Yesterday I could hand out a lot of medals to Red Cell. We can be proud to have so many active players in our faction. A lot of members passed the line of 50.000 XP and got themselves a Bronze Medal of Excellence. For them a new challenge can be found in getting the Silver Medal. Or maybe they like another, like the shiny medal of Contribution.
Nobody has yet achieved a Medal of Teamplayer, for joining 50 squads. I'm curious who'll be the first, and when it can be handed out. My guess it's not next week, but the week after
Also I was very happy that this time I cannot only give, but also receive a medal myself.

All of you: Congratulations!

Medals
Biotom: a Bronze Medal of Victory!
DrgnMastr: a Silver Medal of Skillcaster!
fred123qwe: a Bronze Medal of Contribution and a Bronze Medal of Sponsoring!
Kearon: a Silver Medal of Excellence!
MrDorian: a Silver Medal of Excellence!
NaomiAzzet: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
Nitron: a Bronze Medal of Excellence and a Bronze Medal of Contribution!
Piurivar: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
poisongirl: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
ShuShu: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
th3crims: a Bronze Medal of Victory!

As for the trophies, DrgnMastr added another 10 levels to his name, which is only 2/3 of last weeks, so we are disappointed. It's the most of any in the faction, so he can keep the Trophy of Evolution another week.
Astonishingly (for me, at least) is that I get the Trophy of Victory for gaining most in PvP. I don't even like PvP, but I found that when you meet someone in a PvP-zone it works better to attack them first. That way you win.
Maybe this is a tip for Kearon as he's the one that lost most in PvP this week.

Trophies
Trophy of Evolution - DrgnMastr! (+10 levels)
Trophy of Victory - NaomiAzzet! (+41)
Trophy of Consolation - Kearon! (-32)

Recruting?
Its basically a process of harvesting new souls. Clicking on random player names from an online list, and inviting them to your faction. Instinctively you seek for lower level players that are above minimal required level to join your faction. So you start to click at names of players that are lvl 10 til 19, guessing that its far more likely to find a lower level player without a faction, than a higher level player. But your math is wrong. Why?
Because almost 75 % of level 5 - 15 players have allready started and founded their own faction (Im boring even myself, but - ).

Why is this so?
I assume because 75 % of these players are under 18 years in age, not realizing that founding a faction is only the first step. And HCS made faction founding so damn easy. But thats the only thing that is easy and cheap. Starting a faction will cost you nothing, and prequesites in doing so is just that you need to be level 5.
But once you started a faction, you have to invest a lot of real money (per example you need 75 FC just to unlock an extra building slot for your faction), real time, and a lot of mind (intellectual work) in developing that faction in to a living organisation.

So its quite fair to conclude that those factions are doomed to stagnate at their very creation. But hey, i dont mind or have anything against kids. Its not their fault, its HCS's fault.

By making faction founding so easy, they enabled an accumulation process of worthlesssmall, futureless and hopeless factions. Sigma storm 2, has maybe 190 000 registered players, and God knows how much factions.

A bundle of useless and futureless factions does not help anyone.
1) HCS won't get money donation from faction founder kids, cause they'll never upgrade an extra structure and/or extra 1 % tax rate etc.
2) Other factions are losing recruting material and a lot of low level players ( kids ) who are foolishly trying to found perspective and bright new factions.
3) The low level (underaged) players themselves are beeing led trought the path of false hope that they will be able to manage and save their factions from certain fall. Allthough they could be a valuable and respectable members of "real" factions.

How is this a problem for recruiting ?

Because is anti-evolutional. We have to admit that sigma storm is somewhat evolved game with top players from lvl 50 to 55. Those players when they were lvl 5 - 20 founded or joined their factions.
Game evolved, new players came. And lvl 5 - 20 became a players who should join, not start factions.
To prevent beeing misunderstood, i have to state that i have nothing against new factions.
But i do when it become a trend. A childhis trend of starting/founding factions with no future. By endulging such a trend, lot of potential recruits, are lost due to their starting of their own factions.
Am i right ? Or do i really have a lot of extra time, and need to find myself a second girlfriend ?

Mr Dorian

Promotionday, once more. After the last weekend where we had all kinds of promotions and demotions this week is more quiet. At least considering the promotions. No new agents, 2 new members and a few kicks together with a new one on probation, unfortunately:

New Agents: -none-
New Members: Biotom, draggo
New Initiates: deepthyman, madusa98, Mantodea, ryanrsunga, th3crims
On Probation: Crast
Leaves: XxSmileyxX, NonnoNaz, mxok

Congratulations for all promoted/new to Red Cell, and good luck to all who left. Furthermore the Sentinels will hopefully be installed this weekend/during the week; all preparations have been made and votes are ongoing. With the implementation of the Red Council Red Cell has established the final hierarchy for the faction!

-Nestor-

I know, not an original title but it matches; once more a promotion day with all the action: promotions to agent, promotions to member, demotions and kicks. And im glad that draggo came back, hes reinstalled as an initiate. So here is what goes on:

New Agents: DrgnMastr, Nitron, poisongirl
New Members: crast, hypergrave, XxSmileyxX, thezed
On Probation: NonnoNaz, Natemck
Leaves: snyly

Congratulation to all promoted members, and good luck for the ones leaving Red Cell. And since we have new places for Initiates, recruiting is once more open.
Besides the Promotions we installed a new ranking system, visible at the respective page. A new rank - Sentinel - has been introduced and will become fully functional in the next week or so. This should enable Red Cell to stay up with future development regarding their "fanbase" ;). As always - leave comments here, i would higly appreciate them!
-Nestor-

Yes, once more we implemented a new feature to our faction Red Cell. Medals and Trophies. As you can see on the Members page  Naomi holds the job of "Award Management", and she did and does an excellent job on this.
The first medals and trophies implemented are as follows:

Long time medals:
Medal of Excellence - XP contributed
Medal of Victory - PvP Rating
Medal of Contribution - Credits contributed
Medal of Sponsoring - FC contributed
Medal of Skillcaster - Skills cast
Medal of Teamplayer - Squads joined

Weekly Trophies:
Trophy of Evolution
Trophy of Victory
Trophy of Consolation

Graphical representations for these awards are coming shortly, and will be presented here on this webpage :)

So for the future i not only have to update the the members page for the ranks, but also the medals and trophies - a job im fine with :)
~Nestor~

This promotions day entry will be short, since im short on time. Now for the really important things:

New Agents: Piurvar, ShuShu
New Members: DrgnMastr, Nitron, poisongirl, rygon, snyly, Natemck
On Probation: -
Leaves: Fenix

Congratulation to all promoted members, and good luck for the ones leaving Red Cell. Natemck stepped down from Agent to member on own behalf. Another important thing: The secondary ranks in Red Cell (AKA factionjobs ;) are now in place: Awards management and Armorer have been occupied allready. Now fred123qwe joined as the new Human resources boss. Good luck to him :)
-Nestor-

Hi once more from me. There has been the first official promotion day in the year 2009, and once more a few changes happened. As before some Initiates didnt make it to the ranks, some because of their own decision, some were put down for some reason. Sadly it was also the first promotion day that a member got kicked, but obviously he went inactive. So lets see what happened:

New Agents: Kearon
New Members: Draggo, Piurivar
On Probation: Fenix
Leaves: Culak, Didize, henkalex, skibade

So once more some seats are available in Red Cell (currently four).

What else?
We are in the process of installing some special jobs on the Agents rank, the first of it is the 'Awards Management' Chair held by NaomiAzzet. One more secondary rank is the Armorers job, who MrDorian thankfully took over. Special thanks to you, since this takes a lot of work off of my shoulders. And since my holidays are nearing its end i won't have the time on my hand as i have now.