f13.net

(http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050923/eve-online02.jpg)

There has never been a better time to join your fellow F13ers in Eve Online!  We've reinvented ourselves as loathsome pirates declaring war on hapless, unsuspecting empire corporations and it is a blast.  You can download a free trial, jump into our corp and start griefing our enemies, all within a few hours.

F13 and Bat Country - Evil Pirate Scum Intolerant Militant Holy Warriors

Our first war-dec went brilliantly: we griefed the enemy's miners, blew up their capsules, harassed their mission-runners and after a week our targets paid us a hundred million ISK (quite a lot of money) just to leave them alone.

Now we have a new target.  They declared themselves to be some of the best PvPers in the game, and to be "aching" for some action.  They declared war on our main corp (F13), and brought in friends to wardec us as well.

We were outnumbered, out-gunned and out-tanked.  They had older characters, bigger ships and more of them.  We jumped into their camp anyway.  And we blew up one of their biggest ships, fitted at such expense that selling it would pay for almost two months' worth of subscriptions, as well as an advanced, high-tech assault ship, for the loss of only one throw-away craft.  They ran away and hid in a station for the rest of the evening, leaving us roaming the system.  They lost another battleship the same day, in a one-on-one fight, and now they can't play the game they enjoy, running missions or mining.

Here is the clincher: many of our characters are only weeks or months old.  Many of our enemies have been playing since 2004!  And if we had had another one or two newbie players in disposable frigates that we'll give you for free, we'd probably have taken down even more in that battle.  As time goes by, we're going to be less and less the plucky underdogs pulling off against-the-odds victories too...  Be part of that!

Why Eve?

Eve is that rarest of things: a full-on PvP game set in a sandbox, where your choices of what to do are vast.  You can pewpew, obviously.  But you can also run PvE missions, mine, hunt pirates, grief hapless Chinese macro-miners, scam, become a weapons-producing magnate do scientific research, make billions from arbitrage and margin-trading, haul vast cargoes to vital systems while eluding pirates, gank those haulers for huge profit when they get careless and much, much more.

All of these options are viable ways to play the game: you just choose the one that suits your playstyle best.  You can solo profitably for years using the F13 chat channel as your social hub, or you can join up with others for war or missions.  Joining up with us at the moment will mean war!

Ultimately, you can look to joining one of the major alliances in deep space, who can change the universe itself, creating vast stories unlike any other game in existence.  Remember, everyone is on a single server, with upwards of 40,000 people logging in at once, and the actions of each player, corporation or alliance having the potential to affect hundreds of thousands of others.  If you have ever read people talking about player-created content, this is it!  Here are videos by either side (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwXKPTwJ7kc&NR=1) of the biggest ongoing conflict (http://youtube.com/watch?v=c4diQEwrjv8) in the Eve universe.  Without exaggeration, this is the biggest conflict in gaming history.

You never need to poopsock in Eve. Training skills is done by telling the system what you want to learn next, then doing fun stuff while it improves in the background.  Almost all skills can be trained to a basic level in a few minutes.  Skills continue to train even when you are logged out.

And the game looks gorgeous. Here is a site with a trailer and screenshots for the latest expansion (http://www.eve-online.com/trinity/index.html).  It really does look this good. You will fly your craft around ships kilometres long (http://www.files-firetech.pioneerx.co.uk/view.php?file=Pictures/EVE-ships_large.jpg), and dock in space stations miles high.

What does it cost?

It costs nothing to try out Eve-Online.  You can download a free trial client from here (http://www.eve-online.com/download/).  This gives you fourteen days to try out the game, see whether it is for you.


What can I do?

(http://death.innomi.com/uploads/dinc-noammo-ruinyourlife.jpg)

This is why Eve is awesome.  This is not like WoW where a new player can do nothing at all against someone a month old.  In Eve, a new player with a few hours of training can lock down a vast battleship flown by someone with years of experience, and pin him there to be destroyed.  Or you can specialise in electronic warfare, and jam enemy ships out of the fight, all the time imagining them cursing as they see a twenty second counter til they can do anything at all.

Here is a video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=PayTWKxtn6I) showing how you can lock down a target so the big ships can kill it.

There is nothing so sweet as knowing that your target is repeatedly jabbing at his warp button in an attempt to escape, and that he is hearing a calm voice saying "you are unable to warp because you are warp-scrambled."  He is cursing because he knows you have been playing for a week and he has invested four years of his life into this ship that he is about to lose.  You're the person who can make this happen.

Just by leaving yourself logged in when afk you are helping make our war-targets' lives more tense and miserable!  They see you in-system and don't know whether you are there or not: you might undock and jump them at any point.  After a few months, you can even fly ships that hide in space, so that your targets know you might uncloak right next to him at any moment, jam him, scramble him and kill him.  Imagine their paranoia!

Realistically?

Our current targets are now huddling in a couple of systems, coming out onto the station undock point and scurrying back in if they see too many of us in local.  But they will get careless or cocky again.  If we can get the numbers to engage them  at any given point we will.  Believe me, there are few things in MMO gaming as heart-poundingly fun as seeing your ships warping together towards a target, knowing you have to kill them or be killed, and that now you've pressed the warp button, you are committed.

We spend a lot of time hunting down enemies in distant systems where they are hiding.  We also spend a fair bit of time sitting around waiting for them to even undock, or for our numbers to rise.  But you can head off and explore the game pretty safely during that time: our enemies are only to be found in about 1% of the map.  And it is all worthwhile when you see those flashing red names on your ship's HUD, and when you hear your targetting computer getting a lock, the fleet commander calling out primary targets, and when you see their shields melting under fire.  This video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=5i15Sw80Sko&feature=user), while skewed to one side's viewpoint, was made by F13 lurker Stahlregen, and gives some glimpses of the scale of PvP fleet actions in Eve.

The more people we get, the more often we can engage the enemy on our terms.  We're still learning how to do this, so join up and learn with us.

(http://images.mmosite.com/space/upload/070515/biggish/f3445d1422bc.jpg)

Do the targets care?

Oh boy do they care: their fluffy, pony-riding, carebear existences have been thrown into stark and jarring contrast.  They bluff and they bluster.  They whine and they complain.  They smack in system-wide chat and then they die.

How can you pass up the opportunity to cause grief to people like this:


Or


And even better:


Strangely these people have been very silent since our victory on Sunday.

What does F13 need of me?

All we ask is that you are not a spy.  For most of you this is not an issue.  HaemishM, with his 14,000 posts, is clearly trying just a little too hard to prove he is not a spy.  If you've been a member for a month or so, and have a decent number of posts, then you're probably in.  Unless you have ever earnestly posted charts in a Trammel thread.  We don't need your sort.

Post here, and then apply at our office in Eram VIII - Moon 13 - Sebiester tribe Bureau.  You'll find yourself in the corporate chat channel: ask there for some cash for skillbooks, and some guidance on which ones to get: by training those you can multiply your effectiveness massively in a matter of hours, opening up ranges of weapons and equipment, and making you better at what you can use already.

If you follow this guide (http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Recommended_Base_Stat_Builds) during character creation it is virtually impossible to gimp yourself at character creation in Eve.  If, later on, you decide that you wish you had chosen Gallente instead of Caldari, or anything instead of Amarr, then you can cross-train to start flying their ships in minutes, and most of your existing skills will still really help.

-------------

Update:

In an awesome move, Snee has donated 1,000,000,000 ISK to the corp.

To re-iterate, Snee just donated a billion ISK.  Nine zeros and everything: I checked.

PS apologies for the use of so many goonfleet videos, imagery and tutorial stuff: I used the only kinda-current Bob thing I could find (the Vacuum video), but GF just has a lot more publically-available stuff like the tackling videos, character creation guides etc.

Hmm...nice sales pitch, I'm in. Will download the trial when I get home and give the game a shot tomorrow night.

Fuk! I am so there!  :drill:

Thank fuck I worried it would just be my huge post followed by an uncomfortable silence.

When you get in, look for a button on the left bar that looks vaguely like a few people, about 3/4 of the way down the navbar.  Right-click on it, choose "create/join", enter "F13" (no quotes) and agree to join the existing channel.  It's our non-secure F13 channel for anyone who wants to chat to us, whether in F13, Bat Country or other corps.  Don't discuss war stuff there, as our enemies can easily eavesdrop.

Once there, say hi and that you're new and hope that someone rich is actually reading, so you can be showered with gold and kisses.

It is also totally worth running through the tutorial.  Really, seriously.

Falconeer, are you using the account you used before?

Yes, and I am downloading right now.

If you join us, I'll pay you a million isk and provide a free cruiser of your choice to you when you can fly one. Just send an Eve-mail to Vedi with your f13.net name, and I'll deposit money to your account. A million is not a huge amount, but will cover basic costs of living for a bit.

I've spent more than a year making money in this game which is itself a kind of fun if you like spreadsheets. Now I want to spend it on you so that you can blow up heavy hitters.

Meh, I really don't want to resub right now, but I've got a 7mil SP char I don't use that one of the longtime posters are free to use if they sub it.  PM me for info.

IIRC, it's outfitted with some half-crap gear and a drake that Slayerik gave me (Thanks Slayer!)

Caldari, missile spec, good drone skills, a week or so away from MWD I think..been awhile.

Are there eu people other than Falc and Endie? I might be interested in jumping on a frig and dicking around in empire again... I'll have to check if my character is not involved into some heavy BoB bashing tho, as far as I know she's in Fountain.

You know, this top post almost makes it not seem like a spreadsheet driven game. Almost.

Can't afford to care (no time to spare!), but props on the hard sell.

I'm EU time but mainly playing on my non-f13 trader/builder character.  So you can hit me up for a little isk if you see me online.

I *am* fighting off the temptation to reactivate my combat guy for a little pew pew action.  Think someone with 30m skillpoints, nearly all combat, might be useful?   :drill:

Great post Endie.

There are some other ways to make money as well. My profession is Eve Online poker. Really, it is. I won around 350 million isk yesterday...so now I'll go buy a stupidly expensive command ship and get that blown up in a blaze o glory.

I just got my alt into the Bat Country corp, she is a rifter pilot that is very capable of flying very fast and tackling enemies, while doing some ok damage...and she is basically fresh out of the box.

I will say Eve is not for everyone, but there are a lot of niches it fills. For me its the PVP / looting niche. Some players love manipulating the market to make a profit.

Along with Vedi, PM me if you start up and I'll give you some advice / ISK to get you going. There are certain things (like modules advice) that sometimes you just need to talk to about. Hopefully see you in space soon.

You know what i picked up last night for $9?










Freelancer.




I like eve, but the combat is what kills it for me, that, and i cant leave, or explore my ship.

Thinking of joining, too; I have a 5 mil SP character that can fly cruisers.  Have no PvP experience, would like to get some, and this looks like it could be fun for a while.

Our current targets are euro time, and we usually have four or five people logged on at this time, but there is enough of a crossover that can form up as we did on Sunday and take them on in their peak timezone.  Otherwise, we can hunt their uninvolved members (this takes patience but we got a few such ganks with the last target).

I also have another euro TZ mate who will be bringing one of his characters along, and maybe a couple of Americans whose playing hours tend to start 8ish our time.  All in all we should soon build up to a decent headcount in later euro hours.


You know perfectly well what the answer to that is.  Do it... join us...


So far I've flown cruisers, got a few ganks, been blown up a couple of times when they should have been shooting our battleship (and so they lost) and generally had fun.  Bhodi's cruiser has sometimes been the difference between the sides, right back to our first roaming gang.  This is a great way to learn about small gang experience, especially since you have fresh ships sitting nearby for you to jump into when you lose one, as opposed to the awkwardness of the 0.0 equivalent.

Damnit.  I've been just training skills for the last month and was gonna quit.  Now I might have to play again.  Except my weekends are locked up due to NFL Football.   :grin:

I'm interested though.  Shall I just catch up with you online?

Yep, join the F13 channel and follow the golden thread from there.  What do you fly?

Re weekends, I am not around much tonight til later but I'd be keen to run some later evening ops if we get the numbers: later evening meaning eve time.  So it's not all Sundays.

I think one thing that I've really liked about EvE so far is that I can play it as casualy or heavily as I want.  I had just quit WoW recently because it ate too much time and was worried to try EvE, but with the skill training working the way it does I don't feel obligated to log in every waking moment just to grind/level/quest/whatever.  If I don't feel like playing one night, I just don't play!  :awesome_for_real:  But if I do decide to log in and play all day on a weekend or something I still have plenty to do.

Only three wekends more, though  :oh_i_see:
And it's a long wait until NHL playoffs. *long sigh*

I am warping to Olo right now, by the way. Let a corp office be there or I'll quit at once permakilled by too much warpgating. Classic.

What are your active hours? I've had a pretty bad experience with EVE, because of my weird timezone (GMT/BST+2). I've always been around UK corps (RoA, KIA, etc) and by the time we get a gang together and find something to shoot at it gets about midnight and I either have to stay up late or drop out. That's why I'm tempted in this, 'cause in Empire I can drop out whenever I feel like. And I fucking love the dynamic of small gang PvP. I will now call my crazy friend and claim my character. Endie, I blame you for the countless hours I will have to listen about 0.0 warfare months and months after I quit again.

Ah, you're playing EU time.  I'm EST time here in the US.

Really tempted to open my account back up.  My character was a few days training away from using cloaking ships last time I checked.  I'll think about it.

Very nicely done.  You should get them to pay you!  Unfortunately, even with such lovely opportunities to grief, this game puts me right to sleep. 

I think I have an 8-million SP mission-whore that I deactivated after the kugutsumen scandal.  Will we be running any ops EST, and if so, will you have me if I re-up?

I don't mind tackling and I think I have quite a few SP invest in AF's and regular frigs, if that helps (me loves me some rifters).

We have more people in US timezones than in Euro ones.  We just have a nice crossover period sometimes, depending on who is up late and who got home early.


Even if you're totally focussed on mission skills it really only does take a few hours to make yourself pretty damn useful in PvP: if you can web, tackle and go fast you are there.  I think Vedi and Viin are both EST (correct me if I am wrong) and they've been kinda core to organising stuff.


At the moment I'd be very disappointed if we dopped the wardec.  These guys provide targets.
Edit or did you mean CCP?  If so I'd have to then pay Stahlregen whose GF recruitment drive posts inspired this.

Even with me Viklasing in voice chat?

Now I am confused Endie. Should I join F13 or Bat Country corp? (yes, there are both).

Bat Country.

And be sure and watch the local channel once you have been accepted, as from that point you are at war.  There is a list of all the members we know about in the Eve forum, which you can add to your buddy list so you know when they are online.

This is gonna be great!

Small note:

If you want to PvP only, and don't care about being war'd all the time, you want to join Bat Country. You can still run missions, just have to be more careful and check local and mission away from the front lines. Joining Bat Country means it's open season on you and them - any time, any place.

For PvP Fun, please join Bat Country at either
Eram VIII - Moon 13 - Sebiester tribe Bureau
Sankkasen VII - Moon 6 - Science and trade shool

If you want to PvE/Mission run/Chat with us/Play station simulator/Skill up quietly and not have to worry about those people in local with stars on their name that say "This person is at war with you", Join F13 corp at Ibura, Akora, or Olo.

The downside to joining F13 over Bat Country is that if you want to PvP some, you will be UNABLE to fire first -- they will have to shoot you, personally, before you are allowed to shoot them. You WILL be flashing red to them, but if you are in a support ship, or far away, you may not be fired upon for the entire battle and will be unable to act.

Doh, I got mixed up about offices.

Best to apply at the Eram office, just in case you find yourself alone in a frigate with a whole bunch of the enemy (we based that Sankassen office where they were on purpose).

I think that F13 is wardecced by our enemy at the moment, so F13 members can also fire first.  Someone in F13 could correct me on this, though.

This post is probably the best advertisement I've ever read for EvE, and almost...ALMOST...makes me want to sub up.

Wow.

Deja vu...

Anyway, good luck, and continue posting screenies of the whiners.  Always a good read.

Had I not so much fun playing WoW at the moment, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Keep the corp alive, so I can join you guys when I got the Diku-Virus out of my system.  :grin:

Yeah I was fooled once too by a similar pitch.

Lesson learned.

I don't play anymore, but I have isk and ships I can donate... to whom shall I send them? 

I think I can fly command ships... where do I sign up?

Snee the Hibernating Reseller 

PHIONIX DARKANGEL is teh awesome.  :uhrr: Been reading the recent goodness in the Eve forum. Some entertaining stuff.

I think Caviglia had just gotten into a cruiser, but I think re-learning Eve and getting everything set up is a bit more than I want to take on right now.

Too bad the email they recently sent me was for a $10 reactivation instead of a free month!

(http://img.eve.is/serv2.asp?s=256&c=657704089&r=0)

I messaged you, dude...

lol

Same :)

So the PvP builds direct you to build snipers and the PvE build directs you to cruisers.  The reason PvP don't go for cruisers right away is because a lack of supporting skills?

I didn't even finish the trial last time, a mission sent me to 0.0 and I naively throught I could quickly run in and out.  Secondly I felt aimless, so I didn't feel it it was worth my time to replace my ship.  If I try again, it would be for pew pew asap.

Endie, that was an excellent post. I'm not in F13/Bat Country, but I endorse this product or service anyway.

To all the haters, make a habit of going into 0.0 and hanging out around hostile stations. I guarantee never a dull moment. For maximum gankage, you probably want something like a recon or HAC, but for cheap thrills something in the neighborhood of a Vexor or Rifter hits hard and doesn't hurt to lose. There's very little more amusing than taking out faction-fitted interceptors in your T2 Rifter. The trick is to max out the skills for the particular fight/ship/role you fly and deny your enemies a fight until it is on your terms.

Just say no to missions/spreadsheets/whatever it is that you don't like about the game. Some people do depend solely on loot or ransoms for their isk; all it takes is balls and skills.

Um, be careful of taking on the GF builds at face value. You might not, you know, have 200 other pilots in gang with you when you fly, so you might make different choices. Just sayin'.

While it is on most levels a "spreadsheet" game and I don't begrudge anyone saying so.  If you have never tried EVE yet you read this MMO sub-forum you're making a huge mistake.
Eve is the best MMO out there, but it can be damn hard at times to get hooked and find the fun.  It doesn't just light up a path with yellow exclimation points and hand you color-coded shiney bits, instead you have to find the right people to game with and the right gameplay path for you of the myriad of available options.  Its the only game I have resubbed to on multiple occasions and the only game I've resubbed and actually played for multiple months ever.  Its the only functional virtual world MMO available (no, UO is not functional) and its by far the deepest most-player driven experience available.  Playing with f13 folks last time was a huge blast, I downloaded the client this morning and I intend to give it another twirl.  Will hit up people in game when/if I get online and running.

Nice Hoax, glad to hear it.

fun to read about , yes. Pictures look cool, yes. The actual game play from my try of the 14 day trial I'd have to agree with schild.

Not everyone is going to like the game. I think its a great sandbox with mediocre combat. What makes combat much better is gang warfare (very deep, player skill oriented). Playing with friends.

I agree with "if you haven't tried it, grab the 14 day trial". You have nothing to lose, and maybe you will be like me....I tried it at launch, hated it, and quit. Came back a few years later and now I'm hooked.

Well than point us to someplace you think has better builds.

I'm typing this up in the hopes that my tears will bring you smiles.

Blackbird - A caldari EW cruiser
Caracal - A caldari Missile boat cruiser
Drake - A caldari Missile boat battlecruiser
Mammoth - A industrial hauler
Vagabond - Solo pwnmobile

711h, 53m  ago - Blackbird - Ahh, my first ship loss. We had been tooling around under Slayerik looking to stir some up. At the end of the night, we were so far from home, we deliberately jumped into a 0.0 bubble-camp for a free ride back.

711h, 52m ago - Capsule - As expected, they generously provided me a ride home courtesy of a 200mm Vulcan AutoCannon II.

684h, 31m ago - Caracal - A mission took me into low-sec. I had never been there, but I knew it was dangerous. I saw a wreck 20km off the stargate. Risking everything, I puttered up to it and looted. Lots of ammo and a T2 module ($$$)! Yay! Now, I just need to get back to the gate. Oh, I'm smart -- I'll just do a warp turnaround in an asteroid belt. I'm at the belt and there are some rats that are worth quite a bit of money! It looks like I can kill them. It won't take me but a moment... Oh, a vagabond. Warp scrambled. Webbed. Dead in under 5 seconds.

684h, 20m ago - Ibis - OK, so I need to get my stuff back. I had pretty crappy gear, so maybe he left it. Oh, the vagabonds still here. POP!

684h, 9m ago - Ibis - OK Surely he's gone this time. Phew, the coast is clear. Now to just get my stuff... Oh, Hi there Mr. Gurista. Lovely day for an NPC enemy to leave me alone, right? .... Ouch.

545h, 19m ago - Caracal - Doo dee doo, This autopilot trip is going to take forever. I think I'll go downstairs to get a drink. Ok, I'm back. Oh, I'm in a pod? What the...? Oh, thank you "fastest route" autopilot. I didn't notice I was headed through low-sec.

324h, 56m ago - Drake - Just me and my running missions, la la la, oh, one into low-sec? Well, the reward is over a million! No problem! This isn't too hard... Next room... wow a lot of red... OH MY GOD THERE ARE FIFTY DRONES HERE AHH WARP SCRAMBLED - NPCS can scramble?! What!! NO FAIRRRRR <kaboom> (Note: Do NOT do the 'new frontiers' mission chain)

324h, 45m ago - Ibis - OK, I need to get back my shit. Time to see how impossible it is... yep, this is impossible in a newbie ship. Time to re-buy a drake.

119h, 52m ago - Mammoth - ECM Burst. This thing is cool; it'll break locks on anyone who targets me. I'll just stick that right on there, it fits great. OK, time to undock and check it out. Well, I'm in jita moon 4, the main trade hub of the game and there are about 15 people in range. Well, it won't do anything if no one's targeting me, right? So I wonder what the effect looks like. Where's the activate button? Oh, it's like a smartbomb that hits everything in range. Aggression, -0.5% standings X15 + Caldari Sentry Gun II. There goes 10mil in mammoth and cargo hold IIs.

59h, 49m ago - Blackbird - After being taunted by "Emperor Dano", I decide to "1 v 1" him, my blackbird versus his raven. I fit all small smartbombs and 4 caldari racial EWs to prevent him from locking me. My plan is to eat his Very Expensive Hammerhead II drones (worth about 3x my ship if I can kill them). Everything goes as planned, he sends the drones after me, I EW him into oblivion and start the smartbombs. at 50% structure.. one more hit... aaand my cap runs out. So close.

Aprox 1h ago - Drake - Get sent to a low-sec system again, rewards make it worth the risk. No pirates in local, halfway through the mission, an ares pops in, scrambles me. 5 more people warp on top of me. Screw this, they aren't taking me alive... Time to activate that self destruct.. Oh, 2 minutes. Great. Time to wait out my doom... Oh hey, I'm packing one hell of a tank. In fact, I don't think they can break it. Wow. I've only got t1 modules, I didn't think it was this good. I'm holding off a BS, two intys and a few assorted t2 craft. Can't do any damage to them though. If only i had a web, that ares would be toast. Oh well. Time to inch to the gate, it's only 20km away, maybe I can get a warp off and then warp out of there... and KABOOM goes my self destruct.

lmao...gotta love the drake's tank.

And for smart bombing...put a Medium Cap booster in your mids! :)

Yeah, I should have :) I didn't want to lose too many modules, it was more of an experiment trying to see how much hammerhead IIs did versus how much my smartbombs did. I was expecting either instant death for me via drones or the drone would explode thanks to smartbombs. It also didn't help that I had to EW him for a long time before he finally launched his drones and "got serious" -- my cap was already half gone at that point.

Endie you magnificent bastard,  you may have convinced me to give Eve a shot.

Well I gave my original account to a friend but I'll fire up my pre-xmas trial account and head over. I'll shout on F13 later tonite.

In an awesome move, Snee has donated 1,000,000,000 ISK to the corp, which I will pass on as soon as I log in.

To re-iterate, Snee just donated a billion ISK.

Nine zeros and everything.  I checked.

Err....wow.

 :thumbs_up:

I will name my next cruiser the Snee. I should be up to the Snee IV by Friday.

Cake for everyone!

Seriously, this is awesome. I will now have to dive into the administrative bubble known as "hell" and figure out how people can use these funds in a fair, straight forward, non-exclusive, kickass way.

Question: Is Bat Country or F13's main corp setup anywhere to install jump clones? I'm happily living on the otherside of the known universe from you, and I don't want to commute. (Also, implants).

I realize my money woes would evaporate if I just bought a time card (considering it!) or joined something besides Newb Corp where I wouldn't have blown all my cash on skill books, and my mediocre set of implants wouldn't be a problem to replace. Mostly I just want to be able to jump to the F13 area of the universe, PvP for a few weeks, then jump back and mission some.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=11973.msg396156#msg396156

Yeah, I saw. I was hoping F13 or Bat Country direct had one, so I didn't have Amazing Industries (I believe that's Reg's corp) for a day or two first.

Get to work on those missions after you join F13 and eventually we will! ;)

Oh god, I think even with my social skills I'm at something like a standing of 4. I'm still running L2's because I can't afford to lose a BC. I think I'll hit up Reg and Amazing Industries and set up the clone before I wander over to the F13 offices.

If nothing else, I'm pretty sure Federation Navy has stations closer than my edge of Gallente space. (I love that distance is a huge thing in this game, but it's also a PITA at times!).

Hell my character is bhodikhan. I've been playing since 2004 but have been in an NPC corp for over a year. I can bring my 34mil SP and my HAC collection to help blow things up.

I love empire wars.

To quickly boost your standings, get the Connections and Social skills. Will take an evening to train up to 3 or so and will add a lot to your modified standings.

Yeah, I have those -- I have social to 5 and connections to 3. I'd have to log on to check my actual standings. Huh, I have almost 18 million skill points. How time flies.

the last time (about a year ago) i gave EVE trial a spin my 6600GT melted. I got a refurbished replacement a week later. I loaded EVE again. The fans died. After the second trip to the distributor, I'm a lil' wary.  :oh_i_see: But we'll see.

Your hardware is fine now. After patch, EVE only aggroes boot.ini and the likes.

I logged in from my wife's amd2500 radeon9600 machine, and it was fine in heavy traffic amarr space.

I haven't tried the newfangled premium graphics, but using the normal graphic set hardware reqs are really very light.

In two weeks when my amarr battleship 5 comes in, I'll find out how the lag is in 0.0   :drill:


Snee the Carebear in a Coma

Well,seeing as how i'll be off for a holiday in 2 weeks, I think there shd be no harm in trying this out.
I don't mind getting a role and sticking to it since i'm a complete noob. First time I went through tutorial I never get to finish it before my gfx card melted, but IIRC, there were a lot of spreadsheet involved. Would be nice if I could get some pointers to filter out the data.

Given that I promised myself I'd trial a new MMO every month, I'll slot EVE in for February. I'm GMT+8 time, so I expect to never meet any of you.

I'll have Frigates V done next Monday night and can then finally hop into assault frigates for the joys of excellent firepower on tiny ships.  Once that's done, consider me ready to go pick some fights.

tl;dr

Is this the game where you farm sweat?

u farm rocks i think.
I think basically they're trying to pvp a bigger clan so to speak and needs 'extra bodies' to throw at.
They're willing to buy us the bomb belts and unlimited supply of energy drinks if we sign up.

The major appeal i find in EVE is the freedom it allows you, Alot of people (Goons in particular) diss roleplayers and call them faggots and what not; You can become so engrossed by the immersive nature of EVE that one day you just kinda realise "oh snap, i've been roleplaying a fucking space pirate without even realising it". It can be very hard trying to explain "what EVE is all about" to someone has never played or heard of it before which is why i and many others like to draw analogies between it and other fiction/non-fiction sci-fi books/films that have a level of all encompassing depth that is even slightly comparable to that of EVE.

When people say that you can change the very face of the game they are not shitting you. Mind you, it might require years of hardwork, an unfaltering leadership and enough warm bodies in order to forcibly cram your beliefs and wants down the throats of other players. This it is not just some off-hand fluff remark, it is the literal truth and it is what drives the entire game forward. The massive conquests from an outside perspective resemble something like a real time strategy game (and no i don't mean real time strategy in the sense of C&C or Supreme Commander, I Literally mean real time; with individual campaigns in this massive war lasting months. Campaigns that are sparked and resolved entirely by players and not some fucking stupid plot device dreamed up by even more stupid devs. There is none of the "Oh yeah brosef, ive got to kill these orc and zombie players and shit because they're evil or something and im a good-guy fag-elf and i need to get some battleground reward shit for doing so" that you see in MMOs like WoW. The politics are real, The satisfaction is real and most of all the bitter pubbie tears are very fucking real.

That said, The large scale conquests often devolve into meatgrinders with countless consecutive weeks of daily strategic operations aimed at crippling enemy corporate infrastructure and economy mixed in with interdiction and small incursions intended to disrupt the enemies personal money making endevours by catching them while they try and mine or rat to replenish their coffers, or even cutting them off from their own supply lines and hampering their ability to export their earnings to empire where it can be liquidated into sweet, sweet isk. As you can imagine this can get quite tedious which is why i applaud endies endevour to start up a small scale pirate corp, because while the massive galactic war can be fun and interesting to read about, being a grunt on the front lines can be an absolute living hell. However, one thing will always remain true and that is the enjoyment that can be derived from small fleet work where you can get to know your wing-mates, develop your own personal tactics and form what feels like a brotherhood above all else. You and your mates struggling to make your way in a cold and dark universe where even the most seemingly minuscule and irrelevant faux pas can snowball into drama of unimaginable proportions, ultimately spelling out doom for you and your entire corporation.

This is a harsh and unforgiving game where thousands of players can be uprooted from their homes and sent packing at the drop of a hat, where entire fleets consisting of hundreds of players in shiny new battleships can be vaporised at the push of a button and where you, the day old scrub, that can barely pilot his Kestrel frigate becomes an overnight hero by playing the integral part in disabling the enemy capital ship that thought it would be funny to fuck around with your starbase.

This is a game where the journey that you and your corpmates undertake becomes the real focus and drive instead of trying to power-level your way to 60 so you can pwn some newbs with impunity and run raids till you never want to touch a linear dungeon crawler ever again


p.s don't worry about lifting my megathread seeing as how i stole most of it from the penny-arcade guys

p.p.s who's this haemishM guy because that's actually my real life name, right down to the 'M' initial on the end and it's weirding me out.

i think the issue here is 'Too much information'. It did not look 'fun' at the first 10 mins I had before my video card went bust.

He's like you but more succinct, coherent, and capable of hitting the shift key. Oh, and he's full of mostly irrational anger.

Haemish's gimmick is that he swears for most of any given post, and likes to be angry.  He usually has one long, edgy-like-Tolon paragraph then a single-sentence second paragraph, often with something even edgier.

[haemishm]
Bush Bush Bush Iraq fascists everything fucked terrorism haha MASSIVE CONSPIRACY fuckbucket.  Spunkmonkey republican Bush probably child-abusing diediedie Bush Bush

Motherfucker punch face stab JUST DIE
[/haemishm]

Dude, Snee. You rock man...that is an awesome contribution to the corp! Much props.

I think, after resisting the urge to pick this up since it release, I"m gonna give it a shot. So I guess I'll see you folks in the chat channel.

Now what will these "aces and 8" guys think when they'll see the numbers of their griefers doubled over the night?  :awesome_for_real:

Show some respect...It's "Ace's Over 8's"

lol

I should show them where I play Eve poker at....I'd love robbing these guys for iskies.

Please send my character Sizzle Anburn an Eve Mail to this if you get a chance.

Will do. Look forward to stealing some pots from you :)

So stahl, you going to make a 800k alt or something to join us in? :) Im a big bad 900k rifter pilot.

I'm playing on the low res client on a GeForce 6600 Pro, AGP card.  Old system.  Never had any problems.

Well, in a cargo container in Verge I've got multiple samples of DNA, some janitors, some refugees, some slaves, cattle, uranium, and a bunch of other stuff. So I wouldn't be surprised if "sweat" didn't drop off of someone, somewhere.

Slayerik: If EVE ever pops out that "walking in stations" crap, poker better be included.

Amen.

That and skee ball. Heh.

Send info on EvE poker to Helen Highwater plzkthx.

Partially true no doubt, but also EVE is a game where you want to have people around to talk to at all times.  Space is big, mostly empty and often dangerous.  I can't even sort of imagine playing the game solo, last time around I must have had 6 chat channels I frequented (pvp corp, f13 general, local area ppk, eve radio, some other stuff) while playing.  Basically the more the merrier is actually true in EVE, logging on and finding nobody on in your corp is a shitty feeling from my experience.

I've back online and running I've got my 7mil sp character with a near-launch bday or I'll make a new sub-race character depending on what makes more sense.  Give me some time to get my shit packed up and moved around // sold off, but I'll stop by chat tonight or tomorrow.

I was joking.

(http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa181/Yegolev/yegoleveve.jpg)

That guy has lots of SP.  Mostly in mining, refining and Mackinaw-flying.

Is it picture time? Yay!

Sorry, have to do this. Mostly because I LOVE Eve's characters and can't get enough of those.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2131/2197347613_e161561fe9_o.jpg)

Poker Info, since it's really no super sekrit society.... Join channels and read announcements,

DOA POKER
EVE ONLINE HOLD'EM

There is a low stakes game too, but meh. Games vary from 10-500 mil

Enjoy, and play well.

You just may have convinced my to re-sub.

I had played for a few months in spring '07 but I found before I got bored since I didn't have much of a corp and didn't really have much of a direction.  But this sounds like fun!  I'd love to try the life of an evil griefing pirate.

I have a roughly 5.9mil SP character able to use Assault Ships and may be giving this another go for a while.

How on earth do you play Poker in EVE?

See, that just makes me sad.  Why would I want to waste four years of some poor guy's life when I can go out and work on my garden instead?

No, I'm just kidding.  Sociopathy ftw!

Open up the Channels and Lists tab...Join the two above. You will download a client called Poker Mavens. In the announcements of the above chat channels, they have listed admins that hold the cash (and end up gaining a few mil per person per game on the rake). I also am an admin of Triumvirate's poker table, though since the above two came out it has kinda slowly died off. I'll host some no rake games if we had the interest! :)

No reason not to take a small rake if you're doing the work. :)

And also: Cool. I'll have to try it.

Now that it's out for OSX, I may give it another shot. Especially if I can be a scurvy dog of the spaceways.

Fuck you Endie!

I saw the reactivation email this morning and thought "mmmm... nahhh!" 

Now I'm thinking "mmmm... mebbe!"

Now that's just evil! Because I could log in at work and work at skills like I did the first time I 'played'. Hell, I was at the point where I was able to run high-sec missions on a test machine :) Probably not a good idea in f13 with a wardec, but still. It was a somewhat work-friendly game at the newbie level.

Our enemies group almost exclusively within three jumps of Sankassen and Isenairos.  There are a lot of places you can run missions for a change of pace if you like.  If they left the undock point to find you it would give us some welcome opportunities to ambush them...

All my stuff is in a galaxy far far away about 75 jumps away  :grin:, no problems running missions in and around the systems there.  It is close to low sec space so you need to be sure to check your mission destinations.

Edit your post dude, our enemies (current and future) read the public forums.

They aren't worthless enough to go after one guy 5 jumps away?
Right?, RIGHT?! :awesome_for_real:

Well....considering how often we just have like 6 people online and we all sit afk in station while they camp us, they might actually be bored enough to run down one person 5 systems away if the opportunity presented itself.

I should just re-up so I could leave my guy logged in sitting in a station all day while I'm at work :P

Ok I have a couple of questions for the Eve fans here:

1. I hear the tutorial is a couple of hours long. (ouch!) Does it have to be done in one sitting, or can you do some, log out, and finish the rest later?
2. Can you log out anywhere or do you need to be docked?
3. Are the travel times excessive? (this might not matter based on 2.) Will I be sitting at my computer staring at the monitor for a half hour while I travel from system to system?
4. How quickly can someone get enough cash together to get a "decentish" ship to the point where they can make most of their money shooting pirates and looting them?

1. It's a large mission chain, 10 missions, each one takes about 10-15m to do -- you can do some, log out, and finish the rest later. The actual "Tutorial" part is about an hour (how to handle your ship, how to jump from system to system, targeting, etc.), but then it shoves you into the mission chain so you can a feeling of how missions are run.

2. You can log out anywhere. If you log out in space, you warp to a nearby location, and when you log back in, you warp back to where you logged off from. If you've attacked someone, your ship remains in space for 15 minutes afterward so it can be risky.

3. It depends. If you are on the other side of empire space, getting to 'friends' could take 30m or so, if you are sitting at your computer. If you're autopiloting and in anything but a shuttle, it will take twice as long. Generally people hang out in one area, so you're no more than 5-15m, from where you need to be.

4. If you wanted to run missions, it works like this. Missions take 15-45m to do (depending on level, higher takes longer). Frigate missions (lvl 1) pay about 100k. Cruiser missions (lvl 2) pay about 200k each. Battlecruiser missions (lvl 3) pay about 400k each. This is including mission rewards, bounty (money for killing the pirate npcs) and loot (stuff you get off their wrecks, and salvaging the wrecks themselves). Occasionally you'll 'strike it rich' and get a module or salvage part that is worth 500k+. If you bring an oversized ship to a mission (cruiser for L1) it's complete and utter overkill and you can obliterate everything.. You can get a lot of quick money this way.

However, that doesn't matter. We're willing to finance you if you want to throw frigates at the enemy all day long.

Anyone including me is happy to give you a cash hand up to a cruiser, and given the right starting skills (if you read the guide) you can fit in a cruiser within two days or so. I'm not sure what "most of the money shooting pirates and looting them" means; you aren't *really* going to make enough to live on by just killing the people we wardec.. we do it more for fun mostly although if you want to stay in a frigate it's cheap enough you can pretty much do it forever and we'll finance that. It takes about a month of training to fly a battlecruiser decently, but the rule of thumb is never fly into war what you cannot afford to replace. You'll have to make money somehow, but 1 or 2 L2 missions will set up for weeks and weeks of pvp in frigates.

Thanks for the response bhodi!  This point intrigues me.  Do you mean 1 or 2 L2 missions will set me up to pvp in frigates actually FIGHTING, or as being bait and just holding ships in place while others actually fire at them? 

Actually Fighting. A fully fitted insured tackler frigate will "cost" you under 150k if you get blown up. At that price, you can get blown up all day long. Bait ships cost a lot of money since they use expensive modules to really up their tanking ability. They're also generally battlecruisers or battleships. frigates can't take a hit, you generally go pop if you're targeted.

Holding enemy ships in place so they can't escape or move is a critical part of combat. You may not be doing damage, but hey -- damage isn't my job either. My job is to make it so they can't lock onto our friends. Just because I don't do DPS doesn't mean I'm not fighting. For comparison, my EW (electronic warfare) cruiser costs 3.5 million, plus another million in modules. Insurance gives me back 3 million if it gets blown up, so, I'm really out about 1.5 million when I go pop. I can run level 3 missions, so I basically have to run 1-2 missions if (when) I get blow'd up to replace it.

Now, I run more missions than that, because I'm working my way up the cash ladder -- I bought and fitted my first raven for about 100m, so I can start to run level 4s.. which pay about 3 mil per mission (though the missions are longer, they can take an hour or two to complete). Then, I can lose cruisers all day long and not even care.

Come to think of it, my mission rewards may be a tiny bit low, when you factor in the 'strike it rich' modules which come up every two or three missions. Take what I said missions pay out, and double it.

There are plenty of roles for people who don't do straight DPS; you can even be a space priest if you want, healing up other people's armor and shields. Many of these roles are not skill point heavy, meaning you can jump right into them and be part of the action with a week old character.

See, to many, that DOES mean they're not fighting.  I'm wondering if it would be possible to put together a relatively inexpensive ship that can actually do some damage.

It's neat that there are roles to play that I can jump into right away (healer, crowd control, etc..) but it sounds like damage dealer isn't one of them.  Is that the case?

They should pay closer to 15mil if you add the bounties. You should also get some of your guys in there and let them salvage/loot while you take down the npcs.

Unfortunately, it does take time (skill points) to be really good, and money (you need to fly a cruiser, frigates simply don't do enough damage). If you're focused on what you want (a specific gun/missile type) and you do nothing but do some quick training skills and then straight for the skill that lets you fly the ship, plus the guns that let you pew pew, plus enough support skills that you don't instantly explode when targeted, you can get there and be 'okay' within 2-3 weeks or so, and 'good' with another week or two.

Many of the 'tackler' skills are prerequisites for larger ships (cruisers require frigate IV, medium guns require smaller guns III, you're going to want the speed skills in both ships), so people start as a tackler and work their way up the chain as they get more skill points and money.

RE: LC: yeah, I haven't actually *done* any L4s yet, I was just estimating. I still have a day left on missile operation V so I can use cruises. Right now, my raven fits heavy launchers. It's pretty funny; I have less DPS than my drake (and my tank is worse, too!). I do plan to try and rope one of the f13s in to do my salvaging, I need to work out some sort of payment plan. I'm headed out of town for a week on sunday, so I'll be setting a long training skill and get into some serious mission running when I get back.

Yes, there's a lot to cover. You can break it up -- it remembers where you were. ANd you get a nice implant for finishing that generally sells well.

Yes, but you're vulnerable for a bit after you log out that way.

Only for longer hops, or slower ships, and if you leave it on autopilot. In faster ships, if you use warp to zero and stuff, it's pretty fast. Generally if you're only going a system or two, it's a minute or so.

Depends on whether you plan to work alone or not.

Hmm, interesting.. is that 2-3 weeks of playing casually?  (like, say 1-2 hours a night) or is it 2-3 weeks of /played?

Casual, EvE skills train in real time so you don't have to be on 24/7 to grind anything.

Yeah, I figured that for the skills, it's more the money thing I'm concerned about.  If making money is easy enough for the ship/insurance and implants/clone then I suppose the only real concern is skills right?

You can get the money; We'll give you enough to always be in a frigate, if you want to get above than then you'll have to earn it. If you run missions for 1-2 hours every night by the end of the second week you'll be in lvl 2 missions, by the end of the third week you'll be in lvl 3 missions, you can probably do 2 a night, so a quarter mil, then a half mil a day and then a mil a day... Skills speed it up, if you take a few points in social (more standing per mission) and a few in negotiation (more cash rewards per mission), you can bump it up even higher.

Begging is always an option too, if a mil or two is all that's stopping you from having fun with us, it's really not a lot for experienced people. We have several here who are throwing around billions and billions in the market.

What I did was beg for enough cash to buy a cruiser and basic skill books (I got a 10 mil donation from like 2 people during start), that got me to my level 2 missions. Then, when I had access to level 3 missions, and having a bit more experience in the game, I talked to and acquired a loan of 50 mil from regel with the promise to pay it back within a month. This allowed me to buy +3 implants and a drake to run the level 3 missions in. After running missions for 2 weeks, i was able to pay that money back. After running missions for another two weeks, I now have access to level 4s and I scraped up 100 mil to buy and outfit a raven. Currently I'm skill limited on that, I have one day to go until I can actually put battleship-class weapons on my raven.

Admittedly I play for more than 2 hours a night, probably double that most nights. It's still less than when I was raiding in WoW.

If you're playing solo, especially if you like to hoard good drops "for later", you'll find your biggest outlay is skill books for new skills. I was pretty cash cramped for awhile, and resorted to mining for a bit to stake up a decent boat and the initial skills. If I'd sold the implant you get for finishing the mission, I would have had plenty (plus, admittedly, I was buying the advance learning books too which aren't cheap).

However, even me with my highly limited cash compared to everyone else -- I wouldn't even notice the cash required to get you into a combat worthy ship, get a clone, and get the basic skills stuck into your head.

Skills are the real gate to advancement, mostly because they gate equipment and ships. Luckily, unless you need rank 4 or 5 of a skill, it's a matter of hours to train enough to use something.

The new character creation process starts you out with access to all the basic skills for combat (so you don't have to pay for the books), and really you can train the short ones while ratting and set the long ones to train overnight. And if you like the game, get EVE-Mon. It's a pain to have to setup your implants there, but otherwise it'll just notify you when a skill finishes.

Well, I think I may give the trial a little spin tonight if I can manage it, although I can see my participation in this game being extremely casual..

Nice thing about EVE is -- say you see a skill group you REALLY like (for me, it was Drones) and some of the skills are worth taking all the way to rank 5 (sometimes as prereqs for other skill, sometimes because the bonus is just too nice -- things like Mechanics V, etc). Training rank 5 can take a week to a month, depending. If you're not figuring on logging on for awhile, set a long skill to training. (Same thing when a big patch is coming up!)

Half my level 5 skills came from times when I knew I wasn't even going to have a chance to log on to switch skills for weeks or more.

Damn, that advertisement was great I'm downloading the client as we speak ;-) (although technically we aren't speaking ;-) ).

You should consider a career in advertising or starting yourb own cult.

I shouldn't be reading this thread.  I'm starting to want to mine ice.

Except ISK. After losing my 3rd battleship (100M+ after fittings) on a level 4 mission, I ran out of patience for ISK grinding. My miner alt couldn't get to any of the decent rocks without getting blown to flinders, and mining in high-sec is about as interesting and profitable as watching paint dry.

Great introduction to the game. I'm on cold turkey now. Open PvP and full loot. Sounds like heaven to me.


Guess I'll spend the next two weeks lurking these boards to meet your anti-spy-criteria. I'll call you guys when I've finished my exams end of january. =D

This is true, now WAP shouldn't have been running L4 missions apparently and if he'd stuck to L3's would have made good cash but sometimes you can find yourself grinding ISK.  If you can have fun at the frigate/cruiser/tackler/ewboat level you will always be able to fund yourself.

The other grind is travel, which is greatly reduced as you l2p but can be a downright killer if you make certain common newb mistakes.

To avoid the grind I suggest the following finger rules.
-Don't pilot a ship you can't afford to buy 5 more of (ignoring insurance payouts) with your liquid isk.
-Don't ever buy fittings in single sets, buy in groups of 5+
-Learn your local chunk of empire, learn to recognize the other locals/corps/pirates/miners/runners invest time/isk in instant travel bookmarks in/around your operating area and to Jita (the major market hub of eve).
-Always have a fully fitted ship docked somewhere where it can make you some cash.  Then you can fly your pvp bird, a shuttle or another fast ship out, make some isk and go back.
-Always fully outfit the following when engaged in small-scale skirmish warfare:  5x cheap expendable tackler frigs, 3x cheap expendable dps/ew cruisers, optional: 2x whatever your preferred top of the line combat ship is.  Nothing sucks more then having no ship or not the right ship to fly when the enemy comes knocking.  Also nothing at all sucks more then getting pop'd by your enemies while trying to go pick up a ship/module so you can fight them.  Double or triple these numbers the more serious the conflict is.

If you follow those 5 you'll have much less of a chance of encountering the soul crushing defeats that make people who do enjoy eve up and quit.

I think that's a sign that your skills aren't up to the task. Run L3s for ISK while your skills train up for L4s -- you can run most of them in a BS and it's easy money.

Hoax: Dammit, now I have to go Vex + fittings shopping. Oh well, at least I know what I need now. :)

Hm so if you set a skill to train and then it hits the next level, training stops?  You have to log in again to start training again?  I guess I'm just wondering if you have to do this every time you acquire a new skill/skill level.

Correct.

I think the anti-spy test should be 50 posts in the politics forum....

We should refrain from cruel and unusual punishment

Yeah, I think they're talking of letting you queue skills a bit. And alts (regular alts, not seperate account alts) can't train at the same time. ONE skill training among all characters on that account at a time.

There's a program called EVEMon that runs as a background task and once you configure your implants correctly, will alert you when a skill finishes training. It automatically grabs your character data and what skills you're training off of the Eve-O website. (The EVE developers actually added a nice API to allow programs like that access to character data as XML, so long as you give them the proper key to get in).

When I'm playing EVE, I have that running and it just pops up when a skill is done and I make a note to log into EVE briefly. Does a lot of other fun things too (like you can tell it a module or ship you want to use, and it'll chart out the fastest training pattern to get there).

I had Level IV or V in nearly everything combat related. Didn't have much T2 gear though.

The major problem was that doing level 3s in a BS was like watching paint dry. The jump between L3 and L4 was dramatic. Overly so, imo.

I still can't reliably do level 4s in a dominix and my skills are pretty good at this point. I think my main problem is the "drones aggro the galaxy" bug/feature.

For those who are interested in how we're getting on, we tried the jumping-in-outnumbered-and-outgunned trick again last night, though this time it didn't work as well  :ye_gods:.

They were sitting on the undock point as usual, with two battleships, a battlecruiser, two interceptors, and a destroyer, as well as one more in space elsewhere and two more in the station.  The thrasher pilot normally flies very advanced t2 ships, so that was obviously bait and switch stuff too.  Sure enough, while we warped in he swapped for a nighthawk command ship.  Ouch.  We had 2 battleships, a couple of cruisers and a few frigates.  Not good odds, but we had the urge for pewpew and my ship was insured  :awesome_for_real:  So it was time to demonstrate gang warfare to our new pilots.  Everyone was keen to fight, and there was only place to do that.

We had three of us outside the system on gates: we jumped in and warped to our warpin member at zero, which landed us within 3km of our primary target.  Others undocked or warped in. By then their remaining members were undocked, but we'd been blueballed enough: time to fight.

First problem: the scorpion I'd called as primary simply didn't aggress: it waited for a bit then docked up (in retrospect I think Bhodii jammed it out of the fight so it never got the chance to aggress!)  After that I made a mistake in primarying the abaddon, when we should have just peeled off the hurricane and some smaller stuff.  At least I remembered not to primary the command ship!

Gang warfare and pvp in eve in general is really hectic (fleet sniping aside), and this was pretty much aimed at demonstrating that to new members.  It is a flurry of activity, and we did pretty well in the event: we lost a big ship - mine, which I was resigned to doing as soon as I chose to aggress instead of just calling for everyone to dock - but if the scorpion had attacked anything (like I am sure he meant to!) we would have exchanged battleships instead.

Learning curve experience for me as an FC, and for some other members: the new ones did really well, got their points on targets, and managed to get out when told to.

Main lesson is that we need more firepower all round: two more battleships, really.  And we need Slay to teach us how to bump ships off the undock properly.

Heh, it may sound odd to say that I had fun just exploding and hearing people yelling (nicely) orders in voicechat. Still I did.
And now I am hitching for payback.  :drill:

Yeah, but how much Plagioclase did you get?

Yeah, bumping is a great thing to learn for station fighting and common roaming gangs. It can be done as simply as hitting MWD and Approach at full speed...that only really works on targets that are already webbed. A lot of times you have to manually drive your ship to where the opponent is heading and run into him at full speed ... bouncing him off the station/gate and out of dock/jump range.

Fleet command is the most tense thing in this game. You did fine, I thought to ask if the scorp had aggressed but i wasnt even sure if everyone knew what that meant :) Ive probably led 10 gangs in my life...and you did fine for facing the odds we had. You made the right call at the right time to disengage. I feel like a let down flying a rifter. I almost want to just buy a decent character and transfer em over so I can have some fun....Hmmmm

Um. Oops. That was totally my fault. I instajammed him, he was the first one I locked. I didn't want him getting a jam off on me so he was my first.

For those of us whose PvP experience in EVE has mostly been limited to running, squealing like a girl, away from gate camps in our precious, precious newb frigate, what's the signficance of the whole "agress" thing there?

There are actually two timers.

The first is the lockout timer, in which you aren't allowed to dock or jump through a gate after attacking someone for something like 1-2 minutes. It's to prevent running away by docking when the going gets rough. CCP wants you to be able to get away legitimately, by warping, or not at all.

The second is the 15 minute aggression timer that you get when attacking someone or stealing something 'owned' by them, like a cargo container. It lets anyone from their corp attack you freely for the next 15 minutes, and shows in the upper left corner of the screen.

It's yellow if it's another corp or player, and red if it's concord. Red means that concord as a corp will attempt to attack you for 15 minutes, so any gate guns or station guns will consider you open season. You can still dock by warping to 0 and quickly getting inside the station, as long as the lockout time has expired. If you want to check this out, feel free to try an ECM burst on the undocking area of Jita IV, moon 4.

What happened in this case is that because I jammed him so fast, he wasn't able to lock and attack anyone, so he didn't have an aggression or lockout timer on him. When things got rough, he simply docked. He was allowed -- since he hadn't attacked anyone, he had no lockout timer. We, the aggressors, and his teammates, who attacked us back, could not have followed him in.

I lost a command ship with insane (2 corpum-a repairers, and top officer everything else) fittings to a lvl 4, some of them are really quite vicious. Unless you know the mission very well , be afraid.

It may be you can relax a bit in a battleship, especially tricked out or t2, but I bet they have a few designed to kill those too, if you don't have good intel.

0.0 mining is very profitable, but impossible to do solo without getting podded every half an hour.

I made all of my money before they changed the old escrow systems to contracts... probably the best way to make solo money now ... is to go into HITRADE and ask the Powers-that-Be for advice. There's always a way.


Snee

No need to apologise: you did awesomely keeping him locked down and out the fight.

The fault was mine: I tell everyone how a newish character can keep an expensive battleship flown by a years-old character out of the fight and then I underestimate what you could.  As it is, it was a perfect example of how newbies in ewar ships can help dismantle fleets.

Agony Unleashed (http://www.agony-unleashed.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewforum.php?2) run a fantastic series of courses on EvE PvP. The PvP basic shows how a bunch of noobs in cheap frigates can make vets in faction fitted battleships cry and then they go on to more advanced classes such as wolfpack (destroyers), fleet command, cov-ops etc. Once you've graduated from a class you can attend that class as often as you like in future as an alumni free of charge subject to spaces being available. Access to the course materials alone is worth the price of entry and the full night of PvP in a fleet that consistently wins is just gravy. When I say 'full night' I mean just that, they usually start in the late evening and carry on right through to downtime.

Those look really good fun, and an absolute snip at 7 million.  I'd be in favour of sponsoring members who wanted to go on the next one with some of Snee's gift.

They also run corp classes so if you get enough guys together they'll run the course just for you.

Here's a video (http://static.filefront.com/ffv6/video/fullpage.php?v=459022&autorun=true) one of them made of their last basic pvp course.  Looks like a good tip, Iain.

I am interested! I didn't attend a single class/course/lesson in the last 13 years which makes me eager to get back to school  :awesome_for_real:

Joined the Corp last night.  Can't wait to get into the muck.

Last night I re-subbed.  So I liquidated most of my assets and packed the rest of my bits into the trunk of my Vexor, the Indecency.  25 jumps later ( :uhrr:) I'm in Olo.

I didn't see a BAT office there to apply. Or should I be applying to f13?

This was my retarded fault in the OP and I've updated it to save anyone else lengthy and pointless journeys.

Apply at Eram VIII - Moon 13 - Sebiester tribe Bureau.  We also have an office at Sankassen but it is usually surrounded by a swarm of annoyed, enemy ravens.

I feel the need to mention Eve's economy here; it's by far the deepest in ANY MMO on the market.  And when I say 'by far', I mean 100x deeper than any other game.  The WoW auction house is the lemonade stand to Eve's Wall Street (I may have stolen that line from someone, can't remember).  

You can build ships or thousands of other necessary modules for combat pilots, you can 'invent' advanced blueprints to build the most advanced (and expensive) ships and modules, you can haul pretty much anything - ships, minerals, implants, skill books, garbage, exotic dancers (not joking on the those last two), etc., from one place to another in that age old custom of buying low and selling high.  Once you really know what you're doing and have some isk to flex, you can actually just stay in one place and manipulate market hubs by buying up all of the available items of one type and reselling them for twice as much.  Of course, that's assuming none of the other traders figure out what you're doing and trying to undercut you...

There's a few of us F13ers who play the market game exclusively, or almost exclusively, and have become very, very rich in in-game terms, to the point where we don't even need to pay for the game with real money any more; we can buy time cards using in-game isk.  There's one forumer here who started out with something like 5 million or 10m isk - a somewhat small but not completely negligible amount - and turned it into 1 BILLION isk in under a month, more than most combat pilots make in six months to a year.  He's now part of the 'trading elite' that tend to dominate the Market Discussions forum on the official forums.

Becoming competitive in the Eve markets is not an easy thing to do.  It certainly takes more time to learn how to turn a profit, and in many ways the competition is more cutthroat than any ship-to-ship pvp.  But if you like playing with advanced economic simulators and are willing to invest some time, then you owe it to yourself to download the trial and try it out.

Fleecing mission runners is always good. Way things work is with a bit of time invested in trade skills (not much at all, really) you can set up buy orders -- up to region wide. Take a common rat drop for the area, one that people sell for maybe 50k to 500k. If there are no buy orders out in the region for it (or the ones that are out are don't cover the region) place a region-wide, 3-month buy order for that module at maybe 500 or 5k. (Decimal point games are fun!).

Lots of mission runners will just sell it to the first buy order they trigger (which is the highest price one they can see). The downside, of course, is that all your bought good end up at stations all over the region. I've spent about 5 hours slowly picking up the remnants of 6 months of multiple buy orders. On the nice side, I have 300 to 500 unit stacks of named T1 stuff that sells for 500k a piece, and I paid at most 5k.

It's not the giant profit factory that heavy-duty trading is, but it's nice "fire and forget" trading (just check your buy orders to see if some jerk has released a similar one but for 1 penny more, the fuck). Plus, you only have to travel every once in awhile.

And if you're running missions, for God's sake -- check the advanced market details so you don't sell a 500k module for 500 to someone like me. :)

I'm putting this here because not everyone has access to the private forums yet, whereas a bunch of people are reading this.  We can actually plan specifics about exact departure locations and times in private later.

For a change of pace, how about a suicidal frigate roaming gang into 0.0?  We can load up on ewarn points and webs and fly around til we find stuff either to blow up or be blown up by.  Ideally Slay could run it - his last roaming gang was fun and successful - but if he can't then I or someone else could instead.  We could also go over stuff like bookmarks and safespots, use of TS, overview settings, aligning and gang-warping and other stuff like that if people are interested in learning the basics of gang warfare and pvp stuff.

Saturday or Sunday evening eve time would seem best, but we could adjust for when people can make it most easily.

I am in! I am in!
Reckless  :drill: PvP:drill:  is the point for me. Even more since I found out (again) that missions are incredibly boring.



P.S: Still no secret war forum access here.

Holy crap this game is complex.  I got into the game pretty easily, and the tutorial showed me how to do some basic stuff, but now that I'm done the first part I'm a bit baffled about what I should do.


Also, does combat get any better than EQ style auto-attack???

Combat in EVE is insanely complicated some of the time, other times its EQ auto-attack without spells/skills.  Depends on what your role is and what type of combat your engaging in really.  Also the fitting minigame and locating/baiting/ambushing/camping targets minigame is usually a big chunk of things when it comes to combat.

I just can't help but weep for the missed potential of this game.  If only you actually piloted the ships and had somewhat twitch based combat where you aimed, it would be nearly perfect..

You're mining the wrong stuff.  Still boring, though.  Unless they removed all empire ice....

If you ever get into a largish battle or a fight in any busy system (hi2u Jita!) then you'll fall on your knees and praise the Lord of Kittens that the game isn't like that.

30,000 people all trying to play Rogue Squadron on the same server?

Network code says no...

I'd rather they avoid that possibility artificially and have a good spaceflight sim MMO.  It's a crime that such a beautiful game is so dry with respect to the subject matter itself.

The only reason that was successful is we stumbled upon a gate camp that was fightable. Nothing I did in that fight made any difference, as I got popped by the destroyer and cerb in like 10 seconds. Basically, my rule for PVP is usually "Fire up map. Look at Average number of players in space at 0.0 gateways. As long as it isnt 10 plus, you probably have a decent fight there. If you do pick a fight, and win...then you look for a spot in 0.0 that has like 1-5 guys. Fly that way. You might run into something along the way, or a bubble camp and get owned, but its decent fun and good experience.

Some 0.0 gateways in the North

m-o
p3en
ec-
93pi
BWF
AD-
EOA

or find your own at:

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/ombey/Eve_Regions.pdf





I say this rather than just lead it Saturday because my grandfather is in town from Seattle and I'll be busy tomorrow.

I'm in for the frigate roaming gang.  Can fly Caldari frigs.

As for...


Space flight sims have been a dead genre for a while.  If the single-player genre is dead, I don't see how anyone would even consider making a MMO.   Sucks that it's like Firefly, in that it seems there are a lot of fans, but in reality not enough people are interested to make it profitable.

Freelancer sucked.  I want a Freespace 2 or Iwar-2 -like game with joystick control!  Single player or multi, don't care.  Oh well, not gonna get it.

I put in an app. Should be pretty obvious which one is me.

Naval model works better, I think. Although if you fit up an interceptor with MWDs and nanos, I think that comes pretty darn close to twitchy.

So hey!  Couple questions, because it's been forever since I played Eve, and I played it for a relatively short amount of time.  I just recall thinking the economy was awesome.

1)  I saw someone in that other thread mention contracts in Eve.  Is this an established system integrated into the game, or just a widespread player phenomenon.  And uh, exactly what is contracted?  I don't remember this at all.

2)  What's the going rate as far as isk for a 30 or 90 day time card?

3)  Did they copy over that smooth ribbon interface when Excel 2007 came out?  LOL SPREADSHEETS but seriously I like what Microsoft has done.

Anyway, stop tempting me with delicious Eve threads, I have things to do.

1) It's integrated into the game. Items(trade or sell), auctions, loans, and package deliveries.
2) 180 mil for a 30 day or 420 mil for a 90 day.
3) no

If you are really into trying out the industrial side of the game, take a look at Eve Meep (http://www.eve-meep.com/), the worst-named add-on yet for the game.  It has tools of varying usefulness: calculators for BPO research, T1 and T2 manufacturing, invention and more.

Ah ok. I'll head to Eram and make the app.

So does anyone approve apps in -BAT-?

One man, and one man only (and it isn't me).

I'm downloading the demo.  I'm more of a lone wolf when it comes to PvP, but I'll try the piratey group thing...

If I got it right, you can PvP alone very well in EVE. It's just that it'll take you more time skilling and making money to be good at it.

Hey guys, thinking about jumping back in for a month or two. Unfortunately, I have a few problems.

1) Time. I don't have tons of it anymore. I'm also on EST, and I'm not sure at what times you guys operate.

2) Money. Last I checked, I didn't have tons. Or much at all; I wasn't really a market guy, and I never really got the hang of doing mission running efficiently. But why is this such a huge problem? Well...

Upside: I own a Raven, a Ferox, and a few other things. The first two ships are fairly well-fitted. Unfortunately, I am sure the insurance has lapsed on both ships.

Also, my character has....quite a number of skill points on him. As in, if I had kept playing, I could have gotten into Dreads fairly soon. I'm very good at shooting missiles as well.

What can you guys do for me? I'd really like to get back in and help with the PvP. My only experience with PvP has been especially boring, so I'm not too experienced with it.

We have a bunch of cruisers and frigates in the hangar, thanks to our glorious leader's industriousness and generosity.  Thanks to Snee's billion, and much small contributions from others of us, as well as some of the protection money paid by our last victims to us ("Hey, nice corp you got here, shame if someone was to accidentally shoot all your miners in a horrific and prolonged accident...") we have a pretty generous policy on losses in pvp.  Someone else will have to give you the details, though: I forget.

All right, I bit the bullet and have signed up for the 14-day trial.  After I've spent some time wandering around the newbie stuff I'll come hang out with the cool kids.

I haven't seen an application from you. What char name?

I was on that particular course, it was awesome fun. I think we killed about 1.5 billion isk worth of ships (much more probably with all the expensive implants in the pods we popped), with probably under 100 million's worth of frigates etc.

Highly, highly recommend these courses :)

Well, I've been looking for something new to play. Got the trial downloaded so it's time to give this a go...

hang on here, im confused, so i was thinking about re enabling my account to get in on some of this action when i pulled up your killboard, and it looks like these guys are kicking your asses, granted  i see you got two battleships but that was a long time ago and you guys just lost a rokh and megathron the other day? see for yourself at:

http://f13.7mph.com/

whats the story behind all of this? it sounds to me like you guys are the ones getting griefed. why do i want to join your corp? i have 27mil sp, and several tech2 ships like the crow, manti, and so on with a focus in jamming and t2 large rails.

i just expected more the way you guys were pumping this up

Well, I certainly don't think you are transparent!  I believe 100% that you are a genuine long-time-listener-first-time-caller :pedobear:

We're running at 50% efficiency on the KB right now: we kicked your oops sorry I'll play along their butts at first but they now sit on the station undock in their big ships.  This means they can dock up any time and are, practicaly speaking, invulnerable, although only of any danger if we continue jumping in at close range.  This is a very good defensive tactic, although it means that they spend their evenings massed in one system and one station (I sometimes log in on my covops and watch for a while) while our non-afk members are off doing other stuff.  If they split up to run missions or mine we will probably start getting kills again.

Since we have mainly got accounts of a few weeks or months old, and our opposition are in big ships, we've reached stalemate.  We can't do much except amuse ourselves with harassment and sniping against so many characters in battleships and command ships.  That's cool: there is a victory in kinda coralling all of our targets into one place like that.  We, in the meantime, are steadily gaining skills (at the start of this wardec I could fly cruisers: now I can fit a decent battleship) and our new members are learning how to play the game.  With the new members we've got - as well as the older returnees - we're going to be bloody deadly in a matter of weeks.

Personally, my own feeling is that our wardecs should be less about giving targets fair fights in a place where they expect and want them, and more about making sure that they can't run missions or mine, and that they know their implants are at risk if they try to.  In our last wardec, the targets eventually returned to their normal activities, and we killed a bunch of them.  I think we should do that this time, too.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

You have T2 ships? Wow man, I envy you.

WTF? I was ALSO about the join the corp, but now I learn how badly you guys are doing I'm having serious doubts!!

hehe

you cant expect to successfully pilot a bs with less than 10-14 mill skill points, it would be suicide if these guys are in fact veteran players, altho a high sec corp tends to say otherwise. do you guys have jump clones? that you can use to get out of the camped system? you cannot travel alone either in these systems at war..  since you all have low sp you should focus on getting throw away frigs/cruisers and then come at them in force. if you can focus on one bs and take it down then they might start seeing you guys in a new light. you need to have plenty of ships in system or close by that if you lose yours you can get back out on the front asap. stay in station till you have a small force and undock together. this peace meal attacking you are doing doesnt seem to be paying off.

also if you can set bookmarks out of range of these guys but still at the same base then linger long enough for them to give chase, or if you can tank them for long enough for your buddies to warp in you might do some damage.

anyways your killboard looks like you guys need to cordinate like these guys appear to be doing. do we have a link to their killboard?

:awesome_for_real:

Also, have you tried using ammunition in your guns? It's a good trick!

Its cool, its cool. We've got them right where we want them! :awesome_for_real:

Just in case reading this whole thread was too hard, you ARE aware that this war was started because the very small F13 EVE group was bored, and consists mostly of new players and alts taken from regular posters here?

We're fighting for shits and giggles, man. We indeed have them exactly where we want them -- which is shooting at us. Everything after that is just gravy.

yeah thats cool i hear ya.. hi-sec is a nice safe place for pvp compared to low sec and 00 where you cant choose your fights.

Why would we go to low-sec? We'd have to have required ops and guard shit and run mining ops and generally do a lot of work. That's hardly any fun.

Hey hey don't get stuck in at me, I'm IN this fight!

We DO have them where we want them, I wasn't trying to be glib  :sad:

Oh man, like Slayerik, I am experiencing an awful temptation to bring my main into this fight.

It must be frustrating, though, for our targets: they know that heading

By the way, to any casual observers, after drawing them back to Sankassen last night, we left them there and spent a while hunting down and coming within a few minutes of hitting one of their mission runners.  That's the third time that we've come within an ace of doing that, including once having a covops sitting watching one (I was just two jumps out when time ran out).  Very frustrating!

Nobody should ever be camped into Sankassen unless they want to be.  They sit around in ravens and the like which can't lock a frigate/shuttle in less than forever.

Heh, yeah, I've never really considered myself "camped".  If I want to go elsewhere I just undock in a shuttle and they usually don't even begin to lock me before I'm gone.  Then just jump somewhere else I have a ship docked at to run missions and come back when I feel like it.

I hear that, but I'm not convinced that it is the case.  That is, I admit there aren't any good space sims out there, but I'm not convinced that a good one wouldn't be successful.  Before EvE came out, people would have said the same thing about space based economic SIMs ala Elite, but that's effectively what EvE is. 

Are you suggesting that Eve would somehow have become LESS successful if the spaceflight/combat part had been more sim-ish?

I did some ice mining too, but I was trying to mine enough mins to make ships. Ice mining was for station fuel and such, wasn't it? Not terribly useful after our station got assploded.

I prefer to log in for 5 minutes, undock, wait until they open up with all of their cruise missiles, redock, repeat and then log off. I consider that a "win" in my book. But then I am easily amused.

Frankly, it wouldn't be any fun if they just died over and over. It would be like PvEing.

I've been extremely tempted to give this a go for some time now. Major problem being not having a crew to run with. Most of my guild doesn't dig the scene so I just kept putting it off.

I played a good bit in beta, but I never got into the retail whatsoever.

My main interest would be on the trading / market side of things. Also, someone said you can do scientific research a few posts back? You've got my attention good sir.

Also do you gents have any kind of activity in the early morning hours? (7 - noon eastern) I'm a night shift guy so for all practical purposes I play on euro hours.

That's midday to five pm here in the UK (and an hour later in continental Europe).  I tend to be around at those times at the weekend (when not playing rugby).  To be honest I don't even know who is on during the working day here, though.

Short update: I saw that you have accepted my first char into the corporation. Thanks for that. The problem is that I've started again on the next day as I couldn't stand his face (whi'd have thought) and the ugly choice of ships he had. I'm gonna get back to you guys with my new main in one or two days when I've managed to get me a good starting ship and some money. Then I'll be your pvp tackling slave for as long as you need me. =D

Hooray for quest grinding. Ahmm, I mean mission grinding ... *g*

Think I'm gonna give this another try. Downloading the trial again now.

I can drop that guy, just post with your new char's name in the EVE<->F13 Name thread after/right before you submit a new app to the corp. :)

I made a minmatar and he looked so like the portrait of the Minmatar Gay Rights League guy that I had to delete it a couple of days later.

http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=1414 (http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=1414)

Apart from the 21 day trial and discounted first month, is there anything special about doing it via Steam (I don't have a Steam account myself)? Can they pay their subs via Steam every month? As the EvE client is a free download currently it seems a bit odd otherwise.

I was thinking about the exact same thing. Currently I use time-codes (see sig), since PayPal is my preferred method of payment right now. I use it through Steam as well. However, even with the exchange rate as it is, PayPal takes a hefty portion of middle-man fees.

Likely this is just EVE expanding it's advertisement as it has done a lot in the last year. A very nice offer none the less.

Edit: From eve-online.com

Done. Char to drop: "dbltnk". Char to invite: "Corebear". Thanks and see you IG.

Name:               vayeight
Posts:                3 (1.500 per day)
Position:            Terracotta Army (well, Aces up the Eighthole, or whatever.)
Date Registered: January 20, 2008, 02:32:09 PM
Last Active:        January 21, 2008, 10:50:24 AM

Priceless.  The spelling and grammar aren't quite good enough to be Dano's but not nearly bad enough to be PHEINIX.  And he's been such a longtime lurker that he is aware of the extremely lax spelling and grammar that f13 will tolerate.  It's not like anyone here has ever run someone off for not reading what they wrote before clicking 'post'.

At first, I was a little worried that they would attempt to infiltrate one of the corporations, but now I see that they can't scrape together enough uppercase letters and punctuation to even pass for a poster here.  Fuck.

The fact that they have resorted to (weak) attempts at lowering our morale while at the same time showing knowledge that only members of Aces or Bat would be aware of while masquerading as a lurker who was almost going to resub - its laughable.

Oh shit, I just realized that he has 'eight' in his name.  This is espionage of epic proportions.

Whoever picked these guys, I salute you.  Well done.

For some reason, they're under the impression we're a bunch of teenagers -- or this is our first MMORPG or something. Possibly because we wardecced them with a bunch of newb characters.

It was funny watching Dano when he inflitratred the F13 channel (we got lectures on having a secure channel -- the note about WARF13 escaped his Eagle Eye), but it got boring pretty fast.

The hilarity of this thread was my impetus for re-subscirbing.  I will probably end up just carebearing in the noob corp, but this reminded me why I love this game.

Yes, feel the hate flow through you.

No, seriously, I spend 90% of my time dicking around in f13 corp waiting for the call to arms.

But I could play EvE while cuddling with Tenderheart Bear and I wouldn't consider it carebearing.

Of course, this being EVE, it would turn out that Tenderheart Bear was actually a double agent for Goonsquad who'd turn off key defences just before a surprise attack.

I don't want to worry you, but you're already infiltrated by goons.  In fact, we're thoroughly infiltrated by both sides of the big war.  :grin:

Do the people in US peak hours ever see our wartargets logged in?  They strike me as euro tz only, really.  Do we need a nice, easy mining alliance for the US people to cut their teeth on?

I'm on the most from 5-10PM CST (US time) and I see plenty of people on almost every day.  Usually 6-8 at least.

There's generally three or four on when I'm on (around 8:00 or 9:00ish, CST). I'm just waiting for the call to jump back to Sank. In the meantime, I'm missioning and trading to provide Bat Country with that 1% in taxes! :)

I'm usually on from 8 - 10 EST and there are always 2-4 of them camping the station.  I've never been targeted attempting to enter or leave the station in a frig though.

I did get popped once because I was wondering what they were doing and so I warped to 100 km out and sat there chatting for 5 or 6 minutes when I realized I had been scrambled and then I got obliterated.  It's not like there were really on the ball though.

2 questions:

a) Is there a way to hit an enemy with all my guns at once? It sucks having to manually turn on all 7 turrets and 1 launcher for every mob.

b) What ship and equipment do you want me to get for tackling? Rifter with warp scrambler I, webber I and MWD I?

By default your top row of icons can be activated with f1-f8, the middle row with alt+f1-f8 and the low slots with ctrl+f1-f8. You can move the weapons around in your HUD so they are all next to each other if they aren't already then just run your finger along the function key row to loose them off. For devastating alpha strikes - particularly in PvP - you can cycle your guns up (that is, activate them) without a target, then lock something at the same time as the rest of your gang. At that point, whoever you are primarying gets a faceful of burst damage that should swamp his tank.

I have posted an announcement here about a roaming frigate op for Sunday.  This will be free - free ships, free fittings - and should give people a good taste of roaming gang PvP and how much fun frigates can be.  This should be a joint op with another corp (possibly two), so we should have a fun swarm.

The thread is here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12101.msg401332#msg401332), so sign up.

Oh, sweet griefing, how I love thee.  Vedi, using one type of special magic (public board here!) got a location on one of our enemies.  Three of us headed over there, found his belt and jumped there, to find a mining barge and an iteron V working away, with a fearsome array of hobgoblin IIs out (we'll have those, thanks).

First we killed the itty, while our dual-boxing friend panicked and warped out only one ship when local spiked.  That first character got podded.  Then we found and scrambled the retreiver hiding nearby, and podded him too.  He must have been a touch annoyed.  The podding means both characters lose all their implants, and our mission-running, empire-dwelling friends will be certain to have a head full of pricy implants.

All in all, the (conservative) killboard tells us they lost about 100 million in modules, rigs, ships and cargo, with five nice hobgoblin II drones thrown in as well.  I'd bet that number would be doubled by implants (could be more, but let's not presume).  That adds up to over the price of a month's subscription in timecards, even after insurance.

Scouting out the next system over showed that our targets were bringing everyone over as fast as they could to hit our small hunting group, but we hung around on the gate for a bit then melted away, like the devilish rogues and bounders we are, twirling our moustaches caddishly as we went.

Please don't discuss the four or five things he could have done to save himself on the public board  :awesome_for_real:

There was one thing he could have done.

He could have paid our ransom.

100 mil. It's not a lot.

Then again, we're having a lot of fun with these guys. I don't know if we'd even allow them to slip the hook.

This is a test, hi everybody!!!

I'm downloading the client and will be rolling a character.  I played a year ago for a little while and never got very far and this thread has convinced me to give it another go.

EDIT: It turns out that my friends are still operating the corp we starting almost a year and a half ago and they're actually mucking about in lowsec and 0.0 space and having a grand 'ol time.  Suppose I might need two characters to be able to engage in f13 piracy and hang out with my old friends, depending on how nearby and compatible things are.

The new graphics are shiny and it looks like some other random stuff has improved.

The Caldari intro mission series was pretty nice -- picked up like 600-700K, a Condor, and a Kestral, which I'm sure is pocket change for anyone who's been playing for a while but was a nice way to get started.

Join us.

Thanks!

Ok fuckit I am reupping.   As long as my drunk ass can remember what the hell my account name was.

this is so much fun. i cant wait to build a ship, fit it out, and have them blow it up. have you seen these guys kill board, ( aceco.evesource.com ) ?

This is an awful spy.  Truly awful.

PS Post your losses.  I see some missing from both our campaign and losses inflicted by others from griefwatch.

Uh, I thought Eve was legendary for all this Machiavellian subterfuge.
And this is the kind of spy it pumps out?  A forum spammer with Down's Syndrome?

I am disappointed.

Disband and reform without all those extraneous commas plox

No srsly

We were preparing for The Mittani, and we get Inspector Clouseau instead.

all losses from both sides ARE on our killboard unlike yours. if you'd like i would be happy to post them for your corp also i just need the password for it. i was unsuccessful earlier when trying to put your losses from that battle at the stargate (you only put the caracal and not the maelstrom or blackbird) answer me soon =)

(also check aceco.evesource.com for the real info on the war)

HAHA YOU GUYS ARE PRETY COOL I THOUGHT THESE GUYS WERE BUT LOL. SO R U TAKIN APPS??/

^_______________________________^;; TNX IN ADVANCE  :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :hulk_rock: :vv: :yahoo: :hello_kitty_2:

That's some might fine spying there Lou... :awesome_for_real:

The very first ones I checked were missing.  Your mate ti tar and his alt both got podded.  It's not our KB, so I'm not really bothered, but having a retarded attempt at inflitration boasting about it means you gotta get it perfect.  Thanks for dropping by, we really value your opinions.

Edit: we had an aces spy on our op today and he was pretty chill to be honest.

ooo TY apparently i did miss those. they will be posted soon (missed the pod kills but the ships were posted sorry about that). who was the spy in your frig fiesta?

Edit: i updated it you can check now. if you see anything i have not added send me an eve mail but im normally on top of it the moment things happen or shortly after.

I half expected that sentence to be followed by a link to a keylogger (guess I've been reading the WoW boards too much recently).

They talk like that.

EDIT:  Regarding the Aces...  Yesterday's op, though unrelated to them, did one big thing for me:  I'm a lot more confident.  Saw some death and some kills, got slightly negative standing and am now yellow in the overview, I feel like not a newb anymore.  If all of us feel this way after yesterday...  the Aces are dead, they just don't know it yet.

Next Frigate Club thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12129.0) is up in the Eve forum for those who fancy more lowsec piracy.  It's 12 days away, on February 9th, and on a Saturday this time since a few people suggested that.

Now with new, improved ship provision and microphone clarity...

And you didn't even have to smartbomb Jita to get there! :)

Seriously, yesterday was a blast. Prompted me to go ahead and start looking at some fleet and gang-support type of ships and the like. Plus, flying a pod around 0.0 was fun. :)

Applications are at Eram only or are there other options? (Olo, etc.)

You don't have to be a corp member of either bat country or f13 to come along; were heading into the wild, wild west where people don't get concorded.

Though if you're in a ship whose cost, including fittings, only just reaches the insurance payout of 300k or so, two bhaalgorns and a faction-fitted smartbombing typhoon turn out to work a lot like Concord  :awesome_for_real:

Fuck it.  I'm doing this.

Expect me next month once I've downloaded clients.

I can wait to see if you internet persona...um..matches your internet persona...? :)

Endie's recruitment drive is truly a sight to behold.

Pretty soon we'll have WUA doing high sec suicide ganks.

Allright,I'm in...

Amiable Quinn

Can I still mission care-bear like a freak when we aren't doing ops?

Yep, you always have the risk of one of our targets tracking you down and blowing you up.  But personaly I don't think I've ever been bothered by our current target while I'm running missions and you're fairly safe as long as you pay attention.

What Thrawn said.  It hasn't been an issue.  In fact I've gone to just running missions because the A8's just sit in BS's outside the station so it's pointless for me to sit around.  If someone needs a tackler I'd be happy to run over and help but otherwise I'm better off getting some money so I can survive a few ganks.

If you're that worried about it, set up your missioning hub in another region and just Jump Clone back and forth. I do that mostly because I have a lot of standing with two Gallente space industries, so even their crap agents have an effective quality in the 30s. Heck, I'm about to start running L3's for the same corp as my storyline agent, and I'll be able to use them for jump clones pretty soon -- I'm about 7.4 with them now (counting connections).

well we didnt pay to reup the war with aces. guess we learned a leason, research the corp we wardec. where we dont get our ass's kicked. we look like a bunch of prepie kids with bought charactors.

 :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

Who's "we" kemosabe? You're in AEO.

Dumbass.

Edit: Did that come from "The Eve insults for dummies," page 60? Maybe you neglected to notice that 90% of us flew frigates and cruisers with characters that are under 2 months old.

That we apparently bought.

You, on the other hand, called 6 of your buddies on aim to log on whenever you saw us in local.

Well Endie, your post was good, so I downloaded the eve client and logged into the game.  I went through the tutorial (painful) joined the f13 channel (quiet) hit autopilot to Eram VIII Moon 13 and asked the f13 channel what I should train (you know, to help with your p versus p) and got told to go read the forums and leave everyone alone.

And thus ends my second attempt at eve!  Kudos for a good post that made it seem like it may not actually be spreadsheets in space, too bad that's all eve is!

Your points are valid but don't be chased off because some lurker (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?action=profile;u=2362) gives you lip.

For the record, I just like bitching about eve, it's almost like a hobby! :)

I can give you the "quiet", but such an answer sounds unreal to me. Everyone is happy to help there, and some even took time to mail me tips and explanations about things I asked in chat while they were AFK.
Can't believe someone told you that but if he did I would like to know what was going on in that angry ugly brain.

I was present and my link is the person who did it.  I, on the other hand, did give him some hints on what to train next.

(a) we came up just short of even - 46% I think on the KB though i could be a few percent wrong - against your corp which had several players with literally ten times our skillpoints.  We did this for the experience.

(b) we shut down "Ace's and 8's" for the period of the war: your players were forced to either huddle on the undock or stay in the station, while our players roamed around doing whatever they fancied. On the ultra-rare occasions that someone tried to mine or mission they had us on them and either logged, docked or got blown up.  Sometimes we would log into your base station and wander away, finding on our return, to our amusement, that three or four of your oldest characters had then camped them into that station for hours.

(c) half your members left

(d) if it seemed the profitable thing to do we would continue to grief by keeping the war going longer

(e) if you think we are finished with you you are making a very serious mistake.  Don't make it worse on yourself by giving us lip, sunshine, not least because some of us will be finished with our business in Delve at some point this year.  I, for one, would be delighted to put my two recon-capable pilots into a corp of their own and wardec you for a few months, practising for a spell in Goon Blackops.  I said we did this for the experience: don't go making it about a personal grudge.  Kapisch?

Thanks for the help tazelbain, if it helps any I felt really guilty after I logged off last night for bitching about the hostility without mentioning that you were very helpful.  I'm just getting old and cranky.  Do you know how sad that makes me? :(

Now if I could just get all these damn kids off my lawn.

So, back to PotBS for you?

Oh, and where did you go for 6 months? You just kind of vanished... and then came back. You pulled a double cheddar!

I'll prolly try eve out a little more, it's so intriguing to the min/maxer in me, but then it's just so hard to figure out where to start.. :)


I started a new company and it required a lot of focus for the past year.  I've been lurking just haven't had the energy to post much.

Well, glad to have you back :)
Just use the goonfleet recommended skill training guide, get into a tackler, and wait for next saturday for the big fleet op where we will go en-masse into the lion's den. There's so much there and I do so love min-maxing, which is how the game hooked me good.

Oh yes yes. Seriously. Every one of you lurkers unsure about EVE and wondering if this can be any fun (because spreadhseet in space balah balah), just sign up for the free trial, start skilling (no need to play, just log in to keep on skilling) according to the above mentioned plan and then show up on Saturday, February 9th.
Join us in frigate mayhem and THEN decide if the game is any good or not. This way is free and you have a chance to see what EVE really can be about. Not spreadsheeting, not marketing, not watching a screensaver. Only good ole massive PvP.

EDIT: Saturday, not Sunday! egh  :uhrr:

Saturday 9th!

Although i would heartily recommend this course of action, it should be fun.

I whined a bit about being broke in the channel and Slayer dropped 10 mil in my account.  I then bought every skill book I could train that wasn't priced in the stratosphere and trained them all up at least to level 1.  It's been helpful as far as narrowing down what else to train and what to train higher because now the list doesn't seem so daunting.

Remember to go through the skill books in the market again after you've trained a while and pick up the skills that you didn't have the prerequisites for the first time you checked.

And EveMon is your friend! You can spend literally an hour at a time working through skills and items, and setting up a skill plan to follow.

Cevik!  It's Theta!  Dude!  Long time no see!  Please to be not talking about how interesting EVE is.  Everytime I've read something and gotten interested in EVE, I read something else a few pages later that demotivates me.  I want to continue this system so I'm not spending money.

I'm just training away since I havent made the trek to your side of the world yet but I will be there in time for frigate gate  :P

Yeah if you still feel like your up against the cliff that is the eve newbie experience feel free to just make a new thread in the sub-forum asking Q's.  What you want to figure out is:
1) skills to train, ship to go for.
2) what to fit for Saturday
3) how you want to make $$$ for recreational activities

Start there.  Of course to be fair, mix/max'ing usually requires some third party reading, this is no exception.  But personally I'd be happy to toss ideas out there.

Hey Theta!  Nice to see ya still around these parts! :)

A quick eve tale from last night...

So we formed an ad-hoc op with 7 people (1 battlecruiser, 1 ewar cruiser, 1 dps cruiser, 4 frigates).  We zoom around lowsec in our neck of the woods finding nobody in systems that peak at about 10 pilots.  Seems like these folk are smart enough to jump to anywhere once they see local pilots in space triple in size, funny that..

Overall it was a quite lackluster performance, with nothing happening and people asking if they could blow up cargo containers to let off steam.  I was expecting somebody to jump to a moon and get fried for kicks (players can build outposts at moons in lowsec space) to relieve the monotony.

Then at the same time in the very last system before we return to hisec we run into a Dominix (http://www.eve-online.com/itemdatabase/EN/ships/battleships/gallente/645.asp) sitting at the gate we were going to leave through.  Now lucky for us, because the sentry guns at gates usually dont take nicely to people shooting innocents in front of them, this guy was a pirate to the bone, -9 security standing 3.5million bounty placed by other players sort of unsavory character.  So our intrepid scout/fleet commander/cake avatar/blue name extraordinaire Bhodi, who is flying our electronic warfare blackbird locks on to him and shuts him down.  Telling us on Ventrillo to wake up and come help.

I will now demonstrate how anyone who tells you that eve pvp has nothing to do with player skill is a dirty fucking liar & all the people who claim to hate twitch and want more "strategic" pvp who haven't tried eve, well you should try it, mistakes will be underlined:

I warp to 0 to the gate Bhodi is at, landing near enough to the fight, I know that a Dominix is a drone boat but I dont really know how ewar works I figure that for sure his guns can't shoot Bhodi but I have no idea if drones can go after him or not.  So I start telling everyone in a frigate to go after the drones.  Knowing that they are the bulk of the Dom's firepower and that his turrets are shut down by Bhodi's jamming.  I target 3 drones and the Dom, put a point on the Battleship (meaning he can't warp away) and set my Punisher to orbit the closest drone while activating my pulse lasers.

Now I'm fixated on watching the drone's hp fall away, I switch my frequency crystals to short range once I get in close, I'm grinning as the drone goes into structure.  Fucking oblivious to what is happening in the battle at large.  What has happened is Bhodi has lost the jam, the drones have swarmed him and blown his Blackbird to smithereens, somewhere else our Rupture (dps cruiser) has been eaten or is about to be as well.  Meanwhile our frigates have done their job and half of his expensive tech2 drones are dying or dead.  He recalls them to his drone by.  I'm still not taking all this in, to my credit this all happens in under 2 minutes of real time.  It is not until my frigate, following the drone, practically runs into the battleship that I realize something has gone really fucking wrong.  I activate my micro warpdrive and start trying to haul ass away and frantically search for something to warp to (if you do anything in eve while panic'd you will do it wrong and most likely die) while the Dom turns its attention on me and suddenly heavy nosferatu is eating up my capacitor.  I hit warp, but while my ship tries to align, it slows, his guns manage to actually hit me and I go boom.  I might have been better off just flying the fuck away from him, hoping my speed would see me clear then making the jump instead of trying to make it in his shadow.

So yeah, pvp in eve is hard, anyone who says otherwise is either fighting in BS sniper fleets or just shooting POS's in 0.0.  The information overload the overview/module/target/gang management is critical and you need to make calm informed choices under very real time pressure.  Its also pretty fun in a fight like this where we did stand a chance of victory.  Some fights not so much because you are clearly outclasses (gatecamping or getting straight up ganked) but those situations will often come about because your head wasn't in the game so you can't be too upset.

/endstory

tl;dr version:  We were bored, we went for pewpew, we found some, pvp in eve takes lots of player skill, you should try it if it sounds fun.

The great part about eve PVP is that you learned some shit there. After a couple years of PVPing im STILL LEARNING. I bet next time Hoax will try to be flying towards a planet or asteroid belt (known as aligning) the next time shit gets hairy. He probably learned that Domi's are tough SOBs with massive drone bays. It was probably the worst BS you guys could have ran into. Probably had T2 Ogres rippin ya up like shreds.

Every fight in Eve is different. Gang match ups are constantly changing. You can choose how you want to contribute, without re-rolling a guy. This is especially true after a few months more of training, but it still is true to an extent.

In this game you can win outnumbered. You can win outgunned. You have to execute, focus fire, use ECM to knock dangerous opponents out of the fight until they are managable. Sometimes you will be fighting enemies equipped for speed. Other times they will have ECM. Sometimes they will have pure DPS. Other times they will all be repairing each other in a 'spider tank'. Some fights will be solo. Some fights you will tackle a battleship that is fighting NPCs, and test your conjones to try to take em down in your smaller battlecruiser. Some fights you wont have a chance in hell. Other fights you will have a chance in hell, and that chance is just enough along with some tricky flying or a well setup gang.

PVP in Eve can sometimes be hard to find (at least, good/even fights). But there is absolutely no substitute for the rush it proves me to this day...it is a test of your abilities and knowledge in the game, you must learn every ship and what it can do eventually, if you want to be a true PVPer. It has taken me a long time and many fights, but I feel I am a pretty good Eve PVPer. It really is a great game, it may not be action packed all the time, but the time invested in fitting a ship, cost it took to buy the ship, cost of your clone upon death, all add up to the rush. You get blown up, you are out of the fight...period. Death matters to your wallet and the fight. The nice part is, you can pvp in a ship that would cost less than one module I fit on my command ship. Or  a cruiser for the cost of one of my rigs :)

Oh yeah, a word to the wise and the absolute best PVP advice you will ever get:

If you are trying to warp out, turn off your Microwarpdrive. :) I've died more times like that than I care to remember.

You know, I realize I have no clue how drones work under those circumstances. I know that if the Dominux is jammed, he can't order his drones to attack. But at least with NPCs, they'll often attack on their own -- I have no idea who they choose or why. (Possibly it's just a simple "Who the hell just shot me? SHoot him!" thing) -- but then again, when they do that they tend to be attacking targets I have locked and that are firing at me.

So don't bother shooting a Domi's drones -- he's got more, and he'll just recall and release (forcing you to relock them) everytime you start hitting on them.

I don't know what the range of a heavy NOS is.  And, you guys went up against a battleship, and you were flying 4 frigates and 3 cruisers...  tought fight, pretty much if the jamming fails, you're done for, would be what I would expect.   Because the battleship can focus fire and take out your EWAR and DPS very fast.

Were you eating into his tank at all?

25km.

Yes, it was a tough fight, but we had nothing better to do ;)

No, we weren't eating his tank.

That's hilarious.  Great story. 

I should record this Saturday's expedition to capture moments like this.

Hey now. I was eating his tank just fine.. then I  asploded.  Shields were gone, and I think there were 3-5 ticks off his armor when I went pop.

He was down to 4/5ths armor when he started to repair faster than I could damage him, after engaging him after you guys assploded.

With the Thorax & Stabber on him we might have broken his tank though I suspect it would have been a long interesting and difficult fight (I'm still not 100% certain I know what drones can or can't do versus ecm) the Dom is a nasty armor tanker and I know he had at least one heavy nos to pull more cap down with.  Either way though we were looking for a fight so finding a pirate Dom at the gate was a pretty lucky thing.  Goes to show you can't ever just go to sleep on eve in lowsec which I think we were all guilty of doing.  The response to Bhodi's call was pretty slow even with the long distances in the system.

I remember back in 2002 when me and some friends were waiting for EVE drooling on our keyboards and worshipping every single bits of news we could get about it, one day while looking for info on combat (because we and many other didn't have a clue about how it was supposed to work) I stumbled on a comment which was like this:

"EVE's combat will be much more like Magic the Gathering than Tie Fighter or Wing Commander. It will be all about strategy, customization and countering"

That shocked me, as I was definitely waiting for twitch massive combat, but what's not to like in Strategy, Customization and Countering if done the right way?

Well, you may not be into M:tG but in so many ways EVE is a miracle of a game, if nothing else because you can play the most stylish card game ever, without having to pay for booster packs, and you got to do it online with friends and while smelling adrenaline and sipping bile. Glorious.

So I'm finally getting back to normal gaming-time wise and I've been considering this particular venture for a bit. I think I left off at Cyclone level with a bunch of Rifters in various ports, and about 25mil ISK, having lost most of the rest of my assets to an old enemy when I was trying to haul out into 1.0 space.

I'll grab the client probably today get in, join the F13 channel (again) and head over to Eram (assuming you're still there). I think I dropped from my prior Corp already so I shouldn't be carrying any active wardecs. And if I didn't drop and we're still at war, I'll drop from the corp and wait until tomorrow to play (think it's 24 hours).

We're just starting a war, but doesn't kick in until tomorrow. It's also only against a 10 char corp.

Ask in F13 chat where our main office is.

Join the frigate ops, for sure. I feel sad I missed today's -- apparently they had some fun. :)

I really like to keep my PvP and my PvE seperate, but even I have to admit that getting jumped on a mission was exciting. Of course, the difference between "good exciting" and "bad exciting" probably boils down entirely to IainC being in range to help. (Getting blown up by a pirate with poor grammer skills, not so good! Blowing him up, really good!).

Oh, we had so much fun that we can't even speak about it. You know when something is so good that words fail you?
But a video (http://files.filefront.com/F13FrigateFleet+2+9+2008avi/;9605168;/fileinfo.html), a chatlog (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12129.msg409459#msg409459) and debriefing (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12129.msg409522#msg409522) are up on the EVE forum subsection. Should give an idea of how good it has been.

Ganking has never been so much fun.

My long awaited jump into this nonsense has been fraught with delay...

Zod would have signed up weeks ago.

If it wasn't for that Superman fellow he would have taken over the galaxy by now.

I'm fairly certain Zod would simply have suggested he was interested in playing and he would have been given an account.

Probably as an FC with BoB...











What?  There is no way in hell Zod would be a Goon.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Family-Guy-Superman-2

Ok. I just walked into a gate camp that wasn't even on the map (i.e. I was its first snack) can I get a list of f13/bat country offices taking apps so I can join up and let everyone in on the kill rights fun?

Send the info to Snee ingame if security is an issue.

Thanks,

Snee the Blasted Benefactor

The kill rights are corpwide ?  :awesome_for_real:

I thought they were personal only.

You're certainly welcome to go after the guys that gatecamped me yesterday!

Bat Country offices are in Sankkassen and Eram. F13 has one in Olo.

This deserves a bump, we had a great op on Saturday 03/01 read about it here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12362.70), scroll down for two posted videos and screenies, or go back to page 2 for Bhodi's ss gallery.  Its worth it just to hear Endie telling me to stfu in the one video during the hectic fight (I'm the person asking for someone to web the interceptor).

But yeah we're really starting to branch out in terms of corp activities, looks like 0.0 access might come soon'ish, empire wardecs are an option we're always looking into, abusing mission runners via covops, salvaging and can shenanigans.  Nerf has joined the ranks of suicide hi-sec gankers and I'm sure more will follow.  So if you ever played but got bored and haven't played with f13'ers before you should try it.  If you were playing with us a year ago or earlier on this run, you should come back and give it another go.  Our covops pilots + more people with local locator agents mean we do have access to more pewpew when/if we have the able bodies available.  I dont know about other timezones but currently our late EST // PST primetime weekday and pretty much all day Sat/Sun timezones are capable of decent pvp activity, which should only increase as more people (including myself) reach more financial stability.

For people who have only played Diku, I really recommend you try PotBS that has a good society going or give EVE a shot, this is super true with the new 21 day trial on Steam.

Yep, things are going really great: our glorious fuhrer has had to keep upping the limit on our vent server, from 20 up to 40, and then on Saturday 40 wasn't quite enough and some people had to relay orders into chat until the limit got raised again.

I suspect that getting over 40 people together on F13 event in an MMO isn't a common event, and is really worth experiencing: those are Serious Business raid numbers (we are not Serious Business).  We were no longer a gang but a fleet.  We invaded Bob's home systems in Delve, blew stuff up worth several times our entire fleet and generally had a blast.  People are beginning to get really bloody good at this stuff.

Here are my highlights of the operation*. (http://files.filefront.com/Bat+Country+03+01+08wmv/;9742989;/fileinfo.html)

I'll get around to making the short version someday, but editing down all of that video on Sunday wore me out.

That was serious fun the likes of which I haven't had in an MMO since 2003.  I doubt we have any more people on the fence with Eve, but if anyone else wants to join us, please do.

*Watch out for the audio glitch at the beginning.

Well, my 3d card just melted, but I think my mobo video card can run Eve.  I'll download it and see.

If it runs, I'll message you guys and see about becoming a human missile.

The great thing about Eve is that you can download the old graphics engine which will run on a toaster.

And I never thought the old graphics were too dated until I was absolutely spoiled by the new engine.

Nice vid man, looked like a good time! Just make sure your orbit range is near your optimal next time...I dont think you hit that cane once :)

This is why I never fraps  :awesome_for_real:

I thought I had my defaults set to optimal, but maybe not - also had the close range crystals in for some odd reason.  I was so busy trying to get good angles and capture every ship popping that I never really paid much attention to my own ship beyond making sure that the disruptor was on.    I don't think I made a fleet jump once, for the same reason.  At the end of the last engagement, you'll see that I got targeted - I noticed about the same time I hit warp.  My shields were melted and three drones were on my already half-eaten armor. 

Next time, I'll focus more on the op and less on the post-op.

Frankly I think that the awesome camera work was more important than a 3% increase in gang dps, and would gladly have you focus on that again.

You're right - not that hitting the target meant much, but it looks good on film.  Besides, how many people besides Slayer and a few other homicidal obsessives are squinting trying to read the combat messages in a Fraps video? 

I'll look into building a camera-tank.

Hehe pure speed/tank camera ship, I like this idea it has legs.  Also make sure you have some drones so you can easily view your own drones for extra fun camera goodness.

I love the drones idea!  That will definitely be in the specs.

I could tell by the color :)

Keep up the vids for sure!

I love that idea. Not that I could do it, but that someone would fit a rig specifically for survivable journalism, good stuff :)

"Joker! Forty-two-twelve, Basic Military Journalism. You gotta be shitting me, Joker! You think you're Mickey Spillane? Do you think you're some kind of fucking writer?"

(http://utenti.lycos.it/adsert/giacintosblog/fmj-hartman.jpg)

 :awesome_for_real:

Sir, I wrote for my high school newspaper, sir!


Jesus H. Christ, you're not a writer, you're a killer!


A killer!  Sir, yes sir!

You got me, look for my application soon.

I'm in. I'll grab the Steam demo tonight.

Nearly the entire TF2 squad is playing Eve.  Suspicious.

For the Emperor!  :awesome_for_real:

Blood for the Blood God!

I suspect the idea of blowing up rich bitches in Eve tickles the same nerve as batting in sniper heads.

I just created a new trial account.  I have one with a few months worth of skill points, but I wanted to get back in for free to see if it grips me.  If it does, maybe I'll reactivate.

I'll get around to the office mentioned in the OP after I some newb missions to get a feel for things.

This is... amazing.  I am almost (almost) tempted to fire it up again.  Yeah, I played at some point.

Cheddar, if nothing else is like being on IRC with a better interface and cool music. As someone said elsewhere, EVE is the best looking chat client ever.

On top of that, you can pewpew and chatchat on vent when the time for operations comes. A time usually made of ship exploding, carebear whining and us getting away with the loot.

They have a pink ship...

Give it a shot Cheddar, its worth it for the vent alone, the accents are great.

Sometimes when Endie is FC'ing, you can close your eyes and pretend James Bond is in charge. 

Connery, not Moore.

I applied to the corp as Fentry Mix.   It's still sitting unprocessed.  The promised chat channel didn't happen!

Promised chat channel don't even need for you to be in the corp. Just click on the left sidebar, "chat channels" button. Select "join channel" and type in f13. That's where we entertain spies.

Got it, thanks!

I used to play, was always a noob though. I want to play again and would like to be a part of a corporation so maybe I could figure out what the fuck i'm doing.

I'm going to resubb tomorrow or sometime like that. What do I need to do to hook up with ya'll?

Disregard my previous statement, UO drew me in.   :drill:

See you in a week.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Ritalin_Methylphenidat.jpg)

Just click on the left sidebar, "channels & mailing lists" button. Select "join" and type in f13. We are there.

Falconeer's advice will give you the chat channel.  The OP will tell you where to apply to join the corp.

I've toyed with Eve for 4 years now, playing a month here or there but never getting past the mining, mining, mining stuff and giving up, only to check back in 6 months later to see the state of things. 

This on the other hand sounds like the fun I am looking for. If you are still looking for more I'll drop in on the chat channel as Statis

The fuck are you mining for? Seriously. You don't need to mine a stinkin thing if you don't want to in this game. Blow shit up and have fun. Flip cans. Be an asshole. Or a target. Up to you, thats the beauty.

Applied to Bat Country

Real men play Ultima Online.

10 years ago.

With dial up, a 486 and an active imagination.

(http://www.alcoholfueledfunnymen.com/Machinations/macho_grapple.JPG)

Obviously, he's got the new dye colors.

What the fuck were people thinking with neon clothes? Why did that even become a fad? It's a teletubby vomited on him.

For those who are interested, here's turrent state of the game for BAT/F13.

We've moved to the lawless wilds of 0.0 security space.  Actually semi-lawless since we are aligned with a space-holding alliance.  A role-playing, space-holding alliance, who we'll soon be joining.  So WUA: there has never been a better time to join us in Eve  :awesome_for_real:

We're running a couple of big ops soon.  One is a sneaky ninja, black-ops, wolf-pack patiently-stalk-the-enemy-then-pounce op with advanced stealth ships, for which we already have a couple of dozen of people signed up.  The other is a series of scenarios on the test server so people can try out different stuff from normal while doing fast stuff like capture the flag, last man standing, team-based king of the hill gate and so on.

Numbers are pretty damn big, and if more people left the Eve forums more often then the "what are people playing" thread would have seen at least 50 of us active, which makes for fun on the vent servers when loads of us do ops.  My plan is to run more frequent ops, and folks from our alliance will be doing stuff, too.  Helm and Hoax have both successfully run events recently, too.

:awesome_for_real:

I must add that the existance of cov-ops ships in EVE make PvP a natural fit to me. That is, I get to help my friends find people to blow up, then hang around 40k back -- invisibile, undetectable, and in no danger -- while the fireworks happen. And they thank me for it.

Admittedly, I'm ALSO the one that jumps into new systems, plays the covops shuffle (break the jump cloak, cloak using my real cloak, and run in a random direction hoping no-one noticed while ALSO trying to figure out who all is camping the area), so there's some risk there.

Also, if I'm spotted BY anything -- up to and including newbie frigs mounting civilian guns, I have the life expectancy of a depressed lemming. 

Note: "Has successfully run an op" is subtly different than, "Has run a successful op."

That was my favorite part of UO. I love tarting up my characters in horrible garish colors. You should see my ships in PotBS!

This is why it's a good thing there's no custom paint jobs for EVE ships  :ye_gods:

Logos on ships, at least, are coming...

I think they should actually let players design and raise flags on the ships, on a mast somewhere towards the stern, animated to be billowing in the space-wind. 

:ye_gods:

Really? Oh god help us. There's gonna be a lot of GM time wasted on policing Goonswarm's logos :p

What the hell, I'll give it 14 days.  I haven't played in at least 3 years.

Keep an eye out for Pope Lenny's application.

ETA:  How in the fuck do I join you guys in the chat channel?  Which one is it (Bat Country or f13?), and how do I search for it?  The UI in this game SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS.

I remember why I never subscribed to Eve now.  Amateur hour bullshit annoynaces like this.  Oh, and did I mention that the teeny, tiny unreadable fonts blow goats.  Fuck you, CCP.

Our fleet of trial accounts will make you tremble!  Shake the pillars of heaven!

(http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m20/r3dknight/gunfawkeszawesome.jpg)

Amateur hour?
I strongly disagree. The UI is lovely, unique and nothing more distant from "amateur". Too much GENERIC-DIKU#7483 for you recently? Many complains about it for different reasons (hey, EVE is not a simple game) but to call it amateurish just because you couldn't find the chat channels sounds nonsensical.

As Caladein pointed out you couldn't even scroll up a few posts, or read the the opener, to look for infos about the chat-channels. I guess that means that F13's, or any other forum, user interface SUCKSx4 too?

Maybe your personal UI sucks more than CCP's. But I agree with you after all, real life isn't user friendly.

Any time I have to open a manual, dig up an FAQ, or wander about aimlessly looking for the solution to something that's an obvious problem YOU HAVE FAILED AS A UI DESIGNER.  And yes, the tiny fonts suck.  Digging around to find out how frequency crystals work sucks.  Not being able to find the lasers in the market sucks.  Not having stargates listed on the nav window sucks.  The universe map and the inability to navigate it sucks.

It's like this; you want me to play your game and send you my money.  Every time you make something obtuse, difficult to get to, or just plain hard to find you make me less likely to do so.  If you can't entertain me without me delving for information you have failed.  Furthermore, half hour travel times where I do absolutely nothing = not fun.

I play games to have fun, not to dig through nested, difficult to read windows and drool on my keyboard while my ship travels through a void with no input from me.

If you did the tutorial you'd probably have less problems.  :grin:

Done it before (3 years ago), and I remember the pain quite well, thank you!  I'm not going through it again.  And besides, the tutorial doesn't fix shitty fonts and boring gameplay.

I'll go back to Sins of a Solar Empire, thanks.  At least that game has the good grace to be entertaining.

'now head to the asteroid and fire your mining laser'
'collect the minerals and return to the space station to sell'
'now you can see what your ships look like in the hangar'
'click launch again to continue the tutorial' yawns
*sniff sniff is something burning?*
BSOD

Reboot.
Failed.
Uh oh.
Gfx card blew up. The year was 2005. I am still  :uhrr: about this game. It happened twice too. Not my cup of tea anyway based on what the tutorial taught me.

Eve's certainly not for all.  That said, both the game and the tutorial have changed totally in a year, let alone three, so you'd always have been struggling without it.

And FAQs aren't the place to find out info, the F13 channel is.

You should try it again if you have a non-flammable gfx card these days.  Its much different once you get the basics down flying w/ people you know who will help out.


@Gulp:  I dunno man, your logic leads to every game has to just be a clone.  Because if they do anything different you have to GASP learn how to play the game.  A bit hyperbolic?  Sure but your being a whiny bitch because you couldn't even look through the set of 16 buttons on the left hand side (the only buttons on your screen in space) and read what they say?  The eve newb learning curve is stupid, we all know that, but finding the f13 channel isn't that hard if you know its called f13.  But yeah you do have to learn how game systems work in eve, and feedback and basic documentation is HORRIBLE.  But the ui outside of combat feedback isn't that bad and certainly isn't amateur hour.

This game really strikes me as love it /hate it. Either you love it and stick around, or hate it and bugger off. Complaining about it in a forum really isn't going to change your feelings or ours, but your input is always appreciated. Or not.

The tiny fonts do suck though.

One CAN increase the font size, you know.

Yes, but we need a guide book to show us how  :awesome_for_real:

What? If you don't put the font size slider in an immediately and clearly visible spot in the UI then YOU HAVE FAILED AS A UI DESIGNER.

I'll spare you the green.

(http://www.ut.ee/~a73440/eve_learning_curve.jpg)

Also, I agree.

Finding the fun in EVE is HARD.

It's 'escape' for options, then select 'fontsize' on the menu that appears centre screen btw.

You know, like every-game-in-the-history-of-existence.

Or for that matter there is the enlarge/shrink font button on the chat window.



In case anyone was wondering.

First time I played it, it took me 15 minutes to find the "quit" button. (Escape brings up the options screen, which has a large button labeled "quit game" -- however, I didn't know that escape brought up the options screen).

However, the UI is fine. The game itself is complex, but the layout of buttons and options is pretty straightforward. It's certainly simpler than, say, a raider's UI in WoW. And if you do the tutorial, they don't even SHOW all the buttons -- they add them in one at a time as the tutorial asks you to use them.

There's a lot that could be done to improve the UI.  Better keyboard control of things jumps to mind immediately -- if anything I do is going to give me RSI, it's all the damn clicking on stuff in EVE.   I enjoy the game quite a bit, but I think the interface could be made nicer in plenty of ways.  Lots of little things like just making focus and scrolling and selection better would go a long way.  I expect that's hard to justify compared to adding new gameplay/content/etc.  I'm sure the fact that there is *so much* interface is part of the problem, but I wouldn't want CCP yanking features and "simplifying" things either.  Not an easy problem to solve. 

The complexity is part of the appeal but it also makes it hard for people to get started.  It looks like they're trying things to help that, like the overlay help stuff.  I'm not sure I like the implementation exactly, but points for trying *something* to bring the documentation closer to the UI in hopes that it'll be less baffling to people.  Better documentation on gameplay/mechanics could go a loooong way.  When stickied threads on the official forums or external websites are where people go to learn how things work, that would seem to indicate that docs could be improved a bit.  Again, a balance between spoon-feeding everything to people and making "discovering how it works" an actual exploration-type activity, I guess.  At this point, I think better docs on the core mechanics (propulsion, defense, weapons, etc) would be good to bring more people into the game less painfully.

The EVE UI is "Spaceship Game OS Desktop", more or less.  It makes me want to hook up a second 1920x1200 24" LCD to my win32 gaming box so I can have more windows open and still see the main display!

You mean you can increase a tiny subset of all the fonts used in the game. Try increasing the size of the autopilot list and ship names on screen for instance.

Font size adjustment is limited to the chat display and the context menus only. At 1200x720 on a 19" glass monitor the screen font is basically barely readable.

Try actually reading what font you are sizing in that menu.  On my settings screen the only adjustable font size is clearly (well as clear as anything in Eve) labeled Context Menu fontsize.

Disgareed.
I have a 19" glass monitor and your same resolution (or 1200x960, not sure) and I have no problems at all. And I wear 5 years old glasses to play videogames.

Hmm, just because you personally find the font size OK that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem for someone else!

The joke with the EVE UI has always been that you just eventually learn to work around the problems with it and that's part of the game. Woohoo! I'm trained to level 5 in Crappy UI Management! I remember one forum thread in the distant past asking for some way of sorting items in your station hangars and a dev replied telling players to just use large cans in their hangars as storage bins. EVE is full of these examples of clunky, awkward, limited solutions to obvious UI problems that CCP simply can't be bothered (or just don't have the expertise) to fix.

If WoW is a highly polished turd then EVE is a diamond dipped in shit.

That works the other way around too, doesn't it?
Just because he has a hard time reading it doesn't mean they are actually too small.

Goddammit this is the Bat Country recruitment thread, not the "I want to whine about Eve features" thread, which you're welcome to start.

I just want more rants about how even a blind person could find the font size menu in the ui.

My prescription is 2 yrs old but at 58 that seems to be pushing it I guess.

For anyone who reads this and decides not to play based on the UI, you're missing out.  When everyone first starts Eve, they spend a ridiculous amount of time finding things in the UI.  It is far from intuitive, but I'm not sure how they could make such a complex UI more intuitive.  The real solution is, like Endie suggested, to ask in F13 when you don't understand something - there are many people who like to give answers and often someone (like me) learns something new from just reading others' responses. 

Trust me, F13 is there to give you money and answer questions.  We want you in a better ship flying with us as soon as possible - which is within days or even hours in a game like Eve.  If you are frustrated and / or poor, just speak up.

To the complaint that Eve combat is point and click - if it weren't point and click when you engaged in a fleet battle, you would be bitching more.  When I was starting out and fighting rats in high sec in a ship I didn't really understand but could afford to lose, I was a little amazed that combat was so simplified.  It seemed like a cop out by CCP.  But when you're in a fleet battle or fighting anything in 0.0, you're attention is not on the battle, but on local chat, fleet chat, Ventrilo, your tank, your distances and angles, what enemies are there and what order to engage them in, who you are fighting with and what they are doing, electronics warfare modules, your mess of drones, etc.  If you had to also target and fire, it would suck supremely.  And I don't ever recall Kirk grabbing the joystick and blasting the klingons from the sky one by one with his elite FPS skills.  He had bigger decisions to make, as do you as captain of a ship.  Now Zapp Brannigan, on the other hand...

And it's fun! I went out into 0.0 last night and killed things. For money. Sadly, however, my attempt to get into a roving defense force met with failure.

By the time I was even close (I was in the middle of a mission, had to finish it, loot it, salvage it, turn it in, jump clone, set up my ship, start flying out, realize I had the wrong ammo, go buy some, start flying out) the naughty would-be harassers had seen a giant gang of angry death happily waiting for them to come into Providence and play "Whose internet spaceship is better?" and decided to go play WoW or something.

Admittedly, 90% of that is my fault. If I was based in Providence, instead of halfway across the galaxy, I'd have been with the gang in 5 minutes instead of 45. But that's the price I pay for being a carebear.

Once I was there, though, I got to go ratting (damn good money!) -- I played dedicated salvager/looter to a nice fellow in a battleship. I got a chunk of all the bounties and loot.

Don't get me wrong, the UI does suck. I have my very own whine thread about it in the eve forum.

But a lot of people bring the font thing up, and I find it amusing, because it is almost as if the shittyness of the rest of the UI simply makes people assume they can't fix the font. That probably tells you something in itself.


Still... space... and you know, no elves. Plus Shild's JRPG Emporium, solo friendly, and a 24-hour bat country guild that has lasted more than two weekends. Its all good. And as most others have said, you never need mine unless you really really want to, and the newbie changes last year mean you are in a proper spaceship within a couple of evenings.

So say I want to join this. I know nothing of EVE, but am not retarded and will probably learn fast.

Would I be useless for like a year before I got skill training? Or would there be a possibility of not being a throw away scrub?

You'd be useless for twenty minutes until someone gave you enough money to fit out a tackling frigate.

A week to a month later you'd be fine for one or more roles you actually chose.

There's plenty of threads of stuff for noobs to do in the EVE forum.


EDIT: Oh yeah, you'd need propulsion jamming and warp scrambling skills too, so more like an hour or two.

I'd say uselessness scale goes like this:

2 weeks:
Your competent at dying in a t1 frigate that is helpful to the cause.  You are still mostly buying skill books and asking questions in f13.

6 to 8 weeks:
You can now pilot a t1 cruiser very well, or at least well enough to not be ashamed flying it one on ops.  You also have a BC/BS fitted for pve activity.  Your now answering some questiosn in f13.

2 months+:
Now your working on advanced things, have 20 skills you want and are working on longer train times.  If you wish you can have mastered a particular ship fitting, everything t2 except the guns for example.  While you don't have the flexibility of a 5 year pllayer you can shine in your particular skill niche.

Wow. I'm behind the curve.

In GF, particularly during the recruitment drives, newbees often come on ops on day 2 or so, once they've got through the tutorial and moved to GF space.  One famous incident saw a newbee's first words on TS turn out to be "two points on the Moros" (ie a dreadnought capital ship worth over a thousand times his ship and fittings).

Hey folks, wanted to drop an update in this thread so everyone knows what's been going on.  We've shuffled most of our membership over to BAT now, with a heavy focus on PvP.  As of a few months ago we joined the Aegis Militia alliance and have been living in their space in 0.0 ever since.  Aegis Militia is an old and respected alliance with a great deal of interesting history and some of the best damn pilots in the game.

We just finished a multi-front empire war with The Wings of Maak corporation and Ushra'Khan alliance.  Ushra'Khan is also an old and respected force who are at odds with Aegis Militia for a variety of reasons, both RP and otherwise.  They are larger than us, more experienced and better equipped, and we gave as good as we got.  In fact, according to the BAT killboard, we had over 75% combat efficiency (http://f13.7mph.com/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=4) (which is awesome!)

In the last week we've returned to Providence, the region of 0.0 that we inhabit along with our allies, to earn money and regroup before we sally forth again.  Many of us can frequently be found in local defense gangs fighting off the enemies that come through our space attempting to harass our people.

Now is a fantastic opportunity for anyone who has been hesitant in the past to sign up and see what life in 0.0 space is like.

For those who are not currently playing but used to enjoy Frigate Club ops, or who are in different corps from Bat, I'm running an old school Frigate Club op on Saturday 5th July at 20:00 Eve Time.

There is a thread here (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13625.0) if you have Super-Sekrit BAT forums access.  If you're not in BAT/F13 and don't have forums access but fancy joining in, evemail me.  Spies who I have never heard of need not apply.  Spies I am aware of welcome.

There will be a few more of these, weekend-permitting, coming up.

Well, partially thanks to this old post, I've started a 14 day free trial. Been following all the n00b links and reading as many guides as I can. Still seems like a lot of information that has basically turned my brain to mush. Hopefully it'll all start making more sense soon.

I started a Minmatar character named Ozzix, but reading about the FW stuff and my lack of longterm investment in the character thus far, I'm still a bit up in the air about which race I'll end up settling on.

I'll be in the F13 channel when I'm online. I welcome any suggestions or tips anyone has.

Lemme know your name and i'll drop some cash on ya. The noob experience is much more fun when you have a sugah daddy :)

You don't need to be an Amarr character to join the Amarr militia.  Pick a race based on the stats it gives you to start with and the ships that you want to fly, or maybe based on how you want your avatar to look.

Made an Amarr character named Ozzuar. I like the feel of the weapons and the look of that faction. :oh_i_see:

To people still wondering whether they'd want to (re)sub or not. You can re-activate your old account for 14 free days because of a Factional Warfare promotional.

Main thread here: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13680.0 (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=13680.0)

careful, the interest rate is a bit, obscene  :pedobear:

Lies, I have given hundreds of millions to noobs (total). Don't hate me cause I'm beautiful. :)

(http://endie.net/images/blog/misc/amflag.jpg)

For anyone interested, starting next Friday (18th July) we're running a series of PvP operations basing out of a neighbour's space: we were down there on Saturday for five hours straight with a forty-man gang, and there is no shortage of fights, so it should be fun.

There should be stuff happening every night: plenty of PvP and plenty of targets.  I'm running gangs doing various tactics on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday, with others from Bat or our hosts hopefully filling in the missing days.

You can currently reactivate accounts for 14 days as part of the Factional Warfare promos, so anyone that wants to join in can do so for free.