Hi, i’m a relatively new player (But not completely brand new), and i’m not sure if i’m posting this question in the right place but here it goes.
I’ve been looking at a bunch of newbie corps to join lately and was hovering around joining Pandemic Horde, mostly because its very close to Caldari space and Jita which is my current home and it would be less of a pain trucking my stuff over there. But as i’ve looked around trying to make sure i know exactly what i’m getting into and i’ve heard a lot of talk about awoxing, so much so that it sounds like its an extremely common occurrence. I was wondering if anyone who’s been in Horde for a while can tell me how common is it really? Is it actually that common, or is it severely exaggerated?
No one wants to waste time or effort or isk going after a newbie in a 10 million isk ship.
Only problem you have to watch out for, is if anyone ever offers to do something for you for ISK, or move something for you for free, but asking zero collateral for your items.
For Horde, generally, they will be more than happy to hand out free ships for you to use.
But if someone says “hey, ill move your stuff from Jita to Horde Space, but dont put any collateral”, its usually a scam. Moving things from Jita to Horde should be pretty cheap, and its best to just pay up and set collateral to the right amount, than to risk getting scammed.
The only time awoxing will become a problem is if youre flying really, really, really expensive ships and buying tons of plex. Theres nothing necessarily wrong with that, but just so you know, doing that will increase the chances of awoxing, tenfold. So, dont do that.
Pandemic Horde has an open recruitment policy, so anyone can join. This means that there are players who join simply to ‘awox’ others. However, I have been in Horde off and on for over three years and it’s never happened to me*. The advice is much the same as for any other corporation - be careful, and don’t make yourself a prime target. Awoxers are purged very quickly too.
As a new player, there won’t be much to lose anyway. You’ll be getting killed on operations all the time, no-one cares. You will be given lots of hand out ships and these will be replaced at the new player level. You’ll get a set of skill books and lots of support from the NBI (New Bean Initiative, members chosen to help out the new beans).
If you have stuff to move then there are approved freighter services that will help you do this. There’s also a very decent market in BWF so as a new player, you’ll find most of what you need.
After sixty days, if you have trained some basic doctrines, you will be eligible to join Blessed Beans, which is ESI gated and therefore as safe as any other gated corporation. So Horde is not much different from any of the other newbie corporations of the big alliances.
It wasn’t that long ago that Goonswarm had the reputation of inviting new players into corporation with an application fee and then ripping them off for everything they possessed and chucking them back out again. Some people will still tell you that happens (though they put a stop to it for their new player corporations a long time ago). There’s a lot of propaganda in null sec.
The most important thing to discover is whether the culture of the corporation is a good fit. Geminate (where we live) may be close to Jita but it is also PvP central. Being close to Jita as a reason for joining is not particularly relevant - as I noted, you would be best served at first by getting your kit from the corp, not moving anything. If you like the daily fights, then the odd occasion when you might get your handout Crucifier awoxed doesn’t matter. If you want to mine and do industry, there’s very much a place for you but you might be better off considering Karmafleet in Delve - much safer. Much farther away from Jita, but they will also provide all you need.
I have been ‘awoxed’ on fleet operations by players who didn’t know what they were doing. (Notably by new logistics pilots who instead of repping set their ‘whore’ drone on me rather than the citadel. )
It happens especially when the fleets are always set up to have a doctrine role for the new beans. Our fleets are also riddled with spies, that doesn’t appear to help the enemy much on most occasions. It’s all good fun.
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