Crime & Punishment

This post is slightly premature because we will not be ready for this service for probably a few weeks, but it will hopefully give us some time to evaluate our options and see if anyone is interested in providing us with this service. There are two separate possibilities that we are open to exploring.

Option 1.

We are seeking an alliance that is willing to accept one of our corporations into their alliance and provide PvP training to the members within it. This is a concept we explored earlier in the year with The Ghost Army, but we were not able to get very far before they made the decision to disband.

Essentially, we would want to place Firesworn Warfare into your alliance, where members of our alliance are able to transfer to that corporation to engage in training through practical experience. This is something that would likely be best served by a merc alliance. There are obvious pros and cons to this approach.

On the pros side, you would be gaining some pilots who are eager to learn and participate in PvP activities. You would have sole discretion over who is permitted to participate with you. If you do not want a certain pilot in your alliance, we will transfer them back to our alliance. You also have sole discretion over who even joins that corporation. You could place an alt in the corp with director rights to manage it as you please while it remains in your alliance.

On the cons side, we would obviously have some knowledge of your operations and members, and we have been at war with many of you, and are still at war with some of you. This provides a security risk to you, unless you're willing to put aside our differences and work with us instead. Another con is that I understand the importance of your KB and our pilots could harm it as they are learning, but you are welcome to set any limitations you want, such as only flying cheap tacklers and not engaging in certain activities such as PvE or exploration.

This is our preferred option because I believe it provides the greatest long-term rewards to our pilots. They are able to get hands on training fighting a variety of different threats and to learn from the best. We do not have your experience so we cannot do this ourselves. We need them to be in this corporation because it allows them to remain connected to our community while they are learning from you.

Option 2.

On the flip side, there are plenty of solo PvP pilots that are exceptionally skilled at their art, and I do not want to dismiss an opportunity for them to learn from you. Perhaps you could join our corporation, even if it is with an alt, and provide lessons to them this way. I believe this approach would need more structure in the form of classes with some aspect of hands-on training through lowsec roams or perhaps allying with you in wars where you're the defender.

This option seems a little harder to pull off, but if it is something that sounds interesting to you, I am open to it. Again, you'd be working with players that have a genuine interest in learning to PvP, so they will listen to your guidance, and you have discretion over who you choose to work with. The only thing I would not want to do is wardec other corporations as part of their training, which is why the first option is more appealing.

Payment Terms.

This is completely negotiable. You can charge us a flat weekly rate or a per-pilot rate or a hybrid of the two or something else entirely. Many of you know our situation. We were very active up until the end of summer, and right now we are quite small. We are not rich, but we will entertain any reasonable offer for providing a valuable service. I'm not really the type to hold grudges, so regardless of any history we may have together, I would consider your offer.

Killmails? As the guy who lost really expensive ships in really stupid ways? Just a guess. xD

Are you hitting on me? Because it sounds like you are.

(You looked better without the eye patch.)

PVP LESSONS BEGIN TOMORROW, MARMITE ARE AT WAR WITH YOU TOO

PREPARE YOURSELF

You do realize we're no strangers to wardecs, right?

We have only recently come back after a three or four month hiatus. We have three people in our alliance that are active, and none of us are really playing on our mains right now. You have nothing to shoot at. This also has nothing to do with wardecs. I'm looking for a long-term relationship where we can send our pilots for training. I have detailed what I feel would work best for us. This is a business opportunity. I tried to make light of the trolling, but now I will simply ignore it.

That's not possible. At most, you can only pay for two weeks of war upon first declaration.

To everyone who has replied so far, thank you for the thoughtful responses and I will reach out to you soon.

I believe I can help you arrange something. I am a skilled small gang and solo PvPer, and I would be willing to join your corporation with an alt and help to teach you a thing or two. Contact me in game and we will work out the details.

He's probably looking for someone to teach him how to manage his guardian alts.

Interesting...considering we have no miners in our alliance.

At any rate, this topic isn't about you, Tora.

It seems I was not clear in my original post, so I will try to clarify.

We are a new pilot friendly alliance. Historically, about 80% of our members are less than three months old. We can teach them the basics of fleet mechanics, skill training, overview setup, locator agents, aggression timers, etc. We can help them get into some basic ship doctrines and with some measure of success how to fly them well.

We were an active alliance until around the end of summer, having about 200 members at our peak. During that time, we had members who were able to mentor and help members with the things mentioned above. At the same time, we were embroiled in several wars in which we were often outnumbered.

We had difficulty putting fleets together in a timely fashion and many of our pilots were just not experienced enough or provided with the right guidance to be effective. This is largely my fault because (a) I did not spend enough time trying to build up our PvP side of the alliance and (b) I suck at PvP, having only engaged in it in a limited capacity.

Ideally, we would have someone competent to run that division for us. It's a big job though and it needs to be someone we mesh well with and trust. In the absence of that, we simply need to do the best we can. We considered Agony classes, but they are rather sporadic and I am not sure they would provide the best value or experience that our pilots need.

They would be better off training under another corp who engages in these activities every day. As I said, we were in the process of doing this with The Ghost Army, which would have been ideal because we've always very good relations with them. I am open to other suggestions other than the two options I made above. Constructive feedback is always welcome.

We also try to train our "carebear" pilots to at least be prepared for war, so we provide guidance on flying smart during wartime, and we ask that they train into some basic fits such as Blackbirds and Guardians. These players are not as interested in PvP but they are passionate about our community and are willing to help defend it. They could use help learning to fly these ships well.

Some of our pilots are fairly experienced at solo PvP and might do well at FC'ing if they had the confidence for it, which they would probably only get from someone willing to mentor them.

So ideally, what we are looking for is to work out a deal with someone wherein we are able to have our members learn from those with the experience to teach them properly. This would be an ongoing arrangement as new players are brought on board, probably culminating with many of the pilots you trained in the beginning taking on those same roles in the future so we can be self-sufficient and reasonably competent enough to defend against wardecs.

Hopefully this helps to clear up our objectives. I'd like our players to have enough confidence and skill to be able to form small gangs and work together to overcome threats and take a more offensive role against any threats we face. It's an area we are struggling with, and a challenge we would like to overcome.