Taggart Transdimensional (Player corporation)
| Name | Taggart Transdimensional |
| Ticker | [TTI] |
| Alliance | Virtue of Selfishness |
| CEO | Dan Conia |
| Founded | 2003.05.29 |
| Status | Active |
| Headquarters | Undisclosed |
| Public Channel | TAGGART |
| Website | Taggart Corp Website |
| History | |
| Alliances | Curse Alliance, The Five, Interstellar Starbase Syndicate Alliance, Kinetic Maelstrom Alliance, Te Ka |
| Former CEOs | Ragnar, GunnyP, MarkA, Alaphforce, Gantros Obscura, Musashi Myomoto, Petyr Baelich, Oleksandr, Lucius Arcturus, Stealthgogi, Redslay |
Taggart Transdimensional [TTI] is one of the ten oldest corporations in EVE, and at one time one of the strongest, dating back to the EVE-Beta. It was founded by followers of the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand, a mid 20th century philosopher considered by many to be the foremost proponent of a capitalist economy. Her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, featured a heroine named Dagny Taggart, who owns a railroad company called Taggart Transcontinental. The corporate name was changed from “continental” to “dimensional” for the Eve environment, indicating both the galactic setting and the breadth of operations trading, industry, mining, military, and financial). Within TTI, employees are recognized for individual effort and entrepreneurship, rather than treated as faceless resources exploited for 'the group'. TTI remains strong to this day and was the founder of Virtue of Selfishness Alliance. With the release of the Apocrypha expansion, Taggart shifted their focus to the lucrative areas of wormhole space. Taggart began their move to this area the week of the expansion release, and have maintained a continuous presence since then.
Corporate History
The Ragnar Era - The Ascendance From Beta
In the beginning of EVE there was Beta, and in Beta there was Taggart Transdimensional (“TTI”) which was formed in August 2002. TTI quickly hired some of the best producers in the game, and gained a reputation as one eve's preeminent industrial corps. This led to a so-called war with Endless, which was in fact purely a war in words, i.e. the perfect forum war. It 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.
With the official launch of EVE on May 6, 2003 TTI was within a very short time reformed by Ragnar. Gathering together many of its players from Beta, along with several new producers. TTI surpassed every other corporation in its productive achievements. In its first month 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 the Lonetrek region, first in Amsen and then in Dantumi. Systems in this area were being cleaned of minerals by TTI, despite being at war with the infamous M0o Corporation.
TTI's ambition was not satisfied with living in Empire. Through personal conversations with a Senior Producer at CCP, TTI came to believe that Venal would be the entrance point for the Jovian regions. Given the perceived importance that Jovian technology would have once launched, TTI 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 made Venal its home, with P-VYVL its headquarter.
As TTI established itself in Venal, it decided to join the Venal Alliance. The decision was not taken lightly as the alliance contained several pirate corps, who on a regular basis camped the Tribute, Pure Blind and Lonetrek regions. It was agreed that TTI would not participate in these piratical operations, and that they would be given priority for all the belts in the region. A week after TTI joined the alliance, Jericho Fraction followed. Prior to this they had 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. TTI's adopted a hands-off policy towards the alliance where it 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 that the Venal Alliance was to declare war on the Trade Federation. TTI represented almost 70% of the military power of Venal Alliance, and they rejected the war in a published statement saying that it would have no part in it. Tensions within the alliance began.
Soon after Evolution began its attack’s on Venal and relations took a turn for the worse. Despite branding itself as an anti-pirate corporation, it was in fact the oppositeEvolution was nothing other the same 'evil corporations' under a new name. The leaders from these Beta corps almost all joined Evolution, with SirMolle] being the founder of the corporation. 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 TTI 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 they moved to Venal. Xanadu had a NAP with Evolution at that time, and Evolution wanted Xanadu to help them in Venal. Xanadu had no interests in Venal but they did launch a few attacks towards TTI in the hope that M0o would stop attacking them.
Evolution's next move was to try and increase the tensions within the Venal Alliance. They did this directly through Jade Constantine. The culmination was the infamous vote of whether TTI should be kicked out of Venal Alliance. If TTI was kicked out, Evolution promised that their aggression in Venal would stop. Despite TTI being excluded from voting the vote still didn’t go Jade's way as it was decided to keep TTI in the alliance. The vote however was taken as an act of treason by Ragnar. TTI declared war on the corporations that voted to expel them from the alliance, and thus the Venal Alliance was broken up. It was to no great surprise that the piratical corps sided with Jade (these came to be known as The New Venal Alliance, or NVA), while the other corps either sided with TTI or remained neutral.
When the war started Evolution did not involve itself. The war did not go well for either party, but in the end NVA achieved a pyrrhic victory over TTI. Around this time Ragnar decided to leave EVE, due to time constraints from his real-life businesses. As EVE evolved into a PvP-game, instead of developing the stock market and the business side of the game, as much as half of the TTI player base also left EVE.
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 a drawback for TTI, the corp still flourished. Ragnar and other members of TTI had donated their fortunes to TTI, amounting to over 4 billion ISK. Shortly afterwards in December 2003, TTI was the subject of a corporate theft. The thieves obtained access to the corporate wallet and stole 1.2 billion in liquid funds. Anla Sho] took the entire blame for the theft, and has not yet revealed who the other thief was. To this day Anla Shok remains a member of Evolution.
In late February 2004 TTI joined the C4 Alliance (Commercial Consortium Collective of Corporations), which was based in Catch. M0o, TTI's long standing enemy, used these as an excuse to attack both the C4 alliance and their allies the Curse Alliance. Evolution shortly after joined M0o in the fight against C4 and CA, and once again tried to crush TTI. This time, however, with the help of their allies, C4 managed to defend itself, and TTI went back to creating wealth. After a short period in Paragon Soul and Estoria,in which C4 successfully defeated a Stain Alliance attack in April 2004 the C4 alliance joined CA.
The MarkA Era - The fall of CA and the rise of (-5-)
In November 2004 MarkA became the third CEO of TTI. Shortly after, in early 2005 the Curse Alliance disbanded, as internal strife between Vengeance Of The Fallen and others exploded. TTI remained allied with a group of former CA corps, who would eventually form The Five Alliance.
In 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 to be the 6th corporation welcomed into -5-, along with M. Corp. While some of TTI members did very well PvPing for -5- (MarkA was consistently near or at the top of the killboard) TTI was not a PvP corp while -5- was above all else a PvP-alliance. The state of continued war was not one that suited TTI and it brought devastation upon TTI’s empire industrial inclined players. In order to survive TTI left the alliance but at great cost. The CEO, Mark A and another long time veteran Xavier both decided to join ATUK.
The Alaphforce Era - A CEO in disgrace
None of the older members of TTI were interested in being CEO, so the reins were passed to a new member Alaphforce. Attempts were made to get TTI a new home in 0.0 but these attempts were not particularly successful. Too many of TTI’s newer players had left TTI during the -5- war’s and membership had stagnated. Soon afterwards it was discovered that Alaph was using his other characters to commit market scams and he promptly resigned in March 2006.
The Gantros Obscura Era - Detroid and TTI’s first POS
Gantros Obscura became the fifth CEO and began rebuilding TTI by quickly getting TTI back into 0.0. Still friends with The Five Alliance, Gantros reached a deal with ATUK, (i.e. a NAP and mining/ratting rights). Operating from the 0-G8NO station in the Detorid TTI launched its first POS in KZ9T-P. Unfortunately Gantros did not last long as CEO, as in May the same year Gantros had to cancel his account.
The Musashi Myomoto Era - The rebuilding of TTI begins
The next CEO was Musashi Myomoto. Under Musashi, TTI once again became an empire in corporation. He managed to concentrate the in-game stocks back into TTI's hands and recaptured the remaining funds raised from an earlier internal TTI IPO. He also developed a BPO library, where every member could borrow corporate BPOs for their own production needs. Finally he reclaimed TTI's T2 BPO from a sister-corp. 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. Musashi decided to give the CEOship to Oleksandr who wanted to rebuild TTI by returning to its Objectivist roots.
The Oleksandr Era - The rebuilding accelerates; A return to Objectivism
Oleksandr’s stewardship quickly brought change. On April 3rd 2007 TTI joined the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate Alliance ISS who at the time were based in Querious. The fees for using the 0.0 space were on a per character basis so TTI formed a 0.0 division. The new corporation was named Shrugged Atlases, and became a member of corp of ISS allowing TTI to remain an Empire corp. Production using the T2 BPO ramped up and TTI began to flourish as part of ISS. Several recruitment drives were successful, and most of the members quickly started amassing fortunes.
Unfortunately the ISS alliance was in a period of change and became a transition towards a more PVP orientated alliance. This meant more regulations, more taxes, more mandatory ops and hence less production. ISS gradually became a worse and worse fit for TTI. Members began switching from Shrugged Atlases back to the TTI mother corp, ISS was not satisfied with. Anticipating the inevitable, TTI had joined the Kinetic Maelstrom Alliance (KMA), giving them access to other 0.0 space. Soon afterwards Shrugged Atlases left ISS, and its members moved back to TTI. KMA was a much better fit for TTI, despite it being a much smaller alliance with less attractive space.
TTI continued to prosper and switched alliances again this time to Te-ka, the feeder alliance to Ka-tet. This relationship didn’t last long though as Te-ka began to heavily tax its membership to fund the PVP]and sovereignty requirements of Ka-tet.
Once again TTI found itself leaving an alliance due to incompatibility or oppressive leadership. This time rather than join another alliance that may or may not be compatible TTI formed its own Alliance Virtue of Selfishness “VoS”, based upon individual rights and political freedom. Both TTI and VoS continue to flourish to this day.
The Petyr Baelich era - Life in Wormholes
Petyr Baelich had been running the day-to-day corporate operations as a director and had negotiated blue standings with a coalition 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 appointment the situation in Ombil, (the constellation which Taggart called home at this time) deteriorated rapidly. The coalition 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 resetting standings towards all corporations in the coalition 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. 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 aggression of the hygienically-challenged Psychotic Tendencies. 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 thus far 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 preserving 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. Sovereignty 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 activities far outweighed 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.
The Oleksandr/Kushan era - Valar Morghulis
Over the next several months, TTI expanded into wormhole space and pioneered the tactics needed to combat sleepers at even the highest wormhole difficulty levels. Many of TTI's pilots profited from these endeavors to the point where they branched off and started their own wormhole operations in keeping with the independent and free-form nature of TTI. In mid-august of 2009 Petyr had a RL crisis and was forced to depart EVE. Kushan succeeded him as interim-CEO and ran TTI for several months before Oleksandr resumed his previous position as CEO.
In the fall of 2010, former CEO Petyr Baelich and several other Taggarts decided to leave wormholes for the trials of nullsec space. They formed Valar Morghulis, a pvp corp centered around objectivism. VM quickly made a name for itself as one of most well-organized and effective corps in their alliance. To bolster Taggart's numbers, the HR department started a recruitment drive spearheaded by new recruit Lucius Arcturus.
Near the turn of the year, two new class 5 wormholes were opened by Taggart pilots, one private and one public. Both ventures were successful and immediately started generating revenue.
The Lucius Arcturus era
In February 2011, HR director Kushan decided to step down. With CEO Oleksandr inactive, this would leave a leadership vacuum within Taggart. Lucius Arcturus was chosen to step in as CEO. Due to real life reasons he had to take a break from EvE a year later.
The Stealthgogi era
Stealthgogi received his pilot's license in 2010. He started a mining and missioning career but became bored with highsec life pretty soon. Being a capitalist in search of a new home, he applied to Taggart in 2011. After being accepted, he joined one of many Taggart WH crews, led by then CEO and operator Lucius Arcturus. Shortly after that he became one of Taggarts brokers, reorganised the WH sales and provided some new tools for that branch of Taggarts business. After Lucius stepped down, Stealthgogi inherited the position and was promoted to CEO. Since then he has worked to re-organize Taggart and bring its image more in line with current standards and practices. SG operated Purgatory and Limbo, two of Taggarts WH facilities until November 2012 when he sold the Real Estate and started to concentrate on other means to make money.
The Redslay era
After attacks on TTI wormholes, the exit of 20 Taggarts as Valar Morghulis, the demoralization of CAPLF, and general burnout, Redslay stepped up as acting CEO to keep the corp going. In order to coalesce the remaining membership, the decision was made to move to Solitude. In the meantime, the inner council of TTI was looking for a new CEO as this was never really Redslay's ambition. Seeing a former wormhole operator (Vision) in the public channel from 2011, they began covert interviews to establish capability and interest. By November 2014, Dan Conia was hired on as CEO.
The Dan Conia era
Dan Conia was faced with a largely inactive corporation, competing direction on where it should go, and a stale alliance. First order of business was to clear out all the inactive members and corporations to get an appreciation for the starting point. Fortunately, some loyal players who were not quite burned out (or had recovered) were still around.
The Solitude project was scrapped and TTI returned to its home, the wormholes. The challenge of recruiting for a philosophically based corporation resumed -- no easy feat.
In May 2017, the Virtue of Selfishness Alliance gained two new members: Northern CRUX, and Lambent Enterprises.
Virtue of Selfishness
In February 2008 TTI became the executor corp of the Virtue of Selfishness Alliance, ticker [VoS]. Today VoS is comprised of almost 20 member corps and several hundred pilots. It's goal is to build a 0.0 society that is based upon Individual Rights.
TTI Artwork
Recruitment Posters
Click for larger image
- TTI Womenofgalaxy.jpg
Women of the Galaxy
- TTI Recruitment1.jpg
Individualism and Capitalism
- TTI Goingback.jpg
TTI Merchant Marine
- TTI Ruggedind.jpg
Support Freedom
Business Cards/Signature's
TTI's long standing policy is for corporate members to have corporate business cards instead of signature files.
Click for larger image
- TTI Sig-midas.jpg
Original Style Cards
- TTI Raazsignew.jpg
New Style Cards
External Links
Taggart Transdimensional Website
Taggart Transdimensional/Virtue of Selfishness Forums
References
First 10 Corporations in EVE, CCP Oveur Developer Blog 2004.05.13
