In the past I've done a couple of interviews as Black Claw and probably my most popular post as Alexia Morgan was my interview with Duckeye. Well, it's time for another interview!
This one is with Noir Avlaa of the Sunset Jokers. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy the read.
- You used to be pirates... what made you want to move away from piracy and become a mercenary?
Romeo Blakstorm and I have both been flying with The Tuskers for a while, and a pirate's life was the life for us for most of our EVE careers. But after a while we both just felt that piracy was not the way we wanted to spend our future. Romeo left a couple of months before me to join up in a 0.0 corp, whereas I left my account to go inactive, thinking a break might make me come back and become more enthusiastic to the Yarr.
When I did come back I still found myself spinning ships in station, and Romeo was finding 0.0 no to be to his liking. I looked at my options, spoke a bit to Romeo and decided Merc life was the best way to go. We both like the PVP side of piracy, but I'd like to have a bit more freedom with my movements through space, and be able to earn more than enough ISK than I really need without an alt character, whereas Romeo's been a pirate for a bit longer than me and as 0.0 isn't to his liking then merc work, while alot like piracy, would be much better. He still gets to shoot at people, but with a paycheck and access to empire space.
- So what made being a mercenary more desireable than other proffessions, say joining up with a lowsec alliance as muscle or even roaming 0.0?
Well as I said before, I want to get paid while I shoot at people. Joining up with a lowsec alliance would seem like a restriction after being in The Tuskers, and roaming in 0.0 just seems like a silly idea to me. There may well be as many targets as lowsec but there's also alot more risk. If possible I'll always stack the odds in my favour when it comes to PVP... there are no rules, only winning. I've had a look at a lot of mercs across EVE and they have the same sort of set up as The Tuskers, but without the pitfalls involved with being pirates.
- Now you've created Sunset Jokers, how do you plan to progress into merc work?
For now we're trying to create a core set of players with various sets of skills we can meld together to create a small, effective gang. We're going to learn how each pilot operates over a reasonable period of time with roams through lowsec, probably against pirates mainly, until we're confident enough to start out properly as mercenaries.
We're looking at between 25-40 members when we're fully running, and we'll start taking contracts at around 15 members against small corporations and alliances. We'll start taking most contracts at 25 members, and expand up to 40 members maximum. We want to keep the corp large enough to be effective, but small enough as to keep a tight-knit group of players.
- You mentioned you'd be shooting pirates... Any particular reason, considering your backgrounds?
Aha, yeah, we know how pirates operate, and they flash red in the overview. We're going to be weapons free anyways, but we'd prefer to shoot reds than neutrals, purely for sec status. And pirates bring more fun to the party, if we can learn to combat pirates, which are a bit more unpredictable than most corps I've seen, then we should be fine with alot of wardecs we'll be doing.
It'd also be fun to shoot some old corp-mates :D
- Have you got any ground rules to becoming a Sunset Joker?
Well we'd like to keep things professional. We want members to have at least 5 million Skill Points, and that would need to be mostly in combat skills and be able to fly something like a stealth bomber or an interceptor. We're mostly looking for older players, people who can bring some real punch to a party.
We're definately advocating a professional attitude. We don't want any smack talk from our side of the fence. If someone is giving us lip in local, we find it better to just not respond. After all, anyone is a potential client. If we act in a professional manner, stay courteous and don't get angry then people will see it and appreciate it.
Currently we want pilots who can fly a Recons, HACs, BCs and BSes, but by all means drop us an application no matter what you can fly and we'll see if we have space for you. All pilots must be self sufficient, as we have no corp fund at the moment, nor an industry alt corp ;)
Age limit is 16+
If you're interested check out our recruitment thread - http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1336398
Join "Sunset Public" chat in EVE-Online or EVE-Mail "Romeo Blakstorm" or "Noir Avlaa"
- Ok, thank you for the interview, Noir, and I wish you all the best in your mercenary endeavours!
Thanks for the interview. :)
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