Now look at that: despite I announced that I was (and still am) spying on the recipe of success of HBC and I called all the small-corp management useless and no longer pay them 20B/month, they didn't kick me. I'm genuinely surprised and still can't comprehend what is happening here.
However here is my second spy report on the recipe of success: the large corporation. On my last fleet we were out with a 50-60 man Rokh fleet in Esoteria destroying infrastructure. We met there with a fleet of The Initiative. which is another member of the same coalition as TEST. We merged fleets and rampaged on.
The first important thing is the existence of Init. fleet at all. The Jabber call went out not to TEST but to "All online HBC". It means that Init members and leaders have seen it too. Yet the Init leaders choose not to join that fleet (or inform our FC that they already have a fleet and he shouldn't make a second) but organize their alliance-only fleet and act on their own. They choose to join fleets only when we met in the middle of enemy territory and staying separate would have been utterly stupid, especially as they had no titan with them, so they had to take gates.
What does this mean? Init. leaders (even if not consciously) believe that their alliance is their in-group, the "us", while the rest of HBC are friendly outsiders. It's not like they aren't helping their allies. Actually on that very day their fleet went out to clean space for new HBC members and not for themselves. They merely prefer to be with themselves, with the "us"-people. They could handle it alone and saw no reason to ask for outside help. On the other hand when they shown up, our fleet comms was cheering and upon joining there were lot of welcoming of init-bros. The members of this fleet clearly had a different frame of reference, they did not see the Init people as "friendly outsiders" but clearly as part of "us".
My post told that the recipe of success in EVE is to merge the corporations, cut the useless management. If you think about it, it's kind of trivial. If you want a 1000 man fleet, you need at least 10000 members. If you want 10000 members, you need a 10000 men organization and not 100 different 100-men ones with different management, culture, chat, comms, doctrines, whatever. You need a 10000-men uniform monolith that acts as one. CFC and HBC are winning because they have at least a 4000-men monolith core that pulls the rest in the right way.
How does it connect to "init bros"? It is very important because it shows that while the the leadership lacks the means to formally merge allied corps and remove useless middle management, the Dreddit culture is able to bypass it. From the comms it seemed that the Init people were genuinely surprised by the warmth of their welcome and they were clearly happy to receive the amount of love they got. This means that the people are reaching out to the allied members and invite them to culturally merge, to be "one of us". This cultural reach-out solidify HBC, make it impossible for RMT-corrupted or Falcon-insulted alliance/corporation leaders to move their alliances/corps out of HBC. Just check out The Jagged Alliance. They were in HBC, housed in Querious. However their leadership was unable/unwilling to cooperate with HBC leadership and they were removed. They dropped sov at Nov 4 in Querious. Their simple members weren't happy about it and they voiced their sadness of leaving on the coalition forums. Since Nov 4 they lost 90% of their members.
-MTL-: 49
K0TA: 36
RKHS: 45
SUITE: 135
FOEA: 80
LEUMB: 23
VRTEX: 87
C.R.Y: 145
TAATO: 56
CRVNS: 26
JNKY: 52
These corps with 734 members moved back to HBC, and this number doesn't include the members who quit their corp and joined one of the HBC corps. It seems HBC made some serious impression in these guys.
OK, TEST members are some loving bunch, how is it important or new? The "bro" culture of TEST and Goons is widely known. It has two explanation: one is that TEST and GSF members are some special-breed people full of love. Well, they believe that. They openly claim this on the forums. Goons were so upset that people consider them ... goons, that they created their own news site to battle the bad press.
I don't really subscribe to the "Goons are made of love" theory. I rather believe in a "spirit of Christmas": in Christmas and other holidays people are extra nice to each other. It doesn't come from their person (otherwise they would be extra nice always), but from the setting. They are placed into a cultural frame where niceness is expected. They are reminded to that by symbols and by peer example (other people are nice too). Christmas is the unquestionable proof that outside things can make average people nice and friendly. OK, but there are no candy canes in HBC staging stations nor the FCs are riding reindeer sledges. What creates the structure that turns average people into "bros"?
Have you seen great music festivals? Have you heard of Woodstock? If you visit such event you see something familiar: huge amount of people giving hugs, everyone are friendly with everyone, people get together and so on, and so on. You don't see anything like that in a small club setting. The reason is a mixture of anonymity (no one will tell your mum/wife if you disappear with that random girl in a tent) and the common positive interest (the music).
The large-corp players experience EVE Online similarly as the festival-goers the music, while small-corp players do it as a small-party goers. There your actions have social consequences, you have a reputation to care of, the other people have a known history for you (that drunk and horny girl isn't random but the girlfriend of your friend you don't want to hurt). If you've been in an uptown party, you know that it's not at all about fun.
While other factors obviously contribute (for example a large group can not only be friendly, it can be a lynching mob too), but I'm sure that the main reason why TEST is so "bro" is the large-corp setting. This festival-like feeling could be recreated elsewhere too if the small social groups of the different small corps would be merged into a large one where everyone else is an anonymous, faceless, but clearly loving and helping "bro".
However here is my second spy report on the recipe of success: the large corporation. On my last fleet we were out with a 50-60 man Rokh fleet in Esoteria destroying infrastructure. We met there with a fleet of The Initiative. which is another member of the same coalition as TEST. We merged fleets and rampaged on.
The first important thing is the existence of Init. fleet at all. The Jabber call went out not to TEST but to "All online HBC". It means that Init members and leaders have seen it too. Yet the Init leaders choose not to join that fleet (or inform our FC that they already have a fleet and he shouldn't make a second) but organize their alliance-only fleet and act on their own. They choose to join fleets only when we met in the middle of enemy territory and staying separate would have been utterly stupid, especially as they had no titan with them, so they had to take gates.
What does this mean? Init. leaders (even if not consciously) believe that their alliance is their in-group, the "us", while the rest of HBC are friendly outsiders. It's not like they aren't helping their allies. Actually on that very day their fleet went out to clean space for new HBC members and not for themselves. They merely prefer to be with themselves, with the "us"-people. They could handle it alone and saw no reason to ask for outside help. On the other hand when they shown up, our fleet comms was cheering and upon joining there were lot of welcoming of init-bros. The members of this fleet clearly had a different frame of reference, they did not see the Init people as "friendly outsiders" but clearly as part of "us".
My post told that the recipe of success in EVE is to merge the corporations, cut the useless management. If you think about it, it's kind of trivial. If you want a 1000 man fleet, you need at least 10000 members. If you want 10000 members, you need a 10000 men organization and not 100 different 100-men ones with different management, culture, chat, comms, doctrines, whatever. You need a 10000-men uniform monolith that acts as one. CFC and HBC are winning because they have at least a 4000-men monolith core that pulls the rest in the right way.
How does it connect to "init bros"? It is very important because it shows that while the the leadership lacks the means to formally merge allied corps and remove useless middle management, the Dreddit culture is able to bypass it. From the comms it seemed that the Init people were genuinely surprised by the warmth of their welcome and they were clearly happy to receive the amount of love they got. This means that the people are reaching out to the allied members and invite them to culturally merge, to be "one of us". This cultural reach-out solidify HBC, make it impossible for RMT-corrupted or Falcon-insulted alliance/corporation leaders to move their alliances/corps out of HBC. Just check out The Jagged Alliance. They were in HBC, housed in Querious. However their leadership was unable/unwilling to cooperate with HBC leadership and they were removed. They dropped sov at Nov 4 in Querious. Their simple members weren't happy about it and they voiced their sadness of leaving on the coalition forums. Since Nov 4 they lost 90% of their members.
-MTL-: 49
K0TA: 36
RKHS: 45
SUITE: 135
FOEA: 80
LEUMB: 23
VRTEX: 87
C.R.Y: 145
TAATO: 56
CRVNS: 26
JNKY: 52
These corps with 734 members moved back to HBC, and this number doesn't include the members who quit their corp and joined one of the HBC corps. It seems HBC made some serious impression in these guys.
OK, TEST members are some loving bunch, how is it important or new? The "bro" culture of TEST and Goons is widely known. It has two explanation: one is that TEST and GSF members are some special-breed people full of love. Well, they believe that. They openly claim this on the forums. Goons were so upset that people consider them ... goons, that they created their own news site to battle the bad press.
I don't really subscribe to the "Goons are made of love" theory. I rather believe in a "spirit of Christmas": in Christmas and other holidays people are extra nice to each other. It doesn't come from their person (otherwise they would be extra nice always), but from the setting. They are placed into a cultural frame where niceness is expected. They are reminded to that by symbols and by peer example (other people are nice too). Christmas is the unquestionable proof that outside things can make average people nice and friendly. OK, but there are no candy canes in HBC staging stations nor the FCs are riding reindeer sledges. What creates the structure that turns average people into "bros"?
Have you seen great music festivals? Have you heard of Woodstock? If you visit such event you see something familiar: huge amount of people giving hugs, everyone are friendly with everyone, people get together and so on, and so on. You don't see anything like that in a small club setting. The reason is a mixture of anonymity (no one will tell your mum/wife if you disappear with that random girl in a tent) and the common positive interest (the music).
The large-corp players experience EVE Online similarly as the festival-goers the music, while small-corp players do it as a small-party goers. There your actions have social consequences, you have a reputation to care of, the other people have a known history for you (that drunk and horny girl isn't random but the girlfriend of your friend you don't want to hurt). If you've been in an uptown party, you know that it's not at all about fun.
While other factors obviously contribute (for example a large group can not only be friendly, it can be a lynching mob too), but I'm sure that the main reason why TEST is so "bro" is the large-corp setting. This festival-like feeling could be recreated elsewhere too if the small social groups of the different small corps would be merged into a large one where everyone else is an anonymous, faceless, but clearly loving and helping "bro".
14 comments:
"I'm genuinely surprised and still can't comprehend what is happening here."
I think it's easy: as you said many times they need every warm body. You are a warm body (and you willing to play with a logi ship too), so why wouldn't they need you? As far as I remember they said they would invite you without the money.
@Gevlon
"despite I announced that I was (and still am) spying on the recipe of success of HBC and I called all the small-corp management useless and no longer pay them 20B/month, they didn't kick me. I'm genuinely surprised and still can't comprehend what is happening here."
OK, let's see what we have here. You trying to steal something, no one really cares to protect, or even think about as of valueable secret, that should be kept from the public eye. You have stopped doing the thing, that no one in 10000 members alliance does. And you "insulted" the management of all small corporations while being a member of one of the largest ones in whole New Eden. And they hadn't kicked you. And that surprises you??? Well, that it is certanly surprises the hell out of me.
I must point out that the Initiative was probably acting separately because they are a German-speaking corp.
In TEST/HBC, a lot of our non-english corps are given different objectives than the main english fleets.
It is not uncommon for them to merge with our main fleets after completing their objectives.
"I'm genuinely surprised and still can't comprehend what is happening here."
Wake up. They don't give a shit about you or your "spying". They might as well keep you around if you don't awox people and the upside is that one day you may pay your donations agaon.
Plus I am sure they have fun trolling you ;)
You openly praised TEST leadership, yo've advertised TEST/HBC in your blog and you fly a logi.
Why would they kick you?
Because 60% of TEST members are in small corps and 60% of HBC are not even TEST and they are also in small corps. They can think the leadership might agree with me (that's why I'm not kicked), so the Dreddit leadership might consider them useless weight.
@Gevlon
"Because 60% of TEST members are in small corps"
How much of actual TEST leadership is in small corps, and possibly can be offended by your opinion? Somehow, based on your own posts, I don't think there are any.
"They can think the leadership might agree with me"
Most likely they do agree - after all, it's quite obvious (even from a simple real world history study), that managing a bunch of small nearly-independent city-states is much like herding cats - many problems with little result to show for the pain.
"that's why I'm not kicked"
That's most likely due to very little number of people, who really cares among those you "offend" the most. And very little power to do anything to you among the rest.
Yesterday I stumble across a recent alliance update by your ally Tribal Band that had been posted to pastebin and might be of interest to you:
http://pastebin.com/ZEtfG2xS
tl;dr:
* all corporations below 35 members were supposed to merge with other corporations to create larger entities or leave
* all corporations with 35-50 members were put on probation and are expected to get above 50 members (via recruitment or mergers) or fulfill certain activity requirements.
* more lenient activity requirements across the board
Obviously the first point has not been fully implemented as we are beyond the Nov 18th deadline and there are still many sub-35 corps in TRIBE: http://evemaps.dotlan.net/alliance/Tribal_Band/corporations
"so the Dreddit leadership might consider them useless weight. "
Every Rifter Counts, friend. -Vile Rat
@Ming Tso: what I say is that they aren't flying but do pointless paperwork. They would be more useful if they'd be flying something.
"Just check out The Jagged Alliance. They were in HBC, housed in Querious. However their leadership was unable/unwilling to cooperate with HBC leadership and they were removed. They dropped sov at Nov 4 in Querious. Their simple members weren't happy about it and they voiced their sadness of leaving on the coalition forums. Since Nov 4 they lost 90% of their members."
This probably has less to do with HBC leadership compliance and more to do with their being taken over by Xfile666/RMFHorus/A PUPPETMASTER, who infiltrates alliances, takes them over with bribes and political maneuvering, and sets up massive bot operations for RMT and then destroys said alliances either by being a giant douche to everyone or pressing butan.
Goblin duder, you won't see test become just one corp, because of the fact that each corp has their own culture and identity.
Their own culture and identity gives them strength, and also takes some burden off of the alliance leadership to entertain the members and also, as has been mentioned before, allows those of different languages and real life cultures to act autonomously from the whole when that could otherwise prove complicated and difficult due to various social barriers.
Though I hate to compare eve to the real world, you could see it as a mixing pot, similar to how America at times is viewed. The same can be said for the HBC as a whole: it has Russians, Germans, Spaniards, and various people of other languages. They are also spread across multiple timezones.
Considering all this, you knocking them...it really in the end just shows that you have overlooked a very key strength for the coalition.
TL;DR Chill, we're all bros here.
Hi Gevlon,
First of all, just saying, legitimately noone in TEST cares about you telling these "secrets" to the rest of EVE, or even the world, in fact, we prefer that you do, so that others can learn and imitate and we can get a war like the Great War started. should be fun, yea?
anyways, the thing with Init, or tribe, or PL, is many of these alliances have their own command structures, their own goals, and even their own doctrines which are not necessarily coalition doctrines. For reference, lets look at the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) coalition (yes, coalition, like HBC) where many member militaries (like the US, British, or German) have different command structures, different goals, and even different doctrines (sound familiar? that's because it is :P) and, it's not uncommon for US and British troops to find each other in theater and show lots of love to each other, why? because they're friends (allies, blues, whathaveyou) and they can.
Besides, you'll never get kicked (unless you start awoxing or something like that) because you make the forums a far more fun place to visit.
tl;dr you're too much fun to kick
coalition doesn't mean everyone has to do the same thing at the same time, but we can still be best frans.
structure like this ( alot small corps with reductant middle management ) is very resilient to unpredicted situation, if one person decide defraud funds in one of 100 corp nothing realy happend to aliance but if it was one big corp it will be end of it, did you see eve online 'casualty' trailer?
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