Difference between revisions of "New Eden Research (Player alliance)"

Revision as of 15:56, 31 January 2009

New Eden Research (NER) is an high-sec alliance dedicated to providing its members with a large amount of research labs in several empire regions. It is currently one of the most popular choices for industrialists wishing to increase the efficiency of their blueprints.

History

The alliance was created in April 2007 by Viktor Research Incorporated (VRINC), with the intent of providing a viable alternative to the overcrowded NPC station labs in empire space. At the time of its inception, there were already another two alliances offering similar services, Empire Research and Zzz.

Early life

Initially, the alliance had only one research site located in Iivinen, owned by Viktor Research Incorporated, along with a very small number of research corps. After two weeks of operation, they were joined by New Dawn Corp (NDC), which had previously attempted to join Empire Research in order to supply labs but was rejected, therefore seeking NER as an alternative.

NDC chose Josameto as a research site due to close proximity to Jita, and along with Iivinen, these two systems were the only two research sites available in NER for a long time. During the first months of activity, several upgrades were made to the sites to include more labs, in order to meet the increased demand from new clients joining the alliance. NDC eventually moved operations to Jatate, due to the small number of available moons in Josameto making expansions difficult.

Change of management

In July 2007, NDC took over the task of advertising the alliance to the public, creating a service thread on the EVE-Online forums that remains active to this day. In the following month, VRINC resigned its position as alliance executor, with NDC taking up the role.

VRINC left the alliance at the start of 2008, leaving NDC as the only corporation providing labs to the alliance.

Expansion

With a reduced amount of labs and an unprecedented demand for them, NDC began recruiting corps with research starbases in an effort to reduce the increasing lab queues in Jatate. At the end of January 2008, New Eden Research had five additional research sites, covering all main empires. Many more sites were added in the following months, and the alliance reached its peak member count at August 2008, housing over 700 players.

Due to the high member count, NER became a more attractive target for war declarations, and as a direct result of those, the alliance lost some of its players and has stabilized in the 500-600 member region, many of which are dedicated research characters.

Website

Due to the pressing need to gather all information relevant to the alliance in one place, October 2008 saw the launch of NER's website, developed by the creator of EVE Commander. The site functions as a corporation activity tracking system and as a means for lab corps to announce a variety of data about their labs, as well as having all the information pertinent about the alliance, how it works, and how to join it.

The launch of the site caused several changes in how the alliance operates internally, particularly due to the corporation activity tracking system, which allowed for the removal of the monthly fee for corps actively researching.

Present day

New Eden Research is currently one of the best-known research alliances, housing over 500 members and with roughly 15 research sites. Alliance leadership plans to eventually have at least one research site in every empire region.

Research services

Research labs are made available to the alliance by anchoring starbases (also known as Player Owned Structures) with mobile laboratories. The lab slots have the advantage of being 25% faster than NPC-based ones, and can be configured to be accessible to alliance members, at which point a researcher only needs to pick a station in the same system and make sure to have the necessary skill to operate a research job remotely. (Scientific Networking level 1 allows for this) The labs then function identically to ones found in NPC stations, automatically billing the researcher each time a job is started.

Due to technical limitations involving the hangars of a mobile lab, only ME and PE labs can be made available through the alliance. In order to gain access to copying and invention labs, the researcher has to join the corporation that owns the labs.

Joining

If you are CEO or director of a corporation, you can apply to join the alliance on the Alliance Rankings tab of your Corporation window. Once you find New Eden Research on the list, right-clicking it should give you an "Apply to join" option. Sending a mail to Tamia Clant stating that you have sent an application will ensure it gets taken care of as soon as possible. Once accepted, it takes 24 hours for your corp to join the alliance, and at that point the labs become accessible.

There are no requirements to join or stay in the alliance (except payment of the monthly fee, if applicable), though corporations are advised to stay out of trouble for the duration of their stay. (as example, piracy, scamming and other similar activites would be frowned upon) Alliance leadership reserves the right to remove corporations from the alliance at any given time.

While any characters may join the alliance, it is highly recommended to create a research alt for this purpose, in order to minimize any inconvenience due to war declarations. By taking the following steps on character creation:

- Race: Caldari
- Bloodline: Achura
- Attributes: +3 Intelligence and +2 Memory
- Ancestry: Inventors
- Career: Industry
- Specialization: Engineer

You get a character that only needs to train Scientific Networking I and Corp Management I in order to join the alliance and use the labs. Additionally, Metallurgy and Research skills can be trained for faster research jobs.

Starting your research

Once in the alliance, a new corporation should find a suitable location to start researching. A full list of research sites along with their prices can be found at the website. An office must be rented at the chosen location, and it is used to start research jobs. (due to technical reasons, using a personal hangar does not work) When choosing an installation for the research job, the Range and Type filters must be changed to "Same Solarsystem" and "Alliance", respectively, which will get the alliance labs to show up on the list of available installations. After that, submitting and delivering a research job works the same as an NPC-controlled lab would.

It is important to note that researchers should keep an eye on their office rent. If an office rent expires with jobs in progress, the blueprints will become inaccessible upon delivery, requiring a GM to retrieve them.

Alliance fees and LUTI

Alliance fees cover the CONCORD maintenance costs for keeping the alliance running and these are paid during the first week of each month. Fees vary depending on corp:

Research corps (marked as active) - No fee
Research corps (marked as inactive) - 2 million / month
Lab corps - 20 million / month

The system used to identify active and inactive corps is called Lab Usage Tracking Initiative (LUTI for short) and consists of a web server that receives API data from lab corps and use the information to search for corps found renting labs, then displaying the results on the website's corp fees list. Each corp's LUTI status is checked every payment cycle to determine whether it must pay the monthly fee. There are three colors to identify the different states a corp can go through: green, orange and red.

Green: The corp is considered active for the current month. At the next payment cycle, status changes to orange, but no changes are made to the amount of months the corp has covered. In order to get green status, a corp must make sure that the research site they are using is a LUTI member, this information can be obtained on the lab status page.

Orange: The corp was marked as active for the previous month, but its status is not yet confirmed for the current month. If the corp continues researching on the current month, the status will switch back to green. Otherwise, the next payment cycle will switch status to red, and consequentially discount one month from that corp.

Red: The corp is considered inactive, and one month is discounted from the corp at each payment cycle. If that amount reaches 0, the corp must pay the monthly fee within one week to remain in the alliance.

Corps that join the alliance are initially given red status and 1 or 2 month's time for free, depending on the time of the month they join, allowing them to start researching and get marked as active with no initial fees. Once inside the alliance, a corp can increase the amount of months they are covered for at any time by sending an ISK payment (2 million ISK multiplied by the amount of months you want) to Tamia Clant.

Lab corps

Corporations with with labs in high-sec can apply to join NER by contacting the alliance leader, Tamia Clant. Applications are accepted depending on the region(s) settled and the demand for labs there.

Unlike most other research alliances, where a lab corp is expected to pay a fee for each control tower active, in NER each lab corp pays a fixed fee of 20 million per month, which allows them to anchor a limitless amount of control towers. Lab corps can expand to more solarsystems with no additional costs, but before doing so, are required to have authorization from alliance leadership.

Additionally, lab corps are free to set their own prices on their labs, and are responsible for keeping the labs fueled and operational at all times. Should a tower need to be unanchored, the owner should announce it on alliance mail with as much advance notice as possible, and wait for each lab to finish its current jobs before unanchoring.

Lab owners also have the option of becoming LUTI members, and while that doesn't offer any direct advantage, it attracts more costumers to your research site as they won't have to pay the monthly fee that way, resulting in more business. In order to become a LUTI member, you must supply your full API key to alliance leadership.