Cyphon got us off the ground and on to Thiarer to join the alliance. Hlidskjalf saw the successful launch, maintenance, and defense of the POS and saw us to Hakeri. We once again find the corporation in new space with new goals and challenges. From a few miners working to complete small ship orders to a pack of blood-thirsty war dogs, Novus Aevum has taken a long time to evolve into the thing it is now. All we wanted in the beginning was to be left alone so we could make a little isk in our corner of the universe. However, easy targets find themselves under fire on a regular basis and we suffered from seemingly constant wardecs. I still can hear Torahna’s voice saying “AGAIN?!” when I called him to let him know we were about to go to war (again). War forced us to fight and we discovered that you don’t need superior firepower to win a war, you just need disciplined pilots, reliable intel, and plenty of skill. The wars at the end of the NAWIN era brought mercenaries who thought they were about to pick on a bunch of easy targets. Instead, we watched them crawl away after we punched a hole in their fleet. We learned to fight and the wars have gone away for now. Turns out we aren’t such easy targets anymore.
Much to my surprise, we have become a PvP corporation. Even the pilots I would have sworn would stay away from player engagements have brought ships out to our ops, ready to lose them. We’ve shown our new pilots you can play a part in a fleet with minimal skills if you’re willing to closely follow orders. Our wormhole ops have been incredibly successful and have proven to be the most effective means of training new pilots in PvP combat. However, I strongly feel we’ve got all the experience that is worth gaining from wormhole PvP for now. We have mastered the art of forming a plan and executing it flawlessly—our nearly non-existent losses in W-space but huge number of kills can attest to that. In these ambushes, we strike at players who are not ready to engage us and quickly gain the upper-hand as they panic to figure out what to do. This makes the fight very easy for us (and thus safe for our newer pilots). What this style of fighting does not do is force us to improve our actual combat skills. It might sound odd when I say this but understand there is some logic behind it:
I want us to lose more ships.
Nothing super expensive, of course, but I want to see us flying into fights that do not favor our survival. Why? When the odds are against you, it will force you to fight with air-tight tactics. If we start losing ships (in an intelligent way), we’re bound to improve the skills required to fight other players. Now, I don’t want to lose ships just for the sake of losing ships but instead I hope pilots will sacrifice their ships to learn something about Eve PvP or just to improve their tactics. Every time you make a mistake, you’ll learn something new and you’ll get better. That’s what I want to start seeing from our pilots. Screw the killboard efficiency. If you aren’t losing ships, what are you learning?
A second advantage to this plan is it will teach people that losing ships is not at all a big deal in Eve. It happens—just buy a new one. To exploit this particular advantage, I want to occasionally hold PvP ops where we fly cheap T1 frigates under the condition that you cannot return home until you lose that ship—one way or another. If you want to ditch the op early, self-destruct or get yourself killed. I don’t encourage pilots to fly into 30 man gatecamps solo and hope to learn something from it (because you’re just going to get annihilated and that’s it). Regardless, I still think this kind of op would help us form the mindset we’ll need to advance in PvP.
Lastly, I want to remind everyone that we have the highest of expectations in pilot behavior. We’re perfectly okay with you making a mistake and costing us a loss if you learn something from it. We’re not okay with you smacktalking in local and making us look childish. If you kill someone, congratulate them for putting up a good fight. If you lose, let them know they did a good job. If they bait you with smacktalk in local, ignore it and respond with something more mature or just say nothing at all. Smacktalk only works if you take the bait. If you remain mature, I can tell you from the wealth of experience I have with smack, local will turn on them and they WILL look stupid.
Just remember: challenge yourself and don’t worry about your losses. Contrary to popular belief, this is just a game.
Fly smart,
-Shamshire
- A final message from Hlidskjalf
I’d been CEO now for, what is it, a year?! Leadership can mean so many different things, and there are ways to go about it. Some would impose their will upon a group, bend it to their way and theirs alone. Others diverge, spread the power and become democratic. During my tenure, I always understood the one fundamental reason that people come to EVE Online. They enjoy the game, it’s a game, we are here to have fun. If a game is not fun, it is not a game. If a group within a game isn’t fun, it is not a fun group. And so I let people play the game, never tell them what to do, only offer what can be done. Novus Aevum is now at that stage where it is fun to play, to hunt people, get into fights and not be afraid about the consequences. As Shamshire said, it’s less about sitting in our corner of space, more about taking a pro-active role (such as ganking macro miners in our home systems, very popular with the locals) and so from here, things will pick up. If you want a memorial to our defensive ways, you need look no further than the Einherjar II tower.
I’ve had the distinct pleasure of watching people grow whilst in the corporation, and a year is a long time. We’ve come a long way, watched our numbers shrink as we cast away the old, and now grow with new life and aspiring pilots. It’s made me proud to be a part of the game, and while I am leaving for now, I could well be back. And I know the corporation is in safe hands with Shamshire. The spy-master (he taught me how to be a spy) should have been British tbh, you should have heard us on Vent… Novus Aevum is in your hands, gentlemen. To those that have joined us, and will join us, you join a corporation with arguably the best attitude in all of New Eden, enjoy the wonderful universe of New Eden and enjoy your stay with us. 
Hope to be back soon. Until then, stay safe… but not too safe. 
- Hlidskjalf / Laevateinn
NOAV CEO – 2008-2009