One topic that frequently comes up in the Uni is how to balance the idea of having a minimum standard of skill in order to do certain areas of the game with the desire to be inclusive and allow new players to participate.
Previously, it had popped up in the idea of PVP training. Some players wanted to start training in more specialized types of fleets, which by their compositional requirements would necessitate a level of SP that new players couldn't have. Others fought for the idea of inclusive fleets so new players can have some fun and learn the basics of PVP.
In incursions, we have a similar conversation happening now, with some people wanting to raise the standard (somewhat low already) for fittings in order to join a Uni incursion fleet. This is to address the new changes to incursions, which tend to result in higher demands in the site, and higher Sansha controls, which exacerbates the issue.
I for one find this type of debate healthy, as it shows some trends I believe are very strong in the Uni, our desire to include our newer pilots, and our desire to improve ourselves in different aspects of the game. I prefer a balance, where we have options for both types of approaches. For the PVP realm, this means frequent fleets that include all players, alongside more specialized fleets to allow older players to develop and practice new skills they can teach later.
In incursions, however, we an additional complicating factor, in that their very design influences what is a successful fleet composition. A PVP fleet with a lot of new players just has to pick different targets or strategies. An incursion fleet that is understrength simply can't complete the sites. As such, I think a raising of the bar in this area is probably called for, simply to allow Uni students to participate successfully.
Me
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Community Fansite Competition
The Guild Life is currently having a competition for the best Eve Online fansite. I'd like to encourage all members to vote for the Uni. Our website, including the wiki, is a great resource for a lot of players, both in and out of corp.
Take a minute to click here and go vote for us. You will need a membership on the site, but its quick to sign up. PS: Make sure you validate the email address you use to sign up and vote.
Vote:
Take a minute to click here and go vote for us. You will need a membership on the site, but its quick to sign up. PS: Make sure you validate the email address you use to sign up and vote.
Vote:
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Corp Mechanics
On mumble today, some of my corp mates started asking me some questions about how corp mechanics work, such as hangars, roles, titles, etc... Luckily, the E-UNI wiki has a nice primer on corp mechanics : http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Corporation_(Corp_Mechanics)
I thought I'd take a second to just review a bit about corp hangars, and how we work around some of the limitations.
Corporations are given 7 corporate hangar divisions (these show up as tabs) at every single office that they rented or corporate hangar they possess (pos/ship/etc..) in the Universe. The corporation can then decide exactly what each individual member of the corporation has access to. We can also rename these divisions to something that helps explain what we use them for.
First, we can set access per division, so one person can get access to division 1 only, while another gets access to divisions 2 and 4. Additionally, we have a small degree of control over at which locations the person gets access. For example, I can give an EUNI member access to division 1 (alpha) at HQ, Based At, or Other. HQ is fairly self-explanatory, as it only covers the hangars at the corporate headquarters. Based at covers a single other station of my choosing, as I can set an individual to be officially based out of a single station (but only one). Lastly, Other gives access to literally every other division 1 hangar in the entire universe. Inside of that, we can decide what kind of access we want to give them. The options are to allow them to see inside the hangar (Query), take items (Take), or remove containers (Container Take). Obviously, you can see that this is not the fine-tuned mechanism for access control that a lot of people would like.
To further complicate things, hangars have no in-built access logs. Anything left on the hangar floor can be taken by any individual with no record of it. One work around is to place security locked containers in the hangar. These generate an access log for anyone that opens the hangar, locks, or unlocks an item. We keep everything in the containers locked, and ask that people just unlock, take what they need, and relock the items. Thus, we can have a record of anyone who takes anything from a container by seeing that they unlocked 9 items, and relocked 8. We don't give out the ability to move containers from corporate hangars. If people could remove containers, they could remove the access logs. This way, the logs are always kept secure.
Another method that is used is through the use of restricted passwords. We have some hangars where 4 or 5 different groups of people have "Access" to the hangar, but everything the need is kept inside of passworded containers. The groups each have the passwords for the containers they need, and nothing else. Periodically, someone has the fun job of resetting all passwords (in case they leaked) and mailing the new passwords to the necessary people.
This works great for items and packaged ships, but some items (such as rigged ships), can't be put in a hangar. These can be taken by any player with access, which is why we don't put anything like that in the generally accessible hangars.
Hopefully, this gave a brief overview of how we use hangars. If you have additional questions, ask in the comments. Maybe I'll talk about roles/titles next.
I thought I'd take a second to just review a bit about corp hangars, and how we work around some of the limitations.
Corporations are given 7 corporate hangar divisions (these show up as tabs) at every single office that they rented or corporate hangar they possess (pos/ship/etc..) in the Universe. The corporation can then decide exactly what each individual member of the corporation has access to. We can also rename these divisions to something that helps explain what we use them for.
First, we can set access per division, so one person can get access to division 1 only, while another gets access to divisions 2 and 4. Additionally, we have a small degree of control over at which locations the person gets access. For example, I can give an EUNI member access to division 1 (alpha) at HQ, Based At, or Other. HQ is fairly self-explanatory, as it only covers the hangars at the corporate headquarters. Based at covers a single other station of my choosing, as I can set an individual to be officially based out of a single station (but only one). Lastly, Other gives access to literally every other division 1 hangar in the entire universe. Inside of that, we can decide what kind of access we want to give them. The options are to allow them to see inside the hangar (Query), take items (Take), or remove containers (Container Take). Obviously, you can see that this is not the fine-tuned mechanism for access control that a lot of people would like.
To further complicate things, hangars have no in-built access logs. Anything left on the hangar floor can be taken by any individual with no record of it. One work around is to place security locked containers in the hangar. These generate an access log for anyone that opens the hangar, locks, or unlocks an item. We keep everything in the containers locked, and ask that people just unlock, take what they need, and relock the items. Thus, we can have a record of anyone who takes anything from a container by seeing that they unlocked 9 items, and relocked 8. We don't give out the ability to move containers from corporate hangars. If people could remove containers, they could remove the access logs. This way, the logs are always kept secure.
Another method that is used is through the use of restricted passwords. We have some hangars where 4 or 5 different groups of people have "Access" to the hangar, but everything the need is kept inside of passworded containers. The groups each have the passwords for the containers they need, and nothing else. Periodically, someone has the fun job of resetting all passwords (in case they leaked) and mailing the new passwords to the necessary people.
This works great for items and packaged ships, but some items (such as rigged ships), can't be put in a hangar. These can be taken by any player with access, which is why we don't put anything like that in the generally accessible hangars.
Hopefully, this gave a brief overview of how we use hangars. If you have additional questions, ask in the comments. Maybe I'll talk about roles/titles next.
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