Musings on the Explorer's Way

Opening the doors to Signal Cartel on January 30 was more like opening a small floodgate. Every day, I log in to find new applications and new faces in Corp chat. We are 85 already! Who knew there were so many pilots out there--both old and new--infected by wanderlust and compelled by the idea of finding something interesting out there among the stars?

Exploration tends to be a solo journey. Many who have joined us are in the habit of flying alone and continue to do so. Others enjoy self-organizing into ad-hoc groups to pursue shared objectives. Everyone seems happy to be able to chat with other like-minded souls in the Alliance channel. And many are stepping up in extraordinary ways to support our rookie explorers and help them hit the ground running. It is a lovely thing to see both rookies and veterans alike sharing ideas and inspiring each other with their adventures and discoveries both large and small.

Listening to our members talk about their activities, I am struck by how--just like any other career in New Eden--exploration is as nuanced as the individuals who embrace it. Some are content to wander the stars unfettered by an agenda. Others are intent on earning ISK through exploration sites or finding items of value abandoned by other players. Still others are interested in mapping the universe or otherwise wandering for personal reasons or profit. And at least a few are seeking empirical evidence related to Caroline's Star, the Circadian Sleepers, Thera, and other lore-related mysteries. Despite these various nuances, dedicated explorers seem to share two things: a rugged sense of independence and delight in discovery.

Exploration has given me the time and opportunity to notice and appreciate a New Eden filled with interesting stories, intriguing mysteries, and beautiful things just waiting for me to discover them. When I was a pirate, my focus was solely on the hunt for "targets of opportunity". All my attention was centered on ship fittings, logistics to replace lost ships, combat tactics, and the output of a constantly spammed directional scanner. It was a predator's tunnel-vision perspective from which I rarely looked up to wonder about a nebula, a landmark, or New Eden backstories. I rarely sought out the unknown path just because it was there. Now, I look up. I wonder. And I seek.

Violent Wormhole in Thera

My approach to exploration is relatively stress-free and uncomplicated. When not attending to corp duties or helping rookies find their feet, I wander randomly from Thera in search of low sec, null sec, and C1/C2 hacking sites. I often take side trips to landmarks or simply to see what this system or that looks like or see what others are doing there. Although the discovery angle of exploration is a reward in itself, ISK opportunities tend to be modest (although there have been one or two rather significant finds). That's okay by me as I have few assets to maintain: probably fewer than 10 ships, all frigates, perhaps 5 of which are fitted. Although I explore in more dangerous areas of space, I aim to "fly clever" (as we explorers like to say). Maintaining situational awareness is a big part of that and I can thank my time as a low sec pirate for honing those skills such that my ships are not much at risk and thus rarely need replacing.

Exploration is not the play-style for everyone. Many pilots will prefer a faster pace of life, more profitable pursuits, PvP-oriented activities, or grander objectives. New Eden is a more interesting place because of them. But explorers are on a different, more personal journey. We are the lone wolves among the stars, thinking for ourselves, charting our own course, marching to the beat of our own drum. We find our adventures, friends, and riches where we find them. As New Eden evolves around us, so will opportunities also continue to evolve for our kind to seek, discover, and profit on our own terms.

#cantstopthesignal
Want to know more about Signal Cartel? Click here.

ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM!

My brain cells have finally recovered from the crazy, intense weekend that ensued after the public launch of Signal Cartel last Friday evening (EST). I admit that I wasn't sure how our unusual corp credo would resonate with capsuleers. Prior to launch, I wondered if we'd even get 10 new members over the weekend.

Turns out...that credo resonated with a lot of folks. New member and famed explorer Katia Sae talked about how it resonated with her in her blog post "Can't stop the Signal". We have heard a similar response from new members and it is delightful! We now stand at 36 members, some extremely experienced and even well-known explorers and quite a few very new players. This is not a lot compared to the join rate of larger entities such as BRAVE, RvB, or EVE University. But it is a lot for a new corp that had 6 members at public launch and that is still in the process of getting all its ducks in a row in terms of policies, programs, resources, and so forth. So to say I am thrilled is a wee bit of an understatement!

At any given time from Friday through Sunday evening, Alliance chat was zooming by at the speed of a runaway train while I was in mentoring convos with rookies who had just joined, responding on Twitter, updating permissions on our corp's private subreddit, clarifying and adding corp bulletins and other information sources as the need to revealed itself, resolving various issues with Signal Cartel leadership, processing apps, personally welcoming new members...and on and on. But it wasn't just me doing all the work, so some shout-outs are in order.

First, a huge thanks to my two EvE-Scout partners, G8keeper and Johnny Splunk! Without their original vision, none of this would have happened. I am very grateful that they approached me about joining forces to make Signal Cartel a reality. Two nicer people you could not hope to meet or work with! Thanks to G8keeper for organizing and overseeing our ship replacement and exploration loot buy-back programs which I am sure will be well-used by members. And thanks to Johnny Splunk for the genius behind the EvE-Scout Web site, our Signal Cartel pages, the coding for our Application Form, and making requested feature changes on the fly to improve our recruiters' quality of life and clarify the requirements to apply. By the way, have you followed @eve_scout on Twitter yet?

A million thanks to our lead recruiters Helios Anduath and Ashoka Maurya for being on the ball the entire weekend fielding questions from prospects, processing apps, answering rookie questions in private convos, and more. A special thanks to Helios for somehow managing to have brain bandwidth to write a great instructional guide for members on consistently formatting corp bookmarks for wormholes in Thera.

A big shout-out and thank you to every single one of our new members for coming onboard to share our vision of an explorer's life in New Eden! Special thanks to all of our experienced players who so patiently answered questions and helped others in Alliance chat. It was a wonderful thing to observe the intelligent, civil, helpful discourse in that channel all weekend. We have somehow managed to attract an amazing number of knowledgeable, good-humored, and well-spoken people who are keen to actively contribute to logistics, mentoring, and more. What a foundation to begin with! Warms this old pirate's heart, it does!

Many of us in Signal Cartel who were engaged in handling the influx of new folks were as a result not out scouting signatures in Thera. A big thank you to our friends in Furtherance. and our affiliated EvE-Scout scouts who took up the slack and helped keep the sig data on EvE-Scout up to date.

And finally a huge shout-out to #tweetfleet for Tweets, reTweets, and sharing of information about Signal Cartel in your channels and on your blogs. It was seen and people responded, so many, many thanks for your support and positive encouragement.

Hopefully I've not missed anyone...if I have, call me out and I'll update my post!

Another Exciting Sandcastle

EvE is a sandbox and thus your experience in the game is what you make it. A lot of that has to do with the people you interact with, the friendships you make, and the stories you share. I've had the delightful experience of conceiving an idea and working to make it an in-game reality with Hellcats. And as an extension to that, getting elected to CSM5 by campaigning on a mainly "fix low sec" platform. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Draining work at times--which is why I took a couple of years off from the game after my CSM5 term (2010) ended. When I returned last year, I vowed to play casually--just wandering around with no particular agenda, enjoying the sights of New Eden and interaction with the community.

But I swear they put something in the sand in this sandbox. Something that makes it impossible NOT to want to grow ideas into realities.

Thus I find myself at the beginning of another exciting endeavor in affiliation with the fine folks at EvE-Scout ("We scout so you don't have to."). Soon after my arrival in Thera, I started scouting for them. We began talking about exploration as a career and what a fine thing it would be to create a home, a haven, for explorers who just want to wander between the stars on their own agenda.

Much talking later, Signal Cartel was born: a corp devoted to the highest ideals of exploration, nurturing to new players, and many other things besides that are practically foreign in New Eden culture.

We are, as they say, not your average EvE corp.

But I--a former pirate who adores PvP and believes that EvE should always remain deadly dangerous for the inattentive and unwise--am completely excited about what we hope and plan to do, even though it most decidedly has nothing to do with PvP.

Rather, the mission of Signal Cartel is to embrace and promote exploration as a career choice, to provide a haven and home for explorers, to help new players fall in love with New Eden through the lens of exploration, and to provide useful services to all of New Eden through our membership in the Eve-Scout Enclave alliance. All in a corp with a culture of neutrality, respectfulness, non-aggressive behavior, generosity of spirit, helpfulness, and friendliness to all. Such things are antithesis to many EvE corp cultures but we believe that there are a lot of players out there with an explorer's heart who will embrace just such a culture with enthusiasm. If you're one of them, we invite you to learn more and consider joining us.

And to those of you who say, "OMG where is Mynxee and what have you done with her?!", I say "I'm in the sandbox, building another exciting sandcastle!"

Recruitment Post on EvE Online Forums

Discoveries: City of God

While on a wander through Amarr space, I came across a beacon for City of God in Shastal so I went to take a look. I discovered a desolate and haunting testimony to unhinged megalomania, but the view from the ruined monument toward what is left of Caroline's Star and the nebula is beautiful.

There is much waiting to be discovered in New Eden.

What interesting things have you come across lately?

Eve Character Portraits

In real life, I'm an artist who specializes in watercolor pet portraits, mainly dogs. Like these, for example:

When I was in Stay Frosty and the Summer Frigate Smackdown was posted, I decided to offer a character portrait as a prize...there's not that much difference in painting dogs vs. people.They both involve the same things: accurate drawing and rendering, getting the values right, and so forth. Cervantes Marovinjun won the portrait prize. I was originally going to do an ink and watercolor sketch but decided to do a fully rendered watercolor portrait. Cerv was quite happy with the portrait and talked about how meaningful the portrait is to him because (like any of us who have characters we've nurtured for years) he's very attached to his character. Not surprisingly, I hear the same thing frequently from the pet owners when I deliver their pets' portraits.

I was musing about Cerv's portrait in my in-game channel (The Retreat Lounge) and wondering if there was any market for hand-painted character portraits. Niraia immediately commissioned me to paint hers! We agreed on a slight wardrobe adjustment to show off her *cough* assets a little better. I was really glad when she agreed on pink as it's my favorite color. And...another happy customer!

So, I guess this is a thing then. If you want your character's portrait painted (or to gift a portrait to someone else or purchase one as a prize for your event), click the Gallery page at the top of the blog for more info about this creative service. I'll add portraits there as I complete them. 

Crossing Zebras and Hellcats Reloaded

Just a short update on some cool things that have happened in the last week or two.

First, Dian Lung has launched a reboot of my old corp Hellcats under the name Hellcats Reloaded. I'm so happy to see her run with that and looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

Second, Xander Phoena of Crossing Zebras has asked me to write for them. The focus of my articles will be "EVEtrepreneurs"--those players who take the initiative to create or organize something for the community, whether it's a one-time or ongoing offering, whether it's large or small, new or old. My editor at CZ, Niden Sommer, suggested I write about Hellcats Reloaded for my debut article and provide a Hellcats retrospective as background. My first article "EVEtrepreneurs: Hellcats Reloaded" has been published and you can read it here. Please do leave comments on the CZ post and on Reddit.

As a follow-up, Rixx Javix has published an article about his experiences with women in Eve and how they shaped his rookie experience and perception of the game. I am hoping to feature as many women Eve players as possible in my EVEtrepreneur series of articles. But of course, every player who's doing something interesting, useful, or fun for the community is a potential subject and you should let me know about them!

Please send your suggestions to me via Evemail, or email (mynxeeofeve at gmail dot com), or find me on Skype (Mynxee). Thanks and fly safe (or dangerous, as you prefer)!

Homebase Thera

After finding an easy way into Thera thanks to EvE-Scout, I have spent several days wandering around the system looking at the sights and being entertained by the Local banter. It kind of reminds me of Amamake in the old days when that system was a brawling, chaotic lowsec Wild West kind of a place (it might still be actually, haven't been there in awhile). I love the nebula colors in Thera and exploring the mysterious ruins. Certainly makes one wonder what happened here (and whether the recent changes to and disappearance of Caroline's Star--leaving only an oddly symmetrically shaped glowing artifact--are somehow related to any of that).

After chatting with the EvE-Scout folks, it turns out scouting for them is is a natural fit with what I currently enjoy doing in-game. They have a great project underway: their growing network of scouts scan down signatures in Thera. Those sigs are put into Tripwire, which in turn feeds the Eve-Scout Web site. Scouts also aid people in system by providing intel about camped wormholes and stations among other things. If you'd like some help or eyes getting into or out of Thera, join the in-game channel EvE-Scout and ask for assistance. 

EvE-Scout has some exciting plans and ideas for expanding their project over time. I am thrilled to be involved with such a useful and community-minded effort in these early and formative days.

Anyway, because I enjoy the scouting there and because Thera provides opportunities to jump out and roam to so many other places, I'm going to make it my homebase for the foreseeable future. If you come to visit, say hi in Local!

My little Astero Pocket Rockets is my favorite ship to fly right now. Isn't she pretty? I never get tired of looking at her.