SUSU Update Part 2

Thought I would post some of the responses I got from my corp mail "SUSU Update"


TLDR; Responses from some of the corp members who responded and conclusion. No Move.

""""As a C4 is as high as I have experience living in, I only have limited knowing what a c5 is in actuallity. I would follow us into c5 no question, The hotter the forge, the stronger the steel.
My question about if we should do it was summed up well by Sun Tzu

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."

I feel like before we can move in, we have to define, in detail what our version of "winning" is.

Personally I feel it would be running enough sites that we have recouped our initial investment, and so even do something like fight for local in w-space and piss off all of everyone to come and kill us, we still haven't broken the golden rule of eve. Don't fly what you can't afford to lose."""""--- Member

""""" haven't been in SUSU very long and I'm a wormhole newbie. That said, based on the amount of active players (not characters), I think it would be a bad idea to move into a C5 now.

There are some major cons you listed and I think a good number of them need to be resolved before making a big move.  """"" ---- Member

''''''''We a corp we have a long way to go before we will be ready to move into a c5. I feel that we must be able to field a 20 man fleet with no one person responsable for more than one pilot. When I say that we plan to move into a c5 soomTM I am not talking about a short term plan, there is no set timeframe when we will be ready to move. Our corp should continue to grow and live in a c4 untill we are ready to move.


“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that
something else is more important than fear.” '''''---- Member


''''''''I didnt realize we lived in a wormhole.

Assuming we did live in a wormhole and since we cant defend a C5 i suggest we all move to low sec space. I have tacticals on all the gates ready and badgers for everyone! As a famous actress stated on mutliple occassions:

"aaah ah ah ah ah yeah, fuck me, ah, fuck, ahh yeah" ~Jenna Jameson''''''''--- Member

'''''''We're in a good place right now. Combat is on our terms, though there's the matter of getting that combat started in the first place. We aren't in danger of eviction and so the schedule can be lax. We only need one TZ, don't need to manage piles of extra consumables, or enforce doctrines to keep things simple.

That said...

No point in resting on our laurels. We're already safe and we aren't even building caps in here. I'm in favor of bolstering our numbers and making the move some (many?) months down the road.

Using the podcast as a recruitment platform that shouldn't be too hard. An important question is whether or not to tell prospective members of the master plan (move into a C5). Spear is right that the prospect of a C5 will bring in more experienced players, but having that out there may bring unwanted attention from the C5/6 community. (In the form of spies, ridicule, or what-have-you.)

I'm also not keen on having to join a "side". I like our independent operation. Us versus Them just leads to drama.""""" --- Member

""""" I'd like to move into a C5, but I also don't think we're ready. I don't have any desire to fly dreads or caps, but I really enjoy flying a proteus. I wish it were easier to get fights. I'd be down with us moving into a C5 this fall or something""""--- Member


'''''''While I would very much like to move to a C5, I think the opportunities there are amazing, but we simply don't have the active member base. I think we could manage without a full fleet of T3s, but we do need to be able to reliably field 15 pilots, whereas now we can hit 10 people on a good day. We just need to keep up recruiting, get people trained and willing to fly interesting fights and go out in a blaze of glory. We'll get there, but we aren't there yet.''''' - Member

'''''''I actually have been thinking about it myself too. And you are right Spear that we are not ready, as a PVP corp, to move to a C5.

1.We only have about 3-4 people who step up to FC.

2.We only have a few members who can fly PVP T3’s, capitals, and even less logi. (most of the pilots that can fly these 3 are overlapping so the number is really small on all 3 ship class’s)

3.We dont have the member base to put up a fight to some of the groups that might roll into us and simply put not everyone will fight fair as we learned a few days ago.

Lastly money is nice but like Spear said its not why we are here.

My gut says we are not ready and I don't think we should move. We need more Pilots. We need more logi pilots, we need more FC’s(seriously guys at the very least you all should know how to target call IMHO)

“Fuck this I’m goin to get a pumpkin”
-Bill Burr   

------Member




Conclusion Email From Me

Thank you everyone for your replies and none replies.

The information I gathered has given me the pulse and the vibe of the corp as a whole.

The direction of SUSU will be much the same as it has already been. Pick fights, start shit, create content for everyone we encounter. We can do this from Jim.  

The general consensus is we don’t have the numbers nor the participation to not get thrown out on our asses. We will be postponing our move to a C5 till we can sufficiently defend it.  We can’t bank on idea that people won’t remove us for the lolz just because we are cool. I have little to no interest in being a part of a huge alliance or some other gang of alliances, most of our sr members also feel the same it seems.

So starting May 1^st when my play time picks back up I want to propose some activities to get the blood pumping again. I would like to hear your thoughts on it.

1.       Pick a fight. Right now, we don’t have as much pew as we desire. The fights we can find are few and far between. This is the nature of WH space, all hunting and few killing.  So let’s pick a fight. I’m proposing a drawn out half ass invasion. Find a C3 with some semi active people in it and hurras them. Shoot their posses, camp their holes, live in poorly defended POS and generally bring the fight to them, daily.

        a.       Pros – The best way to get a fight from people is to put up a POS in their system.  They could bring the heat, we could defend with little invested other than our time and some minor ships. No POCOs on the line, no T3’s that can be taken or destroyed. Just some random battleships, BC, logi, and cruisers.

       b.      Cons – They not bring the fight. They be super boring and just POS up forever. Target selection may be critical here.

2.       PVE ops, I know our focus is PVP, but doing PVE in other peoples home systems can by just as exciting. A weeklong series of PVE adventuring using hole rolling from Jim to connect to a C5 chain. We could plant a scanning character into a anom filled C5 who can scan out the exit whenever we want to run them. Could be profitable, could be fun.

 3.       Set up planned Null and Low sec roams. Right now we do it when we feel like it, but setting up a time/date for us to go to a selected region no matter the means, could be interesting.

These are just some idea’s I’m throwing around. Please respond to all with your thoughts. If you have none, than don’t.

SUSU Corp Update

I sent out an email to my corp, and because I have been so pressed at work, I wanted to explain to anyone who reads my blog where I have been and what I have been doing. I don't mind sharing this info to strangers because honestly I have talked about it openly on the Down the Pipe Podcast.

(Corp Email)

SUSU Update.  

I have fallen out of the habit of sending a monthly SUSU Corp update. I have been slacken and I’m truly sorry.

CEO Update. – I have been out of commission on my regular play time this month. Every 3^rd month of the year my job requires me to actually work. This quarterly software release has been super tuff on me. This means I work 10 hour days and usually weekends. When I’m not working I’m staring at a wall trying to turn my brain off. EVE suffers. At the start of May, shit will calm down and its back to biz as ush.

Corp Direction update – There are have been rumors of us moving to a C5. I’ll tell you honestly I’m on the fence. As a responsible and non-shit head CEO I’m asking a discussion to be opened on the topic.

Here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros. –

1.       We fight with the big boys, with the big toys

a.       Dreds, Carriers, T3 fleet doctrine.

b.      Different PVP conflicts and escalations.

c.       Higher degree of experience and skill needed to win engagements. 

2.       Living in a C5 is a larger draw to the experienced WHer. This increases visibility for recruiting purposes. 

3.       Access to more ISK. This has never been the focus of our corp, it never will. More isk, more shinny spaceships to get blown up. 

4.       Security. Nobody wants to invade a C4. You can’t bring dreads. 

5.       Shot in the arm. This may inspire burnt out members to put themselves back into the game. I fear though, this effect is short lived no matter what we do.

Cons. –

1.       We become a bigger target. Being in a C5 means we can and will be invaded at some point. With the notoriety of the podcast and our attitude of doing whatever we want to whoever we want, comes with stronger repercussions.

A.      Ease of an invader to simply roll his hole to find us.

B.      With the increase of collations we be forced to pick a side. Forced to bat phone and respond to bat phones. 

2.       Danger level would increase because C5s are frequently rolled looking for people to kill. The types of players doing this, are the best EVE has to offer. Caught slacken, and it gets expensive. 

3.       The quantity of players needed to fight at the level required by most aggressors we currently don’t have. Not even close. Most engagements in this class of hole are 20+ pilots a fight. Right now our average is about 6.

a.       This would be bad thing because the few that would fight, would get crushed. Regularly. This would build resentment from the people who frequently fight and those who don’t, causing fissures in our loving family.

b.      Separating the men from the boys. By providing a clear bar to accomplish we would clearly see some of our members simply aren’t up for the task. This would reduce member count. This isn’t the environment that I think is healthy nor makes our corp awesome. It’s important for me that all members in the corp feel welcome, no matter the skill level of their pvp.  Fuck elitism. 

4.       Increased need for more members to have a larger stake in the game. As it stands, I fund the POSs, the POCOs, the fuel and most closing equipment needed to cycle a hole. This is changing slowly with the construction, purchase and funding of The Sketchy POS. We also have more Orcas. This is a good sign. But with a bigger hole, more dynamic fleet engagements and a focus on capitals, other members are going to need to step up.

a.       It has never been a challenge for me to fuel a single pos or even 2, myself. I have no trouble funding orca for rolling the hole. But as our needs increase to crush hostile holes connected to us, or after fleet welps involving capitals. I will be strapped for cash to replace ships to make us function.

5.       Security. C5s are easily invaded. Nobody wants to invade a C4. Most EVE players are lazy, pvpers included. Most don’t want to grind a structure for 4 hours in a tier 3 BC. Add Dreads and that thing is done in 45 minutes. This means we are going to need more round the clock coverage. If dreds can incap us in 3 hours, we log into a ecapped pos. Worse, take 2 days off from EVE and log in your ship to a bug zapper.

a.       We would need increased time zone coverage. More members needed. More members = more security issues.

b.      Greater need for all pilots to be available during more time zones.

These are just SOME of the things I came up with. These are things my little paranoid mind mills over every hour of every day.