Until now, people had always said that solid state was the way to go and they saw some great improvements in load times of various things but because I was never able to actually sit behind a computer before and after one of the drives had been installed it was difficult to visualise in my head if it would be worth while.

Having installed the drive, which came in a nice heat sink thing so it could be fitted in the bay smoothly, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate onto the drive. One of the first weird things I noticed was that the windows installer was much faster, although I was using a DVD rather than USB stick as I had given my USB stick away to a friend who uses it more than my once a year for OS installs. (Need to buy a new one sometime.)

Windows installer does not quite work right though. The progress percentage for copying files for example stays at 0% and then jumps to 100%. Because SSD’s are silent, there is no Hard Disk Drive noise… This feels strange. I expect to hear the HDD so when I don’t hear anything, I actually have to bend under my desk and check the disk activity light. Windows 7 now boots up and shuts down faster though.

C:\ is a 60GB SSD
D:\ is my old OS partition
E:\ is a large storage HDD

Now I don’t want all my games installed on the SSD as I would quickly run out of space. I also don’t want my generic documents, music, pictures and movies on my SSD.

So the first step is to move the libraries in Windows 7 to the E:\ which is fine as I am the only user, I can Cut and Paste everything in C:\Users\Ross Stone\ into E:\ and Windows 7 knows to update the library settings so the default paths are in E:\.

Next is installing Steam and Origin (I hate Origin) onto the E:\ so that by default games from those online services install to the E:\. The issue is that Steam by default only installs games into its own directory in steamapps folder. So all Steam games have to run from E:\. If you install Steam to C:\ by mistake like I did, you can move but its a pain.

Origin on the other hand only allows you to install applications to one location. You can choose the location, but all your games installed from that point have to go there. Changing it before each install works, but its a pain and there is no means to move a game afterwards. So I set that to default to E:\ too.

Moving specific games to the SSD as needed

With around 40GB free on my SSD, I can choose a couple of games that I play the most and run them from the SSD so I see the biggest performance gains. To do this smoothly, you install all games to E:\ as per how Steam and Origin like, and then create a symbolic link after moving files.

Eve Online does not really need to run off an SSD so it can stay on the HDD.
Battlefield 3 is retarded and the game launches fresh for each game, it also takes minutes to load a level for multiplayer so SSD would be great here.

Step 1: I created a folder here C:\Symbolic
Step 2: Moved the E:\Origin\Battlefield 3\ folder to C:\Symbolic\Battlefield 3\
Step 3: Create a symbolic link in E:\Origin\ called Battlefield 3 that points to C:\Symbolic\Battlefield 3\

This requires you to open up command prompt as Administrator and type either of the below…

mklink /J “E:\Origin\Battlefield 3″ “C:\Symbolic\Battlefield 3″
mklink /D “E:\Origin\Battlefield 3″ “C:\Symbolic\Battlefield 3″

/J is used for directory junction.
/D is for directory symbolic link.

PC Gamer for example advised using /D in its SSD articles which is what I used. Steam forums advised of using /J though. I would imagine both work well enough for this.

Anyway, Origin will think its running Battlefield 3 off E:\ so run fine, but its actually running off C: sort of transparently so you get the performance boost of the SSD without having to reinstall games.

If I want to clear some room as I don’t play Battlefield 3 anymore, I can simply delete the link and copy the files back onto E:\ where they started.

Now its all setup its great though. Windows 7 is quick and Battlefield 3 actually loads into a game before the round has already started.

Unfortunately SSD’s are still expensive, but I can see the benifit of them and my mind is made up… My next computer will probably have an SSD, although hopefully they continue to drop in price over the next year or two.

£300 for a 256GB SSD is crazy considering all it does is improve loading times, not actual game performance. £70 for a 60GB SSD is justifiable but its quite restricted as most games are 10-20GB now and while Windows takes up 20GB.

All of that however is out of date and old news because as of today its now safe to say that both of those things have been achieved! Stone’s Wishing Well exists and anyone can fly to Y-MPWL and see it. While the Nyx also now exists albeit on a character and location that will remain undisclosed.

Lets start with the Supercarrier, basically it was purchased finally. It looks very shiny and I called it Flagship of Volition. Not sure I will use it any time soon but that’s not really the point of it for me, it was more the challenge of acquiring one. I use other characters more often.

As for the Outpost… That was much more work and required contribution from hundreds of people in the alliance. As of writing we actually have three outposts now. Thankfully we are lucky enough to have some very experienced pilots to cover the various aspects of the task. The work required is insane so its certainly an accomplishment.

We had our military arm of hundreds of people spending hours each day for a week over Christmas attacking and destroying all of the enemy infrastructure. Meanwhile our industrial arm was busy deploying and managing our own infrastructure. The whole process is horrifically convoluted, but fun.

As this is part of the alliances history now, I recorded the above pretty crappy video with no real content just as a means to save what we had achieved really.

This was until I remembered Dave on TeamSpeak saying that there result was Ultra High Quality. So I decided to create the following #firstworldproblems #skyrim internet meme image.

Its a hard life. :(

As usual, thanks to Luth Curmal for content, our unnamed fleet commanders for battlereports, unnamed players who took videos and screenshots of those battles and Gareth Barkwell for proof reading.

Newsletter can be downloaded in PDF format from the below link.

Link to Voice of VOLT 19 (1.9 MB)

Content Includes:

• Editorial Message and Introduction.
• Battle Reports for second half of August.
• Corp Introductions from MAX H, TRGSS, VC and GV.
• More Battle Reports for second half of August.
• Details of how Usurper. [STOLN] alliance suck at PvP and fail consistently.
• Even more Battle Reports for second half of August.
• Details about a really stupid Executive Outcomes pilot called Anat Tenner.
• Insight into our reformation.

Feedback welcome. Contributors for next quarter welcome.

The Volition Cult Forums Link: http://www.eve-volt.net/smf/index.php?topic=7528.0

After that, the next few I got from the much safer Amazon website from a company called DagaCanvas. Pictures below…

The first was £9.99 for all three sections, which I picked up during my time in the dangerous Kingswood. It actually fits the room quite nicely though although the theme is random.

The next two were from Amazon and cost £12 to £30 but they were themes that I have a direct interest in so worth while.

Next on my list of home improvements is a vacuum cleaner and new office chair I guess, although I also need some new kitchen things too. New technology will have to wait.

Still have a few things to sort out, such as updating my curriculum vitae or cleaning up all my historical posts to work with this new theme but things have been rather busy lately. It does not help that Deus Ex: Human Revolution got released and demands my attention, nor does it help that Minecraft 1.8 is due to be released in a few days to further demand more of my attention.

Main priority over the next few days is to finish off the Volition Cult’s public newsletter as that is due for release at the start of September, although that depends on how long its going to take for me to type up all the content I want to be added. Need to make a good first impression with it too.

As for the new website, feedback welcome.

This is one of the reasons I have been busy, although I am not going to take any credit as there are many many many other people in The Volition Cult who are doing far more to make sure everything is sorted.

I was a little nervous about this though, not because I don’t think VOLT will do well, as I know we will do well as we have always done well for ourselves. More because of two reasons…

Cloak and Dagger

First because our corporate command had to decide this course of action from player feedback without giving too much away. One of the awkward things is due to the nature of Eve, we have to be a little cloak and dagger about what we are doing to avoid leaks and try to establish what people want without asking them directly. I am certain that 99% of our members will be pleased with this news, but I always worry if they understand or get annoyed with us sometimes when we have to hold things back to avoid leaks.

The reason was because while we are leaving Fatal Ascension, we can not be 100% certain that there leadership will be decent and allow us enough time to extract member assets from the area safely.

This results in this terrible period of time where we know we are doing something, but we can’t inform our members fully because it might jeopardise there assets. Corporate command even considered to wait longer, until we finished a Nyx that was being built for me before we inform members and make the move…

Reavos Vishad > maybe, waiting for stone’s response to my mail before i build anything more :P
PBA lunax > yr call stone
PBA lunax > i would say pull it out
Agent Stone > I know it costs more, but I am not gonna risk 10Bil + Membership Morale as we have to have everyone wait for me. Its no brainer although hard to admit it.

That was a painful decision by the way. :(

Act of Spite

During the late evening of 14th August 2011, our CEO posted a message to Fatal Ascension about our intentions to leave once our logistics were complete. It ended with…

I want to thank you to letting us be part of Fatal Ascension Alliance and wish you the best of luck.

Nice enough, but it seems it was the right call for us to be cloak and dagger as twelve hours after we informed Fatal Ascension of our intentions to leave, we were removed from the alliance. It seems Zagdul (Leader of Fatal Ascension) was not trustworthy and decided to try and trap our member assets in spite?

I don’t think other leadership in Fatal Ascension felt the same way as we got on well with some of them but in any case… Phew. Lucky we got everyone’s assets out in advance, but its a shame our fears were valid.

Meeting Expectations

Second reason I am nervous though was because we have these corporations joining us that will no doubt have expectations and I can’t help but worry if we will meet all of those expectations. Again I am confident we most certainly will, but I guess its human nature to wonder what if.

TRGSS, MAX H and GV have some very good players, so as VC we want to impress them, but you never fully know what there experiences are or if we can do enough to make them proud to fly with us like we will hopefully be proud to fly with them.

Thankfully we have some good fleet commanders, as do the other corporations. As we are all on the same page in terms of objectives it should be great. We learned a long time ago that our fleet commanders are very important assets as they are on the ground running fun things for everyone and often know how members feel, so as long as we have a good fleet command team we can’t really go wrong.

Its exciting though, as its quite rare to see so many people from different backgrounds work so well together behind the scenes. Expanding the community is always good and not having to stress about the game as much because we are not focusing on sovereignty will be a nice change as null sec politics tends to be rather back stabby when it involves sovereignty or moons under current game mechanics.

In any case, I have now committed to releasing a quarterly newsletter with the above poster, so I have some editorial work to do and that will be my small contribution for the alliance.

The key thing to remember here is that Eve Online is a game and that players pay a subscription to have fun and interact with a community. It’s understood that you have to do some work to achieve something, just as in real life, but organisations regularly push their members too far or lose focus on balance.

Long ago I had experienced a few times what it’s like to be leading an alliance and lose focus of the member base, trying to figure out how to maintain control of space, making decisions based at an alliance level with less thought for how the member at the bottom of the chain may be feeling.

You start to view campaigns in terms of numbers because it’s easier to comprehend, but as a result forgetting that each one of those numbers is a human doing a boring task at your request. Its only when you become a grunt again that you see the mistakes of such.

Balance

Balance is the key, as you have to ensure that there is always a fair balance for members between the things players enjoy doing and things they don’t enjoy but are necessary for the organisation.

Players enjoy good fights, perhaps a close fight that could have gone both ways but where one party made a good call and tipped the balance their way, or perhaps a good fight where you lost but it was still fun.

Problems occur when we have to participate in extended sovereignty warfare which involves either:

1. “Getting the larger blob” – Forming up such a large fleet the enemy can’t hope to win so does not fight, thus you hold the field. Good because the alliance can then secure an area, but boring because you and hundreds of others have to spend hours in fleet doing nothing.
2. “Shooting infrastructure” – Spending a few hours shooting static objects that don’t shoot back. These objects count towards sovereignty and get spammed so you have to waste weeks shooting them.

Now and again you might get an epic fight between hundreds of players but it’s so rare and so laggy that many members see these types of operations negatively because the fun-to-time ratio is not balanced well.

As leadership, you have to ask players to do this from time to time but if you do it too much without allowing players to do something enjoyable, the members will question if the organisation really has the members best interests at heart and eventually leave to other organisations where the balance of fun and work is more favourable.

Unfortunately many leaders fail to see this happening in time or know how to combat the problem when they encounter it.

Responsibility

There is often debate as to what a leader’s responsibility is in Eve Online. Because its a computer game and people play for fun, the question of what leadership needs to do for it’s members vary from perspective.

Goggles Deudigren actually made some good points with this. Relatively new to our corporation and Eve Online, he basically made points that were from a fresh mind, so honest and with no bias.

“I am here this side of the river and everybody else is on the other side doing tons of stuff, and I am frustrated trying to find a way across.”

This was in response to alliance leadership demanding people to join an operation, but failing to investigate and solve why some people were not.

Organisations should be more responsible for their set campaigns, which includes being responsible for logistical matters. Very rarely is the fault of not attending going to be with an individual player if you’re asking them to do something that’s not enjoyable far from home.

Alliance leadership will on occasion make the argument that they should not have to hold the player’s hand all the time, which is a fair point but it’s a bit naive.

If you want a player to spend four hours shooting a control tower for example, which is boring… You have to make it as easy as possible for that player because they are playing the game for fun. As soon as they encounter an issue, they will be reminded to think about if it’s really worth their time to look for a solution.

As for leadership complaining, acting hostile or aggressive to the members. It’s almost always the wrong path to take and in most cases a quick way to alienate your own members. Why so many leaders make this mistake and send messages to the entire community complaining because their members don’t want to do something that’s not fun is beyond me. Being negative is bad propaganda.

The next point was in response to Volition Cult leadership saying that its their job to ensure people have fun. If we direct the organisation down a path that is not fun for members, we need to address it.

“I want it to be clear that it is not anybodies responsibility to make the game enjoyable for me.”

I can understand that people should always be responsible for themselves, and that if your going to play a computer game, it’s your responsibility to have fun in that game and if you’re not, move on.

However from the leadership perspective, it is our responsibility to make sure our members have fun because our organisations main strength is its members (not technetium moons), if they move to other corporations or games then we lose strength as an organisation so it’s in our interest to have our members interests in mind all the time.

If that means letting some corporate assets burn or losing control of something so you’re burnt out players can take a break or do something fun then so be it, in the long term… Those members, those friends even, will pay off more.

Leadership should remember their priorities, because if they are right you can end up with a large persistent community that survives during the good times and bad times because the members are loyal. Get it wrong and at the first sign of trouble, people will look for greener pastures.

During June we left Mostly Harmless as Volition Cult was fed up of the poor leadership and lack of understand for the members on the front line. Sitting in a POS for hours waiting for nothing to happen for whatever reason is not fun and as our members play the game to have fun, an alliance can’t ask us to keep doing something not fun without allowing us to have fun from time to time to make the whole thing worth while.

The issue was that Leadership only saw things from the top, failing to appreciate why there own members play the game or realising there goal is not to farm technetium moons but to ensure there members have fun. So we moved to Fatal Ascension.

Towards the start of July 2011, Fatal Ascension was asked to assist Goonswarm defend VFK-IV so Volition Cult as members of Fatal Ascension having recently moved south now had to move back north to assist.

As the alliance did not run any convoys our own fleet commanders started running convoys regularly to get us into the system. During the large invasion attempt by the enemy, when numbers mattered most, Volition Cult accounted for a huge chunk of Fatal Ascension’s and over all everything was great so having done the boring bit, we were all set to get back south and have some well deserved fun again.

Avathar Dagor of Clan Shadow Wolf was even kind enough to say “My other concern is for -VC-.. without these guys the Deklein deployment would have been nowhere near as successful.. they ran trains from fountain to VFK constantly.. their FC’s are hands down some of the best we have and the best I have ever flown with.” which was nice.

Zagdul who leads Fatal Ascension negotiated for us to take Fade. Unfortunately putting the needs of an alliance over the needs of players as Fade was good income at an alliance level, but required lots of boring stuff from players. As a reward for helping defend VFK-IV and incentive he agreed on the 20th July that Volition Cult could manage the FIO1-8 outpost when we captured it.

Now PBA lunax who is the CEO of Volition Cult made a promise in 2007 that if Volition Cult ever had a station it would be named after me. From memory this was because around 2007 roughly I was doing loads of work for Volition Cult so he made this promise jokingly.

Back in 2011, with so much having happened, even with me having left and then returned and now being a little inactive PBA lunax still remembered his passing comment in 2007 and asked me what I wanted it to be called.

We agreed it would have been called Stone’s Wishing Well as a shout out to our heritage in 2006. Wishing Well is the name of a pub in Longwell Green where directors from ASSTI and BHTM met and agreed to go it alone, later getting PBA in too which led to the formation of The Volition Cult alliance by the three corporations.

Furthermore, Reavos Vishad and a few other Industry people had been working hard on constructing a Nyx Supercarrier for me. Something that I have personally been working towards for many years to the point that its almost becoming a running joke within the community that I will always be saving for a Nyx.

This is a ridiculous amount of work on the industry peoples part, but they continued on as unsung heroes behind the scenes. Unfortunately as we may be moving soon, we don’t have the time to risk building the Nyx in a unstable environment so it was cancelled for a second time.

To add insult to injury, Zagdul had planned to reverse his decision about the station. Not directly either, instead he was contacting random members in the south and complaining that they should be in the north and telling those players that we would not be managing FIO1-8 outpost which caused quite a stir in our corp.

Seeing only numbers, his reasoning was that we were not doing enough. He failed to appreciate the human side and that our moving south (to join FA), then north (to defend VFK), then south (because VFK was safe), then north (to take Fade) made people pretty phased and want a break.

As we are not getting anything out of Fade and corp morale is now an issue because the alliance keeps asking too much without allowing us to have fun, you have to wonder why we bother. Although I appreciate that while I may now have personal reservations about Zagdul, the rest of the corporation may not and we are still members of Fatal Ascension so I can’t be too damning.

All things considered, PBA lunax has come off well from this, as he is willing to keep an almost forgotten promise from a very long time ago. Good to know our CEO is a man of his word.

One of the cool things was that I had registered with Google+ and installed the app on my phone which has a feature called Instant Upload. When I got hope, all the photos I had taken were already backed up on my Google Account ready to be shared.

Click here for photos from Liverpool Meetup

This years meetup went well though and we had people flying over from various places in the world for the weekend which is always great. Can’t wait for the next meetup though, hopefully we can do one in Belgium again? *hint hint*

Those who wonder what Google+ is… Its like Facebook, but better. I will probably stop using my Facebook account soon as the crap interface and navigation annoys me.