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style="font-style: italic;">Recognition of an impending
cascade is the first step to survival.
While a
target="_blank">detailed theory of how alliances
in
style="font-style: italic;">EVE disintegrate
may provide some academic amusement, it doesn't offer any practical
guidance, except for the rare few who find themselves in a position of
leadership. Yet all alliances die; if a pilot is going to get involved
in 0.0 (and why not, since Empire is a criminally boring place) he will
be faced with the eventual decline and fall of his organization. If
handled with naivete, alliance death wreaks untold personal destruction. Asset stockpiles become trapped in stations with no hope
of retrieval and personal wallets are emptied to fund a hopeless war
effort. Far too many pilots find themselves fighting and dying for a
lost cause, and when the war is over they are penniless and without the
means to recover. Yet this worst case can be easily avoided if a few
common sense steps are taken, and some foresight applied. You have to
learn how to recognize when your alliance is in trouble, and then know
what to do about it.
Recognizing an alliance in trouble is made simple by the fact
that most alliances are structured in roughly the same way, and face
nearly identical issues over the course of their life cycle. When bad
things happen, spaceship nerds react in a predictable fashion, even
across cultural boundaries. Just as a running nose and a fever
indicates a cold, these symptoms reflect organizational distress for an
alliance. These occur in no particular order, meaning that you could
find an alliance which begins howling about 'wolfpacks' at the first
sign of trouble, when for others 'wolfpacks' are mentioned only after a
complete breakdown.
Indicators of an Alliance
Under Stress
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style="font-style: italic;">If you detect forum censorship,
it might be time to jump out of your alliance.
Wolfpacks:
Warfare in 0.0 is about accomplishing strategic objectives: seizing
space, blowing up control towers, capturing R64 moons, and blowing up
capital ships. If you are an aggressor, there's something to be said
for sending small gang raiding parties into your target's territory to
disrupt member operations such as ratting or mining. But if your
alliance is on the defensive and losing ground, nothing sets off the
warning alarms quite like calling for small gangs of fast ships to
harass the invader. These gangs are almost always cast in terms of
'wolfpacks', as if invoking submarine warfare from World War II is a
good model for success. Hint: Submarine warfare didn't prevent Berlin
from being sacked, and wolfpacks won't prevent hostile capital fleets
from ravaging your control towers. Wolfpacks are a sign of desperation
from an alliance who cannot defend themselves at the strategic level,
but feel compelled to 'do something'.
Forum Censorship
(Lotka.org): Lotka Volterra cornered the market on overt
forum censorship in EVE.
Since their downfall, their name has been 'verbed' and now describes
heavy handed moderation of dissenting views. Example: "Oldma lotka'd
the Intrepid Crossing forums, they've been scrubbed clean." Some
alliances will censor dissent only when under extreme duress, others
are so sensitive to criticism that anything not pro-leadership will be
nuked immediately. This sort of behavior is something that a wise pilot
will be very suspicious of, as it indicates an inability to confront
problems directly.
"We Didn't Want
That Anyway": Certain types of excuses crop up over and
over again in EVE. "We didn't want that anyway" goes in the same bucket
as "It was just holding us back," "Now we're really mad," and any
reference to wounded tigers. These feeble rationalizations have become
such stereotypes that they are often used as jokes. If you see any of
these deployed unironically with regards to a significant strategic
asset, that's a problem. If your leadership is saying that they didn't
want that chromium mining tower anyway, it's probably a fair statement.
When they start talking about R64s and stations, run; it's only a
matter of time before they start announcing that losing everything has
"freed [them] from the shackles of pos warfare."
Red Pen:
This category covers any kind of op announcement or "Call to Arms"
which includes negative reinforcement as a motivator, demanding that
pilots show up and fight "or else." Threatening people to play a
voluntary and sometimes tedious spaceship game is not a winning
strategy when your alliance is on the defensive, and it inevitably
reduces participation and defensive capability - even if in the short
term it seems like things perk up. Red Pen announcements are a good
indicator that your alliance is being run by mongoloids. Note that
alliances will frequently make use of threats when going on the
offensive, and that this isn't necessarily a sign of weakness; an
offensive Red Pen is used as an excuse to purge corporations or
individuals who aren't pulling their weight.
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style="font-style: italic;">Blaming CCP for your problems is
fun, but it doesn't solve anything.
Denial, a la
Waagaa: In the midst of BoB's downfall in the Querious
campaign, one of their members
href="https://www.kugutsumen.com/mirrors/bob-20090620/www.bandofbrothers.org.uk/threads/thread-117043-.html"
target="_blank">penned a thread outlining some of
their problems in hopes of finding some solutions to their predicament.
While the leadership didn't go so far as to Lotka the entire thing,
they
href="https://www.kugutsumen.com/mirrors/bob-20090620/www.bandofbrothers.org.uk/threads/thread-117043-5.html"
target="_blank">vehemently denied that anything
was wrong, doubling down much like the Republican Party on their core
principles - it wasn't that BoB was doing something wrong, it was that
they weren't doing the wrong things hard enough. When Yaay, one of
their primary fleet commanders, pointed out that this was idiocy, he
was
href="https://www.kugutsumen.com/mirrors/bob-20090620/www.bandofbrothers.org.uk/threads/thread-117043-7.html"
target="_blank">castigated and then kicked out of
the alliance for his temerity. If your alliance leadership is in a
similar state of denial, things are bad. If the response of the other
low-level members of the alliance to this state of denial is fawning
sycophancy, things are even worse.
Blaming
CCP/GMs/Exploits/Hacks: It is undeniable that EVE can be a
catastrophically buggy piece of software, particularly after a patch
deployment. CCP screws up, the servers are occasionally plagued with
ghost towers, GMs can be unreliable if not outright incompetent, and
there are even
target="_blank">hackers out there who may be
trying to ruin your day. But when confronted with these issues, some
alliances keep moving, while others fold up. If your alliance is on the
defensive, whining about how you've been screwed over by a bug, a GM,
or a hacker doesn't change the strategic situation. If the alliance
stops whatever it's doing and waits for a fix from the GMs to solve
their problems, odds are they'll be waiting for a long time; this isn't
a good idea.
Absentee Fleet
Commanders: This kind of problem is impossible to hide. If
fleet commanders don't show up for ops scheduled in advance, things are
bad. Not only does it kill future participation by the membership, but
a FC probably has a better idea of how good or bad things are than you
do; if he's given up, you should consider securing your assets. If you
somehow fail to notice FCs going missing, look for forum posts from the
leadership of the "Don't wait for a FC to start an op guys, start one
yourselves," variety. FCing is a difficult task and fleets in EVE have
a chain of command, so if the alliance leadership seriously expects the
line membership to step in and lead when a FC vanishes, they're deluded.
Separate Corp
Meetings: A sure sign of late-stage cascade is when
corporations begin having meetings separate from the alliance. Meetings
are pain in the ass and usually are only done to enable a CEO to take
the pulse of the membership or to announce a change of plans. If your
alliance is on the defensive and you notice that several of the main
corporations are having meetings by themselves, odds are good that
they're planning to escape the situation.
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Sadly,
even the blindingly obvious can be obcure to the blind.
Fire Sales:
Keep a watchful eye on the market and on the contracts in your region.
If you notice items popping up for sale at prices significantly under
Jita value, odds are good that your fellow alliance-mates are busy
firesaleing their assets as a precursor to a full evacuation.
The Blindingly
Obvious: A catchall for things which I shouldn't need to
point out. Keep an eye on your alliance's membership numbers on
href="http://evemaps.dotlan.net/" target="_blank">Evemaps;
down is bad. Are your key leaders announcing that they're going away on
vacation just when things get really awful? Bad. Are line members or
the leadership posting ranting threads in which they lash out at
scapegoats, dissenters, or enemy spies? Bad. Are ops not being posted
as frequently as they once were, or are ops being cancelled outright?
Is there a sudden spike in theft from within the alliance, or an 'every
man for himself' attitude spreading? Keep an eye on all these factors.
How to Survive a Failure
Cascade:
Common sense isn't common, if the ever-increasing flow of
iskless refugees from collapsed alliances vowing to quit
style="font-style: italic;">EVE is any
indication. If you wish to come out of a failure cascade with your
dignity, assets and wallet intact, here are a few simple guidelines.
Trust No One:
One of the most dangerous mistakes pilots make is having an excess of
credulity; pay attention to the signals and prepare, don't believe
everything that your leadership or fellow corp-mates are telling you.
No one wants to admit that their alliance is in trouble, but if you
hope to come out of this unscathed, you must be able to see clearly.
When things begin going horribly wrong, don't assume that your corp
mates are trustworthy; they could be spies, or simply decide to steal
whatever they can as everything goes to hell.
Only Fly What
You Can Afford to Lose: This should be plastered on the
login screen, if you ask me. Defensive war means losing ships
repeatedly. You need to moderate your losses and take future attrition
into account. Make sure that your warships are of a hull class which
you can afford to lose. Flying one HAC, losing it, then going broke
isn't going to save your alliance, but flying five battlecruisers and
maintaining your balance might. If you have a particular ship that
you're an expert at flying, make sure the fit is standardized such that
you don't waste time dithering after you get blown up. Expect to die
and don't be upset when it happens.
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Installing
Jump Clones is just smart. Get over that "preparing for defeat" BS.
Don't Hoard:
The natural tendency of players appears to be to have one station as a
home base where assets and ships accumulate. In a conquerable station,
this is a terrible habit. If your 'base' station is captured, you lose
everything you've stashed in it. Keep a few (2-3 tops) combat ships
which you've selected for affordability and efficiency in different
stations in your space such that you can never be denied a combat
vessel by a hostile camp. Keep clutter to a minimum; your extra loot
should be regularly sold or ferried out to Empire or NPC 0.0.
Jump Clones:
You should have Infomorph Psychology trained to four. Install a jump
clone in each of the stations where you have a stash of combat ships.
This will allow you to access your assets if the station is captured
before you can evacuate, just in case.
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Research
everythign about your foe, from the ships it uses to its sources of
income.
Cultivate
Untouchable Income: Empire is a boring, terrible place,
but having your income stream entirely dependent on 0.0 isn't wise if
your alliance collapses. There are a number of ways which you can use
your 0.0 earnings to set up backup income streams in Empire while times
are good. Popular options: A PvE-fit battleship parked at a
mission-running hub, an invention bpo/decryptor set, or a rack of four
R&D agents constantly providing passive income from datacores.
Make sure that you have one of these set up long before your alliance
comes under stress, such that you can use your Empire income to fund
your ship losses in defense of your space.
Anticipate the
Enemy: As soon as your alliance comes under attack, you
should commence researching your foe. Who are they, and more
importantly, what do they normally do while on the offensive? Being
surprised by the predictable is an act of criminal stupidity. As an
example, Goonswarm recently got a hold of an account on Scorched
Earth's forums and 'rushed' it, with many members logging in and
posting offensive images (goatse.cx, etc). Scorched Earth members
loudly expressed shock and horror, even though the exact same thing
occurred to Scorched Earth's neighbor, Aggression, less than a week
previously! Red.Overlord is infamous for camping jump beacons with
battleship gangs or suicide capitals, so no one fighting them should be
surprised when these tactics are deployed against them. Do your
homework.
Chart the War
Yourself: If something is going horribly wrong in your
alliance, you can't trust your leaders to tell you; they'd probably
prefer you not to know. You also can't trust the line members to tell
you; odds are a lot of them don't keep track of things at the strategic
level, and even if they do they might have been cowed into sycophancy.
Charting the progress of a war isn't difficult, and the best way to
judge if you need to make a quick exit is to figure it out yourself.
Use Evemaps
to chart sovereignty changes and keep a close eye on your alliance and
corporate forums. Focus on strategic necessities like R64 moons,
stations, and jump bridge networks. Come to your own conclusions, then
compare those conclusions against the 'official line' being promulgated
by the alliance leadership. In EVE,
thinking for yourself is always the best defense.
If you keep your wits about you and keep an eye on the warning
signs, even a total alliance collapse won't make much of a personal
impact on you. The enemy is trying to destroy your assets to the point
where you give up and quit EVE
entirely; with a modicum of intelligence, you don't have to give him
that satisfaction.
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