EVE New Citizens Q&A

This + Null-sec = Fail cascade.

In SOV Null, there is only 1 way to rule an alliance...be a dictator. Sure, have your staff of war generals, creative accountants and other people who help you, but you, and YOU alone should be in final control.

If you let people have a say, it will mean that everybody will fight each other inside the alliance and forget they are under attack by oh so many others.

It'll lead to a fail cascade in highsec too. See what happens when someone serious declares war on you and each individual in your alliance has his own idea about what they should be doing. There should be alliance policy and corporations that don't want to abide by alliance policy either need to try and get that policy to change or to find a different alliance.

If you're too busy bickering about the course of action to take in a crisis and don't have decisive leadership you won't even survive in highsec for any length of time.

I've given it some thought over the years but I never bothered with implementation mainly because I don't have the desire to do it :)

I've done the online MMO leadership thing in the past and it was totally awesome and rewarding but, conversely, it was also time consuming and even stressful at times. I really enjoyed the process of building up a group of people who shared a vision and built it together. That was incredible but after awhile times shifted...

In EVE it is the same thing: to build an alliance means you are taking up the banner to build up an organization of players.

You need to have a clear vision and you need to be able to communicate this vision to others so that they buy into it. You can grow your organization as slowly or as quickly as you wish. There are pros and cons for both approaches.

I don't agree that this is something that would take -years- to do because I have seen it done in far shorter time frames already but it is a matter of your dedication to the cause and your leadership skills OUT of the game. Or, it could take years, it's really up to you.

You have to make big decisions such as how to structure the organization or you can just let it grow organically (which is how most things are done anyway) and, really, you just need to start building up the network of people.

Think of building an alliance like a multi-level marketing system and you'll do just fine.

Just remember, you are dealing with volunteers who want to do fun things. If you provide people with fun things to do then they will happily stay with you. If you push them too much to do unfun things then they will leave you or just leave the game. There are a lot of 0.0 Alliances that today are really just shells. They aren't real. To destroy them all it would take is a significant push and the Alliance will crumble.

We've seen this happen time and time again in 0.0 so the space is there waiting for you to come and take it.

If you spend too much time 'planning' you won't get anything done. Conversely, if you don't spend enough time planning and modeling your organization it will disintegrate the first time it has something bad happen to it. In EVE you will have to deal with EVE players as EVE players.

There -will- be people who will try to mess you up just because they think it's fun to do that. They will try and steal from you. They will try to sabotage your efforts. They will try to destroy all you are trying to build. They won't have a good reason for this. This will happen. You need to be prepared.

Now, going back to the HOW to get it done. Well, you can play the numbers game. This one is straight forward. Recruit everyone and their alt. The more you recruit the more people will join you. The more people will join you the more you will become known. The more you become known the more you can recruit... it's a great recursive system. You can keep building up momentum this way until you feel ready to make your move.

Of course, the people who join you this way will just as easily leave you. Plus a significant number of people who join up will be doing so with the sole purpose of either stealing everything or usurping your organization. Since this is EVE and a significant population of players in EVE -try- to be 'mean' or I guess 'elite' or whatever it is that they think they are you will have to be ready for them regardless. You may as well accept that you'll have aspiring corp thieves, spies, and betrayers from the get go and find uses for them.

So, if you follow this path, you can build to critical mass really fast. I've seen corps spring up and hit over 100 members in weeks because of easy 'recruitment' criteria. If you can harness these people you can get out to 0.0 very fast. And if you move quickly people will stay with you because you are providing them with what most people want: direction. Edit: To hold sov in today's 0.0 you'll need ~1000+ members.

The other path to take is the slow build. Target specific people and bring them on board one by one. The idea here is to build up a 'trusted' circle of potential leaders who will stay with you as you grow. The problem with this approach is that people come and go from EVE online all the time. Someone who you see logging on for five hours a day every day may suddenly, without warning, disappear for months and then come back expecting everything to be the same.

How you deal with this issue will determine your success.

Personally, the way I see it, if you are going to do it pull the trigger and go. Communicate clearly (you will want a website / out of game comms system / instant messenger system) what your goals are, give people tasks that are easily obtainable in a short timeframe (stuff like: this week we're going to raise X ISK, we'll do a roam at X time, we'll do an op at Y time, etc etc), and get your joiners to become believers in the great cause.

If you ever reach a point where your character needs more skills than you have you can buy a character on the bazaar so don't allow skill points to hold you back.

Finally, you will need to focus a lot of your attention on your baby to make it work just like any other organization in its nascent state. If you manage to build up an organization that has structure and relatively defined roles (it's a game - don't pigeon hole people since they will get bored and aggravated with you for 'forcing' them into something) and you delegate you could achieve your goal within a year. Maybe even sooner.

If you fail to build a robust system that doesn't handle corp thefts, combat defeats, back-stabbing, spying, propaganda against you, coup attempts then you will fail spectacularly and it will be enjoyable to read about.

tl;dr: Make a plan, execute the plan, find leaders in your recruits, delegate, make your organization robust and flexible, and you'll be able to accomplish your goal as quickly as you try.

I did read, as I have read every post on this thread, and read twice just to be sure I understood. Thanks for your input Fractal


This is actually what I meant by saying I want people to have a say and input. So that I can take them forward in a way where I know in what direction people want. It was kind of difficult (and still is) to say exactly what I mean here as I'm unsure how to word it without it sounding like "I want the people to run it and I do what they say".