Aideron Update 10.118

Greeting Aideron! Let me Begin by announcing that I am officially the CEO of the corporation. Woot \o/

And thank you all for making my rise to power so enjoyable, and celebrating it! You guys are totally awesome!

These are terrifically exciting times for us, new enemies and new possibilities stretch out before us. While we are not as active as we were during our Heyday, the corporation has been showing great signs of life, and has received many recognition from our allies.

As you may be aware, November’s ‘Ascension’ expansion is coming on November 8th. This is less than a month away. With this comes huge changes to the game, and I am excited about the possibilities that come from it.

With a new age, comes new direction, and while the corporation is going to fundamentally stay the same as it always has been, I believe that some changes and new projects will help advance us in the upcoming months.

A new Aideron Robotics

With the upcoming November expansion, we are in an excellent position to leverage the changes coming. As such we have a new identity for our corp as the “premier source  for Gallente Alpha clones to be successful and get content.” By focusing our efforts on only Gallente Alpha clones, we can facilitate them effectively, and ensure that they are valuable to us within our primary doctrines.

From the CSM minutes we know that the new player experience being added in November will push new players to Faction Warfare. This is of course a gigantic boon to us, as long as we are prepared to leverage it. We have just over one month to get the corporation in as good enough shape as we can before we begin adding potentially large numbers of new members to our ranks.

Being Industrious

One big step that we plan on taking soon is supporting our basic industry functions. We have a high-sec pocket directly next door, and it's high time that we begin to leverage this effectively. We already have basic industrial support, and we'll be looking into getting an engineering complex in November. In addition we are also becoming close allies with the Corp ACTEE. These guys are our friendly Neighbors, and we have taken the first steps towards a proud alliance in coming to their aid this week when they were wardecced. Our actions were deeply moving to them, and we have begun discussion about a partnership, and the potential of such. While our goals are different, they are mutually synergistic. Hopefully I will have more to share on this soon.

For those who are interested please join our industry channels and try to get an alt in our industrial corporations.

Activity standards in the Corp

One of the biggest changes is a new requirement on activity within the Corp. Simply stated, at the beginning of each month we will be removing any member who has not been active within the previous month. The goal of this is to ensure that our membership list is truly representational of our active player base. Of course any members who are removed for this can rejoin without hesitation whenever they become active again. This is not meant as a punishment for inactive people but rather allows us to create a corporation that is effective, and a good place for those people to come back to.

The primary impetus for this change is the addition of alpha clones. Given that having an inactive account is no longer a thing, we must take additional steps to ensure that our Corporation properly reflects our activity levels.

Our place in the Warzone

The last several months has seen a great uptick in our activities, including the support of the militia at large. Additionally when our structures came under attack, we actually saw a response from our allies like we have never seen before. This is very encouraging and the militia is pulling together in anticipation of November. I encourage all members to join the militia slack channels and we will continue to support militia efforts as much as possible.

The state is also preparing for November. However, our fantastically successful assault on Okkamon has left their leadership largely scattered. While victory is a primary goal, having no cohesive opponent isn't the best place to be. As such, the militia is thinking about picking fights with pirates long enough for the state to reform. Expect to hear more on those fronts in the future.

Snuff recently moved in next door. While this has been a challenge, we, along with our allies, have been so far successful defending our assets from them. We are hoping to create a long term solution to deal with this, and expanding our POCOs in Fliet and Deven is still a high level goal.

A Time for War

I am pleased to announce that our capabilities to attack have been greatly increased. Primarily and thanks to Billy, we now have deployment packs, roughly two billion isk in small ships, ready to be deployed at any time. What this means is our future attacks will be much more coordinated and we are building standard operating procedures for various military maneuvers. As a reminder, our core military leadership team still has positions open. If you are interested in helping fill them, please contact Blastil.

Getting our name out there

If we are going to make a name for ourselves for Alpha clones we need to have good training material, and propaganda. I am placing 2 billion isk into a fund to help pay for the production of such things, if you are creatively inclined please see our propaganda channel in Slack.

September YC118 Update

Command Update

Greetings team! Time for another update.

The last few weeks has been exceptional for Aideron, we have consistently formed fleets three nights a week, and have frequently supported Gallente Militia efforts. That assistance has not gone unnoticed, and our numbers, professionalism, and willingness to be the damn best logi in the game has been commented upon by many members of Galmil leadership. In fact Aideron is now being invited to the Galmil leadership meetings, something that is totally new as far as I know.

Additionally, our economic machine has continued to churn on at a good clip. We have nearly doubled our purchasing power since Citadels launched. This should give us the monetary power to do what we need to do in face of the massive changes coming.

And make no confusion, the changes coming are massive. With “F2P”, faction warfare is going to be one of the most exciting place for the new Alpha clones, and this gives us something that we haven’t had before: Focus.

Aideron Robotics is a corporation of friends, and the premiere corp for Gallente Alpha clones of all experience levels to engage in objective based Faction Warfare.

Let’s break that down.

Aideron Robotics is a corporation of friends: I fly with you guys because I want to fly with you. Members should get along, and problems are the responsibility of the directorate to stomp out. The biggest value of having an insular group like a corporation is we can decide what parts of the general public and philosophy we don’t like.

Aideron Robotics is the premier corp for Alpha clones of all experience levels: Not all Alphas will be new players, but in FW we may have committed players that just happen to stay Alpha for periods of time. Alpha players fit into our doctrine perfectly, and can be leveraged by us to great effect. Our goal is to not treat Alphas like second class citizens, but have the infrastructure to make life as an Alpha as effortless as possible, so members of all types can focus on the mission objectives. By only focusing on supporting Gallente Alphas, we ensure that we can give them the support they need, and also ensure they are compatible with our fleets.

Aideron Robotics engages in objective based Faction Warfare: With the Alphas coming, I expect to see a massive uptick in FW activity, including Caldari. The draw of the Caracal Alpha is a strong one, and we already have reports of Templis and other Caldari members preparing along similar lines as ours. We focus on objectives within our space, and try as much as possible to give our actions purpose. EVE is a game of purpose, and we should always have an objective, even if that is testing our capabilities.

To the above, we have several goals for prior to November:

1. Ensure all of Rogue Squadron is up to date, and purge any remaining old fits/contracts and build a compatible set of fits for Alpha clones
2. Prepare to erect an Engineering Complex ASAP for use as a mass production facility for Alpha equipment
3. Get our website as far along as possible prior to November
4. Get our relationship with Galmil to be strong, and get members integrated with the militia.
5. Formalize our PI process and ensure our PI efforts are to support our Citadel/Engineering Complex construction.
6. Construct a system that allows us to retain new members, and ensure people don’t slip through the cracks
7. Ensure our capital forces are sufficient to be able to do some basic maneuvers (finish the Dread tests)
8. Create a strong Aideron identity, branding, and in station ad.

All of this will take a lot of work, and we have several people doing everything they can already. Now that we have focus, I call upon all our membership to consider how you can help make Aideron into the corporation we all want it to be.

Operations Update

Staff

Command

• FC Commander (Fleet Admiral/Commodores) - Director of Combat - Blastil
• Logi wing commander - Ninja Spud
• EWAR wing commander - Open
• Scout wing commander - Open
• Operations XO - Huard
• CFO and hauling management - Baynex + Nyjil
• POS Manager - Pragantis Florian
• PI Manager - Vic Vorlon
• Gallente Affairs (Missioning) - Yoyo
• Industry Manager - Open
• Head Diplomat - Open
• Director of Personnel - Odeva
• Marketing and Propaganda - Odeva
• IT Manager: Billy Daniels
• Senior Instructor - Open

As you can see we have plenty of open positions. We also have several other roles that may or may not have slots for more members.

PI Operators:

Duties: Make PI for our Citadel construction

Requirements: Basic PI skills

Reports to: Vic, Kirith

Channel: #Planetary-interaction

Diplomat:

Duties: Figure out what the hell is going on, smooth over FC errors.

Requirements: formal training in Wheaton’s First Law (Don’t be a dick)

Reports to: Ashterothi

Channel: None (Yet)

POS Operator:

Duties: Empty Silos, Stocks POSes daily (they operate in shifts)

Requirements: Industrial (hauler) skills, trust

Reports to: Pragmatis

Channel: Operations

Corp Fitter:

Duties: Use CFO to move things in, fit up doctrine ships, sell on contract

Requirements: time, available ISK for inventory

Reports to: Nyjil

Channel: #corp-fitters

CFO Hauler:

Duties: Move things into and out of the warzone

Requirements: JF pilot, cyno alt, trust

Reports to: Baynex

Channel: #freight-services

Website tools builder

Duties: Build shit for our website

Requirements: web design/development skills

Reports to: Billy Daniels

Channel: #website

Keep an eye on #broadcasts for additional job listings.

Military Update

(Blastil)

We’re currently preparing for changes to doctrines as a result of the alpha clone announcements. This is going to require a lot out of our Omega pilots, including our willingness to step into leadership roles in the corp until we can give the requisite skill transfer to alpha pilots to start acting on their own. Additionally we will need to consider that we may have to start covering the specialist roles, while alpha pilots make up a larger and larger bulk of our fleets. Please prepare accordingly.

I strongly suggest that everyone here train into EWAR skills if you haven’t already. Damps and Jams are both going to be necessary moving forward, and one thing we’ve lacked in the past is experienced ECM and Damps pilots. I could really use some more pilots who find this gameplay enjoyable. This means you will need to be able to fly either the Lachesis/Arazu or the Rook/Failcon. In addition we will need new booster pilots to fly in fleets. As more details are available in regards to the fittings, I will keep you informed.

Suggested fittings (this should give you an idea of the skills you’ll need)

https://o.smium.org/loadout/private/103196/759301225240854528

https://o.smium.org/loadout/private/103264/372726766709506048

Make sure you have a small cache of frigates and such in Rakapas or Nisuwa so we can deploy forward in support of plexing efforts further into Black Rise.

This is a logistics issue, but it affects military readiness: we need to make full effort to provide a whole navy of throwaway T1 frigates. I’m bringing in blueprints and doing materials research on them now to help produce these T1 swarms, but it's going to take coordinated effort from all aspects of Aideron to properly equip these guys. Especially the next few months alphas are going to lack any form of income to help pay for their PVP, and in the meantime we’re going to be providing them as many throwaway T1 frigates as we can to forward the cause.

Warzone Update

The Gallente are preparing a new offensive. Expect to see objectives, and good old plex fighting. In addition, the militia should be testing EU fleets more often, if you can attend these fleets you will be doing a great service not just to Aideron, but the entire Federation.

The Purge

Hopefully this comes to no surprise to anyone, but the corp is about to get a whole bunch smaller.

For the last month we have been reminding people to add their API keys to our new website aideronrobotics.net. On the first, we shall purge!

Basically if you don't have your key in by the 1st, don't expect to be in the corp by the 2nd. Now we are happy to work with everyone to get them in and set up, but really you have had a whole month. People who are AFK from the game can obviously come back as soon as they give us a key.

After the purge we will assess what we have. The goal is to go from a corp of people who barely know each other, in a relatively faceless organization, to a tight knit group of fighters and builders within New Eden. It is hard to commit to friends who are not committed themselves, and it is time to ensure that this corp is not only the number of members we have, but built from the membership itself.

We will be holding a corp meeting on the 7th instead of Kiriths fleet, and all members are encouraged to come. This will be post purge, and thus will be a time for strategy, formation, and fun. To celebrate all of this we will be bringing in tons of rinzlers and hosting a FFA complete with prizes after the meeting.

We have been working for over two months to rebuild this corp, and now it is time to take it to the next level, and we can only do this if our membership consists of those who are dialed into our organization. I look forward to it.

-Ash

Dread Our Might

I want to let you all in on a bit of an ongoing project. I honestly hoped it would be further along by now, but we have had some setbacks. This should outline all of what is going on, and maybe we can work together to advance this agenda.

Goal: We want to use Dreads.
Why: We desire to grow to be able to handle some capital situations. In order to truly be successful in this theater, at least some capital capability must be demonstrable.
Additionally, we would like to expand not only our ability to knock down enemy battlements, but also tear down POCOs we that we can continue to enjoy our small POCO empire.

Problems: Dreads are expensive, cumbersome, and risky. People need to know how to fly them, and how to fly with them. They are too expensive to waste, and Sisi is no place to test environments determinant by enemy operations.

Solution: Use Taloses as the subcapital equivalent to Dreads. Move with Taloses with a support fleet, treating them like they are several billion isk Dreads. Conduct POCO bashes with corporation equipment to evaluate readiness to attempt with Dreads.

I purchased 7 new Taloses, using the old Cormanthyr fit, modified to have Higgs rigs, which should allow them to be fully aligned to an exit without moving away from the target. This ended up taking over a week longer than I expected, purchasing supplies from buy orders in Jita is quite time consuming for certain items. Building up capacity to build certain ships ourselves may be of value.

I decided to use the Taloses as corporation assets, assigning them out and checking them back in each fleet. I imagine that this is likely how our capital forces may go, with capitals in reserve to be handed out to pilots who are available at the right time. These Taloses are labeled "Door Knocker " 1-7

Now they are ready to go, however in order to hit the POCOs on Sunday, they have to be reinforced on Friday. This experiment should have at least 12 people (7 Taloses + 5 supporters) to really call it an exercise, and lately we have had some difficulty getting up those numbers.

Additionally heightened pirate presence in the form of FETID has made delicate operations such as this one difficult to execute. Increasing the need for higher numbers.

So there you have it, the project, the whys, and the challenges it is facing. We want to focus more on doing major operations on the weekends, but we need people who can commit to those times. This should be from a combination of recruitment (which we are doing) and communication with our forces to let people know there is a reason to be there (which is what this is).

In the meantime, other projects continue to move forward, and our consideration of capital escalation grows as our wallet does.

Comets From the Sky

Next Tuesday has me excited.

Like stupid excited.

If you haven't been paying attention, here is a quick video to catch you up.

Pumped yet? Allow me to explain why this helps you guys, especially those of you who enjoy our wonderful ship contract system. (and if you don't, you should start)

One of the features is "multi-fit", this comes as the last piece of a puzzle that has been harassing operations of larger organizations for years. With the combination of multi-purchase, named fitting, and multifit it is now easier than ever to fit fleets of ships. 1,000 battlysts? no problem!

So how do we celebrate this wonderful new feature? Comets... lots of them.

A few days ago I put in just under a billion isk worth of buy orders for 50 full fit (New) Primus fit Comets. They should be delivered by Monday. These are for you guys to enjoy, with (effectively) no cost to you. Yay \o/

However, there has been a complication. Comets sell for ~10 million on buys and ~13 million sell in Jita. This seems like a pretty good margin (it is) and as such there are a lot of people putting up buy orders to perform station arbitrage. This makes buying them at the lower value super difficult. The option is to just buy out the Comets at the increased price, but that kinda sucks.

Especially when we can make them.

Welcome to the corps very first LP buyback program!

I successfully purchased 2 Comets at the lower price, this leaves 48 to go. I am canceling those orders and putting up new orders for 48 Incursus and 48 Gallente Gamma Nexus Chips. These combined cost ~ 1.2-1.5 million isk. I will ship those in and put up contracts for these guys basically at cost. Members can pick up the contract, and for 10k LP each, turn them into Comets. You can then sell them back to the corp for 13 million isk each.

This is a buyback at a value of 1.2k isk/lp, which is pretty great.

You have to meet me halfway, I will be putting them up in sets of 5, buy the set, convert them, and sell them back for sweet sweet profit.

Once these are all filled the Comets will be fit up, and sold on contract for 1 ISK each! Like I said effectively free!

I hope you guys like this kind of thing, please give me any feedback and if you have any questions, hit me up in Slack

- Ash

Signal Online

Greetings Fellow Empyrians, I am Ashterothi and this is my blog.

All formalities aside I am constructing this blog as a new project, or rather a new place to put my writings to-and about my time in EVE Online. About a month and a half ago I took on full command of Aideron Robotics, and I think this has gone quite well. However, one of the things we have struggled with was the unreliable nature of the services we once relied on. Because of this we launched aideronrobotics.net and Billy has done, and continues to do, a fantastic job with it.

However, the old forums were where I posted command updates, OPORDs etc. and while not all of that is smart to translate into a blog (OPSEC of course) perhaps SotC addresses, command updates, and new programs we are trying out can be put out through public channels. Additionally, I like to write in general (as many of you know) and as such would like a place to put things about Aideron Robotics, being an FC,  being a acting CEO, etc that I think would be appropriate to publish.

Thus here we are, a new blog for, and about our wonder little group of southern guardians. I hope to use this as a method to provide some interesting content, and to keep all of us informed. Part blog, part corporate newsletter as it were.

Well let's get to it...