinet) were leaving FIX; FIX is in total shambles with zero notice. Holy fucking rusty shank in the kidney Batman... how pissed off am I when reading this? Within a week, we were down to about 14 corporations. The alliance Pure. was created shortly after from the corporations that had left FIX. I don't hold anything against the pilots of those corporations, but I have some very specific feelings towards various leaders and have some definate thoughts towards the level of backbone they apparently possess.
Two FIX corporations from around that time ended up merging their corporations into Band of Brothers, my personal best wishes go with them. FIX was down to 450 members, and those that remained had just taken a massive kick to the nads with the events that had transpired. Everyone expected FIX to fold. Fuck that noise. We were going to pull out and regroup, and get some serious payback towards the CODA alliances for ousting us from Querious, and we were going to hit whoever was in our stations over and over until the time came to take back what is ours. We had several things on the to-do list, on the top of that list was getting some R&R for the boys, make some cash, and get everyone back into ships; build up a reserve, start harrassing Querious, build up our capital ship fleet, and then go on the offensive. May the man above preserve those sorry souls who got in our way, because we were going to steamroll them with passion and spite.
Then BoB entered the fray with CODA, and everything changed. They came to us with a proposal, and we liked what we saw.
FIX kept the cabinet structure, there was no reason to change it; there is only one prevailing ideology in FIX these days. We have learned some lessons though. The split was over 5 months ago, in that time period, we've had one corp move on, and we've accepted only one corporation into FIX, PPL (who were previously members of HDY, which is an ex-FIX corporation). The total number of pilots in an alliance mean little in how well everyone gets along, but what does matter is how many leaders you have. The more leaders, the more voices... so the more corporations we have, the more leaders we have. The result is, FIX has become extremely particular about adding new corporations to our roster, preferring to grow our own corporations. At the time of writing this, we're just coming up on having 1000 members again.
Quite some time had passed before I spoke with anyone from those who had left FIX. I had a question I wanted an answer to... why? Why leave FIX when you give me the terms to what is required for you to stay, and we come through with them? It doesn't make sense to me, what possible reason could justify the actions they took. I got to ask my question. Turns out that Gritt had a short talk with one of the rank and file pilots from one of the corporations I'm aligned with. The guy in question is a known hothead, hell of a good pvper. Well he threatened to pod Gritt, because he was pissed off.
That was it. That was all it took to make them leave FIX.
I think I'm done chopping up this body, lots of meat on it, but the backbone appears to have gone missing.
