Very very few organizations were successful in EvE with that sort of layout. Those that did were, in fact, powerblocks, not alliances.

Some terminology:
- a corporation is the smaller organizational unit. Similar to guilds in some other games. They have shared offices and hangars, they see each other online, they have out-of-game servers for forums and organization of logistic services. Corporation wallets are used to pay for stuff that belongs to the corporation (like offices or player owned structures). It's controlled by a CEO and possibly some officers. We have them in Perpetuum too.
- an alliance is a group of corporations. Controlled by the leader corporation (actually by the CEO and eventually officers of the leader corporation). It's the smallest organization level that can claim territory.
- a powerblock has no in-game mechanics. It's a political entity. An agreement between multiple alliances.

When you say "More of it to handle, more people to handle it" it means multiple corporations in an alliance (the "more people" refers to the corporation leaders) or more alliances in a powerblock (more people as more alliances leaders).

What actually happens is that most successful corporations are ruled by one or few strong leaders (often in an almost dictatorial way, but sometimes in a more democratic setup. However it's nearly always a "democratic dictator" where the leader "listens" to the base, but still has the power and respect to impose his own decisions no matter what).

At the alliance level, most successful alliances have a very strong corporation that basically leads and gives orders to the others. Sometimes a couple or a few corps take that role, but when that happens they generally are just separate corps leaded by very close friends.

At the powerblock level, however, there is more "talking". That's were a dictator nearly never happens and diplomacy plays the bigger role.

I do not know for sure, but I suspect the reason for this is that there's a huge advantage in having very few people that are "in the know" and understand exactly what happens. The others are kept in the dark and just follow orders. They cannot decide simply because they do not have the information required to make decisions.

Fewer people with the knowledge means it's much more difficult for the enemy to learn what you are about to do and counter it.

I understand it seems all illogical and weird. But those are the social dynamics that have been observed over and over again. We can debate all we want that it may or may not be a leadership problem. But there are a lot of great leaders and organizers in EvE (including a lot of real-life leaders and organizers, some coming from the real life military some coming from the real life industry or economy or whatever). There are a lot of lawyers, diplomats, and other people used to talk and be convincing or to handle PR and social dynamics. And still that is what happens and no one has yet been able to dominate for a long time (long domination = more than 3 years controlling more than about one third of the territory). All I can say is what I observed (and not only me: the mittani's articles seem common sense, but they are well written and report facts and observations of real emergent gameplay). We can speculate about the reasons of these dynamics but we cannot change the fact that they happen despite the will of whoever was on the loosing side. I have a hard time believing that everybody that lost was stupid simply because everybody eventually have both won and lost at that game, depending on circumstances.

Warning : Long post ahead.

Sorry I wasn't particularly clear on what I was referring to. I actually was talking about this particular section:

None of that should need leadership intervention. If it gets to the point where you are actually facing any of that, you've already made several mistakes, the first of which is developing, through either error or inaction, a culture that encourages such behaviour.

Things like discontent about how a fleet commander handled a fight should be squashed by members of the corporation who understand that 100% perfection is almost impossible to achieve, they shouldn't need direct intervention from the leader of the entire alliance. They shouldn't even need intervention from anyone in a leadership role, and in fact, having leadership intervene in disputes between members should be a last resort, for when the community simply cannot resolve the situation themselves. If the organisation is structured such that fleet commanders are seen as closer to members of the leadership than the regular guys, that goes double.

You should have far more people who recognise that organisational cohesion is more important than any one battle than you do people who will whine about things not going their way and looking to cast the blame. If you don't, you simply can't afford to externalise that onto the whiners and make it all their fault. You obviously have to look at how you got yourself into such a situation.

This is what I mean when I say 'more of it to handle, more people to handle it'. If you try to centralise such things, the workload of your leadership is going to spiral out of control. They need to be diffused through the entire organisation, such that they never cross your desk, so to speak. The means for doing so are fairly clear, and not remarkably difficult. You look at root causes of behaviour. If you've created an organisation where people who want an FC position think that the easiest way to get there is to point out that they could have handled an engagement better than the FC who did handle it, guess what they'll do? Whose fault is that?

How does the quote go? Something like 'Give the people what they want, but make sure they want what you do'?

Dissenting opinions can be encouraged without damaging morale if there is a culture that recognises the organisation is more important and valuable than the situation under discussion. I can *** about my taxes, but I'm not going to move to west africa because they pay less tax.

These are social dynamics that you can observe every day simply by reading a newspaper. These are the kind of social structures that people have been building for thousands of years, why not stand on the shoulders of giants?

It just sounds like a lot of guys want to play autocrat, and due to that mindset, are devaluing the people who actually get things done in favour of the people who tell them what needs doing. The kind of mind that reads The Prince and decides they know all about governing, or has experience leading an organisation with massive inertia working for them and thinks that qualifies them to participate in the catherding exercise that is virtual leadership.

I've been a member of several guilds that were composed largely of military and ex military guys, and the leadership tend to try to stamp the leadership techniques that work in the military onto the guild. It works too, provided the guild is almost entirely composed of military personnel. The most successful leader I have seen of a guild that was closer to 50/50 military and civilians was actually a schoolteacher who had served for a few years.

Real world techniques tend to assume that people are already heavily invested into the organisation. Someone else has done the propaganda, job hopping looks bad, they're signed up for several years, for whatever reason, they have little desire to make trouble. You need to draw on the reasons that real world techniques work, not draw on the techniques. You don't have that inertia supporting you, especially not if you're building an organisation from scratch.

So anyway, back to the point a little, this is why I say that the 'pet' term only has impact if leadership hasn't done their job right. From reading the soss regarding pets, it becomes obvious that such is the case. Alliances are explicitly looking for pets. If it were me, I would be looking for 'business partners to engage in a renewable contract for rights to exploit sectors of space that we can defend but lack the manpower/infrastructure/capital to exploit for ourselves'. There's no gain except a little epeen stroking to be made by referring to people as inferiors when recruiting them. They have the role of exploiting those minerals, you have the role of defending them and exploiting the sectors you can. What makes yours more important? Both are needed.

Gradually you can pass more responsibility for defense onto them, but there should never a need to dictate to them what they must do. If they are regarded as equals whose contributions are important and valued, they don't need orders, they're already motivated to do what needs to be done. They're also willing to hand the responsibility for control of fleet movements over to you as more experienced in that area, provided they are recognised for excellence when it is demonstrated and thus given more responsibility next time.

So I guess if people find the term pets insulting rather than laughable, it's because they really are being seen and treated as pets by their allies. Seems like some (maybe even most) alliances in eve are doing just that. In that context, throwing it around does seem to make sense.

You've avoided directly saying the usual quote, which is "It's just a game".

Games are played at different levels. The 'fun' part of chess is very different from you and your dad playing in the den and two grandmasters facing off in the last round of a tournament.

The 'game' is exactly the same, the rules are the same, the motivation and reward are totally different.

I don't want to play a casual game. Perpetuum developers have said that Nia is a harsh world, and I like it that way. The satisfaction I get from 'beating' a difficult world is the difference between kids playing chess and grandmasters.

If you want to know the real reason why Eve vets are getting upset, it's because even if they don't understand it, they can feel that the game is becoming more casual. Incarna is specifically designed to make the game more user friendly and to increase the population.

Perhaps it's inevitable that at some point in a games life cycle, if it becomes popular enough, it has no choice but to cater to it's casual players.

As much bad press as WoW gets here, Blizzard actually does a farily good job of providing World Class raiding guilds with challenges that are at the grandmaster level, while still providing a whole world for casual players to enjoy and learn in; and give them the goal of reaching something difficult to obtain.

That's not to say the game can't be fun, it just doesn't make sense to make it party ballon and clowns fun all the time. Blowing up 20 bots in 2 mins in PVP is "FUN-FUN" but the thrill is gone 2 second after the last bot dies. Being victorious in a 4 hour battle is "Satisfying" fun. Clicking on the store and buying a Capital ship is FUN, spending weeks gathering materials and assembling it, is Satisfying fun.

Everyone who was here 33 days ago was here because they like the satisfction of being victorious, and those that are here 99 days from now will be the same type of player.

Edit: What I meant with the WoW referrence, is that I think AC can and should do a better job of making the starting experience more 'casual' but that it shouldn't carry through to the rest of the game. Give players time to learn the game, then make them earn their standing within it.

Lots of point in there.

- For wow, what I was saying and it applies here too, is that making something 'simpler and easier' after a while is OK as long as you continue to provide new challenges for advanced players. For instance when bliz nerfs older raid content, the players that havn't cleared it yet get upset, but guilds like Paragon don't care, because they have already beaten it on hard mode and don't need to be the only one with the sparkling pony to know that they are good.

As you say, the game is still new, so it's not ready to be nerfed. The trouble with the sandbox game is that there's no clear way to seperate the hard content from the starter content, because it's player driven.

Oh, and I wasn't saying psycholgy to meta-game doesn't apply - every post here is meta gaming

This is where our communication is failing. You see corps with lesser military might as intrinsically inferior. We're back to 'smaller corp allying with bigger corp is bad, because'.

Punishments for killing people in certain areas of the game sound pretty weak to me. Nullsec sounds fun, but simply having highsec in the game kind of removes the opportunity to call it harsh. There are plenty of really harsh games out there. Haven & Hearth for example is too harsh for me, I make a new guy there every world and quit as soon as he dies, which typically doesn't take longer than a couple months. Last time it was because I made the foolish, and fatal, error of trying to swim across a river, since I heard swimming had been made easier. It had too, I nearly made it.

I do not. They are not inferior, they are unable to singlehandedly conquer and then defend (therefore control) territory. Therefore it is the military that have political power. In this sense (less political power) they are inferior as a fact, in EvE. Only in this sense. Also 'smaller corp allying with bigger corp is bad' is not true. But 'less militarily focused organization needing to ally with a strong military force' is an unescapable reality in EvE. I do not consider it 'bad'. But whoever defines 'good' as being militarily strong or having political power, will consider them 'inferior' (and by that definition, they are). Of course it turns out that, for the most part, those that decide what the definition is for 'good' is, are the ones with the power to decide who can do what where. And in eve those with that power are the military strong. And, not surprisingly, they define 'good' as themselves, and 'bad' as anything else.

If that's the case, then you must hate Perpetuum. In Perpetuum you just cannot kill someone on an alfa island at all. That's even weaker than being punished for doing it: you are punished for just wanting to do it. At least in the sense that you are outright prevented from doing what you want.

Note that, in EvE, the current "punishment" only came as a dumb-down change when they realized that they wanted some more casual people. In the very beginning the consequences were much much less punishing than today.

Except they need allies to exploit that space. Devaluing the importance of that is the problem. 'I can shoot you in the face through my foot' is not power, and thinking that it is goes a long way towards explaining why these organisations are struggling with such simple things.

At no point did I say 'harsh' is intrinsically superior. In fact I did mention that some games are too harsh for me, although EvE definitely does not sound like one. My first MMO experience was a lot harsher than that, no such thing as a safezone. Similar to most of my MMO experiences actually.

The problem here lies in the fact that you're assuming certain things to be true for me because they are for you. You're assuming that I must hate perpetuum simply because most of the games I've played have involved much more stringent penalties for making mistakes and no safe areas, because 'harsh is good' in some way. In general that is true, but there are reasons for it in each case, it's not axiomatic. Perpetuums system has its own appeal, and it's not devalued by the fact that there are more hardcore games out there.

Except they do not need to exploit the space. And in EvE 'I can shoot you in the face through my foot' is power.

There are only a few things you *need* to exploit in the space you conquer (and they are the reasons you want to conquer it to begin with). Mostly moons. And they do it themselves. In the old times they would never let other people do it because control of the moons was the mechanic that defined control of the territory. Today the two things are unrelated so they exploit the moons that give insanely valuable resources and leave the rest unexploited or available for the renters.

The other "must have" are the structures needed to build capital (and supercapital) ships. These, once again, are anchored at moons. And it can only be done in conquerable territory (cannot use a hisec or lowsec moon for that). Also you do want to do it somewhere you have a tight control of because building one of those babies requires weeks (or months) for the build time and the equivalent of multiple man-months of mining in terms of raw minerals. You really do not want an enemy to destroy your factory while it's cooking a titan and holding all that ***. They used to do this themselves when you could count the number of supercapital ships in the whole game on the fingers of one hand (no way a pet or renter would be allowed to build one: he'd become stronger than you). Today we see fights with hundreds of supercapitals on each side. Go ahead renters and build some, then sell them to me anyway because you do not have the military force to use and defend them (they cannot be docked and are juicy targets) . Or do not: most of the blueprints and capital parts required (and often capitals themseves) are actually somewhat easy to buy on the (contract) market, nowadays.

Note that both moon mining and upercapital building are mostly AFK activities. You set it up and only need to go back once in a while to collect the produce and refuel the structures. It's mostly logistics (and marketing to acquire the resources or the fuel). But you do need to defend the structures (which is, in fact, what the military excel at).

Most military organizations have internal industry and good logistics. Very very few need to exploit the territory resources beyond moons and some NPC grinding.

One of the largest forces in EvE, years ago, had a very strong industrial focus. They also had numbers and a lot of military, but exploiting the territory, transforming through industry and then selling on the market was what they did best. Of course they had riches and resources and ships and fittings a gogo. In fact they were the first ones to succeed in building a supercapital. Which is one of the reasons they have been, soon after, been wiped off by a mostly dictatorial based military focussed force. Which of course also had a strong industry and controlled a very rich territory, but when you are among the top 2 or 3 forces in the game, of course you do have all aspects covered. Still military is the enabling aspect. You can me somewhat successful with military (and logistics) only. You can do nothing without a strong military arm (or ally). Of course get all aspects covered and you'll be better than military only. As long as your military subset is actually stronger than any potential military only force. Else they'll crush you.

I'm not. I'm trying to tell you what the reality of EvE is and why, probably, the social mechanics we were discussing earlier (like failcascades) were not due to weak leadership (which is what you were considering the cause).

Sure. Also what I like of these games are the social, political and economic (mostly the economic, if you consider industry and politics as being part of the economy forces) dynamics. I'd even go as far as saying that I'm more interested in observing those dynamics than in participating in them.

I do play. Casually, if you want. But the main reason I will, most likely, keep a subscription (or, in the worst case, subscribe for a month once in a while) to both EvE and Perpettum (and a few other games, but none yet is as good in this regard as EvE is) is to observe what is changing over time. Much more than actually playing. I do need to play a little because a lot of this *** is absolutely invisible to whoever doesn't play. Most EvE players (and devs) do not understand the EvE market and not even the EvE industry, as seen as a market force (I'll do what everyone does and pull a percentage out of my ***: 95% to 99% of EvE players and devs do not understand it). I myself probably only understand it only to a small degree.

All of them understand what is clearly visible. Few understand what is going on beyond that (for those coming from EvE: Akita T and few others probably get it a notch better than the devs themselves, including Dr. Eyjo).

Obviously they do. Otherwise they wouldn't be looking for people to exploit them, they'd exploit the lot themselves. And nowhere has 'I can shoot you in the face through my foot' ever been a form of power except in the minds of easily destroyed alliances. It sounds especially so in EvE. You shot him in the face, but you shot yourself in the foot to do so. Now you still have a ton of guys who need shooting in the face, but you can't walk. And they're coming for you.

'I can shoot you in the face, period' is the situation you need to create before you start beating your chest and lording around, and that is not a situation you will ever find yourself in with allies, because it would no longer be in your interest to be allied to them.

If you can't leverage (example from soss) 8% of the value of a titan *  the number of people paying you rent/tribute per month into a strategic advantage, you have no business calling yourself an effective military force. If you think you don't need a strategic advantage, same again. Ergo, you need people to exploit that space in order to be an effective military force. People might pretend they don't, but it's obviously costing them. Acting superior to people you need doesn't sound all that bright to me. To each his own though.

The whole thing sounds like a massive logistics fail to me anyway. You should be exploiting that space yourself, and if you don't have the wherewithal, you're overextended. Every post seems to emphasise leadership failure as the root cause more and more.

I would be far more inclined to laugh at the all conquering chest beating heroes who took something they couldn't use and need to prance around flexing their e-muscles to the guys they 'gave' that space to than I would at the guys who saw and took an opportunity to make a buck, increase their capability, and develop some experience, all at levels beyond what it seems like they should be able to.

@mammoth
Things are a changing. I'm not very well connected with nullsec life today but I suspect it is now somewhat important to actually exploit the territory. The value of the territory itself is now tied to the amount of exploitation you do and the sheer number of supercapitals employed in current warfare suggests that the revenue from exploitation (or renting) is now important.

However this was not the case a few years ago (and the failcascades and other facts reported by the Mittani are a few years old). Money flow is the main concern. When having a fleet of capitals was something very few could afford, not only economically but also in terms of skills, one of the most powerful forces was not eve a real landlord: they were mercenaries. When capitals became common and supercapitals were rare, moon exploiting alone was all you needed to sustain your organization.

Yes, having renters was an advantage (more money was always better than less money). But many forces did not have them or had them but really could have survived without. Alliances with established control of territory had them or exploited the territory themselves. But alliances that were doing the conquest war often did not (and couldn't because they had not an established territory).

It's actually hard to say for sure, because the ever evolving situation makes the boundaries between "no need" and "need" blurred. Also because many of the "no need" actually did have them anyway. You would have to have full access to internal accounting by one of those big alliances to know how important the revenue from renters was. I was never an officer of any of them, therefore I do not know for sure. But from what I know I suspect that many could have done quite well even without the revenue from the renters.

In hindsight I think the main reason to exploit the territory was to build the economic capital needed to develop a large supercapital fleet. It was needed at the time, but it eventually became essential with recent developments. Therefore it was mostly a mid-long term necessity than it was a current one. I also suspect that most did not do it for that reason. I think they did have renters either for pure greed or to save the money in case they were to lose their territory and needed some economic inertia to fight back.

Also remember the big difference between renters and pets. Renters exploit the territory. Pets actually hold territory and administer it however they see fit, as long as they defend it and help you in your wars. Many were (and are) real renters. Few were or are real pets. It's just a derogatory name the enemy uses to indicate a less powerful ally (or just an ally of yours they are trying to insult by saying it's inferior to you).

The hell is this thread?

For those of you talking about secrecy etc, that's not really how TEST or Goons handled things in EVE. Mittani did a pretty good explaining the three different models, but I'm going to focus on the glories of Space Communism.

Space Communism is a lot like a modern social democracy of the parliamentary model with a strong French style autocratic President at the top of the pyramid.

Each of the various important areas has a guy in charge of it. So, defense, accounting, pos management, etc. That guy is responsible to the directors and the CEO. They also have a staff and can often pay out rewards to staffers based on, you know, some *** metric or other. People only handle the top dog roles for a limited amount of time so as to prevent Karttoon/Bobby Atlas/SirMolle/Evil Thug/etc style burnouts. Functions are limited and compartmentalized, but on a regular basis members of the Swarm are given a look see to make sure that everything is running in an efficient and not-corrupt manner. This management style has evolved over the course of various near death experiences, and pretty much guarantees that no one but the top dog can steal everything and burnout is limited. There are also public postings of the audits to keep the wallet safe, secure and un-raped.

Taxes are kept low and individual earnings/initiative are encouraged, but the real wealth comes from domination and taxation of various natural resources in the form of moongoo. Some moons are national assets, others are owned privately but pay a heavy tax. Outsiders have occasionally been allowed to own bonds in various moons, but it's more common to raise funds within the swarm.

The social part of the social democracy is the full reimburse on ops given players fit a mandated fit. Players without enough cash to make things work are able to requisition free rifters as needed.

Why does this work better than the autocratic or council methods?

Well, the autocratic stuff requires a cult of personality to build up. It usually involves a significant amount of corruption, and fails to develop a significant number of the sort of mid level leaders necessary to carry operations to a successful conclusion. "Nepotism" and factionalism are rife and typically connections are more important for getting stuff done than official titles or actual results. It's also brittle; if the autocrat burns out, the corp usually enters failcascade mode soon after. Lack of delegation is common, leading to ever more rapid burn out.

The council stuff fails because nothing gets done ever, period. Everyone gets sick to death of meeting related *** and while it's more democratic, it's also more useless than tits on a bull. That said, it's more resistant to burnout than the autocratic model and tends to build a strong identity based culture rather than a cult of personality. So if it survives it'll survive a long time, even though most fail early due to the inability of the councils to agree on any decision at all ever. Byzantine is a common adjective when describing the workings of the council and the various factions that grow up around it.

Space communism combines the two -- you've got oversight, delegation and burnout resistance from the modular delegation, and the ability to act and react rapidly thanks to the authoritarian element of the various division leaders and the overall CEO of the alliance. It also tends to have a strong identity and a lot of low level decision makers who can handle stuff before it becomes a big *** deal.

All in all, space communism is best.