Acceptance, Reshuffle, Laughs

Entry: nine hundred twenty-nine.


First off, the alliance news as it relates to UDEAD:
 
A week or so ago, NCdot had an alliance meeting concerning Militaris Industries [UDEAD] and Southern Comfort [SOCO] joining up. While I don't have first-hand knowledge of events and am limited to second-hand, having reviewed the material I feel I have a pretty secure grip on what was actually said and what happened. Keep in mind that this meeting happened a week before the trial date was up.

Eighty percent of the corp, ie the EU and US TZ corporations, voted to accept UDEAD into NCdot. The twenty percent that voted NOT to accept UDEAD into NCdot were the primary AU TZ corps. As for the why, it came down to socialization, something that is actually a foreign concept for me in terms of being accepted into corporations or alliances.

The way I've always experienced it, it was less about socialization and more about what you brought to the table, so I was genuinely surprised that this was the reason since we, as a corp, had been delivering well beyond what was required. Socialization was always the thing that came after. The strange thing about this is that until it was brought up as a requirement that we mesh socially, it'd been pretty hard to do because of how many of the members operate. To that point from my memory, pilots only joined up for fleets, and otherwise dispersed to corp channels or logged out of comms entirely, relying only on Jabber to pick up a call for a fleet.

With that, we and SoCo were put on trial for another two weeks.

Since then, however, it's been much easier to socialize, and we've made an effort. Pilots from other corps have come to our channel, and we've gone to theirs on invite or if we had questions that needed answering. We've also continued to deliver, as the corp hit number 5 or number 6 in the top twenty on eve-kill.net (ratings determined by kill contributions).

Now here we are, a few days away from the end date. I find myself wondering if they'll take us, leave us, or worse, try to string us along for another x number of weeks. At the end of the month, we ranked higher than any DOTBROS corporation, only just under Razor and Goonwaffe, whose numbers are structurally inflated from all the structures they took down in cleaning out Tribute and Vale. We've easily been fielding at least ten percent of NCdot's numbers, if not more, regularly.

But as I mentioned before, it seems to come down to socialization for us, so I'm hoping it's turned out well.

One thing is for sure though, it's coming to an end. There will be no trial extensions. Any attempt to string UDEAD along, or put us on another trial period, will be seen as a rejection. We're not exactly having a derth of offers. The reputation that comes from being in and with NCdot certainly would be nice though, which is probably the reason why we've stuck out this trial for the extended period. Other corp leaders think we're pretty much set to get in, but they said that before we were put on extended trial as well.

 
Second, corporate news:

Amazing that there is actually corporate news I think. I've become a director in UDEAD, in charge of recruiting at that. I've been the main recruiter for some time now, since CEO roles were passed to Andy, but have largely handled it on my own. Since I've become director, I've been given complete management of the recruiting process, and have recently put a team together to help with recruiting. As opposed to how it's been done previously done in corp, that being a single recruiter (me) accepting pilots or putting them up to be kicked, there will now be a team that will come to a majority vote to determine acceptance or kicking of pilots in corp.

Other roles have been reassigned and restructured, but they aren't really my purview. It's general items such as Lead FC, Logistics Director, POS director, etc.


Third, the PvP:

I've been extremely lax on the solo roaming and FCing, actually barely doing any of the first and none of the second. With the change in lifestyle and additional leadership roles, I find myself with little desire to take on further leadership responsibilities, and solo roaming against Goons seems like a silly proposition at best unless I'm extremely close to the staging system. 

That said, I've gone on about eighty to ninety percent of the fleets available, of which there were a large number, and almost always as a Logistics pilot in a Scimitar or Oneiros. It says quite a lot about how much combat is to be had in Vale and Tribute right now that I scored the majority of my one hundred thirty-four kills last month as a Logistics pilots assigning drones. Even though I didn't score the average four hundred kills the rest of my corp seems to have done, I've willingly brought Logistics to every fleet, hopefully boosting NCdot's perception of UDEAD just that little bit.

There was one rather great kill I got though. I was on a roam with Lan (FC), and he pushed an Anathema through the gate into the fleet on the other side. We waited, bubble up, and when he briefly appeared, several of us burned for him. Someone decloaked him, and I burned back, managing to light my smartbomb at the last second and get him. Other pilots in the fleet were snickering that "someone smartbombed him", and the FC started laughing, said "gg!" and asked "the person who smartbombed him, x up". I have to admit, I felt pretty damn awesome at that point. Cyno anathema killed and smartbombed by a Scimitar, not even a whore gun on it!


That would about wrap up events for the last few weeks. Hopefully there will be more to mention in a few days.

Computer: terminate recording.

Another twelve days in NCdot

Entry: nine hundred ten.
 
My how the time flies.
 
Life for me in NCdot has recently been of the possibly addicting type, but not addicting. What I mean to say is, intermittent reinforcement via fights, but a lack of desire on my part, due to other circumstances, to participate in more than the CTAs that get called.
 
I think this has in part been due to the rash of daily CTAs. I'm not a stranger to it, but I'm not sure it's what I'm in for anymore, especially with my lack of desire to do much of anything. I suppose the true test will be once I get the urge back to do the small gang and solo stuff. In general, there's been a lack of desire to do much though, either or in space or not. I'll probably come out of the slump sooner rather than later, just no telling on the exact date.
 
I have been seeing roams go out quite often while I am available. I haven't actively joined them for the reasons stated previously, but they are there and plentiful. So NCdot does have more to offer than blob combat and structure taking 'strat-ops'. The feeling I get from the community is that they enjoy both the large and the small combat, so long as it's combat, but a rash of CTAs being negatively discouraging ("read: no fights for a structure bash") has had a slow burn effect on CTA numbers. It's to be expected honestly. After a certain point where numbers are something CFC is willing to take on, the negative/positive reinforcement comes along ("read: fights for a structure bash, whelp or win"), and activity see-saws in this fashion. Keep in mind that when I say community, I mean the following entities: NCdot, Black Legion, Nulli, IRC, etc, not in order of importance, and likely several entities I am unaware of are unlisted as well.
 
Aside from this, there isn't much to say. Daily CTAs, usually a Zealot or Ishtar doctrine for which I fly the Oneiros either way, or a quick Naga/Naga bash fleet for which I pilot the Tornado. My apparent scrubbiness showed once, however, when "sailboats" were called for and  I had no clue what the hell those were. I "guessed" that they either meant Tornados or Tempests, and not having my Tempest on hand, brought a Tornado. The fleet ended up not going out for round two after all, having been called after a Ishtar fleet whelp of sorts.

I say whelp, and that is honestly how it felt me for despite the killboards calling my 'whelps' wins. It was impossible more often than not to catch reps on a target going down, for any number of reasons. It's only after the fight that I see my fleet 'won'; it just doesn't feel like a win on my end.
 
With that, let's wait and see what the next few weeks bring. The month long trial only has that much longer to go.
 
Computer: terminate recording.