Just out for a week - taking in the beautiful Emerald Isle for a week. Peace to everyone, have set some long skill and the corp will be managed expertly by z0de and Ard. Ronin and Silvestrys occasionally have a look in too.Back around the 26th August.
However, I wish to delight everyone's senses by showing you the latest update to our ransom board available here. The interface is clean and easy to look at though the work is still in progress. Currently, we've made just under 500million isk in ransoms and August is only 50% complete! Happy San, the designed of the ransom board, is leading the way with nine ransoms.
Of course, if you click on one of the ransoms, it drills down to show you exactly which pilots
were involved. Here's an example of a ransom for Ulysses Meta in his Pilgrim. Happy and Bandy (ex-Bastard x2) managed to net a 100million isk ransom. It took some patience by Bandy and Happy to track Ulysses down as he is a tricky customer and wily. So much satisfaction was had when he was finally pointed.Want more information? Click on the 'Stats' link and it jumps you to a more detailed breakdown for the month of August 2009. Like I said, it has been a good month so far, lucrative for those involved in The Bastards. A total of 13 ransoms, with an average of 36.57million isk paid for release. Since we derive much of our income from ransoms, it is a point of honour and honesty that we keep our word and let people go if they pay promptly. Our ransom demands are perfectly reasonable.
Now the all-time stats, makes for some very interesting reading with our previous CEO (RoninData) leading the way with an all-time high of 46 ransoms and he is, not surprisingly, the all-time isk earner with 1.46Billion isk earned through ransoms. The biggest single ransom we ever hard was 1billion (x2); I think that was a freighter for one and a mistake by the other?
Anyway, I ask my readers (all three of you) to check out and use the board. We need feedback as it is an active project. Areas we are working on include:
1. A one-page public ransom policy. For the benefit of the public and will deal with how we do it, what we expect from people and what happens if we break said ransom. Basically, it will boil down to:
All bastards must honour ransoms, if they don't they are kicked from corp. The ransom conditions should be confirmed before isk changes hands. If there is a problem evemail the ceo or a director.
Click here for a list of successful ransoms (links to ransom board)
Click here for more details.
3. There is no intention to release this board out in it's current form to the New Eden population, after all, The Bastards hold IPR on this and we want to give ourselves something unique to our organisation in order to distinquish ourselves from amongst the plethora of bigger and more (in)famous groups like VETO, The Tuskers, Python Cartel (MK2) to name three. More importantly, we're keen to get this board just right before we even consider making it available to others as a service, so people please bear with us. To get this right, we need comments so send them in via evemail (to Flashfresh of Happy San), or comment on this blog. There is a shared ransonboard resource run by The Python Cartel; it's a free beta and well worth a look if you want something right now.
4. Same goes for our loot programme; I will put more details about how it works and what one gets out of it at a later date but the programme is still not ready (if ever) to be shared out to anyone at this moment in time. Once again, The Bastards own the IPR on it and we're keen to maintain the organisations unique selling points. Once again, we're keen to get it right, indeed, get it perfect before we consider anything more widespread.
5. On the theme of isk earned through piracy, I blogged about if too much isk was a problem to piracy and the comments I recieved were interesting. At the risk of linking my older posts to new one (an easy way to recycle content!) I wanted to publish something that Raelyf posted. Rather than summarise it, I will repost verbatim:
Raelyf said:
I think you're absolutely right Flash. I've come to a point in my life where free time is at a much higher premium than money, and I've considered going the GTC route. It makes sense - I could stop worrying about what I fly and the isk I might lose and just enjoy what play time I can get. Still, I haven't because even though it would grant me more freedom, I think it would take the fun and feeling of risk out of piracy.. losses would become meaningless, and it would cheapen the excitement of ransoms and loot.
When I started piracy last December, I had my vaga, 50m isk and only about half a clue. The vaga quickly died, of course, and I've since spent the last 7 or 8 months building up my hangar and my wallet. Piracy is my exclusive source of income, and I now have a respectable hanger including hundreds of frigs, dozens of cruisers, a handful of battlecruisers and BS, 5 or 6 t2 frigs and a few t2 cruisers. I have fittings for everything, and hundreds of spare t2 mods since I never sell anything I collect solo. My wallet is up to 450m. It's been the hardest isk I've ever made, but the most fun, and I'm PROUD of what I've accomplished.**I added the emphasis myself.
Still, while losses aren't so troubling I still cringe when I lose even a t2 fitted rifter. It's not that significant, but I still have goals from which I'm a long way from achieving - snakes, a carrier, blackops, marauder, a second line of racial t2 cruisers, ect. There's plenty of room to grow and plenty of motivation for aggressively pursuing ransoms - I won't cheapen what I've accomplished and what I've set out to do by buying a shortcut through it all.
@BillyBob - Piracy is absolutely viable! My own experiences and those of my corp mates, like Flash, have proven that beyond doubt. It is, however, quite possibly the most difficult way of earning a living. Unlike most professions, like mining, mission running or 0.0 ratting, isk/hour in piracy is completely dependent on pilot skill and, perhaps more importantly, Motivation. It takes dedication, commitment and, most of all, team work to make piracy viable.
For piracy, it's something like isk/hr = motivation * pilot skill + Luck
I am very confident that with our ransom board, and continous improvement in our loot handling and sales; that we can show New Eden's population that piracy is viable, not as a side-job but as a full time career.
Anyway, a long ramble and I need to pack for Ireland. I can't wait.
See you all later.
FF
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