Gentlemen's Agreement

Gentlemen’s Agreement is a space-holding 0.0 alliance with a pervasive enthusiasm for PvP on every scale, from regular small gang activity to periodic massive coalition campaigns. We believe in keeping our ops concise, maximizing economy of effort to keep ops short and fun. We also believe in providing a strong and coherent narrative that leads individual pilots to join in based on understanding of our goals and criteria as an alliance.

We are currently based in Branch but deploy across New Eden. As members of the Clusterfuck Coalition, we are allied with GoonSwarm Federation and its associates.

Since we are part of the broader coalition raw numbers have never been a critical issue for us. Growth is welcome but our focus has always been on integration. We’re pleased with where we are on that score so while we tend to keep a low profile we’re reaching out for some fresh blood interested in being a part of the way we do things while also being up to the task.

How we do things:

• Serious Business in moderation: We always try to have fun, but we focus on accomplishing our objectives at key moments. Knowing when to focus on the op helps make the rest of time spent in fleet more relaxed.
• The Right Way: We don’t do anything halfway. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
• Failure Is Always An Option: Doing things The Right Way doesn’t inherently lead to success -- errors are always possible. We don’t castigate well-intentioned failure; we examine it in detail and learn from it.
• Jabber (privately hosted instant messaging): The alliance is mostly run in various group channels. When something happens (scheduled or not) we send an alert to either everyone or a specific group. To not be on Jabber is to be oblivious.
• Never Stop Posting: We rely heavily on our forums and rarely see alliance mails.
• It’s On The Wiki: We happily answer questions, but we prefer not to answer the same ones repeatedly.
• Fly The Fleet Ship: We are devotees of Doctrine. We include every person in our fleets, but we don’t include every ship in our fleets. We’d rather have you in a frigate that’s suited to the role we expect of it than a battlecruiser that isn’t.

What we expect:

• Do things how we do things, or make a case for why we should change. This is the process by which we make progress.
• Participate: When something is happening, take part in it. The unacknowledged heart of EVE is Narrative -- the secret sauce of alliance leadership is building a coherent story for your membership to follow and empathize with. We don’t have “mandatory” events -- we tell our members what’s important and why, and trust them to show up if they can.
• Be a Gentleman: The game may be a ‘fake’ universe, but the people are real.
• Be Chill: Everyone has bad days. What’s important is that other people don’t get drawn in, and that everyone comes back the next day to sort it out calmly.
• Step Up And Lead: We delegate virtually everything. We expect both people and corps to step up for everything from deploying a staging tower to running fleets. We don’t hesitate to put someone in as much of a leadership role as they’re able to handle.
• Be Honest: We want to know exactly what you think and you can be sure we will tell you what we think whether you want to hear it or not. It is of course important to Be Chill, or this would end in disaster. And take care not to mistake honesty for hostility.
• Jabber: If you’re not on Jabber, you’re dead to us (yes, this is in every section).

We value these principles enough that we’re actually fairly flexible in most other aspects (though we may expect you to adapt in some ways). We only care about other corp stats if they inform us about your willingness or ability to meet our expectations. However, there are a few basic guidelines:

• Corp Size: 50-100 characters is reasonable although we tend to prefer the high side of that. What we’re really after is sustainable activity and leadership depth; member count is just a clue.
• Capable Leadership: We don’t expect you to know EVE in and out, or even necessarily have extensive nullsec experience. But we need you to be capable of learning How We Do Things and bringing your membership on board with that efficiently.
• Self Sufficiency: This is far reaching, but two major highlights are POS logistics and adequate carrier pilots moving ships around for deployment.
• Jabber: We expect corp leadership to be consistently available in the appropriate Jabber channels. We try to distribute the load across the corps and if you’re not there to step up you won’t get your share.

There is far more detail than we can include here. If these points have made you interested in GENTS then let’s discuss it further.

Drop by our in-game public channel TALLYHO and if a diplomat is available you can start there, but most likely you’ll need to eve-mail the folks listed in the MOTD. We’ll do some basic review and then the real fun begins.

Expect to spend some time in a private Jabber channel while we get to know your corp leadership. You can get a head start by signing up for the Jabber service we use at http://eve-mail.net.

It is often said that a gentleman has only the best of intentions. He wants to deal with his fellows honorably and fairly; he wants to ensure their opinions are heard, that they feel their input has value and that their needs are respected.

It is also often said that gentlemen just want to have fun. And to do that, there's a whole lot of very honorable institutions that just get in the way. They're only fun when all the participants would be gettling along fine without them.

We don't want to get bogged down in votes. We don't want to sit in endless council meetings. Filibustering is for people who get paid real money for this crap.

All we really want to do is give all manner of Huns, barbarians, idiots, sycophants, whiners, and people who went to the wrong school a proper good thrashing, then nip back round to the club for a strong drink and a big dinner.

And we're going to start by cheerfully bludgeoning those ghastly rubber-nosed clowns until the pie custard leaks out of their pants, then put our feet up on all that fancy Baroque furniture and tap cigar ash on the armrests.

So certain gentlemen have come to an Agreement: We shall strike off in search of glory, honor, and a truly dapper tophat. We shall seek fun and entertainment. We are, in short, doing it for - Jeeves, what was it the young people are calling it these days? Lols? Ah, yes. The lulz. But we shall do it with a certain sense of style, a certain je ne sais quois, that makes us gentlemen as well as jesters.

Just remember that all is fair in love and war.

"Don't be terrible, be awesome. Don't be serious, have fun. Don't be afraid, we can do this."

The Gentlemen's Agreement was founded by a conspiracy of bitter vets dedicated to creating an alliance in EVE that dispensed with the trappings of real-life politics and bared the thing down to its basic essentials: a coalition of like-minded individuals directed by a dictator with ultimate authority. An agreement was made between these gentlemen, who resolved to hold a few basic principles to be true.

We strive to be fluid, adapting to new situations quickly. EVE happens in real time; so should alliance government. We welcome new ideas and new talent; age or experience should not be a barrier to success.

We want to get bitter EVE veterans excited about the game again. We must never be too serious - we aim to joke, prank and grief our way across the stars, and do it with class. Being available on Jabber whenever possible facilitates this.

We regard targets as a precious resource. We lavish ammunition on them wherever we find them, whether in 0.0, lowsec or hisec. As a result we must be able to use Mumble-based alliance comms while on operations.

If this sounds like a group you or your corporation would like to be a part of, contact Kesper North ingame or via email.

Most EVE players, particularly those of large null-sec alliances, have come to expect forums, wikis, voice servers and the like. CCP has made some attempts to bridge the gap with EVE Voice, EVE Gate, and promises more in future updates to EVE Gate.

For now, however, it's up to the players to deploy their own solutions. Few people, particularly non-technical people, take much notice of the people who make all that happen.

This page is to publicly thank Mjollnir Arcote for all of his effort making this site (and others).