Choosing a side

Well that happened much faster than I anticipated.

I'm in!

I've applied to join the war between the Gallente Federation and the Caldari State, (fighting for the Gallente) and I have been accepted. Even to me this sounds like an odd choice, but I have my reasons :)

First and foremost, I think it's safe to say the Minmatar/Amarrian war is being absolutely dominated by the Minmatar (according to the Amarr themselves, various blogs and forum posts). My FW alt was enlisted with the Amarrians on my original "test the waters" foray, and my god were the Amarrians completely out of morale. Here's the basic premise from several conversations in Amarrian Militia Chat.

Me: So guys, you reckon we can bounce back :) ?
FW Guy 1: Sure, right into a brick wall of f*ggot frigate plexers and massive SFI blobs.
Me: Damn, is it really that bad?
FW Guy 2: LOL it's worse
FW Guy 1: Ya 
FW Guy 2: We take a system, and the Minnies just make billions crushing us and taking it back

So obviously I didn't want to join such a cesspool of despair (also there's a difference between fighting as the underdog and downright stupidity), but at the same time I didn't want to add to the problem and join the clearly winning Minmatar. So instead I looked at the Caldari/Gallente war, which I'd heard almost nothing about in comparison to the Minmatar/Amarrian war, except the fight was pretty even on both sides. My initial impulse was to join the Caldari, purely because they're allied with the Amarrians, and I wanted to try and help their lost cause in some way, but I couldn't find any decently sized Caldari FW corp that I liked the look of and I met the requirements for.

It's cool, we love each other really

So then I started looking at Gallente FW corps, of which there were a much wider collection. I quickly warmed to the corporation "Noob Mercs", part of the "Monkeys with Guns" Alliance. I met all the requirements, except one. A pretty major one.

You must have either positive or 0.0 standings with the Gallente Federation to join



And despite my initial thoughts, this isn't some role-playing thing, this is an actual FW mechanic that literally ties the hands of the corps involved. The average standings of  all the corp's members determines the corp's overall standing to the Gallente Federation, and if this average drops below (I believe) 0.0, the corporation in question gets kicked out of FW. Which obviously they don't want to happen, and the easiest way of avoiding this is making sure all members have positive standings.

Now, that's totally fair by my reckoning, but the problem was that my Gallente standings are absolutely horrific, due to spending my early EVE "career" running missions for the Amarr Empire, missions which often included me shooting the crap out of Gallente NPCs.

Leaving me with a "raw" standing of almost -5.24 with the Gallente Federation. Ouch.

Regardless, I joined the corp's public channel and started grinding Gallente Level 1 missions, thinking this would fix my problems (not quite realising this would take me forever and a day to fix my standings through these missions). Through the public channel however, I started chatting with the members (and CEO) of another corp within the alliance, "Rabid Ninja Space Monkey Inc.", and they informed me that running missions like I was would take me eons to grind the required standing. Instead they reccomended FW missions, which gave huge standings rewards in comparison.

I was confused for a minute or so. How could I run FW missions without being in FW? Then the CEO, Mirana Niranne informed me that he would be perfectly willing to take me onboard in his corporation, since his Gallente standings were sky-high, and would average out mine. The only requirements placed on me were that I then raised my Gallente standings (for when the next pilot with godawful standings came along) and proved that I wasn't a total retard when piloting Interceptors as fast tackle in a gang (which appears to be my new job). I quickly agreed to these terms, and had an impromtu interview over TS, where Mirana gave me a crash-course in FW mechanics and explained the basics of what I needed to know in order to not die horrifically. I was then accepted into the corp, and told to send an application when I was ready.

So now I'm part of Rabid Ninja Space Monkey Inc, fighting for the Gallente Federation. I've been directed to our staging system in the Black Rise region, and I spent most of this evening shuffling ships around, and making freighter runs back and forth. Hopefully within a few days I'll be on the frontline, kicking pods and pewing Drakes ;)

Fly safe!