I would have included those people in this spot right here, however glorious leader Mecinia Lua hasn’t sent me anything yet to post so I will just have to skip it so that this post isn’t delayed any further making it less awesome!!!

As for myself I was unable to assist with the initial anchoring and filling of the egg, but I did manage to sign on for a brief period to assist with repping the shields on the new outpost and as a happenstance I was able to grab a few screenshots. I don’t pretend to be a fantastic “artist” when it comes to in game screenshots, but with my limited time I wanted to capture the moment so to speak.

So behold the power of the awesome floating hunk of garbage!!!

Now in truth what this means is that we finally are able to reduce our dependency on POS’s and the associated PITA (if you don’t understand what PITA stands for…Google it!) that goes with them. Less fuel consumption, means less Ice operations will need to be undergone. In some aspects having the outpost now also provides a margin of safety and security that a POS currently doesn’t allow such as personal hangar spaces with auditing capability… We will now be able to tell when our members… cough Kovadlinka cough… is getting another hulk after he loses his previous one to belt rats! In all seriousness it allows for a better way to track, build, and account for items from operations and a safer place to store and use BPO’s.

Thankfully we will be able to consolidate and offline a few POS’s and a lot of us are happy to have a LARGE number of manufacturing slots available to start building all the various types of ships and associated modules/ammo to go with them. Some of us are actually happy to have a nice place to finally setup Capital ship production… BUT SHUSHSHSHHS don’t tell any of the spies about that!!!  

Currently there is a little poll/vote going on to see what the official name of the station will be. So far it looks like we have a name suggested by Might Joe: “Keep it moving!!! NO CSAA’S HERE” he appears to have come up with some fairly humorous ones so far, but the collection of names and voting is still early so there may be a better name eventually selected. I am partial to the name “Last Stop for Tasty ButterBalls!” but I don’t think there is a pray it will get selected.

In other news a few members have had to go semi-afk due to RL events, which means our miner hordes are MIA for a bit, hopefully they will be back in full action shortly as I need lots of damn minerals to start buying stuff now that Cobalt Edge has no more Drone Poop…ya…that’s right! Drone Regions without alloys…read about that here…not thrilled personally, but nothing I can do about it so back to bounty ratting it is!

In other news we have a few new additions, some newer players whose names I can’t recall, but you all are really important I promise! A few SWTOR veterans have returned (HI SAFID!!!), and there are a lot more people online now around the clock compared to the last few months.

Well I think that about wraps up the currently corporation update, and I think I have covered all the major points that have happened between now and the last post..Oh forgot our lovely neighbors RAZOR are now living back in Tenal…back to the stupid cloaky AFK system campers around the clock…there needs to be a way to counteract that type of behavior..whether it be a fuel component to those ships, or a way to scan them down with ION probes or something…Actually come to think of it now that I don’t need to salvage with an alt anymore… I may just stick her/him into some of the ratting systems of our lovely neighbors..hummm there is actually merit in that idea!! Until next time!

Butterball

With XXDeath deciding that they are about to be obliterated from the Drone Regions now that SOLAR and AAA have have removed Red Overlord from their home the next logical target, of course, was to utterly eliminate XXXDeath… So what does that mean for us here at GEPT and IRC overall.. Well….XXXDeath decided to destroy the truce negotiated by PL on their behalf and pull a surprise attack move on IRC’s capital system (E-BYOS) and the systems surrounding it.. That was probably around mid Feb 2012.. Here it is almost the end of March 2012 and for lack of a better words XXXDeath was shocked by the IRC response. They have literally just given up Oasa and the surrounding regions at this point most likely due to the fact that they know their time in the lovely Drone Regions is over.

That about sums up where the alliance and the corp stand on a war front. From the Industrial side of things we have added a LOT of “mining whores” and the associated multi-box toons associated with that. Now that a semi state of War drumness has slowed we are getting back to our goals of actually organizing mining/ratting/ice operations to complete not only our Outpost (finally) but to actually start the implementation of a Ship Replacement program for our pilots at below manufacturing costs. I have to shout out Gorgorot1 for taking this project up and not only administrating it, but rallying people to actually participate on the mining/ratting operations in order for it to actually get off the ground and start producing ships and modules. So hats off to you mate glad to see this finally happening.

In addition to that we have gotten several PVP oriented folks who have greatly contributed to killboard stats so that I can honestly say we probably have a nice 50/50 split of industrialists and PVPers in the corp now. Of course we are always looking for more!!!

Anyways I wanted to freshen this up a bit and post something so that the content wasn’t too stale, but hopefully in the coming weeks there will be some more things to discuss as I have a feeling the larger acknowledged war front will be taking place shortly after Inferno is released.. Should prove to be an interesting summer in EvE!

Butterball

Oh I forgot…. new people…well I hope new people we are still looking to recruit… I think every corporation in null-sec (0.0) is continually recruiting for one reason or another. If you are here to get more information on the corp by all means read on and survey what you see, however like most things in eve if you really want more information sign in and go to the public

Keep in mind we look for pilots with a minimum of  5+ million skill points. We do require a FULL API key when processing applications (not limited, which means every box checked in the current EVE API system).

A few things to note about Cobalt Edge and Intrepid Crossing (IRC): 

1. To survive in null-sec (0.0) you need at least battlecruiser skills. This typically means that you should try to have all main weapon and support skills at least to a level of IV.
2. We live in the Drone Regions; as such there are no bounties on the rats out in this area. While this is sometimes difficult for people to grasp especially those come from High Sec who are primarily used to running missions etc. the potential to make ISK is usually greater than those in bounty rat regions…it just takes a little more thought.
3. While we are primarily an Industrial and Mining corporation we are required to participate in alliance Home Defense (HD) and Call to Arms (CTA) fleets. (This will most likely become more frequent as the redesign of eve’s PVP, thanks to Crucible, unfolds in the next few weeks/months.)
4. We are spread out over pretty much every time zone, where most are active around the North American time zone we do have a dedicated bunch that play within the Euro time zones.
5. We do have a corporation Mineral (Ore)/Salvage/Planetary Interaction (PI)/and Alloy purchasing program where the corporation buys these materials from the members and then resells them typically to our Industrial builders.
6. We do have a set monthly member due, which includes ISK towards Alliance and Fuel costs. It isn’t outrageous and can generally be resolved with 1 or 2 Horde complexes a month, so maybe 2 hours of time.

Now that the sales pitch is over I wanted to let just briefly cover some of the events taking place within the corporation. We are at the completion line for our Outpost project…now comes the wait and see aspect… thrilling…like watching paint dry….HOWEVER we have our miner hordes keeping up the industry index in our system and as usual our ratting in the area is always consistent. We have funneled a lot of the purchased Ores/Alloys/Minerals to go toward the construction of the Outpost and we are looking to deploy the station in…..sorry not going to reveal that bit in this post.

With the upcoming POS fuel changes in Crucible some of our more market savvy players have already started speculation into the ice and PI markets for the increase in prices on these commodities…Looks like ice prices are going to continue to be elevated for the foreseeable future due to the new Fuel Pellet system being introduced. On a different note our builders were a little bit sad on the announced Supercarrier nerfs, along with out SC pilots, due to mainly reduced demand for these beasts which has pretty much halted production for the moment, good thing we started phasing that production out at the end of the summer. But there is much hope that the Dreadnaught buff will increase demand for those once powerful ships so that a new line of revenue can be opened up for our builders, which in turn helps our ratters and miners get paid more for their efforts.

There are a lot of nice fixes and patches that are coming out and while the alliance gears up for war and the production machines start churning it is a relatively stable period in our area, which for the moment allows for lots of mining/ratting/PVP roams. Honestly in my humble view this patch (expansion) is going to be a really good thing for both the corporation and the overall player base of eve.

Until next post. See you in game!

Butterball

Things have been going pretty good. With the end of the last great war we’ve been able to dedicate a bit more time to the construction of our outpost. We hope to have it up and in place by Christmas.

As always we’ve been sad to see a few take leaves of absences and new folks come into the fold. We’ve got a good bunch of miners right now that are doing well I believe.

Like most everyone we are waiting on the winter expansion with much excitement, it seems to be a great package of things most of the gaming populace has asked for over the last few years. I hope that its a portent of things to come.

April was a good month. We were able to acquire and install a cynosural generator in B-U299 to speed transport in and out of system. In addition the first of some new moon mining starbases were established in Cobalt Edge with approval from Oldma and high command. It is hoped that further starbases and advanced ship production will be up and running within a few months.

Towards the end of April the Goonswarm Federation, Northern Coalition incursions. These impeded some operations but the corp gained some good combat experience. Almost a week and half of solid combat in VY and surrounding systems.

Goonswarm Federation held the station for about twelve hours at one point in early May. Solar Fleet, Ethereal Dawn and Solar Wing provided defense assistance in VY to protect the infrastructure hub and thus the system was never lost.

While IRC, SOLAR, ED and SOL-W defended VY other elements of DRF launched a probing attack on several key systems in Tribute. Goonswarm Fed then withdrew most of their forces from Cobalt Edge to aid in the defense of Tribute. However they maintain a small recon combat presence which continues to prick the side occasionally of the Cobalt Edge Residents.

Concord has recently issued new regulations for jump bridge operations to increase safety at the bridges. The first of these new regulations takes effect in 4 days barring some divine intervention. This new regulation will prevent ships with a jump drive from using jump bridges except the rather small Black Ops ships. It was cited that there could be a feedback loop that could destroy both the Jump Bridge and Jumping ship, the instance of occurrence was less than one in a million but Concord in their infinite wisdom has decided that is to great a risk.

The next phase of new regulations will take place next month in June. These include a large fuel bay refit to jump bridges to speed the flow of traffic as well as a limit of one jump bridge per system. Barring diving intervention these new regulations will change greatly traffic in outlaw regions. Concord cites that there could be an effect upon the stars in a system that could increase flare activity as the reason for the new limits on jumpbridges, they cite the number of stargates active as alternatives to using the more convenient jumpbridges and thus lowering the chance for coronal mass ejections which could destroy planets in a system.

In corp news we completed a Mining/alloy operation yesterday, turnout for the time frame was good and everyone seemed to be in good spirits. In other news we relocated the system we are occupying now and I personally am happier as we now have a better selection of default Ores, Drones, and overall security in the system. The fact that we are no longer in the direct path line of incoming NC reds to our system is a huge bonus and I think it has been well received by the majority of the corporation. I have to tip my hat to our logistic’s people taking down the POS from one system and having it back up and fully functional with all necessary defenses in just a 5 hour window is great.

On the recruitment side due to the continual gorilla tactics of the NC we have to lock down recruitment at the moment and our minimum for skills on a new applicant has increased to the 10 million skill point range. Overall this is probably the best because in this region you need to be able to competently pilot a battlecruiser or higher in order to rat without getting blown up by the drones. And on the other hand if your focus is mining you will want to have most of your ore reprocessing skills to at least level 4 in order to use the Tech 2 crystals and improve your refine yields in the outposts.

Overall going back to the fanfest there appears to be some exciting changes in place in the coming year for Eve. If the reported rumored dev blog patch notes (Here and Here) leak is even remotely true.. Eve again may become a VERY interesting place.

Butterball

At the beginning of the month we started embedding ourselves in our new system. Things are slowly progressing there. Indexes are being built up, still need to get more miners mining, which is hard considering the best ore we have at the moment is Ochre which really out in 0.0 doesn’t inspire to much OMG roid pleasure. I am happy to see that one of the more recent dev blogs has had CCP revist the old DED complexes, you can read that blog here, and they are starting to fill in the gaps between DED levels… Oh wait.. that doesn’t affect us out here in the Drone Regions we don’t get the shiny “Officer Faction” loot like the rest of the Bounty regions in null-sec. But hopefully since they finally, after years and years, have revisted the old DED complexes they may at some point turn their attention to some of the issues with Drone Region space. In fact if they wanted to add a little more aggression out in null-sec all they would need to do is put some bounties on the drones, and actually drop real Drone Faction loot look that is comparable to normal rat bounty faction loot. Watch the Drone Regions all of a sudden become very “wanted” by a lot of different corporations and alliances. I would love to see that personally, but don’t think that is going to happen.

In other news several CTA’s for our new alliance Intrepid Crossing have been ongoing as the Drone Russian Federations (DRF) are pushing they way to reclaiming the Geminate region. Lots of our pilots have been joining these CTA’s even though we are still in our initial break in period with IRC. Several of our cap pilots have been able to participate and in a bit of HAPPY news just this past weekend several of our members were able to… How shall I say this diplomatically… A little bit of payback to the good ole Spire Collective corporation UNSOL. Appears UNSOL alt holding corp wanted to keep some of the space it had in The Spire, oh ya and the main corp joined WI in the NC, ya… I see no problem with that. So I guess Solar finally got sick of that BS and made them kinda pay for the betrayal. So CTA was called, POS’s were popped, Cap arrays were taken, Nyx’s in production were blown up.. Good riddance I say personally. Again this is just me personally speaking not the corp as a whole.

Oh I better end this here as PeeBubble might pod me if I write too much.

So to start off with I won’t go into the long story of the corporate spy from NC that infiltrated the corp, you can read about that here. Instead what was looking to be a big set back for the corporation wound up turning out to be a fairly positive experience. We worked together with some alliance mates in a Located and Destroy mission and even though we failed in that mission the spy was routed out and booted from the corp in short order. The Total ISK damage honestly wasn’t as bad an initially thought, and  like I said in the end it was a great teambuilding exercise and was incredibly fun.

After that event we received some more annoying news that can be read in the forums, and I will discuss that in a future blog. In the meantime with our new recruits and postive attitudes we have been able to do some mining and mission running again within our little solar system in The Spire.

We had a new war decleration brought on by another alliance that honestly hasn’t impacted the corp or alliance very much, more of an annoyance like any war dec. I think we have lost a few ships in some low sec areas, but overall it has not effect any of our operations in any way. I think this again is another reason why I personally am glad we are staying out in the 0.0 regions with a division doing things in empire space.

I would post more, but at the moment other events are taking place that haven’t been fully flushed out, but once they are you know I will post something about them.

To start the New Year off the alliance held an alliance wide mining/anom/ratting operation in an effort to have the alliance as a whole pay for rental costs to Solar Fleet, instead of having to have every corporation contribute the rental cost for the systems they claimed. Overall half of the required ISK was raised and the event had to be shut down a bit early as a roaming fleet decided to come in and stop our efforts. Another operation is being schedule to pull in the remaining amount of ISK so that February 2011 will the first month the alliance overall pays the rental bills. That still leaves SOV costs up to the corporations along with office rental, and over course POS fueling costs. Considering the cost of not having to pay rent out of the corporations wallet I am sure the officers of the corporation are pleased about the alliances goal to take over the rental costs.

On the empire side of the corporation we have been consistently holding our weekly mission nights and while currently based out of minmatar space there are plans in the work to expand into Caldari and Gallente regions in the very near future. And speaking of missions we are looking to have more increased participation from all members of the corporation for these nights the last few mission nights haven’t had stellar turnout. It may be due to the new patches, or other real life issues, but I know myself and the officers of the corporation would like to see more attendance at these events. Not only do these events provide a small amount of ISK to boost the corporations wallet, but it gives the entire corporation a chance to work together and learn to function as a cohesive unit. During one of these mission nights our very own PeeBubble was promoted to the office of a full Director. So congratulations for PeeBubble!! With his ongoing recruitment efforts to get more players into the empire sides of the corporation I am sure these mission nights will become more interesting and profitable for all involved.

Similar to the mission nights in empire space some of our pilots are currently active in the PVP roams and campaigns out in 0.0 land primarily in response to requests from Solar Fleet and Solar Wing in the form of support fleets. While these skirmish have been mainly of the support style functions there have been uses of capital and super capital ships in these events so nothing is off the table. As we have been asked to assist in defense of The Spire region holds and in some instances some operations in the Cache region. I personally have tried to join in on these operations so that my horrible pvp abilities can improve. I know Might Joe and PeeBubble have attended some of these events and from their reports they have had a great time while being able to fleet-up with some of our other alliance mates.

On the recruitment side of the coin we have gained I believe so far 7 new members who are mainly planning on joining our operations out in The Spire whether that be mining, or ratting doing anomalies. Either way it’s nice to see added faces in the corp chat window, and more personally it is good to see more people online during the off peek hours I am usually on!

I think this sums up Week 3 to date for our corporation and like I mentioned at the beginning of this post I am going to try and put out at least one blog a week to keep everyone informed on how things are progressing for the corp and alliance overall. Of course most of this information will be after the fact reporting, but for more up to date information visit the forums and check your eve-mail for communications from both Corporation and Alliance Leadership, spring time is coming and usually that starts to be a busy time for Eve Pilots.

Until next time!

Butterball

Where can we improve? What are we lacking? What would you like done? What assistance do you need that you aren’t currently receiving? In short how can we help you?

Now honestly give this some thought as sometimes a collective brainstorming produces ideas that wouldn’t normally be conceived of by the traditional chain of command. What does this have to do with me you say?? Well for starters if you aren’t getting what you feel you need to improve your game play you have two choices, say something, or quit. I personally would prefer that you don’t quit and instead ask for what it is you are lacking.

Now of course some times it just may not be possible for the corporation to provide what you are requiring..for example:

“I feel a Titan will complete my level of enjoyment of this marvelous game. If the corp would provide that for me, I feel I would most likely stay within the corp and never ever leave….maybe.” 

Short and simple answer to that question will be no we will not give you a titan, but if it is something we are able to assist with I can guarantee that someone inside the corporation can assist.

More mission nights? More Anoms/Mining opportunities in High/o.o space? More PVP operations? Stealth bomber raids? Help with Manufacturing and other related industry tasks? These are probably something that can be addressed.

But here is the kicker.. It requires someone to say something. In short a response from our loyal employee’s on what they are looking to get out of the corporation and what we can do to assist.

Be original, Be unique, hell just BE!!! Say something, voice your opinion, help us help you. “insert other cliche here”

Head to the forums.. voice your opinion.. all 5 of you!!!!

Surveying our Corporation Employees

Butterball