Going Nomad

Entry: six hundred eleven.

I got the mail yesterday. We're moving yet again. The reasons are good, the side effects both positive and negative, and job to be done itself rather annoying.

It's the third time in a month we're moving. As far as I'm aware, there are no truly nomadic corporations in the galaxy. I think Pandemic Legion is about as close to one as I can imagine, since they are so terrible at holding space. But even they, as nomads, need stations.

It's a problem. You move, you accumulate ships, modules, ammunition, and backups of all of those to provide yourself with the maximum amount of choices for spending your time in a worthwhile manner. And then you need to move. You get three choices: sell it all and re-purchase at the new base of operations, or haul it all with you, or some middle ground.

Selling is a bad idea. Lots of sneaky trader types are out there, waiting to take advantage of your inconvenience, and since they have the ships capable of moving large crates of cargo and ships, it's not as much of an inconvenience for them. That said, you won't have to move any of it.

Hauling it all can also be a bad idea. Simply moving all of it even a few jumps can be an all day proposition. Unless you have friends willing to help, it's going to take a while, or unless you have your own personal carrier or jump freighter, but then you're looking at a cost in ISK just to move everything. Case and point, I had twelve ships that needed moved seven jumps away. Each ship moved costs fourteen jumps, two docks, and two undocks. Thus, the total move cost in jumps, docks, and undocks, was eighty-four, fourteen, and fourteen. Docks and undocks take about the same amount of time as jumps, so the total cost in jumps was one hundred twelve. That's a fairly serious investment in time, and that doesn't take into account avoiding gatecamps or gangs of enemies.
 
Then there's that middle ground, the best and worst of both worlds. You'll get shorted on the market, but not need to move as much. Still, you have to move some, and that will still take a while.

My alliance is on its third move, as previously stated. It's been an all day operation for the alliance just to move assets seven jumps, a task accomplished partially by helpful capital ship pilots, cyno pilots, and the strange absence of the settled in gatecampers between 9RQ and WHG on the pipe between FV-SE8 and LGK-VP.

Still, leadership set aside ten days to get this done, so I imagine alliance redeployment operations will continue even well after that. Some people still haven't moved assets out of Catch, Querious, and Delve yet!

This recent string of events leaves me wondering what it'd be like to be truly nomadic. No way to make supers or titans, always living out of POS control towers and forcefields, refitting out of carriers when ship maintenance arrays aren't onlined or even anchored. Your home, ever changing, ever in imminent danger, just one reinforcement timer away from total annihilation.

It'd have to be incredibly hard...I couldn't imagine. The constant theft that would occur, the subterfuge, the being camped in and harassed endlessly, dogs circling your property, kept out only by the walls that could crumbling down once every few days at best, assuming you could manage to patch them together in the first place. Quite honestly, I think it'd be too much handle. It'd be like w-space, only on crack, speed, and rabies. Yes, definitely rabies.

I would love it if there was some way to go nomad. It's much easier to pack up and move a tent city than a brick city filled to the brim with all the trappings of civilized life. Space life would be simpler, and for an alliance that operates the way mine does, always moving with the prey, but coming back for a short respite between campaigns, it'd be perfect.

Maybe someday.
 
Computer: terminate recording.