f13.net

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/threadfleet.jpg)

It's been almost a year, but the F13 crew in Eve are recruiting again.  Not because we are short of players - amongst F13 MMO guilds/corps/clans we are pretty much unique in keeping lots of players involved for years - but because we're doing a lot of fun new stuff, the game is changing, and it would be a great time to get more F13ers involved.  One of the reasons that we have thrived for as long as we have, and that our retention rate is great is that we have a great infrastructure in place and can help you from day one (the othe reason is a fairly constant stream of drama).

So we'd like you to join us.  It doesn't matter if you're an Eve newbie or a bitter vet: as much as anything else this is a social way to have fun playing internet spaceships with people you flame in the politics forum.  We're part of Goonswarm now, and that opens up huge opportunities for fun in and out of the game.


Why play Eve with F13?

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/calimorsm.jpg)

Story - Everyone in Eve is in one world.  Resources are scarce.  Opposing sides truly detest each other.  If you want a game where the ongoing, player-created storyline is vibrant enough to repeatedly make it into the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/arts/television/28eve.html?_r=4&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) then this is the only MMO in town.  CCP have set up a sandbox game with meaningful PvP in a world with up to 40,000 occupants at a time.

Scale - Take a look at this video (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4NDBbt2yBII) and see the glorious sweep of the game.  And with previously crippling lag having been largely swept away in recent weeks, there has never been a better time to experience such fights.  And while you start in tiny ships, you can end up in ones that are tens of miles long http://www.files-firetech.pioneerx.co.uk/view.php?file=Pictures/EVE-ships_large.jpg.

Drama - Watch this video (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LRlrFudaEs8).  The context is that we'd been being hammered for months, with no way to fight back.  Then, our enemy made a mistake and we killed the titan that had been tormenting us, shifting the whole balance of the war for good.  Listen to the reaction at the end and think where else you'll find a computer game that offers you even a chance at that sort of intensity of reaction.  Also, if you ever played at soldiers when you were a kid, listen to that TS recording and revel in it.

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/spreadtheinfection.jpg)

Shared Culture - You'll be joining your fellow F13ers in our own squad in the Goonswarm alliance, the alliance that famously welcomes the newbee to the swarm (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfv1QtZDirY).  Our culture has infected much of the game and our memes are used even by our enemies now.  The nature of that culture?  Relax, play the game the way you want to play it, help out when you can but otherwise chill.  There are no mandatory ops

Variety - Along with your fellow F13ers, you'll have access to fleet fights and small gangs pretty much every day.  You can aim for Blackops, who terrify enemies by living in enemy space and denying them their own game; or Specops if you like to have constant goals and operations set for you; Goonswarm ISK are the high rollers who manipulate the markets gamewide;  GSRecon are vital: they seek out enemy vulnerabilities and scout for fleet leaders.  Become a skirmish leader, like Bhodi, and get opportunities to lead bigger and bigger fleets.  Or you can rat, mine, run exploration or missions, trade, produce, haul, suicide gank, grief, spy, steal and much, much more.  Don't believe the haters: you need never see a spreadsheet!

Support - Goonswarm seriously dotes on its newbies, and you'll never be short of help if you ask.  We have a mentor program, free frigates, subsidised fleet ships, and you just need to say in our private chat channel "um guys I'm new what should I do?" to be showered with help, advice and material aid.  Use the resources available: we have a wiki that is, without any risk of exaggeration, the best Eve resource in the world; we have training videos; we have a technical setup that is second to none in the game, with your password getting you into forums, wiki, jabber, teamspeak and a variety of other applications.

Wealth - It's no coincidence that, only weeks after joining GF, the number of Bat Country members with combat capital ships in their possession has gone from zero to three, with more on the way.  If you want to make money then we have the best ore systems in the game, tremendously lucrative ratting in the Drone regions, masses of unused moons to mine, secure space to erect POSes for your own research and industry empire and so on.  If you can do it in Eve, you can do it in Goonswarm.

Change - We from F13/Bat Country are changing, getting our own squad (BatSquad) within the alliance.  Now we're looking at what programs we can set up, what big goals we can work towards.  Getting involved now will let you help shape that.


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 and see whether it is for you.  In that time you can join up with us in 0.0 and get yourself into fights.  If you're a newbee, we'll set someone to look after you and answer your questions, you can tag along with us for the big fights, and generally experience neophyte bliss.


How long before I am useful?  What's the grind like?

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/dinc-noammo-ruinyourlife.jpg)

People are usually sceptical about this, but you really are useful from your first few days.  One Goon newbie this month helped kill three dreadnoughts (some of the biggest, most expensive ships in the game, needing a year or so of training) in his first couple of weeks.  If you get involved, come to fights and have a sufficiently suicidal attitude to your first few battles you will have a great time and contribute.

There is no need to grind.  Given that we'll give you free ships and that skill training is done in the background, even when you are not logged in, your time in-game can be spent doing what you like.


Do I have to PvP?

Nope.  If you want to try out production then you will be very welcome at the frontlines: there are gaps in the market waiting to be exploited.  If you want to trade instead then you can contract importers to move shipments for you, or you can turn a small amount of startup capital into a fortune using arbitrage and margin trading.  And ask Regel about market PvP and making others' lives miserable without firing a shot.

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/karttoon.jpg)

And fleet fights are not the only choice for PvP.  Our newly appointed Minister for Fun, Karttoon, has reshaped the game with his Jihadswarm.  Styling himself Sheikh, he unleashed a wave of suicide attacks that forced CCP to change the way the game works due to the relentless wave of carebear-griefing he unleashed, all done deadpan, roleplayed and with enough style (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jLFbuMILmnI) to have CCP using his pronouncements on the front page of the game, despite the outrage his griefing causes on the official forums.  CCP's own Quarterly Economic Report suggests the Jihadswarm did over 50,000 real-world dollars' worth of destruction to its victims.


I've Played Eve Before.  What's changed?

Lag is melting away.  No, really.  CCP have some kinks left to iron out, but I've been involved in 500-man fleet fights with the client responding within a second over the last few weeks.  Being in a fight between two 250-man fleets, watching them line-astern, drifting along on their alignments, with lasers sparking between squadrons while missiles and tacklers streak across the 150-km gap is, for just about the first time, something you can really enjoy watching.

The days of being outgunned by nanoships which were hard to counter are numbered: the upcoming expansion will include a speed nerf to make the ships newbies can fly faster and more effective, and the ships the 4-year veterans use more vulnerable to those less welthy characters.  Disposable ships are being boosted.  The resulting angst from rawr-rawr-so-serious vets is delicious.

Ambulation should be here in the next few months, and will be playable at the upcoming fanfest.  In other words, Eve will allow your character to get out of their spaceship and wander around inside space stations for the first time.

There are a bunch of other changes coming up soon in the Midas expansion (as the name suggests, to do with making cashola).


What Do F13 Want From Me?

No spies.  You can spy on other people once you are in, but don't spy on us, plzkthx.  To this end, you'll have to be an F13 poster in good standing.  No, that's not being spelt out, but please do not embarass all concerned by posting here and asking for entry on your third post, even if you do claim to have been a lurker "forever", a regular on Waterthread and to have given Lum his big break back in the day.  The exception is if you're a friend of an F13 poster who will vouch for you.

Download the client, create a character (use this guide to avoid self-gimpage (http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Recommended_Base_Stat_Builds)) and join the F13 channel in-game.  Scream for help there, and post who you are here if you like.

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/tutorialsm.jpg)

I'll post a history of what F13 have done in the past year a little later.  Sign up now: service guarantees citizenship!

... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMSjd6HNQdY)

Yeah, cheers for living up to your name.

To anyone watching that who didn't see it the times it was posted before, it is a good example of the culture in Eve, where you have a lot of very funny people being very creative (see the videos above for more examples), but it is nothing like the real Eve experience for anyone who is in a corp, especially not one that looks after its new members, and doubly so in GF.  The reason I didn't post more fleet fight videos was so as not to terrify people with the mass of things going on at once, the swirling of seven or eight hundred ships, wrecks and drones that can be overwhelming if nobody tells you what to expect.

It's the only game since UO that has held my interest over two years. I personally am pretty space rich from nefarious deeds. i do not fly under the f13 flag, as I have some old friends I prefer to stick with, but anyone joining the game will be welcomed with my standard 10 million isk donation. This should help get you in that sexy cruiser you want, and even throw guns on it!

About Goonswarm...If I were not with old friends I would have joined the f13 crew long ago, they really seem to be doing great and I am impressed at the growth of the corp and those that are a part of it.

And Endie, you should get into sales man. Very nice recruitment post :)

It's got me tempted, and I don't have time for doing much more than changing diapers right now.

The story of a year in F13's Bat Country: the drama bible.

Empire Wars

F13 has been involved in Eve for many years.  However, a year ago, a few of us decided to take the F13 Eve Project (TM) in a new direction.  We jumped into an old corporation Viin had lying around - Bat Country - and started declaring war on mining and mission-running corporations who thought they were safe in Empire space.

We were mainly on complete newbie characters, even those of us who had experienced alts.  Despite this, we hammered the first target that we war-decced: they buckled and paid us ransom to go away.  The second targets disappeared, but then we had a long war with a much larger corporation, rich and with much older characters flying advanced ships.  We killed roughly the same value of each others' ships, but the important thing is that for almost a month our bunch of newbies forced them to sit on one station undock, in one system, huddled there while we looked for ways to tempt them away.

We learned a lot from that war, but empire wars had kinda run their course for now.  We started running suicidal roaming gangs through lowsec and 0.0, flying cheap ships that anyone could fly.  Everyone got plenty of kills, we didn't always die, and we had developed a taste for the dangers of 0.0 space.  More importantly, people were getting used to fighting as a group and some of us started to develop as fleet commanders.  It was time to join our first alliance.


Aegis Militia - Our First Alliance

We settled on Aegis Militia, a small role-playing alliance that held half a dozen systems in the Providence region.  Historically a competent and aggressive PvPing alliance, they had faded somewhat, and were small enough that we would be noticeable if we did well, and had lots of connections.

By now, we were three months into our F13 experiment.  People were getting into battleships, and even a few advanced ships like interceptors and assault frigates.  We had developed a strong tradition for roaming gangs - Frigate Club - that other people from other corporations and alliances were asking to join in.  Bat Country were making a name for ourselves.  Shortly before joining Aegis Militia, we ran a "Frigate Club" op with almost fifty ships in our fleet.  We actually succeeded in scaring off the hostile gangs who would once have preyed on us, and some of us decided to go to Delve, the heart of the game's self-proclaimed end-game elite, in order to get a fight.  There, we dined in NOL-, shot hostile space stations, picked off nice kills like a Band of Brothers Heavy Assault Cruiser, engaged a similar-sized force in much better ships and wiped the floor with them when they engaged piecemeal.

On the way, we merged with Deii Feram, an alt corp that I had helped form before the Bat Country experiment began, and which was already in Aegis Militia.  From that merger, we got a lot of our keenest players (both from DF and from Shotgun Tactics).

We fought another couple of empire wars while in Aegis Militia, and the pinnacle was a war against their old enemies, Ushra Khan, while also fighting two other corporations.  We'd been asked for help by one of the game's oldest empire war corps, and we deployed in force.  UK were great opponents: they brought a lot of ships, they engaged every night at fairly even numbers, and they kept coming back.  Regardless, we used better tactics, staying close and repairing each other in a buddy-system while the fights were still going on.  At the end of a fortnight, we had notched up a great success.  Morale was high.


The Catch Deployment

From there, we really took off.  Within a couple of months, we were the top corp in the alliance for number of kills.  We were getting a name amongst our neighbours and it seemed that there was hardly a fight in the region that didn't have one or two Bat Country members involved.  As our rate of killing increased along with our experience and skill levels, we decided to do something a bit different.  Our allies at the time, IAC, were hard-pressed, so we deployed into the neighbouring region of Catch to help them.  We moved a huge logistical cache of ships, ammo, fittings to a secure station in space there and lived out of it, running operations every day, as well as joining others on their offensive and defensive ops.


Vanguard

Several of our operations involved helping Vanguard, a fairly new alliance living out of IAC space.  They had some good PvPers and FCs, and after we had flown with them a few times, we got involved in helping them take two lucrative but exposed station systems for themselves.  By this time, we had more kills every month than the rest of Aegis Militia put together, despite making up only about 20% of the numbers.  We wanted a new challenge, and the next logical step was to leave our somewhat moribund alliance and join Vanguard.

Joining Vanguard didn't turn out too well.  We knew and said in advance (on our own, F13 boards) that they could not hold the space they had taken.  Nobody in the entire history of the game had held it for more than 2 or 3 months, and it had changed hands often.  However, we had not foreseen that AAA, who we had been fighting for the best part of a year in Aegis Militia, would receive massive reinforcements from another alliance's breakup, and would storm in with multiple supercapitals and sieze the systems from us before we could defend them.  Now we were looking for new space.  We'd suffered our first reverse as a corp, but we decided to stick with Vanguard and see how they reacted.

Vanguard went to Venal, in the end: very rich space, but space that could not be conquered by players.  Logistics were terrible, the locals hostile and we soon began to see people get discouraged.  Rather than risk having people leave individually, we came up with a Grand Plan.


Goonfleet

I'd been putting out some feelers and, mainly thanks to our PvP focus and excellent killboard stats, we had had offers from half a dozen alliances, some of them big players.  But none seemed perfect.  Some were Band of Brothers-aligned, and we had too many Goon alts for that to work.  I knew some others were soon to be doomed (Smash made a play, for instance).  And while a couple of Providence and northern-Catch alliances were very keen to have us, that would have been a step back.

It was time to step up to the big leagues.  Several of us had mains in Goonfleet, and I knew someone in a small Goonswarm Alliance corp, Ultrapolite Socialites, who would welcome an influx of new players.  This meant that we could join them while keeping our culture intact: when we constituted the overwhelming majority of those in the corp there was no risk of the Bat Country ethos being diluted.  There was a degree of argument: a lot of people had preconceptions about Goons, often born of the official forum propaganda (from both sides), but when the decision was made, people rapidly made the shift.  An advanced guard went first, but the reports were so positive that virtually everybody followed.  We were BatGoons.

We decided to base out of a deserted station system in Geminate, near to the massive wealth of the drone regions, and pretty soon we had made it into Bat Country: a station of our own, in effect.  However, a couple of weeks on and the front lines came to us: our new home was the staging system for a series of attacks on Triumvirate, old enemies from Providence.

Now, our killboard efficiency is running above 85% at the moment.  We have had people at virtually all the massive, strategic battles that the alliance has been involved in, since we joined, at both ends of our space.  We have had members kill dreadnoughts and carriers, and only extreme bad luck robbed us of a mothership kill.  Now, we are to be allowed to start BatSquad, our own F13 squad within the alliance, and we're working on Big Plans...

I have to say very good recruitment post.  Call me when I can play with a joystick.

I first downloaded Eve over two years ago and played out my two week free trial. I enjoyed it to a certain extent, the graphics were impressive and I liked the whole concept of the open play style. I had tried a bit of mining and running missions, which I did enjoy but it felt like I was in solitary confinement to a large extent. I also didn't have much of a clue what I was doing in retrospect. It left me a little intrigued I must admit, the depth of the game, the vast amount of skills you have available to train, but it didn't convince me to subscribe to what I then considered extortionate amounts of money to play a game.

Almost one year to the day on, I decided I would give Eve another look to see how things had progressed. After all, the Xbox 360 was boring me and I wanted to play something totally different, so I downloaded another trial. Within the first day of playing, I happened to get talking to another relatively new player and we got along well from the start. We decided to start our own corp and get a few people together to join us. We made the conscious decision to hand pick any of the members so that we would all be of a similar mindset.

Shotgun Tactics was formed and worked very well for a few months. We managed to throw a few decent guys together, helping each other out; the blind leading the blind, but hey, at least we didn't fall flat on our faces. We grew to almost 50 members within a few weeks, some quit, some vanished into thin air and some of which ran off with our god damned corp money!!! Yes Alan Quartermain, you are still on the old Shotgun Tactics crew hit-list!!!

Anyway, after a few more weeks I realised our corp needed something more. We were all good guys, but none of us knew jack about what we should really be doing. We knew we had to get out of the Empire if we were ever going to get anything other than cheap empire kills for stealing from newbie miners and losing a ship for us meant hours of grinding level 1 missions for a shiny new cruiser. So we headed off to 0.0 to look for some nice space... and got wasted in seconds! Pfft... noobs!

Eventually, we met with some Deii Feram guys. To us, they were awesome 0.0 space vets who took some pity on our sorry asses and let us merge into their corp. As it turns out, we didn't know jack about anything and pretty much all our of ships may as well have been fitted with C4, coz the way we had them fitted, we were dead in the water from the offset. So the guys in Deii Feram gave us a lot of great help and got us on the road, thought us how to fight, who to fight and when to fight (although, I'm still not good at running away, a bit thick you see!).

After a few weeks of raking in the cashola in Providence, myself and my fellow noobs started joining in ops with our new corpies and getting on a few nice kill mails. I half expected to hear "wtf is that noob doing here with us?" over comms, but in reality, we turned out to be just as valuable to the fleet in our noob tackling ships as the guys with the 200mill battleships. Hey, their big kickass ships can only kill what they can catch... and that was our job! Within these few weeks, the game had changed from "what do we do next?" to "who do we kill next?" and "hey, how big is your wallet?" (no pun intended!).

So the months rolled on and the carnage continued, we all trained better skills and ships, found our way in 0.0 space and made it our homes. Eventually, Deii Feram merged into Bat Country / F13. A pack of space hobo's that liked nothing better than to ruin peoples day in Eve... we fitted right in! It grew from there and still growing to this day and I don't think I would be still playing had I not have joined the crew. Most of the Shotgun Tactics crew still with us also... and still holding a grudge... Alan!!! 

This is because of all the new people, isn't it?

Its a great post, and even has me tempted, but, i cant get over the combat in the game.

Great group of folks.  I like the recruiting materials and hope that you guys continue to grow.



Edit: Decided to be more positive in an attempt to help the cause.

Waiting for schild to make a post about how it's a "pity it's fucking boring" so I can quote and agree.

I do commend Endie's efforts though.

To be honest, I've been so busy in the Eve stuff - we've just had a huge overhaul announced - that I didn't know we had new people.  Has there been some bulk import from another board?

And maybe Schild is growing mellow, and doesn't want to shit up our recruitment thread?

/de-lurk

I would like to add some features and benefits I've found in Eve and make a few comments about why working with F13, for me, has been very enjoyable.  These features and benefits are very different from the others, so I think it is worth mentioning.

Eve for Me

1) I do the majority of my gaming on a laptop that can't handle most new games.  I have an older gaming rig, but at my office desk, Eve works.

2) I'm busy as hell right now but enjoy tuning in to Eve when I have a spare hour or two.  Some day I'll have time off (I'm a teacher) so the ability to keep my character training while I'm in the busy period is nice.  I don't have to farm, etc.  

3) Deep space can be a cold and empty place devoid of humanity and... asshats.  I enjoy PvP but I am much more happy out in the deep poking around killing a few NPC's, developing my tiny portion of the universe and ignoring all the complete retards.  I can head into populated space if I want to, in fact, sneaking past wars and gate gankers is pretty exciting for me.

F13 for me

1) No Politics - Having had my complete fill of cockmagnet drama queens that spend all their time boasting and little time playing, or trying to asshat their way though a discussion of who is more better for The Guild, I've really enjoyed the F13 approach.  There's no rules, guidelines, requirements, etc.  There also isn't any significant drama.

2) Major Help - Guys like Endie have set us up with the tools and services that allow a poorly informed, extremely casual, generally lagging-to-death guy like me to enjoy the game the way I want to.  This means all the infastructure and mega-bucks equipment I would need to enjoy my little hermatage in space is paid for, managed, and someone even carts all my stuff into the market hubs for me.  

3) Options - If I want to do anything in the game I have that option at hand and people to help me go do it.  Some day maybe I will... right now, I'm quietly playing a total of 3 to 5 hours a week.


/lurk
 

Endies been talking about this for a while.

How is the logistics in Goonswarm.  I really hated moving shit around.

examples/details?

It's true, I don't want to shit up this thread. Though, having seen the Goonfleet forums, I don't see the appeal of an out of game relationship with them. The avatars and sigs there were enough to make me never want to go back - much like SA's avatars/custom titles.

I'd agree too. But seriously, top notch job, Endie.

For me, the worst sort of false advertising is when people claim that a new player can contribute in combat in EvE.  It might be true on the tactical level, but when I found out my role as a new player would basically be a "mosquito with a lasso", and that would be all I would be good for for a LONG time.. I ditched.

Doesn't take long to get in a DPS cruiser. But for a powerhouse ship, it does indeed take some time (and iskies). You can also very quickly be a VERY valuable asset in a gang by training electronic warfare and hopping in a Griffin or blackbird. It's cheap, low-SP effective, and you get to be killed first in many fights.... E-HONOR POINTS OUT THE ASS BABY

First of all, Endie is fucking awesome and does more work than any of us realize to make things fun for everyone else.  Second, Slayerik's donations are great and have helped set lots of noobs up with cool stuff (including myself).

There are lots of awesome stories to share, so here's a recent one:  I'm hanging out in our forward base, chatting and taking care of corporation business when a single Triumvirate (hostile) shows up in local.  I decide to undock and take a look around the station, where I see here flying in an Interdictor.  This is a small, fast and nasty ship that is also obviously scouting and baiting for a larger gang next door, so I make up my mind to play a game with her.

I dock my battleship up and proceed to undock in a variety of small ships to see if she goes after me, but she never launches her warp disruption sphere so I have to try something else to get her to commit.  I next undock in a thorax, which for those of you who haven't played the game much is an extremely powerful close-range cruiser.  I warp away from the station and back to it.  She has predictably launched her bubble by now which forces me out of warp well away from the docking range of the station and forces and engagement.  Hostiles immediately begin piling into the system to come kill me and the interdictor puts a warp scrambler and stasis webifier on me, effectively keeping me in place for her buddies to wreck.

In order to do this she is now orbiting inside my guns' optimal range so I oblige her by warp scrambling and webbing her right back and opening up a can of whoopass on her.  She is dead in a few seconds in a ship that costs about 3-4x as much as mine did, I recall my drones and warp out to a friendly POS the very second her gang shows up to save her.  Trap sprung, victory Phildo.

There are lots of ways to play EvE, but I find it particularly awesome being able to carve expensive losses from enemy fleets while using the same cheap ship that I was able to fly a week after joining the game.

We have a jumpbridge network that, once you've run it the first time (to bookmark the jump bridges) lets you travel across a third of the galaxy in a little over 20 minutes or so.  It's a great achievement which effectively gives all Goonswarm members the same advantages as capital pilots.  You can pop down three regions to get a cheaper t2 ship in Sclading Pass with no bother.

The local markets, especially near the fronts, are very well stocked.  Even battleships aren't that much above empire prices.

There are people - call them haulers or call them smugglers - who make a living getting your stuff to and from empire for you for remarkably cheap prices: I got someone to move 2.5 billion in high-end minerals for Daala and I from our 0.0 space to Jita and it's only because I tipped him that it cost about 3% of the total.

We now have a bunch of capships in the corp - Bat guys have 2 rorqs and 3 carrriers already and the rest of LOVEU have jump freighters, rorqs, dreads and carriers we could get help with - that make things a lot easier.

Also, Phildo is right that Slayerik has relentlessly funded and guided a bunch of folks.

Phildo himself was such a killer in Providence that half a dozen friendly alliances knew about him and grabbed him for gangs: no exaggeration.  Amarr Holymight was much the same.

So logistics are much improved for us, now!


Like many fleet members, I've had sigs and avatars off for a year or so.  It improves the experience.


I like helping F13 folks have fun.  One example is our drone region project (which I need to do this week!): I've set up two towers in quiet, ultra-high-truesec systems and people stick their drone materials into cans there, then drop them off in the hangar arrays.  I haule them out every week or two, and sell them for 10% below Jita prices to an industrialist.  I then work out who is owed what (yes, I do need spreadsheets) and pass the money back to the people involved.


I'm sorry you felt that way.  We genuinelly got to where we are because of newbies.  Some like to tackle, others (like Bhodi did) quickly go for ECM and shut down the bigger ships - really vital stuff - and so on.  In Frigate Club we were pretty much all newbies, tackling, jamming and doing damage.  It's a shame you didn't enjoy your experiences, though: I wish we'd had the chances for people a year ago that we have now.

I figured he was trying to snag all the PVPers who didn't make it past WAR's first month.

To build on what Slayerik mentioned, it doesn't take long at all to fit a cruiser to do top-notch DPS.  The ship I used in my last post could be fit with about 1 - 2 months tops of training time, and all the while that you're building up you can fly it in slightly less potent iterations.  It's fun to watch your ships evolve from just being able to get on killmails to being top damage.

Also, no need for the tinfoil hattery.  The WAR thing is just a coincidence.  (Hello, 100 Guests!)

I gotta say you guys are great at helping out. I was perusing the goonswarm wiki (http://wiki.goonfleet.com) info last time out, READ IT.. IT HELPS!

 In the space of a few days mining had a fairly big nestegg when someone dropped 5mil(or there abouts) isk my way. Thanks whoever it was I forgot to mail you back with the isk as I made it back very quickly high sec mining with the new Scythe.  :drill:

It's fun and I might resub. It was a good change vs the normal diku and something I could casually play and did enjoy.

Ah EvE....its like that amazingly hot girl in college who who seemed nice so you started dating and then got to know her finding out she is bat shit insane. You really want to love her but you just can't get past the crazy.

goddamnit Endie!  This post kicks too much arse... I quit EvE a while ago (been on/off for years), having been involved since pre-beta.  This makes me want to come back.  I realized a lot of my frustrations were due to the Corp I was with, they just werent very proactive... I was just too terribly bored.  That and the fact I never kept up with my training even though I was still subbed.

hmmm... maybe I'll give it a shot again with you guys.  As it stands, my AoC days look to be numbered because that game is failing hardcore... so I may just have some room to play some EvE.

Nice analogy.

Nice.  If you go for it then we'll strap a gun to your back and march you off as soon as you apply.  Someone will get you access to the private forum for guidance, hopefully.

Cheers to getting pissed at me because I don't like your game. You don't mention how hard it is to find a corp that is half decent at pvp (no I didn't play with f13 or BAT).

I think its one of the incentives behind making this post! :roll: There are a shit-tonne of rubbish corps in Eve and joining one would make you want to quit. One of the quirks about Eve is that its not necessarily how you play, but who you play with.

Damm, Endie you're persuasive.

Couple of questions:

Before I quit EvE, Goonfleet+allies were in a seemingly endless war with endless "we need every at XXXX system and if we see you doing something else we will pod you" operations. You seem to indicate that's not so common now? One of the many reasons I burnt out was making the 20 jumps to the front line and then 40 back to my home base- is that still common or has the Goonfleet jump bridge network now cover all the way to the front lines (another issue was he jump bridge network always seeming to break down right when I wanted to use it. Did CCP fix that?).

Can you point out where you guys are based on the influence map (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Verite/influence.png)? Is that part near Etheral Dawn/Interpid Crossing/KIA?

I thought the Drone Regions were considered..well..crap. Did they get made better by CCP, or does the industrial base in the area is now big enough to support the economy?

If making money wouldn't be such a damn chore, I might be back playing. That and getting it to work stable under WINE (fuuuuuuuuuuuuk windoze!!!11!).

Karttoon's appointment is supposed to mark the continuation of a recent shift away from hurf blurf serious business stuff towards more fun.  The attitude has been that people can do what they like, so long as it doesn't interfere too much with any strategic stuff we need to do, so Brobuck has organised the Brogramage back to Syndicate for a couple of weeks, we took out the Eve Cemetary to annoy pubbies, we tried to take down CCP's invincible empire-space titan and so on.


Yes, we are currently based in that yellow bit top-right.  That is always open to change, though.  I'd kinda like us to get a nice refinery station of our own to base out of, to be honest.


The Drone Regions are probably the easiest place to be consistently pulling in the money.  Some believable figures I saw yesterday suggested that my own estimates of 50 mill/hour are reasonable for a decent solo character (with the sort of backup we have in place, infrastructure-wise) up to double that with an hauler alt and ratting with fighters.  This rates are kinda backed up by what I see when I'm hauling the loot for people.  You do absolutely need the infrastructure in place to do it, though.


In our current space, even if you don't want to rat drones but prefer the instant payouts of normal ratting, you can make enough in an hour to replace and fit one of the reimbursement, T2-fit battleships, or to buy several cruisers.  we are in very good space indeed, now.

EDIT: if you are well set up, you can do what I did and mine enough for a carrier in less than four hours.  Even with only a single miner, getting into an end-game, "prestige" capital ship like that could be done as a one-off in a couple of hours a night for a week or so.  The same with drone ratting.  And then you get reimbursed if you lose it on a fleet op.

Well set up? I don't remember anymore. Too long ago. I remember having a Hyperion, a Helios and I think an Arazu. And maybe an Interdictor. Fuck knows. But hey, times must have changed a lot if you can mine a carrier in four hours...

If the offer is still open in a couple of months I will definitely join, work is sort of busy right now though.  I have two different characters training, one is just going to be a miner and the other will be my fighter, they only have around 4mil sp.  I'm currently heading towards a mainly missile oriented guy because I have no idea what I'm doing so just firing off missiles is nice and easy.  Should I abandon that idea, are missiles bad in PvP?

I would be interested, though I've scrapped my old characters, and would be starting over from scratch. 

Assuming that a super-casual partially clueless pvp newb is something you are in need of.   :grin:

Always, if you don't mind being a mosquito with a lasso  :awesome_for_real:

Pretty cool thread, but I can't help but feel a twinge of regret that guilds this cool are being wasted in EvE  :heartbreak:.

So I started over, and rerolled as Ranja Trask. 

I will be merrily grinding missions, and schlepping through the learning skills again while idling in the F13 channel and surfing for porn.  :why_so_serious:

Was thinking about that according to http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=387 they are using transgaming's cedega in a binary package now, this would pretty much eliminate the wine requirements right?

Endie that was such a good recruitment post that I'd consider re-subbing if I was capable of playing yet :D

Quick question though - my problem with EVE pvp has always been the hours of dicking about before you can actually get a fight. Now, sometimes this dicking about can be fun in itself - cat'n'mouse games with an opposing fleet/gang etc - but often even the best bits of that are long and boring. So my question is, if you guys log on and decide you want a scrap, do you, even in GF, still have to endure the hours of dicking about before you can get a-blastin?

A couple things:

I want to also chime in and say that Endie rocks.  His original MMO forum post got me to resubscribe and join -BAT- early this year and his contributions to our fun and well-being are amazing. 

Goons are often foul-mouthed, aim for the offensive to get a reaction, and sometimes obnoxious, but most of the people I've run into in LOVEU (our adoptive corp) and on ops have been quite nice.  One thing Goons do like nobody else is logistics.  Some of the best out of game tools (the evemap app for one) were written by Goons.  Their in-game and out-of-game infrastructure is seriously unbelievable, and the GoonFleet wiki is easily the best compilation of EVE information I've ever encountered.

After we joined Goonswarm, I trained up my ECM skills to fly an ECM battleship in fleet operations... so I needed a couple Scorpions (the BS in question).  Posted a request in a ships-for-sale thread on the forums and within a day, I had two ships contracted to me one system away from our home system at a highly competitive price.  I needed fittings for these ships -- another person on the forums was selling complete fitting bundles for fleet battleships based on the approved fleet fittings (see again the wiki).  Posted a request, a day or two later I had all the bits I needed to enable me to prevent our foes from targeting at a range of 250km delivered to our home station. 

Here's a blast from the past -- some screengrabs and video from one of our early Frigate Club adventures mentioned above:
http://sunnyvale.frotz.net/eve/2008.03.01/

This video in particular shows off Endie's highly reassuring FC'ing of our gang of troublemakers:
http://sunnyvale.frotz.net/eve/2008.03.01/Bat-Country-03-01-08.wmv

I'm pretty casual.  Every now and again I'll burn a solid day or so on a weekend doing EVE stuff but often go a week or two between logins if work is crazy.  I've had a fantastic time flying with the -BAT- folks and expect to enjoy even crazier adventures in the future.

Join us.

You want to join up with us as soon as you can apply: the F13 channel is much quieter than the supar-sekrit one for people in the corp, and you will soon get bored soloing missions in empire.  The traditional Goonfleet manner of doing this is to apply, get accepted then just podjump to empire and ask your corpmates what to do next, but we can get you into our space pretty quickly by more traditional routes, instead, if you like.

Just don't play solo!


The problem with an MMO is, as you know, that the targets are people and might not co-operate  :?.

To balance that, the last three fleet fights against Stain that I was on I simply turned up at the time the operation was due to form up, within 20 minutes or so we were on our way, and fights started on getting into the system and in each case lasted for hours.  In one of them, after three hours of non-stop engagements, regrouping, re-engaging and so on I got carried away and warped to close range in my sniping eagle  :uhrr:  Inevitably enough, I lost it, but even after jumping to a station system 15 jumps away (thank-you jump bridge shortcuts!) and refitting a rokh the fight was still going on when I got back.  I think i got something like 120 kills in those fights, including capitals: they were great.

Of course, it's not always like that: you're right that a lot of Eve is finding targets.  But there are almost always a few operations - either serious business of roaming slosh ops - announced in The War Room, and if you are lucky enough to be in the US timezone there are also squad-level ops: Rho are always running stuff around Scalding Pass and L4X, for instance.  Eurosquad do run stuff too but I've been in Rho for ages, so can't comment.

What kind of infrastructure is aviable in the area of operations? There's no refinery? :(. So if I rat or kill drones, how/where do I refine the stuff I don't want down? Is there a factory and/or refinery station where you are/near where you are based out of?

How many jumps to empire/nearest trade hub? How and who camps is the pipe?

If I get X amount of ore/drone pieces, can someone haul it and sell it for me in empire?

Here's what happens right now:

I've set up a couple of faction POSes in quiet, high-truesec systems in the drone regions.  I also imported a bunch of cans to start people off (though I'll have to import more, since people "borrrow" them) and put them in a hangar array at the POSes.

People then take a can out, anchor it, fill it up with high-end drone minerals as they rat, then dump the full can in the array again, labelled with their name.

Every couple of weeks or so I come along, fuel the towers, pick up the cans, and haul them to a nearby station.  Then, I either contract them to a local capship builder or jump them out to empire.

There are two refineries close by, one of them upgraded, so I dunno quite what you mean by the lack of a refinery.  However, if I am selling it myself I don't refine the drone materials at this stage as they are worth more in their highly compressed state.

I then do stuff with spreadsheets to work out who is owed what, and give back 100% of the take to the ratters.

It means that people don't get their money immediately, but you can make a lot of money for your time invested.  If, for instance, we decided to drone rat our way to a BatSquad mothership we could do so in a moderately unpleasant week and a half.

As to how many jumps we are from empire right now: 2.  I jump to a safe deathstar with a cyno array at a midpoint, then I stick up a cyno in a quiet lowsec system in the Forge.  Obviously, from there it is just a matter of freightering to Jita.

This makes me wanna re-sub. I cancelled few months ago because I had to move and didn't have decent internet for a while (and now I didn't make it past 30 days in WAR). I think I should have T2 guns trained now if CCP didn't mess that up with their recent changes. Can you guarantee people get in if they want? I might not bother re-subbing if I have to fly with other folks...

Piss off. Some people like games with rails, others like open games involving intarnet spaceships in a massive 1 server sandbox.

No game comes close to Eve in depth. It's not for everybody.

I'd like to know what the scenario is for a miner.  I have a Mackinaw but can probably fly a Hulk as well... I just don't have one.  If I join up, I'll be doing so with my industrial pilot who has practically zero combat skill, and I'll be doing little other than mining and refining.

Hell, Endie has a Rorqual I think that would increase your mining gains by a significant amount.  Just find out where he hangs and stalk em! :) Everything I have heard is there is no minimum kills per character and carebearing characters are pretty standard.

I'd hope carebearing was OK in the case of industrial pilots, otherwise I might as well go play PotBS.  What I'm getting at is that I'm interested in mining and refining and I'd like to do so in a secure 0.0 system with some supporting logistics that I don't have to two-box.

Thrawn set up a small POS a couple of systems over from me, and he mines there when he's not bubbling dreadnoughts.  He mines into a CHA, I use the rorq to compress and haul his ore out, and sell the high-end in Jita, while bringing fuel back out when needed.  Megacyte is down a bit just now, but his first shipment came to 1.2 billion or so.  If you set up an operation somewhere down here with a hulk I'll help you out the same way: the system I use is moderate truesec at best, but has a good 20 or so belts, each with about 20-odd ark and bistot rocks on average.


I have a rorq and Vedi has one in Geminate that I'll hand back to him when he learns to fly it :D

And there are, indeed, no requirments to PvP if you don't want to.  It's just more fun if you do, sometimes.  We have a lot of industrialists and there is no PvP/carebear divide (mainly because a lot of us do both, especially in the rush for capitals).

There is no secure 0.0, as I might come roaming in at anytime ;) I'm sure you know that though. Their space is pretty quiet I think.

All this being said, I know I'm speaking for Endie and Co. but I am almost positive they would be glad to have you, and that your logistics are easily taken care of there.

I have enough time right now to do this too if it's okay.  I can bring my little fighter guy too and come out on the weekends as well, I didn't realize the operations were so casual and that you could just come out when you want.  How do we actually go about joining, is there a station we go to and apply or do we evemail you our board name from the character?

10 mil in your account :)

I see reds once every few hours or so, and they are reported on the intel channel well before they reach me, usually.  I dunno if Thrawn has ever had a red enter his system in a month or so.

That said, if you go afk then you'll eventually die: Slay is right that nowehere in 0.0 is completely safe.

But then, where is?  If you mine in a mack or a hulk in empire the Jihadswarm will get you eventually.

Oh, yea, I'm aware of all this.  Should have said "relatively safe" meaning there is some sort of patrol or intel that should give me a tipoff to warp out eight or nine times out of ten.  I can watch local as well as anybody, especially in a quiet 0.0 system.  I never AFK mine.  Never, even in empire where my drones can take down any rat pack.  My issue at the moment is that I don't have the liquidity to replace my Mac if I lose it, which is a bit of a stress factor.

Sounds like you buy your POS fuel instead of mine it, is this due to a lack of ice?  I'm already set up to mine+refine ice and I could contribute more quickly... I'd rather have a lackey to haul the ice but I can fly it in if I have to.

Just reactivated after being inavtive for more than a year.  In game name is Negation.

I used to be in Goonfleet (Merch Industrial specifically) back when I did play, so I am actually docked in a Goon station, but there's a slight problem in that I am no longer a member of that corp, and I am afraid if I try to start moving around to get to a station to apply to the F13 Corp my poor Dominix will get blowed to itty bitty bits.

Any advice on how I can get into the corp?

a) Jump clone back to empire and apply there.

b) If your clone is up to date, podjump back to empire and apply there

c) If you have no jump clones and your clone is not enough to hold your current skillpoints then undock in your pod and I will scram, web and ransom you then podkill you anyway scout you to empire.

Obviously, until you are in our corp you won't be able to dock in a Goon station.

It's an opportunity cost thing: I mine ark and buy fuel with the proceeds because I can make almost 60mill per hour with minerals, and an entire month's worth of all fuels for a small costs me about 90 minutes' pay to have delivered to within a couple of jumps.

That said, the local cost of fuel is a lot higher, and it may be pretty profitable to mine that, too.

PS don't try and sumggle your hulks/mackinaws in manually, people: a rorqual can hold a lot of exhumers, between the cargo bay and hangar.  Viin has also offered to get folks' ships in.

a) According to my handy dandy character sheet, I have never Clone Jumped. (did I mention I haven't played in a while? :) )

b) It does appear that my clone is up to date enough to hold all of my skill points. (I have 23,929,282 and the clone is for 25,600,000)  So I will hop into my pod and head towards empire space.

c) Don't want to put you through any trouble of trying to escort my n00b ass back to empire, if I die it looks like I'll end up being ok.

Change your home station to something in empire. If you dont have implants, just self destruct your pod home and spend the 2 mil on a new clone.

Anywhere specific?  I do have implants, but from what I remember they're not amazing or anything.  Perhaps I could sneak through Goon Space and get to our 0.0 station?  I am in the F13 channel in game if anyone can log in now and maybe gimmie directions.

You'll not be able to ninja it: you'd get to the station undock point and be told you don't have rights to enter.  You'll have to go to empire to join at an office.  Join the F13 channel and ask there abotu which station to go to: your corp history will make it easy to see who you are.  If everyone is in WarF13 and busy, just be patient.  Someone will have it on blink...

Ok, I successfully made it to safe space, currently on the way to Jita.  I don't have access to the WarF13 channel because I wasn't invited, but if anyone gets on and knows of the best station to apply close to Jita that'd be swell.

Whoah, you're quick.  I'll PM you with where to apply and what to say in case Samson isn't around (this is a quiet time of teh day for us).

Alrighty, app is in, now...I wait. :)  Thanks for the help Endie.

Make sure to change your clone location to somewhere relevant now :)

More economic questions: Cool there's a refinery/Edie's refinery service: what about a factory, is that the missing station in the area?

I ask because I have a lot of tech 1 researched BPO's and did enjoy building it and selling stuff locally that wasn't otherwise available.  Still, being 2 jumps from Empire probably means most people don't bother? What's the market like/need?

When I left I had 3 Mech Engineer agents getting datacores: are they still researching even though I'm not subscribed?

Yes. You have some money waiting for you.

We have a lot of factory stations.

Where we are based in Geminate there is a factory station linked by jumpbridge to the refinery station (it's also only two jumps via the gates).

If we move south at some point we have a lot of refinery/factory pairs.  Remember, this is ex-ASCN space  :awesome_for_real:  And we've added a lot since...

Dammit, I'm going back to EvE. And after I said I'd never be back while BoB was still in existence.

Things I need to promise(*) myself-
- Don't post on COAD
- Don't post on Scrapheap
- Don't buy expensive implants (because I worry too much about losing them)
- Don't fly battleships or tech 2 ships in pvp (because I worry too much about losing them)
- Don't get depressed when I check how many years it will be before I can fly a Dread/Carrier in combat (I think I was still 9 months away).

Any other suggestions on things not to do that will ruin my enjoyment of the game?

----------
*- not that I expect to keep these promises, my Will score is crap.

I wanted to take a step back and make some comments about what Eve is and isn't.  I have had a great time but I can imagine a few playstyles that probably shouldn't bother.

Eve's best feature is meaningful, strategic PvP.  Eve PvP is about 3/4 strategy, 1/4 tactics in any situation.  Much of it is a little like chess - always thinking what position you need to be in next, what the enemy knows and doesn't, what he's flying, how aggressive, etc.  This is true for solo 1v1 and for gang actions, though in a gang the fleet commander will be making the decisions, but the fun there is of course armchair FCing.  

When I say meaningful, I mean that the results of PvP are that you could lose whatever ship you bring, minus the insurance.  This is a big equalizer because if you fly (say) a dps cruiser, available at about a week or two into the game, you lose hardly anything.  It's very possible to blow up people with a lot more money invested if you are smart about it.  See Phildo's story above about killing the interdictor (advanced tech 2 ship) with his cruiser.

Another thing that makes it meaningful is that you can lose or gain territory, i.e. resources, by the results of the fights.  Sometimes this is painful and sometimes it's thrilling, depending on which side you are on.  It helps to have friends you can move in with if that happens, which is why this is the only game I know of where every alliance and major corporation (guild) designates diplomats. However, you can always run back to Empire if all else fails, which sets Eve apart from zero-sum, winner-take-all games like Shadowbane.

I was thinking the other day as I got ganked in WoW how every time I got ganked in Eve it was directly attributable to a risk I took, or a stupid decision I made, or something else in my control.  On a WOW or other game's PvP server, typically the scenario is that some person comes sprinting up to you, whom you have a better chance to turn into a chicken than to beat, locks you down and 1-3 shots you.  In EVE, you almost always have warning and an escape method if you're smart.  In fact how smart you are directly contributes to your survival, which I see as an improvement.  Also, I have never been 1-shot in EVE; the minimum has been six or seven (battleship vs my frigate) - plenty of time to flee if I had been of a mind.

However, if you're a fan of the style of PvP where you spawn in, run to the battle, gib within 1.4 minutes, respawn, and repeat, then you won't like it.  Also, if you're the kind of person who buys a level 70 just to arena with, you probably won't like it either.  Having a high-skill character is only part of the equation.  You have to understand and know a lot of things about the game, which comes naturally with skilling up a character from scratch.  

One thing that bothers me to no end is people claiming you can't "contribute" as a newbie.  In this very thread people have stated it.  The fact is, every newbie tackler in a provided, throwaway frigate is one more damage or shield module that can be fitted to the bigger ships, so contributing not only its own DPS but to the DPS of the fleet as well.  Not to mention, within a week you'll be in a cruiser and a month a battlecruiser doing your own real DPS.

Making ISK can be a problem before your skills get to battleship level if you only want to rat, but battleships have notoriously small holds.  Following an older player around with a hauler and a salvager can make great money as well as giving you a chance to bond with guildmates and learn about the game, not to mention increase their isk/hour.

One last thing - the time commitment.  I was amazed at the low time commitment of this game.  The offline skill training thing makes it really up to you.  I can probably count on one hand the times I've played for more than 2-3 hours at a time, the vast majority being under two.  Taking a night off is quite common as well as taking a break for a different shiny.  I'm currently on a WoW break but logging in to change skills or as the mood strikes me.  Then again, if you're Mistar Lives In Mom's Basement, there is plenty to do to keep you logged in for 18 hours a day with your TV dinners and not changing the cat litter.

So - try it. Take the free trial.  There is over 10 days until WoTLK comes out.  You aren't doing anything important anyway.

This is so true. Knowledge is power in this game. Careful planning, risk assessment, taking responsibilty for your actions....these are all things involved in everyday Eve life. Excellent post Jayce.

For all you mining types, we just had a pretty exciting announcement on our forums that will make making money in our core systems much easier and quicker, and very profitable.

Please stop tempting me.  Please.  I have to try to like WAR for a bit longer. 

If it dies I am so here though.  I even have an existing character with randomly placed skill points and 40 mil isk ready to rock.

Stop enticing me.

Though my subscribed to MMO count is now 0 as I just recently canceled my WoW account (though it is active until end of November I believe).

And they have a Mac client too…

But then after a short honeymoon period, I'll quickly be disenchanted and disillusioned with the leveling grind and nonsensical factors…

There is no levelling grind in Eve.  You set a skill training then it just ticks away until it finishes, then you set another, and so on.  The only thing you can "grind" is making money, if that is your bag.  And we have available ways to shortcut that.  Slayerik, being a generous soul and trying to make his peace with God after a history of murderous carebear-ganking, is handing every newbie enough cash to buy and fit out 10 or so of their race's best frigates.

To be honest, i quite like the minigame of training skills so they fit perfectly around when I pop home for lunch, when i go to bed etc...

New guys (I think the new gal already has it) should PM Viin for access to The War Room.  That contains the details of how to sign up and join in.

Also, do join the F13 public channel so we can get you advice on getting in.

If you PM me, please PM your in-game name as well. :)

How is the PvP ganking in <5sec systems?  I left over being unable to mine/rat in lvl 3 systems.  Still butthurt.

Every time I've lost a ship in combat, I've learned something that if I pay attention to will help me avoid losing a ship in the future.  I usually can look back and see that if I did X differently it would have affected the outcome of the engagement, which is very encouraging to me -- yeah they got me, but it wasn't like I couldn't have escaped or fought back if I was a little more on my toes or had the benefit of the knowledge I just gained.

Half the trick is making sure you pay attention to your surroundings and learning when to engage and when to run.

- Q

If you're buried deep in our 0.0 space ratting then you'll not get ganked.  You watch the intel channels and get warning 9 times out of 10.  You keep an eye on local for the rest.

I run my own mining operation with several alts in the belt at once.  I'm right out on the very edge of our space, but I've not yet (touch wood) been caught, and I've made billions.

I've only been ganked while ratting twice, and both times were my own fault.  Particularly the first, where I decided after waiting for approximately five minutes to burn to a nearby station system.  The bad guys were waiting for me on the way, of course.  This was before I knew that you could log off safely at a POS  :uhrr:

And ratting/mining in 0.0 is far safer and more lucrative than in lowsec.

I'm skilling up a fighter right now but I'm not happy with progression enough to invite myself back into BAT. I fucked up Orday enough that I didn't feel like letting him cruise around in his rupture looking like a tard. I've been messing around with a miner and believe it or not, it's kind of fun. Once my pvp gal gets up to speed, I'll be using her pretty much full time. Till then, gluck.

Well I'm in. Suprirsed it was only a 100meg update considering I last played 8 months ago. Someone needs to approve my goonfleet fourm application, and I'm done.

OK, if the resub urge hits me again (although that's less likely now that I'm not gonna have finished some cool skill in the meantime) I'll give you a shout Endie :)

Post your skillset in the Eve Online forums.  Given that a newbie character is only a month away from flying a good battleship or battlecruiser, it's unlikely that you're more than days away from something effective.

Also, we're in Goonfleet: nobody is going to check your skills or complain about what you're flying*.  We're resolutely not elitist.

*except laser moas.  You will be mocked for flying laser moas.

This picture is from an anzac-timezone op this morning.  I thought it looked pretty.

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/nag.jpg)

That's a Naglfar-class dreadnought, by the way.  The two nearby ships below and left of it give an idea of the variations in scale involved.

My megathron is nearby, somewhere off-screen.  This is an awesome op.  We killed some BoB pets and got to listen to erotic Harry Potter fanfiction read by Australians.

Edit: This op concluded with killing the tower and just enough time to dock up right as the server was shutting down.  Also got on an assault frigate killmail and the support in our gang killed some interceptors.  Quite succesful.

More spaceship porn of f13/bat/alliance operations.

(http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/3333/cvafleethl7.jpg)

(http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9162/turkeyshootas6.jpg)

Just idle curiosity, I've looked at a lot of screenshots, even some movies, but I still can't tell:

1) When you see the suns, planets, (not the mini-asteroids), and the fields of luminous gas in the background, is that just painted on the backdrop, or are those things actually there, and you can fly around/through them?

2) Is a zone a box or a sphere?  What happens when you come to the edge, or is there no edge?  (I assume its not a plane with a limited z-axis.).

3) At the grand-map level, is it just 2-dimensional, but really its just a connection of nodes?  I assume its not continuous space, or is it, where you can 'zone' anywhere?

The suns, planets, moons etc are all there to be warped to, and are useful in a lot of strategic and tactical situations, like getting to an enemy position while avoiding their defences ("bubbles" that pull you out of warp, for instance).


Zones, or "Grids" are usually very large, although they can vary a little.  In Kheram, there are two stations almost 100,000km apart, but on the same grid.  A rarely-used grid on a gate in deep 0.0 might only be 400km across (or, rarely, less).  The shape can vary.  There are a couple of uses for just-off-grid spots, but they are rare.


You can start flying in any direction you like.  But given that, even at 30km/s (you can just get a ship to that sort of level or above at huge expense) it would take you millions of years to get from one star to another, so I doubt it matters on that level.

If, however, you mean to ask if you could fly from one planet to another, or to one of its moons under impulse power, then yes, if you really want to then you can.  And warping really moves you through the intervening space, which you can use to check for people hiding in safe-spots between celestial bodies if they are careless in creating them.

To add a little to Endie's answer, the only "zoning" takes place between systems, by using jumpgates.  A system is massive amounts of continuous space that it would take the aforementioned years (of real time) to fly through without using warp.

The system is a sphere, so there is plenty of z-axis.  Many systems have planets off the plane with others that you can fly to.  You can of course fly any direction at subwarp speed.

Regarding the rings and nebulae of luminous gas, those are backdrop.  There's probably 10 of them in total.  They repeat quite often from system to system, but you ignore them after a while.

Thanks, so each system is a HUGE sphere, with planets and asteroids inside of it.

To get between systems you use the gates.   And the universe has a large number of systems.

But if you gate in, and just fly 'up', do you it an invisible wall eventually?  (But since its huge, no one has gotten that far?)

You won't; because of how the eve backend works, when you move out of a zone, that is to say normal space where you can see things, it dynamically creates another one in front of you.

Imagine you're in a huge cube, called a grid in eve terms, and you can see everything in that cube. Most cubes are around objects that you'd want to go to, gates, planets, stations, that sort of thing. If you move out of that cube, another one is created directly ahead you just move into it, leaving the other behind. People can enter the one you made that's adjacent, in the same way you did, or they can enter it in other ways (there are methods of warping to you, and so if people find you, they end up on your grid). No one can see across cube/grid boundaries, but they are large enough that it's not generally a problem. It takes all but the fastest ships a minute or two to get to the edge of a grid, and battles are generally fought at the center of grids around objects (stargates, stations, that sort)

Thanks, I think I get it now, it sounds a lot better than I thought it was.  I assumed invisible impassible walls since that's the trend in most games nowadays.

Forget 30 km/s most ships move at less than 500 m/s, many at less than 100 m/s (~223 mph or the speed of a NASCAR racer).  So, if a typical grid is a few thousand km across, well, there may not be invisible zone walls but pretty much nobody actually tries to fly off grid unless they are setting up safe spots.

Zone wall or not zone wall, you still don't go there is what I am trying to say.

Some of my inspirational posters created during my time with Bat Country in EVE:

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/65/200602338_b9e355b467_o.jpg)

(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/68/201248418_f2957ffe6b_o.jpg)

Granted these were taken before the first 0.0 foray and I believe before the last recruitement drive.   Guys got serious since then.

No thanks. That "game" fucked my life more than it was already, and I didn't even get the satisfaction of getting much fun from it.

At least I learned something about editing videos from frapsing.

I have Carrier level 5. Never flew a Capital ship in combat. Nuff said.

I resubbed... found myself in Delve space with an underskilled clone and an uninsured Dominix (revoked).  Cant upgrade or change anything since I cant gain access to the offices here. :(

I love my Dom... wonder If I can make it 12 jumps through BoB space w/o dying :)

think your best bet is to put the domi on the market and pod run it home, hell maybe ask for an escort .... hate to lose SP

Defintely sell the domi.  Buy a shuttle and make a run for it.

Shuttles are amazingly survivable, unless you hit a bubble camp.  I PvP'd in one all night one night, providing intel.

Just to echo the others, if EVE gets one thing truly right, its the sense that you really are in fucking SPACE. It's God Damn ridiculously huge mother fucking SPACE.

You can really fly around and get the sense that you really are in a infinite and endless environment.


Of course, that's arguably as bad as it is good.

Do you have a jump clone?

If not, you could try petitioning, but the shuttle idea is a good one.  Otherwise, if you can use a cloak then something like a stabber with a cloak, an mwd and the lows fitted with wcs and nanos will get you through even many bubble camps.

That's why when I quit I was in space in a covert ops frigate :grin: *Nee Ner*

If you don't have a cloak handy, I'd recommend a rifter with a medium shield extender and stabs over a shuttle to burst out of bubble camps, they accelerate and align fast while providing you with a reasonable damage buffer.

I've known a couple of people who got a successful petition after re-subbing in a station that's changed hands. They got moved to empire space but without their stuff I seem to remember.

Otherwise, yeah, rifter's are very hard to catch :)

Too late now, my Dom and its contents are up for auction.  I'm sitting in Tash Murkon right now.  After having made the run, the only resistance I got was the initial jump from Delve (I think they had it bubbled).  After that clear sailing all the way, the few zones that were populated were just miners and most people wont bother with a neut in a shuttle.  I really wished I tried it in my Dom... I could've aligned towards the other side of the gate and been home free probably.

I'm going to petition (now that you've told me I can) to have my Dom moved to my current location.  I doubt they'll do it though.

Most of you seem to be forgetting that you can't use fitting services in hostile stations.

GMs moved my stuff to emp. space for me!  They rock.  Was basically a "thank you" for resubbing.   So I got to keep my Dom, everything in it, and ALL the items I had in my hangar.  So now I've just gotta pop some jump clones and start moving this stuff to f13-space?

That's awesome.

Depending on what the stuff is, it might make more sense to sell it at a trade hub and rebuy everything you need.  Besides the Dom and its fits, of course...

Motherf...  wish I had thought that he GMS would actually move my stuff, I left behind my fully fitted Domi deep in Goon space and hightailed it out of there in my pod.  Now I am simply flying a Shuttle of Doom :(

Nothing wrong with shuttles of doom.  I was terrorizing Providence in one two nights ago, and we regularly use them to knock out mods on undefended POSes!

I am completely new to eve, lurked here a little while, saw this thread and my interest was sparked.   I am interested in joining you guys, but considering i've never even played the game i dont know where to start. 

Im going to make my way over to the wiki and start reading up. 

Any tips on character selection etc?

Thanks

If you don't have someone to vouch for you, then I'm afraid that you won't get in, Mr 1 Post.   That's covered in the OP.  Sorry about that.

i realize that, i read the thread :).   i dont expect to be randomly accepted based on my amazing first post :)  I just found your recommended base stats guide, doing some research now!

Feel free to join the F13 channel anyway if you have any newbie questions. Assuming you're not a horrible, evil spy of course.  :wink:

Reg, stop inviting horrible, evil spies into our channels!

The wonderful thing about EvE is that I could announce I've been a spy all along, and no one would really be all that shocked.

Could someone please give me access to the subforum so that I can find out how to join?  I'll be bringing two accounts, one is Stopgap who is my miner and the other is Falcate who is my fighter and will try to contribute to whatever operations are run.  Falcate can fly a raven but is using the popular PvE fitting from battleclinic so I imagine he wouldn't be very good in PvP so I'm currently training up the basic tackling skills.

PMing Viin is probably the quickest way to get access...

I tried that a few days ago but I don't think he's been around.

I can't do it, I'm afraid, but maybe Yoru or Schild could help? vOv

I'm here, I sent it to Schild. You don't have access to the WAR forum inside the EVE forum still?

I need access to the super-secret sub-forum as well please.

Send me a PM with your in-game name please. :)

No not yet.  Perhaps all the bannings are crimping his workload :).

When I can fly a fighter with a joystick, or lead a squad of marines on a boarding action of one of those huge-ass ahips, call me. :awesome_for_real:

Don't wait by the phone.  This ain't Rainbox Six or X-Wing vs Tie Fighter.

Ain't waiting.

I'd really like to get into it, because fucking up someone's day does warm the sub-cockle region of my heart, but I need some twitch to keep my old bones from wasting away to atrophy.

I've been in atrophy-ville the last few years.  It ain't bad  :oh_i_see:

Shame they're nerfing speedy ships, because flying interceptors at ridiculous speeds can ALMOST be considered twitch.

Alright bitches, I'm in.

You've got three months to thrill me.

Time for Stupid Questions with Cadaverine!  Brought to you by Comet Body Wash.   :why_so_serious:

Anyway, seeing as I rolled a brand spanking new character for this, what should be the minimum ship I can fly that will still allow me to make ISK in the cold darkness of Goonspace?  Currently, I can only fly frigates, with the appropriate minimal tackling skills while I work on the learning skills.  I would assume that I would need to be in battleships at a minimum? 

Also what about me miner that is starting to dabble in production stuffs, and hauler alt?  Is it fairly quiet in your neck of the woods, or would I be needing to bring bodyguards?

A battlecruiser would enable you to rat, though inefficiently until you train up a bunch of support skills, in most of our space.  You can be flying one in a few weeks and until then you can pvp in free frigates.  As to the mining question, I don't touch the stuff so that's for others to answer.

If you aren't in the secret EVE subforum (called WAR!), PM me your in-game character name and I'll have Trippy add you to the forum. Lots of good threads in there, plus the EVE forum itself (prolly better to ask noob questions there than in this big thread, tends to get lost).

Here's our alliance's latest video (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Sye46MEUk).  It's p. good, like all Stahlregen's stuff (he has an account here, so be nice).

61MB HQ downloadable is here (http://rapidshare.com/files/145735720/doit.wmv.html), and well worth it, too.

Surprisingly, he has chosen to use some Nine Inch Nails this time.

Edit: while there is a bit of a reference to our Geminate and Esoteria campiagns, a lot of the text is the Jihadswarm manifesto.

Hey, cool, I wasn't expecting that.

Hope you rolled Minmatar.  Speedy rifters might be the closest to what you are looking for wrt twitch.  Getting into a Stiletto (interceptor) is just a few months of work, but Rifters and Vigils are pretty damn good for T1 frigates.

(http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/8764/cefterifter5an.jpg)

So,

How much fun can I have in EvE with about 2 or so hours of gametime a night and not having to talk on vent/TS/etc (I'll listen, but since I don't have a gaming room I do not really feel like bothering my roommates with the talk)?

For reference, I am getting bored with the more actiony games and am looking for something a bit more strategic.

A lot.  I rarely if ever play more than 2 hours per night.  Marathon for me is four hours.

What type of things do you accomplish in that time frame?

You could hang out and make some money by killing NPCs until there's a call to scramble defenses.  Or you could try running missions in empire with a couple of us that keep empire alts.  Or you could fly around solo in a cloaking ship looking for juicy kills (this takes a few months of training, though).  Lots of things to do in 2 hours.

Or, if you can choose when to log in for those two hours, you can time it to join in a roaming op or defence gang.

For those in Euro timezones in particular, we just got an alliance announcement about a new project that should let you log on and find something to do at pretty much any time.

For those already in, it's Darius's ironically-titled "play Eve on hard mode" post, and it is pretty much made for Pred and Amarr.

Starting out: tutorial, missioning, highsec ratting.  All of which can be done on any timeframe.
Intermediate: log in for ops and logout when you have to go, mine (if that's your thing), or rat.  Ratting and mining is purely on your own timeframe. Some suicide gank around this point.
Advanced: by now you're space-rich and probably just login for ops or solo pvp.

I have an idea to post some sort of more detailed progression of the above in the protected forum for when you do get started.

Aight fuck it, I've run out of tv shows to catch up on anyway.

Downloading now

For those who went Fuck Eve after the change to 60-day timecards, Oveur's new blog has some excellent news.

If you buy a Game Time Card, you will be able to split it up for sale into 30-day cards (CONCORD 30 Day Pilot Licenses - oh, those wacky RPers) for sale, so folks can go back to buying a month at a time.

GTCs will now be in-game items, tradable (only, I think) through in-game contracts.  And no, you won't be able to leave a station with one, so no experiencing the joy of ganking someone with 1000 bucks of GTCs in his cargo, Slayerik  :sad:.  This does, of course, make it harder for people to do RMT for GTCs: CCP are taking on the Chinaman in his Space House.


Sweet.  Join the F13 channel immediately on getting into the game (using the button near the bottom of the left navbar) and ask for help and ISK: Slay attempts to balance out his bad spacekarma by acts of extreme generosity to newbies, and drop an evemail to my logistics alt Justinianus Flavius for some more cash.  Get into the sekrit forum as soon as you have had the chance to get into the corp and someone (Pax) will try and allocate you a mentor.  We have a bunch of new members in now, so there are lots of other new folks around, and plenty of folks to talk to during normal hours.

Will do, I'll be on tonight.

Miasma joined up, and went on his first roaming op last night, organised by Phildo.  Not only did Miasma get his first 0.0 kill, but he survived.

The kill is here (http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=4708).  If you look at the price of the ship and fittings the guy lost, it comes out at two or three hundred times the price of the ship of Miasma, who kept a tackle on him.

I wonder what percentage of people are flying rifters in their first 0.0 killmail? I know mine was in a rifter, awesome ships :)

Please stop having so much fun, you're making me want to resub  :why_so_serious:

I probably shouldn't tell you that our 6-man gang came very close to killing a couple of expensive T2, faction and capital ships later on but were just 2-3 ships shy of being confident of engaging.  We did mess up their isk-making though by forcing them to dock because they had no idea what we were planning to do to them.

My first killmails were a bunch of rigged russian battleships while I was flying an Incursus.

What exactly is a killmail?

This (http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=4706)

Shows who killed who, using what ships, and what the dead ship was fit with.

Are they automatic or do you have to do something?  The wiki tells me to post but then I thought I read a thread here saying it was done for me.

You have to submit them.  Our KB is passworded, the main Goon KB is not.  Passwords are listed in other threads in the main Eve forum.

Anyone know of an issue with Eve not detecting sound card drivers (that's the message it tells me)?  It's kinda annoying to game with sound (and the tutorial would be more tolerable with voice).  I know my sound works cause I just watched a movie on my laptop.

You might be to pick the right sound card from the settings menu (esc, audio tab) - if you have more than one and it can't get the default one it might do that.

Wait, EVE has sound?    Sorry, in-joke, everyone turns sound off in EVE after a week. Or an hour if you decide to do some mining :p

Killmails are generated by the game automatically but you have to post them manually on out-of-game killboards.

It is astonishing... No. Actually, it's pretty hilarious, just how warped the general opinion of our current alliance is.

Yesterday, two of our "advanced cruisers" killed a war target in a battlecruiser. "Good-fights" and comments on the terrible damage dealt by our victim were exchanged, even a newbie in a battleship shared his excitement in local chat, as he happened to be in the right place at the right time to see the fight, but in the wrong corp to actually become part of it.
Hilarity ensued as a neutral attempted to mock our unchallanged victory by saying "it is surprising they even undocked".

Just for the record. There are tons and then some alliances that chicken out from a battle. An alliance, which killed motherships in frigates is not one of them.

Eve offers you the big story arcs that people care about, mainly because they are not just made up by the GMs (those exist, but tend to get ignored).

For instance, our northern friends are fighting our enemies at the moment, and after getting pounded on for a while, have turned it around a bit and had some good successes.  This leaflet is a laugh, but also reflects the depth of the narrative that it is spinning off of:

(http://endie.net/images/blog/eve/propaganda12.jpg)

You have no idea how lucky you are not to have voice in the tutorial. :)

So Mollie lost Titan no.3 then?

As a fellow mental patient I have to offer my sincerest sympathy.

Whats the next one going to me named then, "Darwins' toilet roll" or something equally silly...

Yeah, Molle lost two titans lost week.  And Triumvirate just lost one a day or two ago.  It's a fun time to play EvE and kill supercaps!

As I understand it, Tri are actually down two titans in the last couple of weeks: another one went off to join Pandemic Legion.  Interesting times.

Also, Tuesday is the day of the speed changes, making this a very good time to be a newbie.  Just not necessarily a Minmatar one.

OK you rotten bastards, I resubscribed my main character for 3 months, and will likely follow with my industrial/mining/research alt. I will need some hand holding though, since I don't remember a goddamned thing about the game.

Well, we just captured a station in Feythabolis.  I dunno if this one will stay ours: very probably not.  But we were a decent percentage of a Goonfleet fleet, took it, and if we keep it past downtime we will be on the permanent record :D  We are looking for an outpost of our own, whether this one or another, and we will get one.

All this is a loooong way from a year ago and wardeccing miners to make 100 million ransom.  Though that was fuckin fun too  :drill:

I've applied to LOVEU. My credit card's going to regret this.  :why_so_serious:

Sweet.

We're doing Serious Business stuff right now, providing a second front while the bulk of the fleet fights at the other end of our current region of conflict.  It means a lot of guerilla stuff, but we're getting mentioned on the alliance boards for working like fuck to harass our enemy, and so far we've done some really good work.  It also has the outside possibility of a pretty sweet payoff at the end if we keep it up.

I guess I'll be prepping an Arazu again then.

Dammit. You bastards sold me, I'll re-download tonight and get back in this shit.  I don't remember much about the game either.

Don't start your free trial til after the patch finishes (hopefully tomorrow night).

Ok, thanks for the heads up.

Also if it's still going on, Steam had a 3 week trial compared to CCP's 2 week one.

*sigh* I'm geting tempted to resub. I guess it shows how shitty my life is right now that the hell of Eve might actually be preferable

By the way I have an original box CD key that never got used that guarantees a month long free sub to a new user. If anyone wants to try out the game and not pay those b*stards for a month PM me and I'll give it to you.

As long as the patch doesn't mess it up, we're actually doing something at the moment that a newbie can contribute to with an alt, created on day one, that is massively strategically important.  It's called fighter-bombing, and if you create the right race of character it lets you do enough damage to our enemy in an hour that they have to devote a years-old character in a capital ship about four hours to fix.  If you die it costs you literally, absolutely nothing at all (thus the slight concern that Goonfleet may get nerfed in the patch, yet again).

Which reminds me that I should clonejump my alts into 0.0.

T is no noob ... you should twist his arm to resub!

It makes me sad to think his guy with Carrier 5 is just rotting away ;)

I'm having a fair bit of fun here since I joined.  Goonfleet is definitely the place for a clueless newb like me, I like it so far.

I was in my first large scale fleet yesterday and it was my job to sit on a stargate and tackle (root) any enemy ship that zoned in.  You can do this right off the bat with a brand new character, you basically screw over a guy who probably has years worth of experience and let your friends blow him up.  At any rate I was a little jumpy and started wondering what would happen if I clicked on my warp scrambler (root) before the enemy came in, my hope was that as soon as I locked onto the enemy player they would automatically fire saving me the one second it would have taken to click on the module.  Well the gate opened and I immediately clicked on the pilot who came through, it turned out he was friendly and scouting ahead for the 60 man fleet who was just behind him.  Unfortunately, I learned that if you have pre-armed your guns you immediately lock on and fire even if you just click on the pilot...  My first large scale fleet action and I had just locked onto and warp scrambled the highly skilled covert ops pilot who was the vanguard of a five dozen strong fleet :ye_gods:, he also couldn't cloak (which is his job) because I had him locked.  He called me a retard (fair enough!) then Nerf told him I was a newbie, then he actually apologized for calling me a retard because he didn't know I was new, and *then* he gave me twenty million credits just because I was a newbie and the rest of the fleet warped in behind him :awesome_for_real:.

Today one of the directors lost an incredibly expensive ship and the alliance's boards are all just laughing about it and posting mock insults to the guy, I'm amazed at how well they took it.  They actually gave him a medal for losing it in such an absurd way :awesome_for_real:.  I'm sure if that was any other corp there would be finger pointing, bitter recriminations and rage quiting.

I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I'm learning.

Srsly, how do I get set up? There's no one in the F13 channel with pointers. I.e. LOVEU forums and Goonfleet Forum/Wiki access.

I need to get you access to the WAR forum, that has more info in it. But basically, go register on the forums. www.goonswarm.com.

Just in case you don't have access the WAR forum:

Make sure you register on forums with the exact in game character name you're signing up with.

He means GF forums.  I didn't get that right away.

If you're still on the fence, now is the time to try out EvE or reactive and join us in.  We're fighting a war on multiple fronts against one of the largest enemies in the game.  Last night we several towers to defend and destroyed our enemy so badly in the first engagement they didn't even bother to bring out the big guns for the rest of the night.

THIS is the kind of shit that makes EvE fun, and even with a brand new fucking character you are immensely useful to us.  Newbies are roots in a game where running away is everything. If I had 2 or 3 more newbies hanging around I'd have racked up 50 kills in the last few days instead of 20.

PM me an email address if you want a 21 day trial instead of a 14 day.  Yes, I get a month free out of it.

Sod it. I'll probably resub in the next few days. If you guys will have me, I'm in. Hell with my leadership bonuses I could be useful in a shuttle while I'm sitting afk...

{edit} 1001st post. Woo.

Congrats and welcome back! :) Shoot me a PM once you are in with your in-game name so I can get you access to the forum.

Nothing to see.

I'd love to get involved in EVE.  I've tried.  Even have a near 30mil skill point character.  Just the barrier to fun (and knowledge) seems so daunting, I quit after a few weeks.  Also, earning ISK sucks.  Mining, missions, I get bored.  Hard to explain, but I never feel "comfortable" in the game.  Nothing clicks for me.  I just feel like a monkey mashing buttons.

Yet, I love reading about it.  The wars sound like serious fun.  I like fighting.

It's that storyline, together with the unforced, natural co-operation that those stories promote that get me going.

Here, split up because it is a Jade-Constantine-style wall of text, is the story of the last couple of weeks.

For example, as I've mentioned in the War thread, our (the F13 group's) alliance was attacked by most of our neighbours on Thursday, with only a few hours' warning.  Our main enemy was widely considered to be the new elite of the game, with massive resources and fresh from the destruction of their northern neighbour.

There was a kind of shock on the boards, as people realised what we were facing.  The enemy rolled into our space with well-prepared fleets of hundreds of ships in several places at once.

Then people just started saying "this is about destroying as an alliance, and it's not time for us to die, yet."  People who had been whining and trolling for months started signing up for fleets.  Vets who'd not played for a year or more resubscribed.  Long-gone superstar fleet commanders suddenly appeared on Teamspeak with no warning, to organise people and get our defences going.  Newbies who had been forced to listen to the stories about Syndicate and the defence of Detorid had an epic story of their own to be part of.

Then, something wonderful started to happen.  First, little Zenith Affinity turn up in our space, and it turns out they want to help.  We've always been on good terms, but they owe us nothing beyond that and by backing us they know that they will lose their space unless we win.  They start jumping in in ones and twos throughout the night.  Their fleet is tiny, but they put their capital fleet in huge danger and the gamble helps F13 hold the line in our part of space for 36 hours or so when the rest of the alliance has to pull back.

Then, our neighbours UNL (despite being part of the same Russian-speaking community as our enemies) said "we were asked to stand aside, and told this was not our fight, but we're with you."  That's hundreds of combat pilots on our side at a critical moment.  I was, in all seriousness, reminded of this scene (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K9SxVeq3aDg).

Things still look bleak: we're still outnumbered, and in capitals massively so.  In supercapitals we simply cannot compare.  But we face down the first few days of attack through our incomparable logistics, losing a little ground here and there, but holding firm.  Outlying systems are abandoned and overrun.  We shift to the defensive.

This leaves F13 massively exposed.  We were committed to the attack in the rear of our enemies.  Now we were alone for days.  Our enemies were the cause of the whole thing: a goldfarmer alliance who ebayed much of their massive profits taken from our alliance's space, and their morale was soaring.  They outnumbered us, and could turn their entire attention onto us.  Our assets were attacked round the clock, and we were faced with the decision of whether to save what we could - huge amounts of strategic assets - or gamble on the alliance holding firm long enough to re-establish contact.

We decide to go for it.  People log in for hours at a time, maintaining 23/7 presence (there is downtime every day) in our target system, harassing the enemy, forcing them to defend when we can, making life harder for them when we cannot.  Every now and then we'll get a marginal numerical advantage, and will deploy equipment in surprise ops.  Within 20 minutes we'll be outnumbered four to one and defending as well as we can.

Meanwhile, the main fleet is hard-pushed. But then we get a call: our French allies have pulled out of the north and are coming to help: they're a few jumps away, outnumbered, already engaged by the combined fleets of all our enemies.  But they think they can win, with our support.  At first a few, then dozens, scores and even hundreds of Goons start rushing to help.  The fight lasts for over two hours, and the enemy tries tactic after tactic, but soon we gain an advantage.  The momentum shifts and then, in the last twenty minutes, they shatter, flee and hide.  We've faced their combined fleet and won.

I've been vocal in this fight, calling targets when the commanders couldn't, and passing target info on when they could.  Now, I use this to mention that the F13 group, "LOVEU", are facing an overwhelming attack in twenty minutes.  If that attack succeeded, the enemy would move on to push harder against us: many of us were aware that we would almost certainly lose everything we had struggled for a fortnight to achieve, within days.

So a hundred bloodthirsty goons volunteer to jump through hostile space to help out F13/LOVEU.  The enemy fleet is already attacking, and we have literally minutes left before they can secure the moon from us.  Just as our installation becomes vulnerable, the hostile scout sees what is coming their way.  The enemies scatter.  Most leave the system.  Some just log out in disgust.  Amidst many "fofofos" in the system chat channel, Goons pour in and cause chaos.  Some help secure our assets.  Others camp the entrances to shoot latecomers.  More still start shooting the hostile installations in the system, reversing the momentum at once.

Of course, they don't stay there forever, but contact has been made again, after a dark few days.  Soon, we are outnumbered again, and the hostiles try to attack, but our people don't budge.  Some of us are running on 3, 4, 5 hours of sleep that night, but we have a second tower due to become vulnerable in 24 hours, and we know that we can pull through for another few days if we try.

Today, that second tower - which we frankly regarded as lost - was saved.  F13/LOVEU guys together with the Anzac and US West-coast Goons yet again secure the system, some staying up to 7am local time.  As a nice boost, they steal hundreds of ships from an unsecured installation that our enemies have used as their supply cache.  A swift line of supply to a nearby system is secured for the moment, and we take the chance to pour more of F13/LOVEU's resources into the attack.  Should be a long night for those of us taking over the Euro TZ shift, but we think we have a chance again.


Footnote: I can't believe that a bunch of F13 posters, mainly newbies who decided to try griefing miners a year ago, are now pushing hard to take space from some of the toughest enemies in the game.

Why do I always join alliances when they are or are about to be under massive attack and outnumbered by enemies...  :grin:

Because thats when you get the most action!  :awesome_for_real:

True true  :awesome_for_real:

So accept my app dammit  :grin:

Christ, Endie, you almost have me joining :)

I am kinda sick of Euro TZ , euro alliances anyway. hehe

App accepted Sir T, sorry I didn't see it amidst the pile of tower mail spams I got overnight.  Get down here and help us kick some ass.

I joined earlier this week; in this one week I've seen teamwork, leadership and camaraderie, frustration and worry, loss and joy, sacrifice and reward -- in short all the stuff you want from life -- and YOU GET TO TO IT FLYING A FUCKING SPACESHIP.

How much more do you want Captain Kirk?

In the past week, we've sniped, nipped, swatted, and occasionally punched our enemy - keeping them unstable and unhappy; soon they'll over-reach and we'll take a lot of pleasure kicking them in the balls over and over again; I joined because of the epic stories and amazing "War! (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9357.0)" thread- but in my small 'oh crap, I'm in europe and I have to go to bed now or I'll get fired' way I feel that I've contributed to the team, the team's contributed to the alliance and the alliance has stood firm and re-energised the game.

Reactivate and rejoin the war -- there's no better game out there than Age of Internet Spaceship Empires Online (http://www.eve-online.com).

Endie, that story needs to go in the Goon-Wiki somewhere in the history section.

Yeah, that's what "Little Bees" (http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfv1QtZDirY) does to people  :drillf:

Good read Endie.  Makes me want to play.

I know I was an ass earlier in the thread, but I'm about to serious the FUCK UP!...

OK, done.

I think one of the biggest things that makes me wary of PVP is losing my ship.

It's not the money, I don't ever buy/fit a ship that is worth more than about 1/10th my net worth, it's the tracking the shit down that I need to refit. It can take FOREVER.

What do you guys do to speed up this process, or can you just avoid it entirely? Just buy 2 or 3 ships and fit them out all at once?

You can't spead it too much, but there's some things to do-

Joiin Goonswam and get access to a wiki with various fits for all ships and player levels.
Use Eve Fitting Tool to confirm it fits with YOUR skillbase.

Yeah, I was pretty proficient at fitting(I was using a thorax with t2 guns and mostly t2 everything else, I could fly a brutix pretty well, it was just a little to expensive to fly unless it was an emergency), it just got to the point where it felt like I was spending more time running around getting parts to refit after my ship got blown, than actual fighting.

The goonswarm jews are really good about stocking the stations around the action full of shit you need for reimbursement fits, and if you're fighting a little ways away from a station, just fit 3 or 4 ships, insure them, and have them carrier jumped in (thats what I do).

Also, don't die as much, that helps.

So it seems like I just have had shitty corps in the past. Probably the basis to a lot of my problems.

Yeah, I was no fan of goonswarm before I joined, in fact I was one of the most vocal against it and the last to join, but the alliance has been great so far, and our corp is getting a killer rep and even more from the alliance now that they've seen us in action.  This really is the best time and way to get into eve if you've been on the fence.

If I start back up, I'll definitely talk to you guys then!

It just occurred to me that there should be no reason for anyone here to do a 14 day trial like the rest of the proletariat.  We have a lot of folks playing so anyone should be able to get a buddy system invite.  Just post here and someone will pick you up (or PM someone if you want a special buddy).

It's called going native. It's more common than you think ;)

(http://goonfleet.com/images/smilies/gf-siren.gif)(http://goonfleet.com/images/smilies/gf-siren.gif)Incoming Goonfleet.Com Leaks - Spies start your recordings(http://goonfleet.com/images/smilies/gf-siren.gif)(http://goonfleet.com/images/smilies/gf-siren.gif)


Official F13 (http://goonfleet.com/images/smilies/gf-madprops.gif) Zone

We're currently LOVEU - an old GF corp that was moribund with four actives until our arrival.  The last 24 hours have seen this said about us by the alliance on the goonfleet forums:

And thats just since I joined up...  :awesome_for_real:

I have the canonically low post count, so I suspect I'm not eligible, but I'm reading this stuff with great interest.  I have a friend in GoonFleet, have an old and low-post-count SA account, and know an old (ex-?) LOVEU guy, Carino Cantati from Ropetown in WoW, so I might find another way to get into F13's good graces.

Just re-subbed my old EVE account (Metella in game), now to see if I remember what any of my ships do!

If you have a > 3 month old SA account, another possibility is to join GoonFleet proper via their nifty all-online signup system on http://goonfleet.com/

Yeah, I'm from '06 on SA, so I did that and it's waiting for manual inspection of my credentials and an interview of my neighbours.  I'd like to hang with F13, I think, but I imagine that's quite possible once I am welcomed into the GF family?

Some fraps of what I have been up to since joining up (I would have had some tackler action by my computer could not handle running fraps and eve during those battles)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRGaqqdIHBg

Enjoy

Remember from day one you could be in the middle of the red blob making sure that some poor bastard goes nowhere.

Yup.  We're all part of a big Goontastic family.  Get down to Goon Central and start participating in ops and you'll likely run into a number of F13 folks.  I believe a number of us also hang out on the F13 chat channel in-game (it's public, anyone can join) still.  A bunch of us are members of Rho Squad too.

With the pew pew continuing to heat up, thought it worth linking to here:

http://f13.7mph.com/?a=corp_detail&crp_id=118

This is the specific kill board page that shows what we've been blowing up since joining GS.

At 1147 GMT today, the count stands at:

456 Ships killed worth 64.22B ISK
142 Ships lost worth 4.35B ISK

I suspect our kill rate is going up partly because we are all new, and so don't get targeted in fleet fights nearly so often as veterans in their gold plated super ships.

In short. We are awesome. You can be too.

Bleh, I try to keep away but you KEEP PULLING ME BACK!

In fact, the damage would be a lot higher, but a couple of us fly in Goonfleet rather than LOVEU, for historical reasons.  Thus,  I've done another 22 billion (http://f13.7mph.com/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=22) (and lost 0.57bn, to be fair), and Bhodii has probably done the same again (if not more, since I have very few capital kills, due to the sort of fights and the timezones I fly in).  Unfortunately, the killboard counts those separately since we are special snowflakes.

Makes me want to come back.

Oh you assholes...

I tried EVE previously. I really, really liked what I saw but I found it a bit daunting to get into simply for the fact that I knew absolutely nobody. Now, I find you guys are part of GF?

You guys do take fresh off the boat newbies right? I think I got as far as making my toon, buying a couple time cards and selling them for ISK, and starting very very basic mining. So....yeah.

So there is a free 5 day re-up for anyone who canceled before 11-30-08.

I'm gonna wait till the holidays chill out, then use it.

(Didn't want to make a new thread)

Goonfleet *loves* their newbees and so do we.

One 60day GTC sells for 550-600M, which goes for quite a while until you start losing expensive T2 ships or lots of battleships regularly.

The general advice is: create an account, join the corp, podjump down to GoonSpace, and only visit empire when you need to do some shopping (though there are some decent services for getting goods shipped down from empire).

Ok I'm in-game finally as Falwell and joined the F13 channel. Doesn't look like anyone is awake though.

Someone's usually awake, you just need to yell at us loud enough.

I will be on tonight (i.e., early in the American morning) as well- and try to find someone to join me up. 

Palmer also wants to join, if I may. My character is Palmer Eldritch.

I have played briefly before, but I'm still pretty clueless. It sounds like that's not seen as a problem (to put it another way, I am young and easily led when it comes to Eve).

I'll find someone to hassle in F13 - I've been reading threads but still haven't worked out exactly what i need to do. At the moment, I'm flying around hauling a load of minerals I left in various hangars last time I played.

Good plan- best idea is to consolidate/sell all your Empire goodies before you join so as not to get caught up in war decs.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to consolidating my crap. A lot of it is in some pretty pirate infested areas in lowsec.

Yes Eve is fun!  I played for a while in '07, resubbed and joined f-13 a few months ago.  Pity I couldn't play for a month or so shortly after that.

Anyway, being in a system with 70+ blues in local is quite comforting for someone who likes to mine. :)

Well I have applied by submitting an app at the LOLVEU headquarters. Now comes the nailbiting wait for a response.

The best way to not take PvP losses personally is to write off the cost as soon as you buy the ship.  When you buy and fit a ship for PvP, it's born to die, and you should think of it as already lost, you just haven't gotten the killmail yet.  If you can't afford the loss when you buy it, you'll feel it too much when it actually goes down.

I usually bought mine in sets of at least 6, but I never flew fleet BS, either, just dictors, BC's, and coverts (although for a while, coverts represented as much of an isk loss as a fleet BS).  Dictors especially I thought of as disposable munitions, if they lived to get a single bubble on the enemy, they had done their job and I called it a good deal (but my fleet dictors were Eris' when those were considered a bucket of suck and were cheap as hell).

I wasn't quite as casual with my carriers, but I had a couple of spares for those as well.

--Dave

Fleet BS are a bigger investment (to buy, rig, fit and insure six would take me over a billion), but by contrast if I had bought six rokhs when I started flying them back in early 2007 against Bob, I'd still have 2 of them left.  If you're not low in the alphabet, if you've got your client set up to avoid lag (the reason I lost my last rokh, thanks to using a different PC without my overview set up), and if the first thing you do on warping in is find your align point and choose a speed at which to return along it then they last ages.  Especially if you watch out for titans and doomsday-tank your ship.

Things that a newbie won't have to worry about for months.  They get the fun job of running right up close to the enemy gang and making sure they stay put long enough for Endie in his 200 million isk battleship to blow up.

Too right: the great thing about the last few weeks has been the punctuation of the FC's commands with the latest tranche of newbies calling out "point on so-and-so", which is the cue to lock up the unlucky victim straight away.

There hasn't been a better time to be a newbee for two years, either.  These are great days we're livin' bros. We're jolly, goon giants, walkin' the galaxy. With guns.  These people we're wasting here today are the biggest faggots we'll ever know.  When we rotate back to ratting, we're going to miss having someone around who's worth shooting.

This thread makes me twitch. I'm so close to reactivating my Eve account already. Dunno if you'd have any use for a bloodthirsty ex-fractionite free-spacer, however ;p

We have a use for any fucker capable of filling out the subscription form.

Unless he's someones real life friend I suspect that fact that rask has only been around for a few days could be a problem if he's hoping to join you guys in your goonfleet corp right?

If that means what I think it means, Probably not.

It means what you think it means. However, I did that the last go 'round, not looking in any fashion to continue it. It was fun, but ultimately temporary. The only issue there would be having it in my corp history. I suppose it would generate a fair bit of hazing.

It's a moot point if I don't re-up. I ended up quitting last time due to RL time issues, just wasn't able to scrape any spare time together to do anything meaningful. And if it's any issue that I've only been on f13 for a few days, that's fine. I was originally just commenting on how this thread made me feel like playing Eve again.

And damn Goum, your name is familiar, but I'm at a loss.

Its more than likely to generate some suspicion in goonfleet proper and Goonfleet wins inter-corporation disputes.. I don't know LoveU's hiring practices, but i am pretty sure that it would disqualify you from MrchI.

My name is probably familiar for being a big forum whore on Eve-O, Scrapheap-Challenge, Penny Arcade, et all. I use this name quite a bit, so there are likely other instances you might have seen it come up.

That or you're confusing me with the Kuomintang(formerly Guomindang)

How did you come to F13 in the first place, Rask?  And if you were referring to Star Fraction, that does tend to be a negative for a few of the people here.  Among other things, Jade Constantine came here around the time  of the first CSM election and shit up our forums something fierce.  Still, glad to see we were able to rekindle your interest in the game.

I believe I remember you from Scrapheap Goum. I did post there for a short while, but mainly lurked obsessively in ships and mods.


Pretty funny actually, I got linked here by a friend that sent me the Mark Jacobs shitstorm of a post concerning Warhammer Online. I liked the reviews and overall attitude on the site and decided to stay. Just got around to creating an account yesterday? Or the day before. Found it odd I'd never even heard of f13 before.

I was actually in Tabula Rasa Systems, not JF, and after TRS broke up with most of the active members going to...beh, can't even remember the corp name--I was absorbed into JF. At that point and before I was really pretty inactive (might have left with the people I usually flew with had I been more active), got on board for the Tourney when we beat BoB and that was pretty much it. Decided to quit then and move on, maybe come back when I had time, as I really enjoyed Eve. Since I've got more time and kitted out a new computer I was thinking about it.

As for being in Goonfleet, even a member corp, you probably wouldn't have me (and that's just fine). Pretty much was red to you the entire time I played. Started out in YANKS when I was a noob, became a part of RIOT, flew with Celtic Anarchy and CoW before joining TRS. Some of my most memorable times in Eve have been shooting-and getting shot by-Goons. It's fun to look at the Sov map every few months and see Goon space still there years later.

Someone can probably figure out my character from all that mess.

I'm afraid that there is a vanishingly small chance of getting into LOVEU with your posting and corp histories.  You'd find it easier to get into Goonfleet proper, to be honest (:10bux:).

I thought I'd post a couple of other videos I've made since joining up

Just me trying to make up a story of what was happening, let down by my spelling. and iv you are wondering why I keep blowing up one ship its because the rest of their gang ran. I was stuck shooting POSes for a few weeks...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTbluOwmwX4

download : http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Himo/Southern_War_Part_II.wmv

Oh, you know the "biggest faggots we will ever know" Endie mentioned? Here's a selection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzJUwzzvgqM

Download http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Himo/Southern_War_Part_3.wmv

Hey guys! I got pointed to this thread by my Buddy Predator IRL. I've been on Eve the past 3 months and I'm looking to join a corp in 0.0.

Although I'm relatively new, I know quite a bit about the game, and am very active.

So anyway, what are the requirements to join? (i.e. who wants buttsecks?)

Damnit, I've been avoiding EVE cause I've been trying to catch up on other games, but all this talk is giving me the urge to play.

Someone tell me what to do to get into this war and what does it take to get the 21 day trial?

Gaiscloch, have Predator shoot Samson Savage an evemail in-game to confirm and I'll be happy to get you in.

Nix, convo me in-game.  Unless you're really a spy this time.

Nix: I'm pretty sure that you can get a 21 day trial if you get it through Steam. Likely you can get one if someone does some buddy thing with you as well but I don't know about that.

Looks like I'm going to get sucked back in as well. I have a decent mining/manufacturing guy and a newer (~6 mill skill points?) combat guy. I'll resub soon and start looking for you guys.

For the 21 day trial you just have to talk to an active member and provide them with an email address to send the invite to.  I can do it, but I already have one person, and if the trialee subs then the trialer gets a free month, so I want to spread the "wealth".

So some active member who wants a free month should post here.

:grin:

Anyone want a free month?

pm me an email addy

Is it possible to get into LOVEU with a trial account? Also, does anyone have a link to what can't be done with a trial? I know you can't train haulers, don't know what else.

I can't say with certainty, but the answer is very probably yes.

The hardest thing in eve is getting people to stick around. Merch's pre goonfleet retention numbers was something like 1/10 making it past 6 months and 1/7 making it past the first month. For people who didn't join up right away the retention rate was half iirc. Getting them into a good corp immediately is pretty important. Not only does it increase the liklihood that they will stick around but it means they're going to stick around and be productive with you.  There is nothing in eve that is so valuable.

edit: The stuff you can't do with trails is pretty much only training and the list aside from haulers you probably wouldn't get to during your trial anyway. There is no part of the game that is out of access to you. You can buy anything, build anything[that you can train], shoot anything, join anything etc. Eve does not hate its potential customers.

Nice, sounds good. Want to get started, but I'd rather wait to find out so I can make a character that's productive. I'm notorious for gimping myself pretty hard.

I have a character you can use for as long as wanna pay on the account. like a 14 mil SP caldari guy. PM me.

There should be a link to the goonfleet public wiki on character creation at the start of the thread.

One of the nice things about eve is that its impossible to "gimp" yourself. If you train something that isn't good you can just start training something else.

The reasons that alts exist in eve are not really related to a main character being "gimped" they are much more to do with economic terms.

1. Location: Good markets only occur in certain spots and its not easy to check them from the depths of space. A market alt that you can log into changes that.

2. Concurrence: Second accounts mean twice the training time and it means you can run more instances of the game on the same computer. If you want to dual box you need an alt and alt account.

3. Purchased characters: Usually these go on separate accounts, but CCP supports transferring characters over accounts when they're purchased for isk.[for a fee]. In this way, players can buy training time from someone else.

But if you're just running one account you will never do worse for starting earlier rather than later.

Go here (http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Basic_Character_Creation) and read up a bit. It should give you a good understanding of whats going on with characters.

Some notes: Stats are permanent, don't worry about your charisma at all, its only useful for a very small amount of things and the slower training of those things will be entirely offset by the faster training of everything else. To wit, a character that starts with 3 charisma maxes the command ship skills faster than one with 14 starting charisma simply because they train everything else so much faster.

Your character portrait is permanent: Make sure its something you can stand to look at every time you log in.

Your name is permanent unless you buy another character: Make sure its something that isn't totally retarded.

When training learning skills: Never train them past 4(I think, i haven't done the math on it), once you're at 4 you can buy the advanced learning skills and train them to 4. Training learning skills to 5 pays off in something like 1 year of play. And advanced learning to 5 will pay off in something like 3-5 years. So its pretty much not worth it

I would recommend either a Minmatar start or a Caldari start. Caldari Achura gets the best base stats[3 charisma, 8 billion perception] for combat characters but starts with Caldari missile skills and while there is nothing wrong with missile skills they aren't quite optimal for the type of stuff we do[where gunnery is a bit better, though they do get a lot of use in other areas and make great support skills].

Minmatar Brutor start out with the Rifter and the Vigil and gunnery skills and iirc the second best stat adjustment (Also, sunglasses). The rifter and vigil are hands down the two best frigates in the game. The Vigil is the second fastest but has a very long lock range and a slot layout that doesn't suck(executioner is faster, but 2 meds and 2 lows make it worse than the 3 med vigil). The Rifter is simply the best frigate in the game period. Its fast, you can armor tank it, you can shield tank it, you can do lots of DPS with it, it has 3 meds and it looks awesome.

Starting with gunnery skills is nice because you can easily train into Amarr[lasers and amarr ship skills] or gallente[hybrids and gallente ship skills] or caldari [hybrids and caldari ship skills] a little bit faster[won't matter much if you start training the skills up of course].

From there you can train to any races ships to do anything you want.

Instructions on building characters correctly....

http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Basic_Character_Creation
http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Recommended_Base_Stat_Builds

...I'm pretty sure they are both publically viewable.

Basically Perception and Intelligence > Willpower and Memory >> Charisma.

Unfortunately it isn't about trade offs, this is simply the correct answer.

Thanks, totally forgot about the newbie thread in the EVE forums.

Fine, ignore me fucker ;)

This is why we broke up. You're so needy! :pedobear:

Ever since sham-wow you just haven't been there.

Good advice above.

For all the really new newbies, I'm about to post a novel in the subforum (PM Viin or Phildo for access) that will point you in the right direction once you get in-game.

Well done introduction and explanation of the game and current status.  I have started the download and am reading the wiki.  One thing, when I try to access further links in the wiki I am unable (I am referred back to logging in here at the forums, which I am), how does one get access to further WiKi information?

Anyway, once I get things going expect a shout out. 

14 day vs. 21 day, any significant difference other than length of time?

I'm planning on subscribing for at least one month so if anyone would like to share a 21 day invite please let me know so I can get you credit for a month of play. 

Thanks in advance for the help. 

Stupid five-free-days email.

I need some help ENDIE.  I need to get a Mackinaw and Perhaps Other Things from a wide swath of empire to someplace in 0.0, where I would like to be in a nice corp that appreciates me for who I am.  I like long mining sessions on the beach, cuddling in a hot refinery and puppies.  Pilot name is Yegolev.

I am in an unusually bad position to help you: I have had three hours connected since December 15th, and currently speak to you via the medium of Blackberry.

However, Goonswarm has the Interbee, which can move almost anything for you at very low prices, around 0.0 or between nullsec and highsec.  Ask in the LOVEU chat channel (which someone in the F13 channel can tell you).

Why do you hate freedom?

If you're still in need tomorrow evening EST I'll give you a hand doing all the above.

For those of you that have (or haven't) been following the main EvE forum, yesterday Goonswarm killed a titan.  Five F13 people were on the killmail and several others were involved in the fight, including a handful of people that were recruited by this thread.

I asked in another thread, but I think it was the wrong place to ask, so I'll ask again.

Will my char being 5 or so years old (3 months played) effect my chances of getting into the f13 corp? Or does my postcount/time here as well make me a shoe-in?


Edit: Char name is Haerc (if you want to check old corps).

Join the F13 channel in-game and look for me there (Samson Savage).

K, will do soon.

How hard is it to get into an alliance like Goonswarm ?

I've played Eve on and off for serveral years, had a 9.5m sp char the last time I left. I always played a solo 0.0 pve style, but with al the recent war reports and videos being posted (like that noncap titan kill) I'm really feeling the urge to get involved in those big wars somehow. And goonswarm seems like a nice yet big alliance with an interesting underdog status.  I certainly dont fit f13 requirements so I'm not even trying that , but I hope anyone here have enough inside knowledge to tell me how I could enter something big like goonswarm ?

If you don't have a qualifying forum account here (you don't), Something Awful (Goonfleet), Ars Technica (Arsed) or Penny Arcade (Merch) then you're pretty unlikely to get in.  I don't know what the recruitment policies of some of the other pubbie corps are like, but I don't think any of them open-recruit, since we'd hear all about it if they did, in the short period before they got booted.

There are lots of other alliances involved in this war, though.  I don't know if Sniggwaffe is open right now (though it would be a radical shift of culture for you in any case), but you might try ZAF, who are pretty cool.  They're no use to you if you are a spy, since I believe they keep their strategic logistics sealed and they know less about our plans than the average Bob forums spy, but they're involved in all the fights they want.

I’ve been in the corp about nine days now, and here’s how it’s been so far:

I helped blow up a titan, the biggest, most expensive capital ships in the game.

It belonged to our enemies BoB, the biggest douches in the game.

I also helped kill a dreadnought, which is a pretty big ship.

I was flying my frigate, the crappiest ship in the game.

My character already had a few mining skills (almost no fighting skills) before I joined the corp. When I mine, I now fill my hold with the most expensive ore in the game, because it’s out there in Goon space just floating around.

The Goons have a wiki for members, including LOVEU members (the F13 guild), which explains how this insanely complicated game works.

If you’re a real newb, people will give you ships and money.

That’s all for now.

This isn't necessarily true, they're just the smallest.  We've been known to fly shuttles in PvP, and they have no fitting slots whatsoever.

This. Last time I tried Eve (was years ago), I went "Looking For Corp!" in local and joined some totally newbie corp with like 5 active players. In a week or two I think I managed to make more isks than they had by buying up crap from the NPCs and selling it 10-20 jumps away for a better price... That and mining in an Osprey kinda killed the game for me, was boring as hell, farming gold and waiting for skills to train... Corp activity? The best one was lets mine together :heartbreak:


Too bad I didn't discover this forum earlier, after reading through ~40 pages of the big war thread and this one I found out what I missed all the time. Oh well, I'm too busy trying to kill Malygos nowadays anyway, I used to raid Blackwing Lairs (zzzz) and Veldspar (at least I think it was that, anyway, more zzzz) at the same time, but Blizzard managed to improve the raids a little bit, you can't slack off while speed farming instances anymore. Meh, sucks to be a total newbie on this forum, maybe I'll qualify after spamming contributing in the WoW section, one can always hope. I'm a regular on ars, but their corp sounds way too carebearish to me.


It's pretty funny how I found F13 - Followed a link in a comment for "Scaling in Games & Virtual Worlds" to here, read the 2008 MMOG Events post and decided to stick around, then I accidentally found this insanely active Eve section. It's incredible how the 100k players can generate more drama than 20M WoW players combined :heart:

I think a big part of it is that everyone is together. If some shit goes down in WoW on a different server than yours, who cares, but if something happens in EvE, it effects everyone (except the Chinese).

Once upon a time, there were like 3 people from f13 in Eve (I think the forum might even have been Graveyarded for a while).

--Dave

I remember those days. I used to hound you for Market advice :awesome_for_real:

I've been with LOVEU/Goons for 10 days now...

I had a list like Palmer's, but he got most of it down.

I'll say this though, I've never had this much fun in an MMO and I wouldn't be having as much fun or any at all if I wasn't in LOVEU.

If shit goes down in WoW it doesn't even affect anyone else on the same server.

Maybe the price of herbs might shift a little.

Really? There are actually two Ars corps. Ex Coelis [EXCO] is the carebear empire based corp. Ars Ex Discordia [ArsED] is the null-sec PvP corp and is part of Goonfleet. It should be doing the same pew-pew as F13's LOVEU.

Yep, I thought that a bit of a problem, too: I guessed it was just a disguised rebuttal from Arsed if he did have a posting record there vOv  Arsed are certainly not carebears (although they have some might fine producers).

HAI GUYS   


Edit: sent PM to Endie

Just thought I'd post some more links of Movies I've made

Part IV : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPkvZbBxGQ8

Part V: Showing a titan kill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCG7VgFWVCE

Not great quality due to computer lagging as hell during the fight but it is what it is. Some random scenes at the end.

Part VI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro1mCcEVhHI

One of the best videos I have ever done. Watch this if you don't bother watching any other ones. Includes some shooting of NPCs because I felt like it and they looked great. More combat at the end.

Will edit in some high quality video links earlier.

Here's a link (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/raidstream/HanisDarkRoom_G7_Battle.avi) to a very old video (2006) for the closing stage of Operation Prohibition.  It's big (about 240MB), so here's a lower quality YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzRi7vkf_w) of it, which unfortunately chops off the last minute or so and is so low-res you would have to really know Eve already to understand what you're seeing (a sped up version of a couple dozen engagements spread over three hours).

For background and narrative, this operation was really the prototype for the mass-scale assaults that came to dominate Eve warfare in 2007.  Firmus Ixion (FIX), a very old alliance recovering from a near-fatal lost war that forced us into a Protectorate status to Band of Brothers (BoB) (we couldn't claim space in our own name, and BoB had veto power over our foreign policy) subcontracted to Mercenary Coalition (MC) to help take the Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate (IAC) outpost in Eastern Catch at G-7WUF (this thread by Seleene (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=409086), the MC commander, gives the overall postmortem of the campaign).  MC was only about 250 members at the time, while FIX had bounced back up to 1200 (after dropping to 300 right after our territorial losses a year earlier), IAC was about 900 members, but very dynamic and growing.  The plan was that MC would concentrate on logistics and dreadnought ops, while FIX would bulk up the main fleet and provide carrier support (at the time, MC did not feel carriers were useful on the battlefield and concentrated on dreadnoughts).  KIA (another mercenary outfit) was subcontracted to engage in general harassment and interdiction, "making it not fun to be the enemy" and interfering with enemy logistics.  There was a considerable amount of speculation as to the identity and goals of the primary client, most of which centered on seeing it as a sideshow to the major regional conflicts of the time (BoB vs. ASCN and RA/Goons vs. Lotka Volterra).  Only 3 people knew the actual identity at the time (besides the client himself and anyone in his circle who was aware).  The payoff to FIX for their participation was to be MC support for our second attempt to plant an outpost in ED-L9T back in Querious.

Initially, most of IAC's neighbors were either neutral, or hostile to all participants.  3 days before the beginning of the operation, IAC dropped a new outpost in F4RQ-2, a chokepoint system on the path to the dead-end constellation containing G-7 (and right next to the original ISS station).  This complicated matters no end, giving IAC an independent logistics base to support G-7, and moving ISS from neutral to "Officially Neutral" towards IAC (off the record, they started selling dread fuel to MC at Empire cost rather than the usual 0.0 markups).  MC/FIX commanders wanted to shift the objective to the new outpost in F4R, as both an easier target and a necessary pre-cursor to effective attack on G-7.  However, directives from the client were very specific that the attack was to be against G-7, and operations against F4R were to be limited to transit and interdiction.

The initial assault was very successful.  IAC fleet discipline was a joke, their most experienced commander had actually left FIX after being demoted from FC status for general incompetence, and they had no tradition or experience of real fleet operations.  For political and diplomatic reasons FIX had very few dreadnoughts and lots of carriers, while MC had lots of dreadnoughts and few carriers.  MC commanded all operations initially, FIX commanders taking over only when MC FC's were not available.  MC found very quickly how useful carriers could be for anti-POS logistics, as FIX carriers rigged for cargo-hauling bouncing between the staging base and G-7 allowed them to maintain a much more rapid operational tempo.  IAC POS were taken down at a rapid pace (at the time, POS in Reinforced mode did not count towards Sovereignty), and on the second day of operations MC took sovereignty of the system and control of the station.  Sub-capital operations were mostly equally one-sided, with IAC fleets and gangs being blown apart as rapidly as they formed (sometimes faster, a FIX reinforcement column stumbled upon and destroyed two separate IAC escorted logistics trains in Empire).

MC did not, however, permit FIX to use "fighter bomber" tactics, a system we had pioneered for bulking up the throw weight of small fleets by assigning fighters from the carriers to light, fast ships and sending them in with the battleships of the main force (they eventually changed their minds on this after seeing it in action at the Second Battle of the Egg in ED-L9T, but that's another story).  Still, general quality of force differentials combined with FIX's traditional practice of assigning cruisers and battlecruisers to protect the battleships from "tacklers" (rather than sending them in with the frigates to point-blank range on the enemy main force) proved more than sufficient against IAC.

Then the roof fell in.  IAC turned to many of their neighbors, begging for assistance and pointing to the speed of the MC/FIX assault, suggesting that the mysterious client was another of the area's alliances and the MC/FIX blitz would be turned against them after IAC fell.  This appeal, combined with a general desire to fight against two alliances seen as "BoB Pets", proved effective, CVA becoming the first neighbor to join with IAC.  Meanwhile, crash-related oddities lead to IAC being able to dock at the MC-controlled station, and GM stupidity led to IAC ships getting teleported directly from the F4R station to G-7's and back, even while we maintain a lockdown of the stations and gates.  The next day the station control is fixed (but too late to keep IAC from moving their strategic supplies to the much harder to control station in G-7), and CVA is joined by Sniggardly (SNIG), The Priory (PRI), Axiom Empire (AXE), Dusk and Dawn (D2), and even some Goons and a few members of the Guiding Hand Social Club (infamous corporation infiltrators, no-one had been seen flying under that corp ticker in years and they had acquired mythical status).  Odds went from approximately equal, to 4 or 5 to one against us (D2 alone was considered one of the game's powerhouse alliances, second in wealth only to ASCN and in numbers only to the Goons).  At the time, fights with more than 200 in a system were a guaranteed node crash, and they remained over 300 nearly the entire day.

By just after midnight, there were no MC commanders left (MC was euro-heavy, especially in the command structure, and this was around 0400 GMT).  Command was passed to a FIX FC, and most of the remaining fleet was FIX pilots (including the two remaining Covert Ops ships, two-boxed by Yours Truly).  Admentus (the FC) told me to start picking out stragglers from the enemy force, we were going to do some "Drive Byes".  This was a tactic FIX had developed for bleeding the enemy when severely outnumbered.  Traditional fleet engagements at that time involved two roughly equal forces approaching to within Battleship guns range of about 100km, and the lighter vessels trying to reach close or point-blank range under their own power while the battleships pounded on each other.  Eventually one force would try to retreat, and "tacklers" would attempt to keep them from doing so.  If you didn't have fairly equal numbers, you didn't fight.

A driveby involved rigging Battleships for longer-range engagements, 150km or more, and having a CovOps ship find a point about that range from a target cluster of ships (and even greater range from the bulk of the enemy fleet).  Ships would warp in together, and align for warping out while engaging targets that generally couldn't shoot back effectively.  You needed a critical mass of battleships with the needed range to take down enemies faster than they could realize their risk and warp out, and ships that couldn't make the range would engage the lighter ships as they attempted to close the gap.  The danger was that if an enemy ship managed to close the gap, 150km+ distances allowed the rest of the enemy force to warp to that ship, swarming the driveby force.  There was also a then-new class of ship (interdictors) that could lay down a warp disrupting "bubble" that would prevent the entire fleet from being able to escape.  If a dictor got on top of you and laid a bubble while you were badly outnumbered, you were screwed.

To make this work required close coordination between the CovOps pilots and the FC.  First, the CovOps pilot needed to find the right warp-in point for the fleet, someplace that they could attack a few enemy ships without being exposed to fire from the bulk of the enemy force.  It had to be a long way from anything that could be used as a warp target (dead ships, mostly), and that included a line out to 100km *past* the warp-in from the enemy fleet, as they could warp to 100km short of the target point.  Once the ships warp in and the shooting starts, the CovOps pilot is the only one who isn't so busy finding targets, activating weapons, and watching to see if they're taking damage and need to warp out early, so he has to watch the enemy ships for those that are getting too close to the fleet, and for interdictors.  Do it right, and the driveby produces one-sided kills, do it wrong and your outnumbered force gets locked down and cut to shreds.

Me and Admentus knew how to do it right.  At 0500 GMT the enemy numbers had finally fallen far enough for fighting without crashing the node.  For the next 3 hours, we killed them at will.  I'd move both of my cloaked ships around, constantly finding new assault points, and every 10 or 15 minutes, after everyone had finished repairing their shields and armor from the last run, Admentus would bring them in, picking out the stragglers.  Battleships were the favorite target, but anything would do, and nearly every run produced a few kills of something.  The enemy was from 6 different alliances at a time when multi-alliance fleets were almost unheard of, and never from more than 2 or 3.  They apparently couldn't even agree on who was in charge, never mind how to respond to the constant attacks.  Every run left their formations more and more tattered, creating more openings for the next.  Fast ships would burn across the field trying to engage, only to get blown up by our secondary fire, and if they made it through that they'd see the tight disciplined "blob" of our ships warp away just before they entered range to warp-scramble, as I watched with over-view settings set specifically to pick them out and gave the word to scramble and Admentus engaged the gang-warp.

One time there was an extremely close call, as an enemy CovOps pilot I didn't even know was there got inside my head and predicted where my next warp-in would be, and served as an anchor for an "off grid" dictor to drop itself right on our fleet right after it warped in.  But my *other* screen had an overview set for interdictors *only*, and as soon as it entered the grid I called out "Dictor, Dictor, Dictor!" and everyone started their warp out, many not even having aligned yet.  But dictor bubbles only stopped you from starting a warp back then, if you had already begun one you could warp right out of the bubble, and they did.  Then I probed out the Dictor, we killed him, and we went back to dropping into the enemy like the wrath of the gods, the choosers of the slain.  When MC started waking up and logging in as it turned morning in Europe, Admentus took the fleet in for one last attack.  3 hours of picking off stragglers had led to most of the enemy being very tightly clustered (those that hadn't figured out that to be away from the pack was to die, were mostly dead).  I maneuvered my ships right into the middle of the enemy formation, and two of our own dictors we had held in reserve (one had been waiting literally all night while hearing us on TS crowing about our shooting gallery exploits) warped to my ships, locking down most of the enemy force.  Even those they still outnumbered us three to one, their morale broke, they scattered and ran for cover.

In the end, it was only a moral victory.  The next day even more enemy reinforcements showed up, IAC put up more POS, and the operation was called off in the absence of directions or additional funds from the client.  A few weeks later, after an even more epic 26 hour battle, FIX, with support from MC, planted our first outpost.  A couple of months after that, "Prohibition II", a second attempt at taking IAC's stations, this time funded by ISS, would briefly be the largest operation in Eve history, fielding the first "Capital Blob" of more than 100 capital ships.  It would end with the complete loss of all ISS stations instead, as the opening salvo of what became known as the Great War saw forces of thousands become routine.

Oh, and the mysterious client?  Tyrrax Thorrk, a corp leader in IAC who wanted to get more influence inside the alliance and push it into an alliance with Goonswarm, as part of a byzantine plot by the Guiding Hand Social Club.  By presciently arranging for the POS to carry 3 days of strontium, and orchestrating the stream of allies that saved the day, he gained so much political capital as to quickly become the official leader of IAC.  A year or so later, after he had built IAC up into a Power, he robbed them blind and quit just before his military and diplomatic maneuvers put IAC into a box from which they could not escape.

This is one little story, about one little battle, in one little campaign, embedded into its larger context.  I didn't write this story, I didn't make it up, I *did* it, I lived it just as much as I lived through Basic Training, or my first kiss, or my first car crash.  And Eve generates such stories all the time, for everyone who goes looking to be in them.

--Dave

EDIT: Fixed the first link

Nice story, Mahrin!

I like the bit about Tyrrax at the end, someone could write a full book about the things that he's done in Eve.

This is one of the great tragedy's of EVE. Your report is interesting and compelling (reminds me of the reports in the old BattleTech readouts), but the actual game play is boring and abstract. Even speed up to 10x's the normal rate or whatever it was.

I got the most of the bests parts of your experience, without having to actually play through it.

Great story, Mahrin, and I learned a couple of bits I'd not know about that whole chapter in Eve.

And Fordel, this sort of stuff is what we're living through just now, and being part of it is massively engaging, whether it is the desire to log into the goonfleet forums first thing in the morning to see what happened in the other timezones, or sitting there in fleet and being told you're about to jump onto a tackled enemy titan as a bunch of our members, including (I think) Slog in his first few days, got to do this month.  Or some of us are in Blackops now, and get virtually immediate small-gang PvP on demand, whenever we choose to log in.

None of which changes the fact the actual gameplay is terrible, but that isn't here or there. I'm sure I can /rant in some other EVE thread.  :grin:

Crossposting to inform of the Frigate Club Birthday (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15922.0) event open to all players who frequent this board and want to play EVE. If you've been on previous Frigate Club ops you know what to expect. If you haven't then you've missed some pretty good times. Don't make that mistake this year!

f13s 1000th ship kill for the swarm:

http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=5897

This is a Nighthawk command ship, it cost over a quarter of a billion isk to build and fit, and the pilot spent at least six months training to fly it.

Predator killed it in a Stabber. That's a cruiser you can fly after about one week in game, and which cost him ten minutes of ratting and some pocket lint.


So far since joining goons we've killed ships costing around a quarter of a trillion isk, and lost ships worth less than ten billion. This includes 377 battleships (57 lost), 45 HACs (4 lost), 20 command ships (none lost), and over 70 capital ships (again, none lost).

In case you were wondering, the space-tears taste good.

Space tears fuel me. I might have to start suicide ganking again just to refill.

Here's my own personal stats since joining at the end of November. I'm burning out though so I wont be as active in future I think

Ship class                          K   L
Assault frigate                  1   0
Battlecruiser                  3   0
Battleship                        61   8
Capsule                          5   6
Carrier                        12   0
Command ship                  2   0
Covert ops                  1   1
Cruiser                          5   1
Dreadnought                  6   0
Electronic Attack Ship          1   0
Frigate                          1   3
Heavy assault                 10   0
Heavy Interdictor          4   0
Industrial                          0   10
Interceptor                  4   0
Logistics                          1   0
Recon ship                          5   0
Starbases                         22   0
Titan                           1   0

http://f13.7mph.com/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=9004

Reading this thread makes me want to play Eve every time .
Then I play it and after 2 hours of flying NPC missions the drudgery kicks in and I uninstall it thinking that the game you guys are talking about must a complete different one from the one I play.
Yeah, english is hard

It seems that way because it is a different game.  NPC missions are ok for some folks, but I only ever run them to set up a believable newbie spy alt, and how I hate that pain.

Another feature that makes this game incredibly interesting. I have never seen a game that seems as politic as Eve.
Battling for influence spheres, spying and counterspying, Alliances that deserve the name. And drama, so much drama. On the paper this game reads like one of those never ending soap operas, only more addictive because the players form the story.
And yeah, I would have bet money that the next posting after mine includes the word spy. Don't worry, after 3 played trials the chances of me doing another one are next to null.
Still hard

You'd be wrong.  Pay up.

A lot of it is that we *were* playing different games.  I quit the Eve tutorial fairly early on, and after that never ran a mission or fitted a mining laser (on mass mining ops I'd run a hauler).  For a while I ratted, but within a couple of months of starting Eve I was playing the market game, buying and selling stuff.  Using the money I made from that (many billions of isk), I started playing strategy and politics.

Beyond that, Eve makes you find your fun, and you have to do a lot of sublimation and delayed gratification, doing stuff that isn't much fun in a state of zen unconsciousness while you wait for events to add to the narrative of your life in Eve.  If you need constant reinforcement that what you're doing right that minute is fun, you're not going to get it.  You have to make the leap that what you're doing may not be fun in and of itself, but it does *matter*, and that will contribute to a grand orgasmic burst of fun at a later date.

Watching Hans Roaming open the Pearl Harbor cyno in FAT, being there when the lights went out in 9CG for the last time, helping lift FIX back onto the stage through sheer determination of the members not to let that be the end of our story, the months-long sieges in ED- as half the Eve universe found out just how tough a nut Fortress Querious was, seeing 49-U escalate from a minor pissing match over a few moons into a linchpin of the entire Great War and personally flying the freighter with Jump Bridges to lift the siege and turn the campaign....

Even the anti-climactic withdrawal of the FIX remnants from Querious had its own Shakespearean majesty in tragedy to it.  That the alliance had survived so much, born and reborn in conflicts that re-shaped the entire map, only to be undone by such petty ego and hubris and end in such indifference from all concerned.  Very post-modern.

The moment to moment gameplay of Eve is cerebral at best and boring beyond endurance to most people.  The meta-narrative of events occurring around that is truly Epic.

--Dave

Excellent description Dave.  I've been wanting to say something like that myself, but couldn't state it as eloquently as you have.

One thing you can't say about EVE is that it's no skinner box, like some have said DIKUs are.  You aren't getting constant jolts of joy.  But being part of something bigger than yourself is its own reward to those who like that kind of thing.

That's the best description of EVE I've ever read.

I think one of the problems CCP has is helping players to make that jump. Far too many people never experience the epic (and totally player-generated) drama.

Since this is our recruitment thread, I feel that i can say this...

The chance to quickly be caught up in that bigger story is one of the big advantages of being in Goonswarm with F13.  If you're playing Eve solo, you miss out almost entirely on the rich player-generated content.  If you're in an empire corp then short of the occasional wardec, the situation is much the same, and even a wardec will rarely give you great tales to tell.

If you're in one of the lower tier of smaller alliances, you will begin to have stories, but they can be disjointed, dominated by those of others, fractured and often consisting only of who you are paying to get access to greater riches, and whether those others survive.

But a few alliances allow you to act on the great stage, and the grand sweep of warfare in Eve right now is happening in our space.  It is around our systems that the huge battles, the ambushes, the blockades and the guerilla warfare are occurring.  The story Mahrin is telling is one that arises from the opportunities that present themselves when you take the Big Risk and jump into deep 0.0 warfare with the big boys.

We'll all lose in the end: everyone does.  The names of alliances who lived in our space are manifold: Lokta Volterra, ASCN, -V- and others.  They're all dead, and one day we'll be thrown out, too (although due to Goonswarm's rather unique composition and nature we will probably survive that in a way the others didn't).  But they got to tell big stories while they could, just as we are doing now.

I routinely read on our wiki and other places about great battles, last ditch strategies, weeklong sieges, last gasps of alliances... then when I read the system name, I realize, Hey, I fly through that system EVERY DAY.

For example, C9N (which we only recently lost) is an obvious one because of the "Remains of Steve", which is a warpable beacon.  "Steve" was the titan owned by Cyvok of ASCN (a long-dead alliance that was rich in their time), destroyed in a deep safe spot, the very first titan ever killed.  That's right there.  Also, the FAT system Mahrin talked about (FAT-6P to be exact) - we were in an alliance for a short time that took that historic space (and then lost it hilariously).

We have reached the heights of drama!  If you are an old F13 Eve player - whether in Bat Country, F13 or Goonswarm - come and join us as we try to deliver the coup de grace to Band of Brothers in Delve.  If you were there at any point of our two-and-a-half year battle against BoB then you surely want to be in at the kill?

Check out the War thread in the Eve Online forum for details.

PS If you're not a returning member you won't get in.  No spies or Dungars.  Or TrevorReznicks (sorry brosef).

Aww, damn.  And I was just about ready to finally end my solo-Eve career and attempt to join up with you guys.

Re: new thread title

That wasn't just a headshot, that was a decapitation.  :heart:

Old hand Chrome Coyote requesting details on that headshot!

What happened??

It starts on page 108 of the War thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9357.3745).  For the casual observer, that page number should give you a clue to the length of time this war has gone on for.

It is truly internet history.  :grin:

Former Goonfleet member but my sponsor bailed on Eve -- I don't have a Something Awful account but I was a member in relative good standing and was active while I was last playing and I'm looking for a way to get back in.  Anyone around here have any suggestions?  Been trolling the Goon boards looking for an answer but not found it yet and thought this would be the next best.

Unfortunately we aren't going to be of any help. Best bet is to contact your old corpmates and see if they can help you out.

Thanks for the help!

Got pointed over to #GFHelp if anyone else is lurking and in a similar situation.

Spy.

(http://www.paintshop.ee/spy_eve.PNG)

Endie, is this offer still open?  I have a 20 million sp ceptor pilot I could bring back.  Of course all my crap is still in 9YU I believe, hopefully the system is friendly or my dozen ceptors are most likely useless.

Also I haven't played in a year and most likely suck, but the thought of hearing your dulcet tones curse at me with a Scottish accent for some reason seems alluring.

(http://www.mathewingram.com/work/wp-content/uploads/spy%20vs%20spy.jpg)

Do you still have access to the subforums where we can talk about this with Samson?  This will need discussion, but I suspect that there may be a way.

Joke is not funny any more. Let it die.

You guys are for sure pationate about EVE. I read much of the thread and it sure seems interesting.

I never tried this particular MMO and I might give it a try, but I'm pretty sure I'll end up alone and bored because I'm no one on this board and I'm from a different timezone (Europe). Do I have any chance to find a suitable corp, or are most of them closed because of paranoia?

There are lots of open corps recruiting all the time. You're right, you won't get into one of the big exclusive 0.0 corps right off the bat but you don't need to be in one of those right off the bat either.

If you decide to try it out join the F13 channel and we'll at least answer your newbie questions and keep you company and help you out with a little starting up cash.

Being in the Euro TimeZone won't be an issue for EVE. It's truly global in it's player base. There are probably more Europeans then folks from the America's playing.

(http://home.comcast.net/~huffadopolis/eve/calltoarms.jpg)

K, I want to play, but your recruitment ad there has words I've never seen before in the english language. Please to be noobifying. Cynoed?

Shot great distances across space in an instant to rain fire upon an unsuspecting enemy fleet.  Or just to move your shit around.

Capital ships cannot use standard stargates, they have to have another ship create a "Cynosaural Field" in the destination system for them to jump to.  "Failure Cascading" refers to what Clausewitz would have called "Friction", the way that small defeats and obstacles mount up until doing the simplest thing can become impossibly difficult.  "Titan" is the largest class of ship in the game, capable of destroying entire fleets with one blast under the right conditions, and costing an amount equivalent to the entire economic output of an alliance of 1000 for several weeks.  "Pointed" means that a warp scrambling device has rendered it incapable of escaping.  "Hictor" refers to the cruiser-grade version of a ship that exists to create large bubbles of space in which warp or cyno travel in impossible (shortened form for "Heavy Interdictor").

Not quite as good as the original version of that poster, because a Hictor requires a long time to train into.

--Dave

It's the same guy from the first poster proving that he's still, and always will be, an invaluable contributor to the swarm.

I sure hope they mean cascade failure or cascading failure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure), because "failure cascading" isn't a real phrase. Unless it's just an evebortion of a phrase (which, according to google, it is), in which case, carry one.

Goonswarm is all about evebortions.  Last night was epic and I don't even play any more.

In it's original Eve usage, it referred to the sudden collapse of ASCN as a "cascade failure", which became the model for future sudden defeats that were a long time in the making.  Goonswarm doesn't consider itself bound by such petty concerns as the proper use of terms.

--Dave

So can I play EVE on my Android yet?

(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/318368/user27396_pic1699_1233890826.gif)


Boom, headshot.

Hello,

An old friend of mine, Morphiend, told me to give this thread a look over since I have been trying out Eve again.  Great recruitment post but seems I arrived to late as hiring is now closed.   I'm mostly interested in learning the 50+ mill an hour mining and market manipulation spoken about in the recruitment post ;)  I was curious if anyone could give advice on another corp that would have similar capability. 

Never mind the game mechanics.

What's happening right now in this game is potentially the most historic moment in the long-running space opera which is Eve.

The most powerful and feared alliance the game has seen, formerly known as Band of Brothers and now re-named KenZoku, is on course for a crushing defeat at the hands of an alliance of alliances led by the self-styled simpering retards of Eve, Goonswarm.

Alternatively, they might, just possibly, recover from a devastating blow, defy the odds and emerge as the bloody, victorious and unchallenged masters of the universe.

It's going to play out over the next few months and the outcome could be decided by you.*

* kinda

The market manipulation stuff is available to you even now.  If you join the F13 channel in-game there are several wealthy marketeers that can help you out, and you're actually better off being in an empire corp to do this.  However, for the high-end mining you do need access to 0.0 and if you want to do that with us it will take a little while before we can open up recruiting again.

Have Morfiend send me a PM to verify that you're buddies and keep hanging out in the F13 channel, we'll help you out some more in there.

I sure hope you mean "carry on" because "carry one" means something to do with arithmetic or the movement of items and makes no sense there.  Unless it's a Schildbortion of a phrase...

"Failure cascade," for those who actually want to know rather than just perversely choose to troll their own forums, are network effects and the term seems to have been invented by The Mittani: "A failure cascade is a 'tipping point.' Once the point has been reached, failures by an organization cause stresses that lead to more failure, at an ever-increasing pace."  It's a good phrase, very descriptive and instincively understood, and a better gaming phrase to be associated with than, say, "lol twitch".  To know more, you can read this article (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_124/2645-Riding-the-Failure-Cascade) by Joel Gonzales at the Escapist, which is cited in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2007/dec/18/thefailurecascade).  Schild could have done so too, if he wasn't quite so incapable of using the same google he so proudly flaunts above.

The order of events in failure cascades is fairly well understood, though - like many social dynamics - sufficient leadership and a degree of luck can occasionally reverse the process.

PS anyone who joins us is guaranteed months of Schold shitposting in our private subforums.  This is - and I am quite serious here - a source of great amusement but a touch of weariness to the denizens, very much along the lines of having some fundie spend great swathes of their time posting on the forums of a homosexual community site about just how much they don't understand what the attraction is, with suspicious amounts of detail.

The Mittani may have done many things, but inventing the term failure cascade isn't one of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure). Applying it to a social situation in EVE is a slightly new context for it though.

Ah, I see someone already commented on the "carry one".  Nevermind then!

What we have here is an apparently superficial argument over whether Failure Cascade is the same thing as Cascading Failure.  It's silly to be having it, although I will point out that the wikipedia entry you linked does not once use the term "Failure Cascade."

(http://www.peakoil.org.au/dave.kimble/monty.python/ppp-judea.jpg)

Perhaps you would like to move on and prove that "Homecoming" is not an American tradition because someone else used "coming home" beforehand?  Is this limited to swapping words around or can I use anagrams to prove that all most words in English were actually invented by the Pawnee tribe?

Here's failure cascade in a paper from 2004 (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1378764&isnumber=30086). Someone else flipped cascading failure before the Mittani.

Here's something from 2003 (http://concreteproducts.com/mag/concrete_yesterdays_bridge_collapse/).

EDIT: unnecessary.

Well done, you found two words in the same order in a different context with a different meaning and where the word "cascade" is attached as a qualifier to the word "paths" not the word "failure".  Etymology is not really your thing, is it?  And while I am impressed by your uncritical use of "http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22failure+cascade%22&meta=", gratified by your need to resort to poor-quality dick-sucking burns in order to maintain your (let's be generous and call it an) "argument", and impressed by the deep admiration for Schild that forces you to white knight so gallantly for him (or, to translate down to your level "sucking his dick"), you look dumb doing it. hth

edit: your second example, about cascading power failure, is even worse.

Content

Now, in an attempt to get past the trollery and get back on topic, at this very moment some of us in F13 are currently racing around from system to system with a massive, fuck-off fleet, others are camping the enemy into a single station, while our resident producer just docked a war-affecting amount of logistical and production capability right in the belly of the beast.  A great thing about what we're doing in Eve right now is that you can log in and do stuff somewhere at any point of the clock.  We've even had two members FCing large combined-alliance fleets, including capitals, in combat.

The fact I edited the post before you posted your oh-so-witty response meant I was over the pissing contest but congrats on posting it anyway. Don't quite know where I came in blowing Schild in this little exchange, but whatever. My own fault for being tempted into a semantic definition troll, especially involving EVE.

Failure cascade works on so many levels.

I just resubbed due to boredom.  Anyone feel like helping me in game with a little direction?  I have no idea what to do but I wanna try to have the fun you guys are talking about, especially since I don't have a lot of free time these days, and this seems like the game to play casually.

I have a 2.5m SP character though I'm not sure if that's good or not.

We laugh in the face of skillpoints.

First off, join the F13 channel in-game. Second, wait for someone who knows me than more to tell you what to do third. Or they'll probably reply here. But I know we like newbies.

Well my main complaint is what do I do?

I'm sitting in some sort of ship, I have no idea what kind, a bunch of guns and I have a ton of drone skills and I'm not using a drone ship.  Nerf told me to get a few of the T2 Learning skills, which is what I'm training now.

But what can I do when I log in.  I want to blow stuff up and learn about fittings and shit.  Do I just randomly fly somewhere and attack people?

Oh and I'm poor.  I think i have 5mil isk.

Run some missions while you remember how to work the interface and how to fit ships. I can donate some isk to you as well- just remind me in game. Once you get a better feel for your play style, you can narrow down your immediate training goals and go from there. T2 learning skills are shitty, but they save you a TON of time in the long run.

I tried to do a mission and the pirates were eating through my shields quick like so I think I found a too tough a mission.

Also.. http://eve-sheet.com/skills/Draegano

Shrug.  If I get home tonight I'll play around some more.

Some of the missions are clownshoes difficult, but most should be doable even if you have to warp out to repair every now and then. If you are getting hit hard, take note of what kind of rats are doing the damage. Then get some shield/armor mods that harden against that particular damage. See below-


If you don't have the patience to swap mods all the time, you can try to omnitank with things like Invulnerability Fields and Damage Control Units. They won't be as effective as the specific hardeners are, but they will be better than no protection at all.

That's a lot of work to fight NPC shit.  Especially level 1 missions.

You shouldn't need to worry about swapping resists unless you are doing a Level 4 missions or an especially tough Level 3. Might want to get a good fit together though not sure what you are using atm you should be using a vexor.

I'm in a catalyst apparently.

You should be flyin a vexor for level 1 and 2 missions with your skills.

What if I can't afford one?  :awesome_for_real:

And I have no idea where to find missions.

Unless things have dramatically changed since I last played, a Vexor should only run 5 mil tops, a proper fit another 2-4 total. I am sure one of the EVE vets can sneeze that amount of ISK at you once they get online.

If you're able to train up Assault Frigates, even though the Vexor is a nice ship, I enjoyed flying an Ishkur ten times more.  I think the Ishkur was my favorite ship to fly in the game, when I played.

The Ishkur is certainly awesome, but it's really skill intensive compared to a Vexor. It's also roughly 5 times the cost I'm guessing.

A lot easier to go "oops, shit, welp" in a Vexor and get a new one.  :grin:

I don't know what prices are like now, but when I played an Ishkur only cost roughly twice as much as a Vexor.  It's also a tougher little ship, at least in my experience.  I picked mine up for 9 million I think?  Not including fitting, of course.  I never did lose that ship.  But yeah, you need some pretty good skills to fly it well.

Maybe you got lucky (or I was unlucky). When I played, I never saw one under 25 mil.

Explain the skills that make you fly it well vs. not flying it well.

A lot of it is just the base skills, but to rank 5. I don't have a list in front of me, but you'll probably want a lot of the general engineering and mechanic skills. Things that give you more Grid to work with when fitting, more CPU (a lot of ship setups don't actually 'fit' until you max those base skills out). Things that flat out improve your mobility and stamina. Probably want t2 drones/guns to go with a Iskhur too. You'll also just want the actual Assault Frig skill up to 4-5, to maximize the bonus.


Did they ever put in a 'recommended' skill list for ships/items? I swear I read about it in some patch note, but this is EVE/CCP. So who knows!

Ishkur

Median selling price in view: 23,724,000.00 ISK
Volume for sale now: 1,407 units
Movement (Initial volume - volume remaining): 509 units

http://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=12042


Vexor

Median selling price in view: 4,104,999.00 ISK
Volume for sale now: 3,572 units
Movement (Initial volume - volume remaining): 966 units


http://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=626

Wow, they've gone up in price a lot.  I know it's been a long time since I've played but still.  :ye_gods:

True, but you are only talking the difference between 10 minutes of ratting or an hour.

Not to someone doing L1 missions. :)

You should be able to take a Vex, slap 5 Hobs in it, mount a few small rails and go to town on any L2. Just shove in some armor plate (biggest you can fit), a good repper, and whatever increases your capacitor recharge. Heck, you should have room for a tractor and a salvager.

Fire the gun to annoy a group of rats. Launch drones on now-aggroed rats. Let drones eat rats. Tractor in and loot/salvage rats. Repeat.

With a little care and effort you can do L3's in a Vexor (though I would recommend a Myrm ASAP).

The months training time added to get into an Ishkur and then the cost on top of that is just not worth it for missions that at best net you a few hundred grand.

And if you are a truly giant dork, you name all your little drones after Viper Pilots and pretend your Vexor is the Galactica. Not that I would do that...  :wink:

Ugh. You'd need support skills to 5, and you'd have no room for error. Frankly, you can run the Myrm with just BC to 3 and the same skill set as the Vex otherwise. You small hybrids to aggro, and use drones. Nice thing about Gallente -- focus on your drones and armor repping, and you can get away with murder for a very long time. :)

Yeah, I did 3's in a BS plated Vexor and there were a few close calls, I may have even lost one.  It was much easier in a Myrm, the bonuses to medium armor reps mean that at BC 3/4 and medium rep II's (which are easy to train for) you repair a significant DPS.  Enough that with a dual repped Myrm I was tanking all but the hardest L4's with ease.

The ONLY reason I got out of the Myrm for L4's was due to not being able to output enough DPS to finish the missions at a reasonable rate.  There are a few BS's in those missions that can tank 5 well skilled Hob II's for a VERY long time.

Yeah, I pretty much ran into those same problems in L4's. Switching to Ogre II's (and later Warden II's) made a lot of missions trivial.

Myrmidion with BS plate and two reppers is a beast. I think I used my old mission Myrmidion to rat in 0.0. I only fit one gun. :)

I'm going to be on tonight around 6pm EST for a few hours.  Is anyone going to be on that I can look up for help fitting a Vexor out and giving me a quick rundown of fittings and such?  And maybe some help picking out good missions and ratting places?  Still lost on that one.

Join F13 and start spamming questions. I will be on after 6 PM PST, so if you haven't gotten any answers by then I can try to help =)

I'm going by like year old memory, but I think I fitted:

Lows: 800 or 1600mm plate, 1x Small or Med Armor Rep (can't recall), EANM II. (Is that all the lows?)
Meds: Cap rechargers? Something else? Drone Nav thingy maybe?
Highs: 2 small rails, 2 salvagers, 1 tractor.

Drones: 5xHob 2s, 5xHammer 2s.

Use should use EFT to figure out what you can fit before you buy it, though. Helps a lot.

There are 4 low slots, so 2 Hardners. I usually went rat specific for the region I was in, but the broad specs are probably fine for missions.



I usually tossed a AB in one of the mid slots, overplayed Vexors are fucking *slow*... but that was well before warp to zero was put in.
I also usually used a Cap Battery II instead of a Cap Recharger, though I do not remember why anymore.


The top slots are just at least 1 tractor beam (again, the ship is SLOW), and at least 1 salv. Fill the rest with the biggest 'small' railguns you can fit, since 95% of the enemies you face will be other frigs. Really, you could put any kind of small gun in the highs, since the hybrid bonus is only for medium guns.

Once you can fly hammer II's they will pop frigs faster than you can target them, I think I only carried one gun and that was just to stir up the nest and get aggro.

I honestly think I slotted in a cargo bay expander instead of a hardener (other than the EANM). I did have an AB, a cap recharger, and something else in the mids. I just fitted the one pop-gun, for the same reason as Murgos.

Once you had Hammer 2's, nothing lasted long enough to bother. You just need a gun to make them attack you, instead of your drones.

Thanks to a bunch of you that helped last night.  Everyone's names were kinda different.

Anyway, I fitted a Vexor with a bunch of drones, 3 150mm small rails, 2 salvs, 2 drone nav comps and a 10mn burner.  Then put in two hardeners and the EACM(or whatever it was) and an armor rep.

Finally got my barings and did a few missions and killed some rats, and spent more time looting than playing.  Drones did almost all of the work.

I guess I have to faction grind for L2 missions now.

I'm training Science 4 right now so I can a tractor.  Then it's back to getting 2 of my T2 learning skills to 4 (I'm level 3 and 2 right now).  Then I can start working on other stuff, whatever that stuff may be.  Like I have all ths kills for a mini warp, but I don't have the mini warp skill yet.  I have to buy it.  But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So I'm slowing getting it.  I think my mentality has changed slightly after I finished WOTLK and bought EQ2's last expansion and basically wasted my money.  I like the more casualness of it rather than moving forward constantly grinding something.  I kinda enjoyed the fact that I could stroll through this game rather than constantly be doing something.  I wonder if this makes sense.

Who knows if this mentality will stick after the weekend.  We'll see.  But I actually had fun last night.  Strange, never happened before in EVE.  I doubt it'll last though... who knows. :oh_i_see:

Can't wait till I get a chance to get into some PVP with you guys.  Can someone post here when recruitment opens up again?

Train Connections and Diplomacy when you get a chance.  A few hours training that will open up way more Agents then 10x that amount of time spent mission running (and help with other factions as well).

Is BoB dead yet ? I am tempted to resub... and drunk... so don't seduce me  :why_so_serious:

(http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/therundown/monty_python_2__limbless_black_knight.jpg)

--Dave

Stop teasing me like this, Helm!  Eve hasn't been the same without your manly German accent!

:heart:
Point me gently into the direction of nowadays vent-info and we will talk about this. I am still drunk enough ...  :ye_gods: :why_so_serious: :awesome_for_real:

Join us again!  We miss you.

Helm's German charm reminded me of this site. Apparently if you want to give EVE a try Computer Bild magazine (http://www.computerbild.de/Seriennummer-anfordern_1689106.html?spiel=eve) gives you a 30-day trial timecode. All you have to do is enter your e-mail in the field... and go through a little Google Translate maybe.

Though keep in mind it doesn't beat EVE's Buddy Program where a subscribed member can give you an invite for an extended trial and if you proceed to subscribe yourself the person that invited you gets a free month on top, which they can be thankful for by giving you lots of starting ISK.

Predator continues his run of landmark kills, with the 2000th f13 kill for goons.

http://f13.7mph.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7098

Since moving to Delve f13 has been responsible for melting 678 internet spaceships, worth 87 billion isk.

We've lost 82 ships worth 2 billion isk.

f13 needs you etc.

EDIT : Added spaceship porn showing off various graphics updates in the last patch...

Goon Battlecruiser fleet in camping formation
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/318368/2009.02.28.15.22.19.jpg)

LaZ0rs
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/318368/2009.03.19.04.06.56.jpg)

Taking on evil russians coming to Kenzoku's aid in fleet fights, my laptop is running something like 50 fps in this.
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/318368/2009.03.19.14.07.04.jpg)(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/318368/2009.03.19.14.24.23.jpg)

Also, new corpse graphics:
(http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/318368/2009.03.19.17.31.02.jpg)

How much for the last one?  :oh_i_see:

Jesus, I knew she was big, but 200kg?

2 meters Cubed is a BIG WOMAN too.  :grin:

I'd like to give this another go. I resubbed last night just see what I've got and try and remember how to play (I don't).

I've got a Vexor with a trunk full of stuff and about 25 mil ISK.  Skillwise I have around 7 mil SP that are all over the place but mainly toward piloting Gallente frigates and Assault Ships.

Join F13 channel and spam questions until it all comes back to you  :drill:

Delurking after a couple years.

Is it possible to grind faction with F13, or Goonswarm in general?

I've tried Eve a few times in the past and never got far into it because the game sucks solo. There's only so many rats you can kill or asteroids you can stare at before you snap. Every time I read the Eve threads around here, though, it looks like good fun, largely because of the crowd you run with and the context for what you're doing.

Problem is that what seem like the fun corps all require references, active forum membership, or whatever for recruiting to prove that you aren't a dastardly spy. Which I understand, to an extent, but it's frustrating from the outside.

So is there a decent way to get into that fun without knowing someone inside already?

I'd guess not, or those dastardly spies would just take advantage of it, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.

No, not really. There are corps/alliances that take in fresh people, a few specialize in that... but the 'serious business' corps and alliances, won't be taking in randoms.


It is something of a chicken/egg scenario. Can't gain access without knowing folks and you don't really get a chance to get to know folks without access.

Isnt the sole pre-requisite for GS having a SA account?

Spy.

There is, and always has been, a bunch of us willing to help you out in any way we can if you're starting out, whether by giving you ISK to mess around with freely or keep you company while you're searching for Villard Wheels. I'd be happy to be a mentor to anyone if they just ask and help find the things they like doing.

F13 corp, which is our Faction Warfare corp, has good standing with Caldari corporations and decent standing with Amarr ones. GS is too large and living in 0.0 to care about NPC standings.

Another new poster with a similar situation.  Is there a trial program for the F13 corp?  Some sort of Temple of Trials?

Tell us a little bit about yourself.  Who, or what, is The Drizzle?

It's a ATHF joke.

Yeah, who is he?

Aside from that...


I'm a pretty fresh newb to EVE.  I tried it a few years back and didn't last beyond the first day or so.  A buddy of mine was talking about it the other day and when I saw the 21-day trial from Steam, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I've been lurking on F13 for a few months now, and I've been considering an account.  Seeing the EVE thread gave me the motivation to do so.

Wow, this damn thread, making me want to play!

Unfortunately, I have no way of looking at my character at the moment, BUT, I am building a new PC in the next few weeks, and am interesting in re-upping my account and joining the big boys in 0.0 sec space.

Any chance there would be a spot for me? I was around at some point WAY back when our original corp was in some sort of alliance. I do remember I was fairly good at piloting Caldari BSs, I have a decently-fitted Raven and liked me some pew pew missiles.

My skills were practically all concentrated in missiles and stuff that helped fire them better; I'm not economically-minded enough to have any success with trading or market things, and I was a terrible mission runner, but I loved me some ratting. And, I also loved the IDEA of PvP, but whenever I joined it just seemed to be a lot of sitting around. Also, I was not keen on losing my ship when I would be hard-pressed to replace it.

At this point, if I rejoined I would probably only need maybe a small cache of missiles to fire at rats, and money for insurance...just in case. My character had multiple millions of SP, just FYI. I think I was actually shooting to one day pilot a Dreadnaught, because I love me some big ships.I may have actually been fairly close to actually being able to step into the cockpit.

EDIT: Also had a Ferox, and other smaller assorted ships scattered at different spots throughout the galaxy. I just hope that if I ever log back in, I'll actually be able to get my goods OUT.

Strazos, you just scrape over the postcount bar, and I asked in corp chat and a couple of people said they vaguely remembered seeing your name aruond at some point, so I imagine we may just be able to grant you some sort of probationary membership until we discover if you are some sort of awful shitposter...

As regards getting all your stuff: gather it up and sell it or insurance-fraud it (better idea if in empire) before joining us, because we don't do empire.  There are always wardecs, in any case.

I'm done pussyfooting around in highsec so I'll be liquidating all my junk.  what's the deal with 'insurance fraud'?  I'm sure involves insuring a ship and suiciding, but does it somehow net you more money?

Anything I should bring other than clean underwear?  Is there a system I should head to?

I think if you got the ship at/below material cost, you roughly break out even. It's mostly a way to get the money out of a hull sooner, rather then later.

It involves blowing up your ship and collecting the platinum insurance. When discussed in a market context it refers to doing that and making money off of it, therefore driving the prices of minerals back up. Otherwise it probably just involves blowing up your ship intentionally/semi-intentionally to get the isk out of them asap

Good to hear...I might need some sort of short in-game amount of help, just to get me back on my feet and blowing up rats in 0.0.

I just really hope I'm not sitting in some random hostile station.

Or that I'm NOT in a hostile station, but my Raven is.

Drizzle, to reply to you: F13 is currently embroiled in a huge war so without a reference we won't be able to let you into our corporation at this time.  However, you can join our public channel for advice and to chill, and we can direct you to several newbie-friendly corps/alliances where you can cut your teeth and experience the finer points of the game without the monotony of soloing in Empire.

I renewed my account the other night, and rerolled as Amarr, having always played Caldari before. I'm having way more fun with lasers than I ever did with missiles; maybe it's all in my head, but it feels more involved. Range and velocity actually matter, and running away is not always the optimal maneuver!

Also, I adore the skill queue. I can update it once a day, and skip all the annoying micromanagement. It's great to be able to do things like train all the basic learning skills up to 3 overnight.

Is there any decent reference about factional warfare? I have some basic questions, like what kind of standing hits does it cause, how well does it pay, is podkililng penalized, and the like, and I can't seem to find a reasonably authoritative answer to them. More generally, though, is it a decent way to get PvP experience? Are enough people involved that it's actually fun?

Phildo is a lot more patient with the would-be spies and transparent lemme-into-Delve-er-I-mean-goonies-plz applicants than I am.  To try and cut down on the latter cohort, protip: Delve will be a warzone for the next forever so you'll be quicker getting rich by joining a farmer alliance.  We have quite enough worthless ratters already.

Tl;dr if you're not a very long-term F13 poster or their real life friend then you won't get in.  Seriously, you will find it much easier just to go to GF and take the :10bux: route.

(unless you are an Anzac who can time stront)

Ethereal, there is an eve wiki now.  I don't have the address offhand but I'm sure you can find it linked on the eveonline main page.  It's probably got all the gory detail you could ever think of written by some Jade Constantine wannabe.

You can also ask in the f13 channel ingame but only a few of us have done any appreciable amount of battlegrounds Factional Warfare.