2.3. Fleet Staus

A few things:

1. You've noticed that we've been making an effort to ship people into warbirds this last week or so. Not surprisingly this has coincided with a couple semi-successful jumps on PM, a successful jump on LoF last night, etc. If you are ACTIVE, and you're not a dedicated trader/itemer or a raider/RC, we need you in a warbird. Last round we built a reputation for the ability to jump anything and everything, because we always had a high number of ships online. We haven't lost our spirit this round, but we do have diminished ability to see it through when our online presence is so limited.

2. We are HAPPY to fund warbirds. The AA is there for you, and we're shelling out 2.5-3 bilion a ship. A well designed L220-230 ship is just as effective in group fights as a L250, for significantly less cost -- we just have to design them to cover eachother's weaknesses. We can basically afford to buy you a combat ready ship anytime. There's absolutely no reason for you to be active and not shipped or or within a couple days of shipping up (if you want to trade for a few extra ship levels, or are low on turns). Sitting around doing nothing isn't fun for anyone.

3. Set up IRC highlights for yourselves. View --> Options --> Highlights on mIRC will allow you to create a highlight list and have a sound play when someone says your name. If you're not paying attention to IRC, or if you aren't even at your computer but your speakers are on, it might alow us to alert you when your presence is necessary for the dealing of death and destruction.

4. Since we clearly are having a round which is far below our typical standards of activity, it's easy to start being apathetic about the game and the alliance. You might ask, "why should I take the time to ship and be on IRC when we never jump anything, and never do ops, etc?" The reality is that we CAN'T do anything unless we have you online and ready to go. There are ports being raided all the time... but when we have barely anyone online and able to jump at prime raiding time, there's nothing we can do. With all the people on vacations or extended absences, we have to make the best use of the active players that we can.

Currently in the way of warships we have:

Stainless
LotD
Rodin
Dazzle
Solace
Agito
Nightmyre
Cornelius
Zoltan
BigD
Kinslayer
MegadetH?
Ashanthalas (semi active)
Omi (semi active)

I want to see this list grow, and soon.

Solace