Planning

Sorry if the last few entries have been kind of lacking. Been busy with planning the un-mothballing of AMC. This involves such wonders as shopping around for web hosting and things like that. Yep this time round I'm going to get a proper web site/forum/wiki/killboard setup for the alliance. Also planning out the corporate structure of the alliance and various policies. Gah the nitty gritty of alliance leadership, what fun.

At this stage I'm not going to go for a vent server for the alliance. Untill we grow beyond a certain size, with a working in game voice system, I can't justify the added expense of a Ventrillo server. Ventrillo does have a better voice quality than the EVE voice system, but with 2 accounts and a web hosting service I'm hitting the limit of what I'm willing to pay for a game.

I will note that it still beats the pants off of most other forms of entertainment cost per hour entertained wise.

It will be interesting to see what effects the upcoming expansion will have on the EVE universe. One of the problems EVE has always had is that there's a "critical mass" point for alliances wanting to move into 0.0. So you ended up with a chicken and egg type of problem for budding alliance leaders like myself:

- Untill you are in 0.0 it is hard to attract and retain combat pilots.
- Untill you have enough combat pilots it is hard to get into 0.0.

These two related problems are why alliances tend to be fairly static in their existance untill a failure cascade happens.

The upcoming expansing should upset a whole bunch of applecarts. First of all there is the lure of T3. Second of all there is the random nature of the connections between known space and wormhole space. Third of course is the fact that wormhole space will contain plenty of moons regardless of what else it contains.

I'm crystal balling here but I suspect we'll see mixed results with regards to wormhole space usage. The wormhole space connected to 0.0 will after the dust settles probably become "raiding mostly" space. What I mean is that alliances will organize expeditions to 0.0 space but due to the odds of ending up connected to enemy systems probably not be serious about colonizing said space. Empire on the other hand will see quite a lot of colonizing attempts. If as implied most W-space systems that connect to high sec will re-connect to high sec most of the time, this means that logistics too and from individual systems is simplified in that once you're in one you can scan down an exit wormhole and end up somewhere else in high sec. With the mass limitations of wormholes, the odds of a colonized system being wiped out by a blob are much reduced. And once you colonize a system being able to build up forces in said system although tricky should at least be do-able.

This of course is going to suck some of the pilots out of 0.0 as larger alliances realize this and send expeditionary forces to high sec to establish w-space colonies connected to high sec to ease their own logistical nightmares. On the other hand the alliances can't spend too much of their forces doing this as they then risk becoming too diluted to defend their 0.0 presence. This leaves the doors open for smaller alliances to create and hold wormhole space enclaves. I think we'll see some rather interesting mini-wars breakout in the high sec connected W-space systems and the 0.0 connected systems being rather under-used except as raiding targets (either the system is empty in which case you send in a resource exploitation expedition or it's got your enemy's POS's in which case you send in a POS bashing fleet). The mass limitations of course affecting the ability to POS bash.

Regardless, there's an oportunity to hire and keep Combat Pilots interested while still being largely bassed in high sec. It's lucky my original scheduled un-mothballing of AMC intercects with the upcoming expansion so nicely. This does however mean that I need to get a lot of details nailed down and worked out.

Back to the evils of planning...