Electus Matari Forums

Hello, Electus Matari!

I apologize if this post is a bit longer than standard applications. I am prone to being very thorough in my explanations. *OOC: I also apologize for any accidental OOC comments or typos, so please forgive me as I should have gone to sleep awhile ago!*

I would like to present what is hopefully a welcomed application from my corporation to join your alliance. My corporation has been sort of floating about since leaving our last alliance, and I've had encouragement from a few of your pilots that I know to submit an application. As well, I can provide plenty of strong references from outside your alliance, that I know are mutual blues between us.

I have been browsing through your forums, trying to get more of a feel of how we would fit in internally, on a day to day basis. To start things off, I will just go through answering some basic questions that I copy/pasted/reworded slightly from the bottom of the FAQ at http://www.electusmatari.com/forums/show...p?tid=2765 .

•Why we want to join:
We are looking for a Cause to join, and I know that EM fights the Good Fight. Although I am personally of Gallente background myself, the majority of my capsuleer career has been within the Molden Heath region, working for the Republic fleet agents, as well as fighting against piracy in the area, before I even became CEO of my own small corporation. Since then, we've grown in numbers, and been in two different anti-pirate alliances in the region... however, both of them lacked a specific purpose or overall intention, which led us to be disillusioned with our place within each alliance, so we left, but on good terms.
We would love to join Electus Matari because we share belief in its causes, in fighting against piracy and slavery and working to help rebuild the Republic. Now, you might think that, being Gallente myself, wouldn't have as much motivation to fight against slavery quite the same as a Minmatar would, seeing as Gallenteans (despite their ideals) haven't suffered the same as Minmatar, but I do have somewhat personal motivation against it... my 'sister' Margo Fitch, who was once enslaved, can share her story at another time, though. But it does have some effect on our motivations.

•How our corporation works internally:
Well, not 100% certain how you would like this question answered, but... In short, I am the CEO and I have final word. However, we have never had any sort of situation where I've had to express such authority, thank to our cohesiveness as a corporation. Margo Fitch and Brad Chang are our official directors, and I have given them full authorization to speak on my behalf in any situation. *OOC: these are my alts for those who do not already know.* However, member feedback is requested, and occasionally votes are made in any and all matters that affect the entire corp that require an executive decision, including but not limited to: diplomacy, war declarations, new membership application reviews, tax rate, major expenses / investments. So while I may be the one in charge and make all the decisions in the end, I do not do it without the consent of my employees.

•What our business plan is.
Well, at first, we started off as an independent mining corporation. Of course, we still worked for the Republic Fleet agents, and joined friendly fleets on occasion (including EM fleets from time to time) to fight piracy in low security space. But in the beginning, we mined in order to build ourselves new combat ships, both to expand our arsenal as well as to provide dirt cheap replacements for our combat operations. Now that we have grown in membership, we build ships a lot more quickly, and can offer services to our close friends to help quickly produce ships for discount, as well as providing more corporate income. Members are compensated for devoting time to mining primarily through extremely discounted ships for their personal use. Corp mandated ships are often provided, as well as ships lost in corp ops to pirates are often replaced for free. At the moment, however, our production of anything other than ammo and rigs is limited due to our first nearly completed capital ship project... after which, we will resume regular ship production.

•How we recruit:
While we have done a little bit of open recruitment of rookie capsuleers, it has been few and far between and, for the most part, they haven't renewed their first pilot liscense with Concord, which ends up with termination of their employment with our corporation. So, for everyone else that we have recruited... most of our key members, both new and old, are close, trusted associates that I have worked with in the past. Currently, we have a total of 15 members, most of which are active on a regular basis, and basically almost all of those members used to be with me in my old corporation, Sky Tek Industries, and they joined my new corporation when I left Sky Tek to make this one. The rest of our currently active members came to me through very good personal referrals from pilots I have been friends with since I started working as a capsuleer. We do plan on expanding even more, but

•What we do as a corporation and what we're capable of
Well, as I sort of mentioned above, as a corporation, we engage in all of the basic corp functions but with a sense of professionalism. We aim to be the best. When we mine, we have Margo Fitch as the BEST Orca pilot there can possibly be, as well as 1/5th our members now able to fly Hulks effectively. The majority of the rest of the corp can fly a minimum of a retriever, with a goal for everyone to meet that minimum to capitalize our Orca pilot's maximum ability. As I mentioned above, we are nearly complete in finishing collecting all of the materials for our first capital ship: a Thanatos, that I will be piloting for corp lowsec operations. I guess that will be an important thing to mention as well, is that I will be our first capital ship pilot, and we have another member who is not far behind me in that capability, which will be our next big mining project.
When we do missions, we have effective means of salvaging 10x faster than the average mission runner, since we use the Orca's tractor beam capability to haul stuff in mid-mission and have one pilot quickly use a salvaging destroyer from the ship bay to clear it all out while the rest of the fleet works on the next area of the mission, or hands it in to start a new one. We feel that we maximize our time well, and can contribute nicely to help alliance members make the most of their time if we work with them using our strategies. Obviously, during non-wartime periods, we are more than happy to share our Orca services to people within the Alliance.
Last, but certainly NOT least.... Combat-wise, I have led many joint small gang operations as FC, including both members from my corporation (both new and experienced pilots) and friendly corps, although I would not consider myself an extremely experienced as I'm still learning the tricks to running a fleet while fighting the same time! But people always ask me to do it again, so I guess I must be doing alright. Also, I'm certain there are several Electus Matari FC's who will read this who can vouch for our willingness to fight and our effectiveness at doing so.

•OOC: Whether we'll fit in and be comfortable in an RP environment of the type you have. We're not looking for people who are prepared to try and force themselves to RP, or to "tolerate" it, but folks who will love and revel in it as much as we do.
Okay, so this will be a very interesting question to answer (OOC of course). For the most part, we are unfamiliar with the level of RP that EM engages in, but we're also very interested in getting to that level. I guess what I'm trying to say is, that although it will be new to us as a corp, we're more than willing to try and learn. Personally, I am all for it, as I do a lot of theatre and so know all about characterization and also a bit about writing, even though recently been doing more Stage Management and techincal stuff than acting. I don't play any other MMOs, but DO play D&D v3.5, with a lot of RP and character development, at least in campaigns that I run.. I know at least one of my members, Articula Maximus, has been in an RP corp and/or alliance before, and attempted to start his own RP corp before. I think, though, that RP is fairly new to most of the corporation, but they sounded very interested in this, including the more novice members (I keep wanting to call them new, but then remember that most of them have been with me for over half a year now, basically since they started playing).

In summary...Anyway, I hope that answers most questions ahead of time... I looked at some of the other corporation applications to try to see what kinds of questions I might expect to be asked and tried to sneak in at least references to parts of such answers, but if you need any further clarification, I welcome any and all questions.

Sincerely,

hercules fitch
CEO of FITCH FOUNDRIES

Thank you for your application. Our council will decide in a week or so after discussing this internally. Meanwhile, all EM pilots are encouraged to ask questions - if you think that some answers should be non-public, just mail them to me and I'll post them internally.

Jayleen Wyld
EM Council Secretary

Hi there Herc! I don't have any questions off hand, but I'm happy to see your application and want to wish you best of luck with it :-).

I'm glad to see this application, Fitch.
My first question to you would be this: Have you discussed openly with your membership the fact that Electus Matari is often at war, and that there may be extended periods of time without the comfort of CONCORD protection in high-security space?

(2010-11-26 14:35)Crevo Helion Wrote: [ -> ]Hi there Herc! I don't have any questions off hand, but I'm happy to see your application and want to wish you best of luck with it :-).

Thanks Crevo!

(2010-11-26 17:10)Altaen Wrote: [ -> ]I'm glad to see this application, Fitch.
My first question to you would be this: Have you discussed openly with your membership the fact that Electus Matari is often at war, and that there may be extended periods of time without the comfort of CONCORD protection in high-security space?

Thanks for the question, Altaen. We are familiar with the potential inconveniences of being at war. Our newer, less experienced members are told to always watch their local channel for war targets, and dock up when one appears in local, as obviously younger pilots generally won't have the skill to fight very well on their own. Even our more experienced pilots are told to avoid solo confrontation, at least with their missioning ships, without proper intel on how much support the hostiles might have.
In general, if possible, we move as much of our isk making businesses to lowsec when highsec is not feasible to safely make money (when we aren't busy helping to fight, obviously).

Hello, Hercules Fitch.
It's good to see your application. I've gotten a good impression from you and your corp mates from the little I've seen. I have two questions for you.

First, I read that your corp is NBSI in 0.0 space outside of Great Wildlands. That's a good RoE, but EM is a bit more strict - we are NRDS everywhere. Do you think this will be a problem?

Second, I noticed that from the 15 members of your corp, "only" about 6 were ever active in combat, some of who rather infrequently. You mentioned above that your corp is quite active - I take it most of the others are focused on industry? Just trying to get a feel for the corp, considering you put a lot of emphasis on the capsuleer combat in your corp description.

Also, a note, if you'd prefer not to reply in public, you can of course respond to any questions via PM to any member of EM, we can post it in our internal forums.

(2010-11-26 18:40)Arkady Sadik Wrote: [ -> ]Hello, Hercules Fitch.
It's good to see your application. I've gotten a good impression from you and your corp mates from the little I've seen. I have two questions for you.

First, I read that your corp is NBSI in 0.0 space outside of Great Wildlands. That's a good RoE, but EM is a bit more strict - we are NRDS everywhere. Do you think this will be a problem?

Second, I noticed that from the 15 members of your corp, "only" about 6 were ever active in combat, some of who rather infrequently. You mentioned above that your corp is quite active - I take it most of the others are focused on industry? Just trying to get a feel for the corp, considering you put a lot of emphasis on the capsuleer combat in your corp description.

Also, a note, if you'd prefer not to reply in public, you can of course respond to any questions via PM to any member of EM, we can post it in our internal forums.

It's okay, I don't mind posting openly about most things.

In regards to RoE, of course we will conform our policies to match your standards. It won't be much of a shift, after all. All it will require is a stricter enforcement of said rules on our part, as we've grown lax and need to regain our sense of discipline in terms of combat, which I hope that fighting for Electus Matari will help us achieve again. (By discipline I don't mean willy nilly unruly fleets, I refer to a lax in enforcing RoE on rare occasions when roaming. I've tried to train my guys as well as I could with my limited FC experience in proper fleet discipline, part of which I've learned from flying in other people's fleets, such as yours.)

PLEASE NOTE! Fitch Foundries has updated it's official RoE on its corp description (the rest of the description is going to be revamped as well), to read as follows:

Quote:Our rules of engagement are simple. Outlaws are always fair targets, as are corps/alliances set red to us for ANY reason. (If you think you have been mistakenly agressed by one of our pilots, please contact the CEO hercules fitch)
Neutrals MAY be shot within the system Half and adjacent systems, if they interfere with our operations there and do not heed our warnings. In nullsec, we now fully NRDS in order to comply with EM RoE.

In regards to number of actual active pvp pilots, we aren't 100% setup for that yet; however, this is partially because I haven't felt totally comfortable taking my newer members out on roams yet, since we haven't had the support numbers of more experienced combat pilots on a regular basis. I didn't want to embarrass my corp's reputation by taking out just me and some rookie pilots, and having them brutally massacred since I would have to half FC / half babysit, so to speak, as well as still fly my own ship. (*OOC: dont' forget, that 3 active members are one person: myself. However, of the rest of the members, the ones that aren't actively engaging in pvp have been instructed to refrain from doing so without my approval and guidance. It is still a new concept to many of them, to shoot fellow capsuleers, even if they are brutal murderers and thieves, since even if you DO manage to kill them, they don't go away when they die... they come back to haunt you, often with a vengeance, unlike your regular non-capsuleer factional pirates. But I've been trying to fast track them to fit into fleets, even with their limited experience. Ie mock fleet maneuvers through highsec, practise fights (not to the death, of course), and just general training of how fleets would operate in pvp by using missions as an example (so they could practise going after the targets I called out for them, warping out when they are in trouble, and just basic stuff, at least for the noob guys that you haven't seen on the killboards). Don't worry, we're working on getting more people in fleets, but we don't want to train them via suicidal insta-pops vs outlaws... costs too much!

Just yet another sidenote, referring directly to the comment "considering you put a lot of emphasis on the capsuleer combat"... part of my corp's advertising was the imply that our goal was for lots of combat. Personally, as an individual pilot, I try to spent large periods of time roaming lowsec, and hence is why I advertised that as a major corp activity that I would like to bring more people into, even if I have to train them up first before they are good enough to come along.

After looking back at the length of replies, I apologize for not editing enough beforehand... from now on, will limit the amount of content that I include in quotes, as to only quote the parts I directly reference back to. (Far too exhausted to deal with editing tonight's post last night, will either edit it tomorrow or say screw it and just be more diligent next time!)

Thank you for your answers! And long answers are perfectly fine.

Please do note that EM has absolutely no problem with pilots not doing capsuleer combat (most of us do both capsuleer combat and industry to various degrees), and we do not have any kind of mandatory ops or "participation requirements" - my question was simply out of curiosity on the corp's activities and pilot composition.