Test / practice sessions

Introduction

Running test sessions and practice sessions is a very time consuming activity. For most test and all practice sessions, you'll need at least two full teams to be able to do anything useful, and preferably some more people as support. Multiply this by the amount of time spent on preparing for, running and evaluating sparring matches, and the actual number of man hours becomes quite high. And not only is the amount of time spent quite high, the activity itself is complex as well, since the preparation is much more specific then most Agony roams and the results are more meaningful as well. All this can put a lot of pressure on the participants, potentially making it stressful.

Since we all play this game for fun, it is important to make the time spent on these sessions something fun for all people involved. Not all work involved will be fun (after all, who likes buying items and fitting ships?), but if the execution is efficient (little time wasted waiting) and effective (clear goals and expectations upfront, clear results in the end), most people will enjoy the overall experience.

With that in mind, a good organization of these events will help achieve those goals. This article is written to help organizing these events. Its target audience is the people doing the organizational tasks, but it also very useful for people participating in these events.

Setting up for test and practice sessions

Before you can run any test session, you need to get some things prepared. This section will help you.

Choosing a practice location

Practice sessions will be run on the test server Singularity (or Sisi, as it is commonly referred to). You need to select a system where the practice session will be held. Here are some pointers for finding a suitable system.

The system must have one or more stations with a seeded market. You don't want to travel far to get things, so you'll base out of a seeded station. Preferably, the seeded station has a medical facility for clone / pod jumping. Preferably choose a quiet system on Tranquility, since that will lower the chances of people using the system on Sisi, which cuts down on potential spies. A 0.0 system is preferred because it means you can use bombs, although it must have NPC stations with a seeded market, but a low sec system can work as well. A high sec system is not a good idea, since you cannot use out of corp alts without getting CONCORD trouble and prohibits the use of carriers.

It is also good to have a secondary location selected, so you can move in case of people disturbing practices. You can either have one close by and fly there (and perhaps use a carrier to jump stuff there), or one on the other side of the universe and pod-jump there. With each system, you also select the seeded station (or one of them when multiple are seeded) and rent an office there. Be aware that the office needs to be re-rented every time Sisi has a new mirror.

Setting up the arena

Once you select the location, set up an arena there. To cut down on warping time, create one in line but off grid with the undock of the station, so you can instantly warp there after you undock. You need at least 1 center can and 2 team warp in cans off grid with the center can. Create copies of the can bookmarks and put them up on corp contract. To save time, create the bookmarks on Tranquility so you don't loose them every time Sisi is mirrored, but only put cans there on Sisi only to prevent giving away your practice location.

Getting non-market items

It is possible you need certain items for setups that are not seeded with the market, such as:

• certain implants
• faction ammo
• faction ships

Either acquire these items on Tranquility and put them in the right place, so they get mirrored each time, or acquire them on Sisi.