Let me send out another big thank you to those dedicated folks running the fleet access service like NoP.
Also, let's ignore the OP's nonsense.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I see no problem in a tier 5 fleet, making another fleet, and funneling resources into that one, while having a another person lead it, whether, you met them and formed an alliance or picked from a lower rank to, lead it. Thats what the Infinite Nexus is going to do. If your in a tight nit group this wont be a problem. Thats the price of casualness, and good leadership based around that. Yah we didn't get to tier 5 in 18 months, it took us 20-22 months.
We got friends all over the game in various fleets, where we got gear from we wanted as a group, and this did not kill our fleet as we achieved t5/3/3/3 based on the idea we play together but dont "make it a job" to do. We are still as active as we ever were, considering it is summertime, and we are mostly adults and have real lives too. Kids are on vacation from school so those people who are in it, that normally dont talk, and will be back i say with-in a month or so.
We hit tier 5 two months ago, on our starbase, then we hit tier 5 science, and that is on cooldown, and then tier 5 shipyard will be set and on cooldown ASAP immediatly following tier 5 science.
If you want to know how a small fleet, can get to tier 5 if your "not going to make it a job", get to know a tier 5 fleet. Plenty of nice people in a some what large active tier 5 fleet, would swap fleets with an ALT no problem to contribute. If a person don't know how to do that your not paying attention.
What you do there is make a channel so everyone can still play together, not giving a hoot what fleet they are in, as long as they are making fleet credits, and play together.
You do that, and you will have people gravitate around you, good people and great players. If a large group of players falls apart that normally means someone was just plainly being a Jerkface Mcspitzak, and ripped something off, the entire group couldn't get back or were being overly paranoid and delusional. Mainly the entire fleet, which if you have two people with two toons, at RANK 7 that can work together like my fellow leader in my fleet have, and it can never be ripped off from anybody. EVER. Unless they don't log in for at least 8 weeks. Then obviously something happened, and leadership SHOULD pass.
Its up to the leaders to provide the atmosphere to keep those people together, beyond what the game naturally provides.
My plan, personally, is to start utilizing the foundry now, and only create stories in the foundry i will "advertise" to my fleet members. Some are gonna go strait to learning PVP. Some are going to concentrate on crafting... via having to do the PVE ques. Which ARE fun, when YOU want to do them.
The way I personally look at it is, i helped, and created this fleet so it can help the members, and people we play with, no matter what fleet they are in. You gravitate hardcore players, and casual players alike, with a positive attitude. You don't let Negative TRIBBLE, affect, or "dominate" your fleet.
Thats the fleet killer.... Negative B.S. people don't want to deal with, whether its a rascist remark, or biggotry, or huge blown out of proportion, disagreements. The other fleet Killer? Poor Leadership, and by poor i mean, those who would let it flood the entire conversation the fleet is having, and not have the knowledge how to kill it QUICK or let it affect the group, and be done with it, fairly, and responsibly if need be.
it is after all only a game, people will come, people will go, yer buddy bob you know on teamspeak, or Ventrillo or whatever you use, will DIE one day, and the chance HE DIES tomorrow is just as probable he dies the next day as an example.... The best thing to do is, ask your fleet members, how there day is going when you log in..... play the game, B.S, play the game some more, and then say good night or ill see you later when you log out, and i feel people take all this to seriously, to forget to do that sometimes.
Any fleet that has not made tier 5 and has been around for as long as i have, has poor leadership. It takes 2 people, to solo a starbase, with an average game time of someone who has a job and a life, if they fill all projects everyday they log in, two years to do. Two hardcore bro's with wallets? Can get it done basically in 16-18 months.
People know that too, thats why they go out and try and "ally" with a tier 5 fleet. Because, decent people would like there fleet credits to go somewhere, instead of into a provision project you already have 2,000,000 of and will never use.
To sit here and blame it on the ability to help another fleet out, is to sit here and sound like you have a problem keeping your members, because yer a general jerk, and demand you want things done TODAY, or you have some form of "fleet bank donation" charge or some TRIBBLE people don't want to pay, because simply, its a jerk thing to do.
Any fleet leader should keep in mind this FACT: Your Fleet Members don't "work" for you, You "work" for them.
Give them oppurtunity to shine, give them a story to role play with, Give them a good fleet to practice PVP with, and if they don't do it well together, make sure your "PVP allies" are willing to play with and share some knowledge....
Give them more then one fleet to play with, in, and be a part of, then just one. Give them something to gravitate around, and be a part of. Give them and idea and a purpose to play together, beyond fricken contributing to a starbase. You are the Sun, and the planets around you, are your fleet members. Without the warmth of the sun, your planets will die, or go rogue..... your planets don't need to do anything, but provide life, to feel that warmth.
A good fleet leader, don't judge his fleet by the number of people he has in it, but by the amount of "warmth" he feels from logging in every day from the people he plays with you know. If people get cold, and dread even talking to you, something is going on, and it is YOUR problem, not theirs.
A good fleet leader also needs to be able to tell people when they are doing something wrong, and not embaress them when they do. And be willing to learn if they don't know something themselves, and not act liek they know something when they don't.
You CANNOT, create friction between members, you always need to be the "neutral" player at the top rank, no matter what.
And never EVER EVER steal from, or make a profit, "from" your members. thats the most Douche bag move any and all guild members, fleet members, or group leaders, in any game can do.
Like i said, to blame it on free gear, is a stupid thing to do. You failed, as a leader, oh well, pick yerself up, find another game to play, ( because you will ) and try it again. one day you will learn its you, not your members, that are the problem, if you continue to have problems in other games.
Fleets will always be an issue. Fleet shared holdings moreso.
I'm pretty new to ST:O, but played many MMOs before and a 7 year vet of Eve Online. I've seen it all.
I'm not sure that there is an easy way. If you let any new recruits have access, then you'll eventually be scammed. If you don't then new recruits will be loath to trust you and donate til they can use the bank.
You can interview every recruit, they can lie
You can ask for references... but that's about as useful as rl jobs... they WILL lie
Its an exercise in trust.
The best way I have found is a bank vault that recruits can access
and another that is available after they prove themselves... with the truly awesome gear in it.
But in the end, until some MMO gives the ability to make a "deposit in lieu" then we're all at risk...
Say, you need to make a 100,000 EC to join... if you're thrown out within a month, then the balance is deducted from the deposit... Perhaps, if you steal, allow the fleet to put a bounty on you, or something... it's not like evidence is an issue when all transactions are tracked.
ROI on dil needs to be at least three to four times higher than it is now (3+ marks per Dil) - because right now it's not worth it to donate to my fleet. Every time a project comes up, the marks get filled instantly - their ROI is worth the grind.
White doffs - bad implementation; most people are stuffed full of blue/purple doffs and simply don't have room for a raft of whites (with only one type being used for a given project, meaning all other types clutter up the Doff roster). EZ fix - either open up the white doffs for projects to 'any', and give much higher FMs for submitting green or even blue doffs (1 green equaling two white, one blue two green, ect) of the specified type.
Commodities - making EC in this game is the worst grind of any game I've ever run across, so it's about as pointless dumping commodities into projects as Dil.
The sink is too deep, and no one is willing to TRIBBLE away their grind to it without much MUCH better rewards.
Fleet's also aren't really explained very well. As a noob to the STO games (I joined maybe a week ago) I was invited to a fleet, and have no idea what to do with it, or what my purpose in it is. The only difference I can tell is I now occasionally have someone speaking russian into my headphones that I didn't have before.
As a fleet leader of a soon-to-be Tier IV fleet (upgrade in progress as I write this), I believe I can safely say that the problem is not with the ability to get an invite to other fleet's holdings to get high end gear, I've done this several times, and many of my fleet members have as well.
I suspect the problem with the OP's fleet is that he/she has recruited members who only contribute beause they want gear/ships for themselves and are uninterested in seeing the fleet progress, this is not the fault of STO or the developers, but rather with the people recruited in his/her fleet.
What the OP needs is to recruit members who actually contribute because they want to be part of a high tier fleet, which is admittedly hard to accomplish, as even I have several members who only contribute to get fleet credits for gear.
Getting good people in a fleet is the hardest part of making a fleet, I got lucky when I made my fleet, and I suspect the OP wasn't as fortunate...
Sorry if I doubt your story. It just doesn't pass the logic test. I'm guessing you are one of the sellers.
Why would your members donate million upon millions of dil to a starbase that has zero value? Answer: They wouldn't, no matter your magical "get them to see the value" bull****.
Nice try.
And BTW I've been at it for two years.
We're a small fleet, and have maxed all our holdings as well even while many of use utilized other fleets to get the gear we wanted. So yeah, he's right on the money.
Fulfilling your fleets capabilities comes from having a good exec. Good leadership generates fleet activity, pure and simple.
In all honesty though the fleet is a secondary build priority these days. I can get better gear through other sources including crafting; rep gear for the most part is better than fleet (the exception being elite cores and tac consoles); the best ships are no longer fleet ships.
If you don't care about the people in your fleet or the community in any way, what you say is true. If you treat it as a mathematical formula devoid of any emotion or personal investment, then yes, it's all about the slash-and-burn tactics of the fleet commander. As long as you churn through hundreds of random newbies that join the fleet, dump donations, realize there's nothing personal about the fleet and nothing to keep them there, and then leave, you'll be just like a CEO of a company who doesn't care about employee turnover as long as he gets his golden parachute.
However, when you factor in actually caring about developing a community or a team of friends based around a specific theme or idea, you don't just take the random newbies to drain them and dump them.
I several tiny fleets. One is me and my son and maybe sorta kinda a guy I used to work with and his brother (neither of which has logged on in a year). A second fleet was a novelty fleet I started early on with some folks that dies and undies a few times a year, it's undead right now because of the anniversary event and people logging their alts on to get the zombie ship. And of course the standard, one each, rickety Klingon fleet. The novelty fleet is the highest progressed one. Tier II with Tier III queued waiting for a hundred or so more doffs for the chipper. Tier I holdings. All 3 of these fleets probably would have been disbanded years ago if it wasn't for gaining access to Tier V equipment from other fleets.
I like my fleetmates, even though they are all, every last one of them, a bunch of flakes. I'm glad we are in fleets together. When they do show up online we have a ball. I would hate to disband any of the fleets, so thanks to all those Tier V folks who give us access to the good stuff and let us limp along our merry way.
Comments
Also, let's ignore the OP's nonsense.
- Judge Aaron Satie
But you can choose to stay or go.
ANYONE can get fleet gear now through the NoP channel as already stated.
There are plenty of decent fleets out there that routinely open up for new members.
But at the end of the day, if you don't like where you are, move.
We got friends all over the game in various fleets, where we got gear from we wanted as a group, and this did not kill our fleet as we achieved t5/3/3/3 based on the idea we play together but dont "make it a job" to do. We are still as active as we ever were, considering it is summertime, and we are mostly adults and have real lives too. Kids are on vacation from school so those people who are in it, that normally dont talk, and will be back i say with-in a month or so.
We hit tier 5 two months ago, on our starbase, then we hit tier 5 science, and that is on cooldown, and then tier 5 shipyard will be set and on cooldown ASAP immediatly following tier 5 science.
If you want to know how a small fleet, can get to tier 5 if your "not going to make it a job", get to know a tier 5 fleet. Plenty of nice people in a some what large active tier 5 fleet, would swap fleets with an ALT no problem to contribute. If a person don't know how to do that your not paying attention.
What you do there is make a channel so everyone can still play together, not giving a hoot what fleet they are in, as long as they are making fleet credits, and play together.
You do that, and you will have people gravitate around you, good people and great players. If a large group of players falls apart that normally means someone was just plainly being a Jerkface Mcspitzak, and ripped something off, the entire group couldn't get back or were being overly paranoid and delusional. Mainly the entire fleet, which if you have two people with two toons, at RANK 7 that can work together like my fellow leader in my fleet have, and it can never be ripped off from anybody. EVER. Unless they don't log in for at least 8 weeks. Then obviously something happened, and leadership SHOULD pass.
Its up to the leaders to provide the atmosphere to keep those people together, beyond what the game naturally provides.
My plan, personally, is to start utilizing the foundry now, and only create stories in the foundry i will "advertise" to my fleet members. Some are gonna go strait to learning PVP. Some are going to concentrate on crafting... via having to do the PVE ques. Which ARE fun, when YOU want to do them.
The way I personally look at it is, i helped, and created this fleet so it can help the members, and people we play with, no matter what fleet they are in. You gravitate hardcore players, and casual players alike, with a positive attitude. You don't let Negative TRIBBLE, affect, or "dominate" your fleet.
Thats the fleet killer.... Negative B.S. people don't want to deal with, whether its a rascist remark, or biggotry, or huge blown out of proportion, disagreements. The other fleet Killer? Poor Leadership, and by poor i mean, those who would let it flood the entire conversation the fleet is having, and not have the knowledge how to kill it QUICK or let it affect the group, and be done with it, fairly, and responsibly if need be.
it is after all only a game, people will come, people will go, yer buddy bob you know on teamspeak, or Ventrillo or whatever you use, will DIE one day, and the chance HE DIES tomorrow is just as probable he dies the next day as an example.... The best thing to do is, ask your fleet members, how there day is going when you log in..... play the game, B.S, play the game some more, and then say good night or ill see you later when you log out, and i feel people take all this to seriously, to forget to do that sometimes.
Any fleet that has not made tier 5 and has been around for as long as i have, has poor leadership. It takes 2 people, to solo a starbase, with an average game time of someone who has a job and a life, if they fill all projects everyday they log in, two years to do. Two hardcore bro's with wallets? Can get it done basically in 16-18 months.
People know that too, thats why they go out and try and "ally" with a tier 5 fleet. Because, decent people would like there fleet credits to go somewhere, instead of into a provision project you already have 2,000,000 of and will never use.
To sit here and blame it on the ability to help another fleet out, is to sit here and sound like you have a problem keeping your members, because yer a general jerk, and demand you want things done TODAY, or you have some form of "fleet bank donation" charge or some TRIBBLE people don't want to pay, because simply, its a jerk thing to do.
Any fleet leader should keep in mind this FACT: Your Fleet Members don't "work" for you, You "work" for them.
Give them oppurtunity to shine, give them a story to role play with, Give them a good fleet to practice PVP with, and if they don't do it well together, make sure your "PVP allies" are willing to play with and share some knowledge....
Give them more then one fleet to play with, in, and be a part of, then just one. Give them something to gravitate around, and be a part of. Give them and idea and a purpose to play together, beyond fricken contributing to a starbase. You are the Sun, and the planets around you, are your fleet members. Without the warmth of the sun, your planets will die, or go rogue..... your planets don't need to do anything, but provide life, to feel that warmth.
A good fleet leader, don't judge his fleet by the number of people he has in it, but by the amount of "warmth" he feels from logging in every day from the people he plays with you know. If people get cold, and dread even talking to you, something is going on, and it is YOUR problem, not theirs.
A good fleet leader also needs to be able to tell people when they are doing something wrong, and not embaress them when they do. And be willing to learn if they don't know something themselves, and not act liek they know something when they don't.
You CANNOT, create friction between members, you always need to be the "neutral" player at the top rank, no matter what.
And never EVER EVER steal from, or make a profit, "from" your members. thats the most Douche bag move any and all guild members, fleet members, or group leaders, in any game can do.
Like i said, to blame it on free gear, is a stupid thing to do. You failed, as a leader, oh well, pick yerself up, find another game to play, ( because you will ) and try it again. one day you will learn its you, not your members, that are the problem, if you continue to have problems in other games.
I'm pretty new to ST:O, but played many MMOs before and a 7 year vet of Eve Online. I've seen it all.
I'm not sure that there is an easy way. If you let any new recruits have access, then you'll eventually be scammed. If you don't then new recruits will be loath to trust you and donate til they can use the bank.
You can interview every recruit, they can lie
You can ask for references... but that's about as useful as rl jobs... they WILL lie
Its an exercise in trust.
The best way I have found is a bank vault that recruits can access
and another that is available after they prove themselves... with the truly awesome gear in it.
But in the end, until some MMO gives the ability to make a "deposit in lieu" then we're all at risk...
Say, you need to make a 100,000 EC to join... if you're thrown out within a month, then the balance is deducted from the deposit... Perhaps, if you steal, allow the fleet to put a bounty on you, or something... it's not like evidence is an issue when all transactions are tracked.
White doffs - bad implementation; most people are stuffed full of blue/purple doffs and simply don't have room for a raft of whites (with only one type being used for a given project, meaning all other types clutter up the Doff roster). EZ fix - either open up the white doffs for projects to 'any', and give much higher FMs for submitting green or even blue doffs (1 green equaling two white, one blue two green, ect) of the specified type.
Commodities - making EC in this game is the worst grind of any game I've ever run across, so it's about as pointless dumping commodities into projects as Dil.
The sink is too deep, and no one is willing to TRIBBLE away their grind to it without much MUCH better rewards.
I suspect the problem with the OP's fleet is that he/she has recruited members who only contribute beause they want gear/ships for themselves and are uninterested in seeing the fleet progress, this is not the fault of STO or the developers, but rather with the people recruited in his/her fleet.
What the OP needs is to recruit members who actually contribute because they want to be part of a high tier fleet, which is admittedly hard to accomplish, as even I have several members who only contribute to get fleet credits for gear.
Getting good people in a fleet is the hardest part of making a fleet, I got lucky when I made my fleet, and I suspect the OP wasn't as fortunate...
We're a small fleet, and have maxed all our holdings as well even while many of use utilized other fleets to get the gear we wanted. So yeah, he's right on the money.
Fulfilling your fleets capabilities comes from having a good exec. Good leadership generates fleet activity, pure and simple.
In all honesty though the fleet is a secondary build priority these days. I can get better gear through other sources including crafting; rep gear for the most part is better than fleet (the exception being elite cores and tac consoles); the best ships are no longer fleet ships.
However, when you factor in actually caring about developing a community or a team of friends based around a specific theme or idea, you don't just take the random newbies to drain them and dump them.
I like my fleetmates, even though they are all, every last one of them, a bunch of flakes. I'm glad we are in fleets together. When they do show up online we have a ball. I would hate to disband any of the fleets, so thanks to all those Tier V folks who give us access to the good stuff and let us limp along our merry way.