Taggart Transdimensional
From EVE History
Taggart Transdimensional is an industrial corp originally created during the EVE beta that continued after the retail launch. A controversial corporation, it has been the subject of numerous forum wars, EVE wars, and controversy. Its original CEO, Ragnar, is one of the most well known and colorful characters from the beginnings of EVE. Corporate governance is based on the philosophy of Objectivism and laissez-faire capitalism.
Contents |
About Taggart Transdimensional
Bearing the Light of Capitalism into the Darkness of Eve
The mission of Taggart Transdimensional is to build a corporation based on a pure meritocracy, which views humans as heroic beings, with their own happiness as the moral purpose of their lives, with productive achievement as their noblest activity, and reason as their only absolute.
Emerging from Caldari space in the earliest ages of Eve, Taggart strives to bring its vision of individual achievement, personal freedom, and unbridled Capitalism to every corner of the Universe. The engine of Taggart industry never rests, pursuing profit across the stars. The weapons of Taggart are never silent in the battle to expunge the dark stain of Collectivism from every corner of space. Only when man rises on his own merits, instead of the backs of others, will humanity find true peace and success.
The beginning: The Ragnar Era
The Ascendance From Beta
In the beginning of EVE in 2002 there was Beta, and in Beta there was already TTI (formed in August 2002). TTI quickly managed to hire the best producers in the game, and it got a name for itself as the best producer. This led to the so-called war with Endless, which was in fact purely a war in words, i.e. the perfect forum war. This was an ideological battle, between TTI that stood for freedom and Capitalism (and its allies, The Entente) and the 'evil corporations' that stood for piracy and Communism. For staging this war, as well as for the publicity that it gave us, we would like to thank HellGremlin.
With the official launch of EVE on May 6, 2003 TTI was within very short time reformed by Ragnar. Gathering together all its great minds from Beta, along with all the new producers that were not in Beta, TTI surpassed every other corporation in its productive achievements. In its first months it produced cruisers in high volumes, and in its second month it also produced battleships in high volumes. At this time TTI was based in Lonetrek region, first in Amsen and then in Dantumi. Systems in this area were being cleaned of minerals, even though the infamous M0o Corporation at that time had started a war against us.
But TTI's ambition was not satisfied with just living in Empire. Ragnar along with the other leaders at the time decided on moving to the Venal region. Through personal conversations with at time the Senior Producer at CCP Mike Wallis (Campion), TTI was able to acquire the information that Venal would be the entrance point for the Jovian regions. Given the importance that Jovian technology will have once it is launched, it gave the Venal region a high strategic value. Coupled with its at that time richness of high-end ores and its isolation, the choice was not a tough one--TTI was going to make Venal its home, with P-VYVL as its headquarter. About half of TTI then moved to Venal, the rest of TTI continued its production in Empire.
At the same time that TTI established itself in Venal, it was decided to join the Venal Alliance. This decision was not taken lightly. The Venal Alliance contained several pirate corps, who on a regular basis camped the Tribute, Pure Blind and Lonetrek regions. With it being made clear that TTI would not participate in these piratical operations, and that TTI would be given priority for all the belts in the region, the decision was made to join the alliance. Without TTI's support, these operations outside of Venal were in fact stopped for a long time. A week after TTI joined the alliance, Jericho Fraction followed. Jericho Fraction had prior to this published daily posts of anti-TTI propaganda on the forums, but since the 'evil corporations' and their ideology were considered beaten in Beta, these posts were viewed as jokes from TTI's side. Due to Jade Constantine's skills in writing, illustrated for instance through her anti-TTI propaganda, she was appointed by TTI as de facto spokesperson for the Venal Alliance. As you might have realized, Jericho Fraction were purely forum-warriors, and at this time nothing else.
TTI's policy towards the alliance was a policy of hands-off. TTI would not interfere in the pirate corporations in the alliance, and considered them for now as a necessary evil. It was planned by TTI that when POS's were introduced, TTI would kick these pirate corps out of Venal. However, TTI were forced to abandon its hands-off policy when it was decided (by QBall, Morpheus and Jade I might add) that Venal Alliance was to declare war on the Trade Federation, and in practice become EVE's policeman. TTI, which were about 70% of the military power of Venal Alliance, rejected this war and published its own statement saying that it would have no part in it. So already at that time there were tensions within the alliance.
But things were taking a turn for the worst. Evolution, a corporation that did not exist during Beta, began an attack on Venal. Although it in the beginning branded itself as an anti-pirate corporation, it was in fact the opposite. Evolution was nothing else than the 'evil corporations' under a new name. The leaders from these Beta corps almost all joined Evolution, with SirMolle being the founder of the corporation (which you all know I suppose). There is no doubt that Evolution's goal here was TTI, and that it did not have any interest in the Venal Alliance. It started by taking a few shots at our haulers, but Evolution was far from strong enough to be a real threat.
At the same time M0o were attacking Xanadu in Fountain, a former ally of TTI before we moved to Venal. Xanadu had a NAP with Evolution at that time, and Evolution wanted Xanadu to help them in Venal. But Xanadu had no interests in Venal. Because of this Evolution managed to get several M0o pilots to say that they were paid by TTI to do the attacks, even contrary to Stavros who 'actually dont like lieing' and 'dont like being called a lapdog'. Xanadu did a few attacks towards TTI due to this, as they wanted the M0o attacks to stop. If Xanadu had continued, the Venal Alliance would surely have fallen. But Xanadu stopped when Stavros published his post stating that it was 'all a joke'.
What was Evolution's next move then? They had to strengthen the tensions within the Venal Alliance. They did this directly through Jade Constantine. The culmination of this was the infamous vote of whether TTI should be kicked out of Venal Alliance or not. If TTI was kicked out, Evolution promised that their aggression in Venal would stop. This vote proceeded as thus: each corporation had 1 vote each, with TTI being excluded from voting. However, the vote did not go Jade's way--TTI was voted to be kept in the alliance.
This vote however was taken as an act of treason by Ragnar, and here enters the equally infamous hat of Ragnar. Those corporations that voted to kick TTI out of the alliance were declared war upon, and thus the Venal Alliance were broken up. It was, to no great surprise, the piratical corps that sided with Jade (these came to be known as The New Venal Alliance, or short NVA), while the better corps either sided with TTI or remained neutral.
Then the war started. Evolution did not involve itself in it, and it was left entirely to NVA and their new friends. TTI on its hand were allied with M3G4, Space Invaders and Scientes--sometimes referred to as the 'Northern Alliance', although such an entity never existed. It was basically a few corps from Venal Alliance that sided with us, as well as M3G4 who was in the war purely for the PvP. NVA also managed to get more corporations to come and join them, most notably RONA Corp and Reikoku. The war did not go well for either parts, but in the end NVA achieved a pyrrhic victory over TTI. Before this loss however Ragnar had, due to the necessity to devote more time to his real-life businesses, decided to leave EVE. The same had also a large part of the member base of TTI (about 50%), who was disappointed over EVE evolving more and more into a PvP-game, instead of further developing the stock market and the business side of the game.
The GunnyP Era
Corporate Theft and the Curse Alliance
With GunnyP stepping up as the new CEO of TTI, the decision was taken to admit loss, and to withdraw from Venal. Although this was quite the drawback for TTI, it was still doing very good. Ragnar had donated his fortune to TTI, which amounted to over 4 bil. And other TTI members had done the same thing. At this time (December 2003) TTI were unfortunately the subject of a corp theft. The thief, who got access to the corp wallet by Anla Shok, did not however manage to get hold of the whole fortune of Ragnar. There was only about 1.2 bil in liquid funds in the corp wallet, thus a considerable amount of it was saved. Anla Shok took the entire blame for the theft, and has not yet revealed who the true exploiter was. To this day Anla Shok remains a member of Evolution.
Aridia were then decided as our next home. It was a decent region that was not claimed by anyone, and we moved there together with our new ally JEDI. Together we fought the pirate corporation PAK out of Aridia. In time more corporations joined our little coalition in Aridia, and it came to be a flourishing region.
But Aridia came be too poor a region for TTI, and we needed to move to a better place. TTI decided to move down to Period Basis, where we based ourselves out of TPAR-G. For a short while we enjoyed this region very much, but then M0o entered the region. We were still not as strong as we used to be, and we were never primarily a PvP corporation, so we were forced to move to another place.
In late February 2004 we joined the C4 Alliance (Commercial Consortium Collective of Corporations), who was based in Catch. M0o did not like this off course, and used this as an excuse to attack both the C4 alliance and Curse Alliance (who C4 were friendly with). Evolution then shortly after joined M0o in the fight against C4 and CA, so once again they tried to crush TTI. This time, however, we had strong allies to help us. The C4 managed to defend itself, and TTI could go back to creating wealth.
After this C4 moved down to Paragon Soul and Esoteria, with TTI basing themselves in Paragon Soul. Here the ores were good, and TTI could continue creating its wealth. During this time we successfully defeated the Stain Alliance's attack on our regions, and they were chased back to Stain.
Then in April 2004 the C4 alliance joined CA. This was a natural progression after the long cooperation between the two alliances. But with time CA just created more and more enemies, and more and more of its member corporations left the alliance.
The MarkA Era
The fall of CA and the rise of [5]
In November 2004 MarkA became the next CEO of TTI. At the beginning of 2005 CA disbanded, much due to Vengeance Of The Fallen's flame war of accusations and hate. After this we worked closely with a group of former CA corps, namely the ones that after some time would form The Five Alliance.
July 2005 The Five (-5-) Alliance was officially formed, taking use of the ability to form official in-game alliances that was introduced in the Cold War expansion. This alliance was formed by ATUK, Shinra, Black Omega Security, Black Reign and Supremacy. TTI was proud over sharing the position as the 6th corporation welcomed into -5-, along with M. Corp. TTI, notably some of our members (Mark A with a total of around 20,000 kills), did very well as far as PvP goes in -5-. But this alliance was above all else a PvP-alliance, but TTI is not a PvP corp. The state of continued war was not one that suited TTI. Neither did the game mechanics suit -5-, specifically the POS-warfare. RA would come into the ATUK systems right near down time and put up 4 or 5 POS's, and then the next day they'd conquer the station. They repeated this throughout much of ATUK territory. And it required all of ATUK's attention to continually kill the POS's and reclaim the stations. RA had infinite isk since they had RL businesses set up around producing and selling isk. Coupled with the internal problems within -5-, particularly the Shinra/M.Corp split which first split the alliance between the north and the south--and then the decision of that faction to leave -5-, -5- was formally disbanded at the beginning of January 2006. However, our CEO Mark A wanted to stay with ATUK and keep fighting, and he decided to join ATUK.
The Alaphforce Era
A CEO in disgrace
Following MarkA Alaphforce took over as CEO. Under Alaph attempts were made to get TTI a new home in 0.0. But these attempts were not particularly successful, and after it was discovered that Alaph were doing market scams on one of his alts, he resigned March 14 2006.
The Gantros Obscura
Detroid and our first POS
After this event Gantros Obscura became our next CEO. Gantros had much experience from the time Mark A was CEO. Often Mark A could not get on EVE for weeks, and Gantros worked as a CEO during those times (along with Xavier). Gantros begun rebuilding TTI, and getting TTI back into 0.0. He set up a Sponsorship with ATUK, i.e. a NAP and mining/ratting rights in KZ9T-C in Detroid, operating from the 0-G8N0 station. In connection with this he had to purge TTI's memberlist of inactive members, as the fee that TTI had to pay to ATUK was decided according to the amount of members TTI had. But Gantros did not last long as CEO--as early as May the same year Gantros had to cancel his account.
The Musashi Myomoto Era
The rebuilding of TTI begins
The CEO that succeeded was Musashi Myomoto. Under Musashi TTI once again became an empire corporation. Musashi managed to concentrate the in-game stocks back into TTI's hands. He also developed a BPO library, where every member could borrow a given BPO. He captured the remaining funds raised by the TTI IPO. And he also managed to retrieve TTI's T2 BPO from Special Circumstances, which was a sister-corp of TTI. These last acts angered Elithomel, the CEO of Special Circumstances and a former member. The result of this was that Elith created a corporation, Phoenix Durango (PHD), specifically to wage war against TTI. This war continued to the end of Musashi's period as CEO.
At the start of February 2007 Musashi made it official that he was planning to step down as a CEO, as he would no longer be playing EVE actively. There were two members that then were interested in being promoted to CEO: the senior Uhlan that wanted TTI to remain as it was, and Oleksandr that wanted TTI once again to move to 0.0. Musashi decided to give Oleks the position as CEO.
The Oleksandr Era
The rebuilding accelerates; A return to Objectivism
On April 3rd 2007 TTI joined ISS alliance. At that time ISS lived in Querious, in H74-BO system. This was a trial for the ISS alliance, it had to prove to BOB that it could defend itself. Within a short period of time ISS hired the JSZ-X6 constellation in Esoteria from BOB. This is a wealthy constellation, with at that time 2 stations. The rent for the constellation was on each member, and due to this a 0.0 division of TTI was created. This division was named Shrugged Atlases, and after a little time this was the corporation that would be a member of ISS. This being an alternative to a purging, like the one Gantros did. In the beginning TTI was doing were well in ISS. Our recruitment drive was successful, and we were all becoming wealthy again. And a few of our members were also doing well on the ISS killboard. But we soon came to realize that ISS alliance were in a progress of change. It was becoming more and more a PVP alliance. This meant more regulations, more taxes, more mandatory ops and hence less production. Hence ISS was becoming worse and worse for TTI. More members started moving over to TTI, and neither TTI nor ISS were satisfied with each other.
TTI had already joined a new alliance, Kinetic Maelstrom Alliance (KMA), on the July 20th 2007. But it was not before July 29th that Shrugged Atlases left ISS, and its members moved back to TTI. KMA was a much better fit for TTI, although it also was a much smaller alliance with far from as nice systems. Unfortunately KMA went the way of many small alliances in 0.0 and was overrun and its space taken away; TTI left the alliance on the 14th of January, 2008. TTI found a new home in the (then) recently unveiled Drone Regions under Ka-Tet's feeder alliance, Te-Ka, joining them on the 20th of January, 2008. Te-Ka was a good fit for TTI as the drone regions provided a plethora of minerals for producers to use to create value. Te-Ka was already an alliance in decline, however, and it soon became apparent that their only purpose was to feed the main alliance, Ka-Tet off the sacrifices of the members of Te-Ka. TTI led the exodus from Te-Ka and withdrew from the alliance on the 6th of Febuary, 2008. Later it was discovered that the leader of Te-Ka scammed his members out of their assets by offering to transport them back to empire. He contracted them all to a known con-artist named Kublai, who then proceded to scam the Te-Ka leader and took all of the items for himself.
TTI moved back to empire space, and took the opportunity to found the Virtue of Selfishness Alliance based upon the priciples of Objectivism and operating under a capitalist model. A new 0.0 home was needed, a relationship with the Curatores Veritas Alliance in Providence was found to be the best fit. Providence is NRDS, (Not Red Don't Shoot) and CVA is an amarr-RP anti-pirate alliance. The alliance grew, but by early 2009 Oleksandr had moved on and found he no longer had the time to devote to being CEO of Taggart and the Alliance Leader of VOS. Oleksandr resigned as CEO in favor of the director of Human Resources, Petyr Baelich on the 20th of March, 2009.
The Petyr Baelich Era
Probing the depths of uncharted space
Petyr Baelich had been running the day-to-day corporate operations as a director and had negociated blue standings with a coallition of small alliances and corporations living in lowsec Amarr space prior to becoming CEO. Upon being named CEO by Oleksandr, Petyr quickly went about the work of restructuring the corporation using the divisional models from the Ragnar era. Recruitment was once again started in earnest.
In the weeks following Petyr Baelich's appointmet the situation in Ombil, (the constellation which Taggart called home at this time) deteriorated rapidly. The coallition was breaking apart due to the conflict between those member corporations who wished to use the resources of Ombil to create value and generate profit, and the corporations who existed only to facilitate combat and resented those they did not feel offered enough in that arena. The biggest PvP corporation in the area, Psychotic Tendencies brought the issue to a head by reseting standings towards all corporations in the coallition and firing upon people it had called allies as little as a few hours earlier. This decision by Psychotic Tendencies to commence the use of force caused Petyr to side against them in the war which followed. Psychotic Tendencies and their allies were by far the more powerful of the two groups in the area and the war against them proved costly in terms of ships and resources. One by one the corporations on the side of reason fell away and left the area and the spotlight was placed upon TTI/VoS as being one of the only large groups left in opposition to Psychotic Tendencies and its ilk, (although only a few members of TTI/VoS actually lived in the region). Over a period of five days, several of TTI's Player-Owned Stations (POS's) on high-value moons were destroyed or stolen as they were unanchored. The call went out to the alliance for aid, but only a few pilots had the combat experience and battle-ready ships needed to defend our assets against the unchecked agression of the hygenically-challenged Psychotic Tendencies (legend has it that you can actually smell a Psychotic Tendencies member via the eve client). TTI was left with defending what POSs remained on its own.
Five POSs remained. Three owned by mining director Dythius as moon mining, advanced material reaction, and asteroid-mining operation bases, and two owned by Petyr Baelich as research and development centers. One of Petyr's towers was also setup as a "deathstar" and had enough faction weapons and electronic warfare batteries to decimate even a large PvP fleet. It was learned from intelligence sources that Psychotic Tendencies overestimated TTI/VoS's strength and believed the deathstar tower to be a bridgehead for a full invasion of the area. Psychotic Tendencies strategy thusfar had been to reduce Taggart forces and hamper our ability to work/profit in the area. Thus the mining/reaction towers were their primary targets. A series of daring "alarm-clock" ops (operations timed to occur during weak spots in the opponent's timezones) were scheduled and 3 of the 5 towers were unanchored and saved from destruction by the heroic efforts of Kushan, Dythius, and Petyr Baelich who braved 10:1 odds in transport ships and bait-fit battleships (battleships fit with a strong tank but not much offensive power designed to draw resources away from the true targets of a larger fleet or occupy and distract the enemy). After the last tower was unanchored, TTI/VoS left the area and vowed not to return except at the head of a fleet of warships.
After departing Ombil with many losses, but also after perserving billions in corporate assets, Petyr set his sights on wormhole space for Taggart's new home. Wormhole space had many resources only found in 0.0, but the nature of its mechanics favored small, agile groups rather than large, lumbering powerhouses. Sovereignity could not be formally established and rare moon minerals did not exist, so there was little to attract major powers from setting up shop. Resources in the form of rare ores and new technologies did exist in large numbers and the potential for team-building activites far outweiged those opportunities found in empire space, however. Within a few weeks Taggart had setup its first POS in the area and had begun to harvest the bountiful resources of uncharted territory. This brings us up to the present date, so if you want to know more, you're just going to have to stick around to see!
Appendix I
The 'Nibelung' tech 5 mining laser This is the story about how TTI acquired one of the two tech 5 mining laser that ever came in the hands of a player. The stats of this laser were as follows:
'Nibelung' Particle Bore Stream V 30 Energy 20 32mW 1 133tf 22320m 148 ore units 5 60 sec Mining
It happened in the beginning of August 2003. The lead artist of CCP, Torfi Frans, went out in his 'newbie' Jove ship to show the newly modeled ship (and do some role-playing). To reward the player that he role-played with, named Saruu, he dropped the mining laser that he had on the ship into a can, and then messaged Saruu that he had left something outside and to undock immediately. Frans thought that this mining laser was not of much value, and that it was available as rare loot. Saruu was smart enough to realize that this mining laser was immensely valuable, and hence he contacted TTI. Ragnar gave him 50 mil for the laser, which at the time was a considerable sum. Following this a screenshot was published on the TTI website of the laser. Much uproar followed on the EVE-O forums, as this item never was intended to be given out to the players. In exchange for giving the tech 5 mining laser back to the devs, Ragnar were in exchange given a Mining Laser tech 2 BPO, which at that time were not out on the 'lottery'.
Appendix II
Spreading viruses to your enemies in EVE does not pay People might remember way back after release TTI was attacked by some idiot spreading viruses through our email network, followed by several other very damaging viruses. The only mistake he made was not covering his tracks well enough. Calladen Nimitz notified Telia (that's the Swedish Telecom) and they notified the Swedish national police. The poor person who failed to disguise his ISP on all those nice emails already had his computer searched (over the internet), and Telia thereby got "sufficient grounds" to investigate. In the end the Swedish National Police came knocking on his door. Computer crimes in Sweden are serious and he received a 17 month sentence in prison there. So, thanks to the FBI, Telia, the US Attorneys office and the Swedish police a criminal was brought to justice--and since then no one has performed any electronic crime towards TTI.
