A Life of Solitude

So I apologize for not having wrote anything in what could be construed as a rather lengthy bit of time. Things within the corp have been quite busy and I've been spending a lot of evenings in the belts around Solitude, pulling in the ore to raise money for various goals in regards to wanted/needed ships and modules. To add in on top of that, the corp itself has been quite active in running a lot of mining ops, low sec (and even 0.0) ops, and mission ops. We're currently seeking out other corporations and alliances around the Solitude region to create a sort of larger network both for shared intel as well as to create a strong group that will both help and back each other in actually putting the region of Solitude on the map. The corp directors really have some brilliant ideas that are starting to see light of day and may well create a viable market in the region.

Up until now, the purchasing of many goods was as nearly as expensive as buying goods in nullsec. We hope to change that. No, things will not nor never will be as cheap as you would find them in Jita or perhaps even some of the other major trade hubs but that's just something that isn't logistically possible. Jita is for the most part surrounded by high sec empire space. You can travel to and from most places in empire without ever crossing into unsecured low sec or even worse nullsec. With the thousands upon thousands of pilots located and operating in empire, the supply of goods is always there. However, with so many being scared to traverse long distances through lowsec, places like Solitude will never become heavily populated until something can be done to make lowsec passage less intimidating. And we both know that of course will never happen. In addition to that, the academies are all in empire, constantly spitting out new pilots nearly every day. So basically, empire will never be the empty void that Solitude is.

Let me give you a brief description of Solitude.

Solitude is its own little set of high sec systems surrounded by a turbulent area of space. Within only a couple jumps, one could easily find themselves in Syndicate even, a very dangerous section of nullsec filled with gate camps from numerous alliances and corporations. Due to its sovereignty being held by none other than The Syndicate, it is not exactly a place of interest for the larger nullsec alliances like Goonswarm and the former BoB alliance (now known as Kenny or something like that I believe). So instead, its left to the smaller groups to set up shop and perhaps get some nullsec practice in or just reap the benefits of being able to kill anything that moves, without taking hits on their empire security status.

However, even if one is to avoid nullsec, getting to Solitude can still be a very dangerous journey. Although you won't have to worry about a gate camp involving warp bubbles like you would in nullsec, gate camps along the route are still a major problem. The journey to Solitude without traveling through nullsec takes you down a lengthy pipeline of about 15 to 20 jumps I believe with numerous choke points. Fortunately at this time the pirate population is relatively minimal but in lowsec, every individual whose path you cross is a potential pirate, even if they aren't tagged by Concord as such. So flying your standard freighter or hauler through is definitely dangerous, if not utterly suicidal.

Now yes, a lot of the combat pilots in my corp do go hunting in the lowsec areas surrounding Solitude. And yes, they often come back saying they didn't find a damn thing to kill... but at the same time, unless they're in a decent sized fleet, they still for the most part avoid certain systems in the route to empire. (unless of course they're feeling rather frisky....or really bored...)

Either way, my point is that logistically, if you're a corporation made up of "younger" pilots, or pilots with only a small amount of experience, then like nullsec, Solitude is not for you. If your like our corporation with a varied mix of younger and older pilots than it becomes possible as the older pilots can form the basis for the logistics of living in Solitude, supplying or helping the younger pilots get their gear and ships from empire to the high security space of Solitude safely. Though in truth its still slightly uncommon to find a fresh pilot out of the academy in Solitude.....definitely not in the mass numbers you'd see flying around the space lanes of Empire.

What all this is saying is that I like Solitude. I like the fact that I can sit in a high security system for hours and never see another pod pilot. Not even on the local system comms. I like the fact that here, we can actually make use of the standings system much like you would in lowsec or nullsec but it not actually being either of those. I like being able to easily glance at the people in system and know whether they are a friendly or known enemy, for as time goes on, the list of neutrals to in the region goes down....unless of course a new alliance or corp moves into the area. Basically for the corps objectives, its a great place to make home and stage our operations out of.

-ML-