Pilot Archive

1. Start posting in your galaxies forum inquiring to see who would be interested and who would be willing to help rally opposing faction pilots.


2. Begin by cretaing 3 public chat channels and advertising those on your galaxies forums and in-game. Make the neamse of the channels "unique" so people can tell them apart, one for each faction at least.


3. Set specific times and days of the week when pilots can rally. For example M,W,F at 8-10pm eastern. (I suggest multiple times so that European pilots can get involved too)


4. Whenever you are given an oppurtunity to help someone, take it! Let people know who you are and that you are willing and able to help out. (This can become daunting, I recieve anywhere from 5-20 tells a night asking for help completeing missions. Just be sure, if you're busy doing something else to reply politely and say you're busy)


5. Start throwing little player events to help get things jump started. I had some good success with my "Capture the Imperial Commander" event, and have plans on some additional events coming soon.


6. Don't let the subject drop off the first page of your galaxies forum, if possible, see if you can get it stickied.


7. Foster relations with opposing faction pilots. Get to know your regular opponents, there's more of a gruding respect between pilots than there is on the groundgame. Think of it in terms of World War 1. Even the british pilots thought the red Baron was the greatest.


8. Above all else try to provide fun, fair, and enjoyable PvP experiences for all the pilots. As an Imp I want to see the Imp's win, but there's many a time I've allowed myself to get blown away just to keep the Rebels coming.


9. Kitten: Decide on everything you want a space battle to consist of (including rules but be careful here not to introduce too many) and invite pilots you know of to it (send out mails to all of them but tells encourage people moreto come to the event... so do both).


10. Kitten:Take at least 2 weeks to planm organize, and advertise an event.


11. Kitten:Make sure to add all of them to your friendlist so you can easily mail them updates, tips on how to equip ships (overloads!) and whatever.


12. Kitten:Try to find a pilot from the other faction who is good in organising and coordinating to lead the opposing force.


13. Kitten:You win nothing on the long terms if one side dramatically outguns the other so forget about rivaltry between factions.


14. Kitten: Do advertising on the galaxy forums and keep it bumped. Make sure the battles are organised for fun. Griefing should not be allowed and the atmosphere between and insidethe factions should be friendly and only on second place (a bit) competative.

See, the thing to remember is, if we want pilots in the air, they need to enjoy themselves. It needs to be completely different than ground PvP. Never send someone a tell like "I Pwned Jo0!" or "Man you suck!". Encourage the other pilots even if they are your enemy.

I know that if I kill every Rebel within 5 seconds of going overt, they probably will not go overt agaian. On the other hand if they have a good experience with PvP'ing against me, then they are much more likely to seek me out for encounters. In space, it shouldn't be about "who's the best" it's about "whats best for the JTL PvP community".

If one side is constantly winning and "owning" the new pilots then we all suffer. If Rebels don't go overt, Imps have no one to fight. Don't bother with setting up pilot guilds and such, individuals will do that on their own. What you're trying to accomplish is giving those squadrons/guilds something to do, somewhere to go, and something to fight for.

A word of warning. This is no small project. If you're going to do this be prepared for huge amounts of email, long discussions in tells, and much more time organizing and planning events. You need to be consistant and available. People will be constantly asking questions and looking for help. Ignore any and all drama, let the individuals deal with that themselves. Don't stress if someone gets mad at you, you can't please all the people all the time.

(Kitten is a pilot with the Nuetron Pixies on Starsider and one of the very active pilots from that server.)

Any additional suggestions and/or observations from Starsider/Valcyn pilots are welcome in this thread. I know it isn't easy to get this stuff started but it's definately worth the time!