f13.net

(http://endie.net/img/eve/Delve.png)

Join f13 in Eve

Watch the latest trailer for the new expansion here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDVEHE10nHc)

Imagine a game where you share a single universe with a third of a million other players.  Imagine a game where your alliance is as populous as a small city on Earth, and active round the clock.  Imagine a game where you can look around you during a battle and see three hundred friendly battleships drifting along through space, flanked by a swarm of support ships.   Their lasers criss-cross almost two hundred kilometres of space to strike the enemy fleet, where hundreds more ships on a parallel course send their fire lancing back at your fleet as they scramble to escape the shimmering, deadly bubbles of the interdiction probes in which they are trapped

The suicidal pilots of the dictor swarm have done their job - the enemy are locked in place, unable to escape - but now they are dropping like flies.  The interdiction bubbles will disappear soon, allowing the hostiles to flee.  Your fleet commander calls for tackles, and you turn your ship to dive across the void, aiming for an enemy long-range sniper which is burning towards the edge of the lockdown bubbles.  First one, then another hostile anti-support ship locks you up as you accelerate, their targetting icons flashing red on your overview.  Damage messages flicker across your HUD, but you've learned from your first attempt, where you over-eagerly flew straight at your target, dying to a single volley from his huge railguns.  This time, you jink from side-to side, always approaching at an angle so that the enemies' guns cannot track you, and your shields shrug off the incoming fire as you scream into range of the enemy battleship, your micro-warpdrive hurling you towards him at thousands of metres every second.
 
You swap to an orbital trajectory around him.  But you were too focussed on getting the tackle and you overshoot by twenty-five kilometres in seconds.  Swearing, you turn off your microwarpdrive and your ship slips into a smooth, circling orbit just as he emerges from the interdiction probe's range.  You imagine him stabbing vainly at the warp button, his hopes of escape dashed.  Now he sees you for the first time on his HUD, his systems informing him that he cannot warp because you have his warp drive cores scrambled.  He launches a flight of five medium drones to try and drive you off, but you pulse your drives again and leave them far behind you.  He aims his eight 425mm railguns at you, his tracking computers scripted to follow your fleeting signature, but the volleys are wild, the huge guns unable to keep up with your darting ship.
 
Heard by five hundred people, you call out on the fleet voice channel, "Point on Kiwihawk," and the Fleet Commander immediately calls out to all: "Primary is Marak Nachtfalke, he's melting... New secondary is Kiwihawk in a Rokh.  Get him locked up."  The hostile is screaming for help on his voice-comms as he sees a hundred and more hostile battleships erupt in flashing yellow and red on his overview, and you see your shields stripped away and your armour begin to ablate as his friends try in vain to drive you off.  But you know that Goonswarm Offensive Logistics have prepared a dozen more Vigils for you at your staging tower, and his long-lance sniper will cost him two hundred million to replace, thirty light years away.  Exultantly, you watch his hull rupture and erupt, but instead of fleeing to save your ship you lock up his escape pod and pour fire into it before your ship dies.  He's out of the fight, poorer and furious in a cloning booth, and you're already asking for a tackler warp-in with your next ship.  You're a Goon hero.

Here is a short animated film of the fight that changed eve history after months of us being apparently doomed, and how it looked to some of the participants (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rk-gLXqA5g).  Yes, we're an alliance that makes its own animated features (and books, songs and videos).  It's no big deal.
 
(http://endie.net/img/eve/burnthemall.jpg)
 
This is Eve

Incomparably the largest single virtual gameworld in existence.  A game of sweeping scale, it is an affair of politics, war, espionage, blackmail, theft and trickery in which grudges and conflicts span years.  If someone attracts your wrath they cannot reroll on another server: there is only one shard, on which everyone plays.
 
It's also the game in which the longest-running and most successful f13 MMO group plays, as part of the Goonswarm alliance: itself the most notorious, the largest and arguably the most successful alliance in Eve's history.  Reviled by most of the galaxy, together with our allies we have taken the richest space in the game, and we face invasion and a war of annihilation within a matter of weeks.  We will win that war.  This is your chance to join us while we do it.
 
You'll be playing in a corporation (like a guild,sort of) that we're the largest part of - Ultrapolite Socialites - and whose CEO is f13 poster Nerf.  We hold a constellation of our own, including two outposts, one of which we built ourselves, a massive undertaking visible to all on the game maps.  In the Great Southern War, when we were betrayed by our allies and attacked without warning, Ultrapolite Socialites took on more than half of a hostile alliance alone, fighting far behind enemy lines for over a month against the odds to keep them away from the front.  Then, in Delve War II, we spearheaded Goonswarm's assault on the Period Basis region, taking the strategically vital TPAR system alone then fighting off Executive Outcomes - an alliance ten times our size - when they tried to take it back.  Having developed a speciality for this sort of work, we next took on another alliance during the Period basis campaign, Blade, and stripped them of every system they still held there.  Ultrapolite Socialites are not a Serious Business corporation, but in wartime they punch above their weight.
 
(http://endie.net/img/eve/foreignlegion.jpg)(http://endie.net/img/eve/goonwaffe.jpg)(http://endie.net/img/eve/27titans.jpg)
 
What is Eve for me?
 
Eve is a game of internet spaceships.  You take control of ships ranging from a few metres to many kilometres in size, and captain them, directing their direction, speed, defences and offences.  Operating outside of the core empire, in space with no security, we fight to claim and hold systems, to take them from our enemies and to help our allies in their wars.

You'll be joining us in Goonswarm.  As an alliance we are loathed by most of the galaxy.  They attempted to crush us, to wipe us out, to drive us from the game.  That backfired. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4diQEwrjv8)  We built our strength over a period of years, rebuilt, made alliances, came back and crushed the people responsible, throwing the game's most powerful alliance out of their systems and removing even their name from the game. Now we own the best space in the game, and sit at the core of Eve's most successful power-bloc, hated, feared or admired depending on who you ask.  
 
I'm a Cute Newbie.  Why should I join?
 
We have a ton of newbies right now, thanks to the one-man Irish charm offensive which is f13 poster Pred, so you'll have company.  Initially, in PvP, you will be a tackler: flying a fast frigate to lock down the enemy as described above.  You die a lot, you help kill even more, and you learn a ton.  In a matter of days you can get into heavier, more survivable tacklers or into electronic warfare ships like the arbitrator or blackbird if you prefer something a bit different.
 
Delve is the best place in Eve to make money, but that can be tricky for the first couple of weeks or so, and you'd be dependent on others while you do so.  But if you sign up you'll be given ships, money and advice.  If you are a keen PvPer you'll sign on with Homeland Defence and find tons of gangs, camps and roams going on in your timezone.  You will not need money for ages, because if you are killing anything we'll know you're already addicted and we'll give you all the free shit you need.
 
Don't hang out in Empire when you join.  Goonswarm retains players better than anyone else in the game because we love our newbies, and because we get them into the dangers - and freedom - of nullsec on Day Zero.  Follow the wiki, ask for advice, join up and jump into our space.  Get on the forums, find an op, get on teamspeak, say you're a newbie, profit...
 
As a newbie in a goonswarm gang you'll be called a spy, you'll be told you are worthless, but you'll not get worked up because you're chill.  If you're not chill you'll hate it and leave.  But luckily you are chill so you'll not try too hard either to roll with the punches nor to be tremendously witty in your comebacks.  You'll then get a tackle on an enemy command ship, the gang will get a great kill and you'll notice that you're being called :shobon:, that it is being proclaimed that you are the best spy, and that your wallet is full of free money, because we love our :shobon:, chill newbies.
 
A few months in, with plenty of kills under your belt (because PvPing is the real reason to play Eve) you have more choices than anywhere else in Eve.  Ultrapolite Socialites is over-represented in BlackOps, who deploy far from home for weeks at a time and terrorise whole enemy alliances into a state of collapse, and who contain some of the best PvPers around.  If you decide you like fleet fights then you can join Goonfleet Foreign Legion and deploy with hundreds of other Goons to help our allies when they need it.  If you prefer things a bit slower-paced you can sign on with logistics and help Moki run our space.  If you are patient and focussed to the point of autism you can join up with GS Recon, who are specialised scouts and explorers and are essential to the Fleet Commanders and directorate.  You can mine (don't mine), run PvE spatial anomaly exploration work, run missions in our own space, set up an importing business, produce ships and equipment for sale, or disappear into wormhole exploration for weeks at a time.  You can start DJing on our radio station, help out Offensive Logistics or even - if you have a background in statistics, maths or similar analytical fields, sign up with the Goonfleet Advanced Research Projects Agency and do scary-secret stuff that manipulates the very fabric of the gameworld (seriously).

(http://endie.net/img/eve/heroes.jpg)(http://endie.net/img/eve/producers.jpg)(http://endie.net/img/eve/jihad.jpg)
 
You might even decide that you want a degree of celebrity: if you become a skirmish commander at some point, leading gangs of Goons around, then so long as you're reasonably relaxed and don't have a hilarious or grating voice you will be very popular.  If you are a born griefer who gets his sociopathic kicks from tormenting others, then there is Jihadswarm.  You might have the social skills to infiltrate an enemy alliance on an alt, slowly climbing up their ranks to sow chaos and destruction when you disable their defences at a critical time and make off with their strategic resources and wealth: the Goonfleet Intelligence Agency will support you through your handler.  Or if you decide that sneakily stealth-bombing huge enemy fleets for hilarious griefing is for you, there is Mister Vee's Goonwaffe: the most expert exponents of an entire new fleet doctrine in Eve.
 
 
I'm a bitter vet.  Why should I come back?
 
Lag is pretty much fixed.  No, really.  As long as CCP knows that a big battle is due (fleet fights are not meeting engagements as a rule, so 99% of the time this is true) then having 800 people crammed in won't noticably lag you out so long as you have your PC set up sanely.
 
The new patch, Dominion, radically changes the cost and mechanics of holding space.  We're looking at more people in the alliance living closer together rather than never seeing another pilot from one day to the next.  In Delve, we have defence gangs and roaming gangs every day in a variety of timezones from system camps, through drunken slosh-ops and suicide roams, to vast, hours-long fleet fights.  
 
POS-shotting will be gone in a few days.  The new conquest mechanics revolve around far fewer structures, so no more nights spent kiting (or repping) 15 towers.

Doomsdays are gone.

Delve is Goons.

  
Where's the Grind
 
There is no grind in Eve.  Or rather there is no grind that you don't make for yourself.  Training is ongoing all the time, whether or not you are logged in.  That means you set up a queue of skills before you head away for the weekend and when you get back you can fly that new ship class you want.  Killing a hundred NPCs won't make you any more skilled.
 
There are no levels.  There are quests, sort of, but most of Goonswarm doesn't run them.
 
Some people are made for grinding.  Good luck on you: in Eve you can become very rich thereby (at least before you burn yourself out with your lack of self-control).
 
 
What's in the pipeline?
 
The list of features under development is striking.  There's Dust 514: an FPS set in the Eve universe which will let Eve players hire console players as mercenaries in order to sieze regions on planets in the Eve universe.   See a preview here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9obWc3yIMTY&feature=fvw). Tied to this there is planetary control, allowing Eve players to control and exploit countries on the planets they currently only see from space.  Walking in stations - leaving one's ship and exploring the orbital outposts in which players dock - was slated for launch this winter but has been pushed back, but is still in development and a new teaser can be seen here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yCcRMNT-WI&feature=related).  If these changes roll out as planned over the next couple of years then the Eve universe will encompass everything from the single grunt on the ground to the vast titan gliding in orbit above him, tens of kilometres long.
 
Perhaps their CCP's exceeds their grasp.  It's an MMO, so we're all jaded enough to be sceptical of how much will result of this list.  But the fact is that CCP are creating the sweeping and varied game that nobody else is even talking about right now.
 
 
Where do I sign?
 
We don't open-recruit.  But if you're an F13 poster in good standing then you're probably in.  What constitutes "good standing"?  Well, don't sign up now and apply, as such obviousness will just embarass everyone concerned.  You need to have been a member for a while (we don't say how long) and to have a certain type of posting history (which we won't tell you) and not to be one of our obvious enemies in-game.  If you are a spy then might I suggest that it is a lot easier to infiltrate Goonfleet, and that the ten dollars for Something Awful is simpler than achieving our criteria.
 
If you decide to apply in the next couple of days then go to one of our offices in highsec (see the foot of this post for locations) and apply to join while docked, using the offices tab bottom-right of your screen.  If you need help with this join the "F13" channel in-game (do this anyway) and ask: just remember that most people in the corp aren't in there and that some of those who are are not our members.  Include your F13 poster name in your application or you will be scammed and laughed at.  You will also be asked for your API on entry, so that we can check out potential spies for learning difficulties or retardation.
 
If you're a complete newbie then read the (open) Goonfleet wiki article on character creation (http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Basic_Character_Creation).  Feel free to choose whatever race you like, but it's likely that Amarr will be your best choice, while Gallente would be ill-advised for most purposes.  You can download the free trial from here (http://www.eve-online.com/download/) or from Steam (preferable if you have it).  Steam currently has a 4.99 offer for the game.

More Links:

The campaign for Querious (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAmK84ur9AE&hd=1)

Little Bees - Goonswarm cultural victory (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfv1QtZDirY&feature=related)

Stahlregen's Five virtues of a successful goon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Sye46MEUk)

The Goonfleet Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, pages 1 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer1.jpg) 2 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer2.jpg) 3 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer3.jpg) 4 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer4.jpg) 5 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer5.jpg) 6 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer6.jpg) 7 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer7.jpg) 8 (http://endie.net/img/eve/primer8.jpg)

Poluketes' History of the Great War (http://www.sesfanqulahmemorial.com/hist.html) (in the style of a Mogul text)

The story of how we killed Bob, took Delve and lived happily ever after. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvwk4QncSG4&)

Goodbye To All That (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c0DCNB-VuI) - A space retrospective made as we abandoned our space, moved to Delve and burned our boats on the beach.

With thanks and acknowledgements to Stahlregen

LoveU Highsec Office Locations:

Gelfiven V Joint Harvesting Food Packaging station (Molden Heath region)
Kahah I Khanid Transport Storage station (Khanid)
Leva II Emperor family Bureau station (Kor-Azor)
Malkalen II Mercantile Club Bureau (Lonetrek)
Rayl VIII - Moon 7 Carthum Conglomerate Factory station (Domain)
Samanuni III Wiyrkomi Corporation Factory (Black Rise)

Reserved for stuff.

I joined LOVEU back in the midst of the huge second war for Delve, I got more kills in my first week than I had in my first two years of playing Eve. Since then, I've led gangs of newbies on ops where we've destroyed fantastically valuable ships with the Eve equivalent of Toyota Corrollas, run my own Moon empire, taken part in some of the largest scale battles ever seen in any MMO and been given a chance to fall in with a very chilled MMO guild.

It's only fair to warn you that it's not all unicorns and lollipops. As Endie mentioned, Goons have a pretty robust approach to interpersonal relations plus you'll be exposed to a lot of SirT posts. There's not a lot that can be done about either of those things but if you man up, develop a thick skin and undergo extensive therapy you'll be fine.

Don't tempt me

Someone says this in every recruitment thread, but right now is the best time to join us!©

The best thing you can do if you want to play is to give an existing player your e-mail address for a 21-day free trial, to which you can add the key from the $4.99 Steam offer. Your invitee will get free gametime, which he will reward you with a pile of in-game money, which you can spend getting dozens of ships blown up or on buying a PLEX card for free gametime of your own. So that's 21+60 days of subscription for 5 bux. It's a steal!

51 days of gametime for $5 is an amazing fucking deal, and if you've ever thought of trying Eve now is the time.  We don't know what's going to happen after the patch tomorrow, but one thing is for certain - lots of people are going to die, and the majority of them probably won't be us.

For all of you ex-UO/AC/EQ griefers who are looking to relive the glory days of carebear tears flowing like a torrential rain, there is Jihadswarm.  You can have a brand-new character trained and ready in 10 hour (TEN FUCKING HOURS) that can infiltrate easy-to-join carebear corporations and slaughter their members with impunity.  I'm popping the girlfriends Eve cherry on this tonight - we've already infiltrated a corp full of mouthbreathing retards who can't get past having a /girl/ in their corp, their nerdrage on ts should be epic when that girl blows up their 100,000,000ISK ships on a character less than a day old.

Theres something for everyone in Eve, and worst case scenario is you're out $5 for 2 months of trying it out and get to hang with a bunch of f13 people while you do it - so hop in those rifters and lets blow some shit up.

I have tried EvE once before, but the PvE was pretty dry and tasteless... and I never got to try the PvP out.

So the $5 includes the whole game and expansions?

Yes, get a member here to send a trial to your email, then go here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/

And buy it for $5, and apply it to your trial account.
Bam, 51 days of gametime.

Any Aussies amongst the F13ers?   Or would there be nobody about in Aussie prime time?

There is a Goonswarm social group (ANZAC) you can join to get in touch with Aussie and NZ players if you find there are not corp members on when you play.  But you should find there are corp members on most of the time.  Other LOVEU members could fill you in more as I'm mostly playing in the Pacific time zone primes.

Alliance wise; There are plenty of player on at all times only a few jumps away if any.   The jumpbridge network is also available for getting across the region in a few jumps if needed.

There are a few Aussies I think, but Goonswarm has dozens.  They are kinda important in fights just after US prime but before downtime.  We've done very well in those, recently.

I won't lie to you, though: it's less than in US or Euro timezones.  Mainly small-gang stuff.

Isn't Comstr an Aussie?  Dunno why I think that.

Best recruitment thread pics yet and quite possibly the most expansive expansion in a while too.

This then is the kind of offer to jump on. You really want to experience this type of PvP.

/jedimindtrick

:-)

Seriously, if I had more time, and could actually be consistent about it...

I am only interested in MMOs for the PvP and Meta game these days, which is why I would love to try out Eve properly....

And yes, this is the best recruitment post I have seen....  I am compelled to try it out and this time make sure I get to the PvP  :grin:  Just might need to find some Aussies to play with...

I stole some of the pictures from Stahlregen's post on Something Awful.  He's an Aussie, too.  Not that he'd remember.

We've had a few months of relative peace but a major war appears to be breaking out. So there's going to be plenty of chances for PvP. The main battleground at the moment is not our region but the one next door, so we get to do our own thing in our home space while having battles nearby.

Nice post.

That's a cool preview video.  My only gripe with the game is that if there isn't anything going on I end up sitting there staring at the game paralyzed with what to do.  For example, ratting takes longer to loot stuff than actually kill them all.

Anyway, can someone give me a TLDR version of the new xpac for curiosity sake?

To be honest I tend to look at The War Room (the main ops-planning forum) and choose to log in for operations.  So I know stuff will be going on when I log in.  Right now is too late for me (midnight here, 7pm US East Coast) but an op is just starting.  There was one at midday Euro time and one at about 6 euro time.  However there are gangs from Homeland Defence going on for lots of the time, so you can just log in and join what they're doing.  I see two of our newbies went on one of those ops and got ten or twelve kills between them.

Also there's no need to rat if you don't want to.  I never do, though I've got other income streams now if I need cash.  But until early this year I didn't rat or mine for more than about four weeks in two years, and that was for a capital ship.  The rest of the time I just flew battleships with approved fittings so that every time I lost one I would get reimbursed by the alliance.  You can also get frigates for free, and I'm going to try and make sure that free cruisers are available for newbies in the next two weeks, too, so you could lose fifty and still never need to rat.  I also give bonuses big enough to buy a bunch of ships to newbies when they get their first kill, and if they get the most kills that month amongst the newbies, and if they just do something cool etc...

tl;dr just pvp and we'll make sure you don't run out of ships.

That recruitment post is almost good enough to get me to consider goons, the only problems are 1) Obviously I don't trust goons in-game, and 2) the "call you a spy, worthless etc" reminds me an awful lot like my 2-4 weeks (can't be arsed to check exactly how long as eve apparently crashed just now) in defi4nt (dear god, what a worthless alliance), where there were multiple occurrences where people who were running around in hulks/iterons/etc were threatened to be popped and podded just so the enemy (rawr, a whole 2-5 man gang of neuts, what worthy foes) wouldn't get the killmails. Spoke with a friend who's up in that area now, and apparently things haven't changed much.

But having said that, damn, Endie, you goons must be about as schizo as player corps can possibly get, where you manage to come off externally as a bunch of asshats, while internally you sound like an excessively tight group. Hat's definitely off on the recruitment speech. Best I've ever seen.

Eve is a game where you can sign up and hate your trial because you joined a half-assed corp or spent your time in empire grinding missions, mining or getting blown up for wandering into low-sec or 0.0 without the slightest idea what you were doing or where you were going. Two weeks of that is enough to melt anyones mind. Forget that crap!

Get on the other side of it; join the side that knows what they are doing, loves to ruin everyone's day, steam roll over your opponents and make a tonne of ISK in 0.0 while you learn how to play Eve the way nobody ever intended. Here's a few mission's you wont find with agents: Gank that freighter pilot for his multi-billion cargo with your mates, ransom some pubbie for his ship to spare his life, stop a whole alliance from making ISK while you shit in their space... you get the idea...

There's a difference between serious business ass-battery of the type you describe and a bit of hazing/pisstaking as you'd experience in goonswarm. I've had and have alts in various target alliances for GIA purposes and it always makes me happy to be a goon. Remember, we won Delve II because a BoB director spent a week in goonswarm and had so much fun he didn't want to go back.

And the last time I saw a newbie executed was particle9 and he was merrily trying to bump our only Titan (at the time) out of a pos, so far as we could tell. Now he's one of our forum mods.

Goons can be pretty chill really and our corp is very chill and full of nice people and me, so you could get the free trial and come hang out with us a bit and see if you like it.

I like how you differentiated there.

It's nice that someone saw what I did there.

I've been playing Eve on and off for years now, exclusively as an empire trader and industrialist. My interest is piqued enough to start a new account focused on PvP and join up with you guys.

Any [good] UI changes with this update?

So whats is being offered for the every day player with the new xpac?

I see shiny new graphics and the ability to walk around a station.

Anything else?

The UI is apparently now more hardcore, I'm afraid to find out what this means.

Walking around station is postponed, again (surprise :grin:). Apart from graphics, there are a few UI changes (I haven't bothered to log in to sisi to check them out), sov changes, avatar titans which go "imma firin mah lazorz blaaaaaargh", T2 production balancing so technetium is the new dysprosium, etc etc etc.

Which, I'll point out, Endie did point out in his recruitment post. :grin:

I didn't get passed the first few sentences.

come on -- how much ISK for real?  that's the biggest cockblock in this game

ISK is easy - how much do you need?

I do agree that "not having isk" is a deterrent to PvP, but in 0.0 rat bounties are sky high and it's really easy to get isk. I don't know what these changes will do to that (I never explored wormholes or anything like that), but I imagine it won't change drastically.

However, if you have more money than time, you can always buy/sell timecards. (Sanctioned by CCP, btw). ISK won't make you a good player, but it will make sure you can buy the ships you need to participate/try the things you want to do.

I'm coming back for the holidays!  Work has been near-continuous crunch-mode for the last couple months, but things are almost wrapped up and I have three weeks off in December for some hardcore slacking.  Just checked that my account is still working, got some skills training, and so on.  See you guys in space soon.

Never stop posting.

In the new patch we're able to upgrade the number of Anomalies and deadspace complexes (think PvE instances) that appear in our space, so systems can now support more people at a time.  It's not the best way to make money in-game but an hour of killing NPCs will give you enough isk to get back into a PvP cruiser if you're short.

Is there information about the new sov mechanics somewhere?

Endie, you make the best recruitment posts for any game - no wait, anyTHING - anywhere, ever. CCP should be paying you tbqh  :awesome_for_real:

Tiny question, is it possible yet to change the font sizes drastically in EVE? I ask because the only way I'd ever be able to play it again is if I manage to get a PC connected to the TV, which would mean me trying to read text at 1920x1080 from a distance of ~2m.

As a counterpoint, if you made it through the whole thing, you probably deserve Eve and it deserves you. :awesome_for_real:

The pictures were nice though.

The short answer - for those like Schild whose snideness exceeds their attention span - is that the patch notes are here: http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp

Slightly longer answer, including (for Viin) UI changes that will only interest vets:

- The sovereignty system is completely replaced: no more tower warfare, a variety of new structures, timers and mechanics to game and explore.
- The way you make money in 0.0 is being changed, with the start of a series of new system upgrades you anchor as an alliance to make systems hubs for an alliance's members.  They will variously make hidden belts filled with "super ores"; provide improved and more numerous anomalies that are like missions that you can warp to (letting everyone from newbies to teams find ways to make money); guarantee one or more wormhole entrances in a given system at all times; provide DED complexes in your system.  Apparently this system is designed to be expandable and tweakable.  And the more you use a system the better it gets.  Ideally lots and lots of players will be in each system, making for more social 0.0 gameplay.
- There is a new fleet finder: you can see all the fleets you can join and sign up at once, as well as seeing immediately where everyone is so you can get to them.
- Faction ships are now substantially boosted, and new ones added.
- It is now possible to view the content of containers and ships remotely.
- You can now make courier packages as big as a freighter hold.
- Joining a corp can be done without going to their office.
- You always have access to level 1 (quality 0 and less) agents of all factions and corps, regardless of your standings with them.  So you can mission with Blood Raiders in Delve if you decide ratting sicks.
- It is now possible to enable warning sounds for when your shield/armor/hull drop below a certain threshold (threshold for damage notification is customizable from the HUD settings).
- You can turn on logging of loot in fleets.
- Titan doomsdays are focussed on a single target - no more grid-clearing awfulness and you're almost certainluy safe if you're not in a capital.
- A bunch of new epic arcs, agents and missions, including a new type: exploration agents.
- No more tower spam in mail.
- Graphical changes: most notably, the new planets look amazing.
- A new in-game browser based on Google's Chromium tech.
- Skill requirements have changed and a lot of stuff like stealth bombers' bombs are easier to use now.

And the usual ton of little stuff.

I watched a Titan on fire outside the POS shields in 319. I have seen hundreds of laser glitter in the dark off the PR- gate. In the 2nd Great Eve War I saw a enemy fleet of 400 ships fight three friendly fleets over a space of 1200km and a time span of 5 hours and the amount of drones left in space afterward made the system look like it was filled with a snow storm. The looting afterwards to clean up the wrecks took more than 10 hours. The dominion trailer starts off with a sea of dreadnought and carrier wrecks in space- I've seen such things (and been able to get tackle's on ships that cost over 2 billion in a ship that cost 400 times less than that).  

There's actually often an Aussie-time zone fleet op because our enemies often do stuff around downtime (10pm AEST) so serious business fleets were often working and fighting enemy fleets before and afterwards in our last two wars in the southern areas of Estoria and TPAR station. These fleets were very rarely waiting for action as we had to come in, hit a target or two and get out again in a few minutes and the smallest ships we had, the Frigates, Interceptors and Interdictors were the most important in the fleet because they allowed the FC to target 1 or 2 enemy ships at a time, kill them, and get out again before our enemies could do anything about it.

The 3 biggest UI changes I can see are the Fleet Finder, being able to see in containers remotely, and the warning sounds for shield/armour levels. The Fleet finder should make both forming and joining fleets MUCH easier- you can see at a glance if there's a fleet formed for Homeland Security (going around in a small gang to fight random hostiles in Goonspace, or going into close by enemy territory). The remote container means FINALLY having a nice clean hanger. Also a lot of the old skills like Heat, Cloaks, Archaeology, Hacking and Bombs no longer need a lot of skills at Level V.

NO MORE DOOMSDAYS. It's replaced with a Freespace2-like Beam Cannon/Wave Motion gun that targets single ships and won't be used on anything smaller than another capital ship. Conversely, Stealth Bombers (now also quicker to train for) allow a group of 10-30 tech II frigate pilots play out Death Star trench runs (though it requires a lot of both individual bomber pilots and FC skill and timing to work, which Goonswam has, and our enemies currently don't).

And for anyone who's never played Eve, the Goon-wiki is the BEST and most complete information on the game there is.

How did I forget this?

Eve is a game with a lot of breadth (there are many ways to play and things to do) and a lot of depth (player skill and knowledge matters, from fitting out your ship onwards).  The Goonswarm wiki is an absolutely incomparable resource - easily the best in Eve - which can shortcut a lot of the learning, as well as providing a great way to avoid having to work during your time in the office.  There are, at this moment, 1,906 articles in the wiki and it's had over 2.7 million page views.  It's a superb achievement and you'll love it.

Also, nice Bladerunner allusion, Comstr.

There are always Aussies on but not all are allianced to Goonswarm. I've spent the last 10 months doing PvP/PvE with Aussie pirates and Empire groups that do losec and 0.0 engagements as well as missioning. There's always someone to talk to if you know where to look.

If only LOVEU had been recruiting when I started EVE - but with the war on I can understand why they were cagey about new members. :)

Are those awful SA guys still ruining the game for everybody else?

Well, we're certainly not very popular with highsec macro-miners if that's what you mean.

And Nerf's only source of income is scamming.

Oh and the new patch is pretty much an implementation of a mixture of ideas from a bunch of us, so if that turns out bad then yes, literally so.

To be fair though, if you join you would be one of those awful SA guys ruining the game for everyone else.  Which is much better than being the guy whose game got ruined.

I'm personally claiming IP to the new doomsday, when that turns out to be horrible I expect a backlash on my doorstep. I'm just a pubbie though.

Hey, I shot some stuff in a belt last night...

Granted, it was a hulk, but I'm sure a bounty will show up sooner or later.

Between Nerf calling me out in the War room, and this post by Endie I almost have to reactivate an account or two. Great post.

Are there any good videos/screens of the new shiny graphics?

I would probably have to say EvE is my favorite MMO I've played to date, even though I'm currently not playing much.  If anyone reading the thread does drop into the game as a complete newbie drop me a PM on the forums with your name and I'll pass some isk your way.

Just don't get caught in the trap of "Oh, I need to play in empire for a few months until I get the hang of the game." Take the isk, get to our space and start flying with gangs in a cheap tackler ship and get blown up then repeat.  It's the best way to learn.  If you decide you don't like 0.0 so be it, but being used to 0.0 and going to empire is an easy transistion where being used to empire the flying to 0.0 is going to be a complete shell shock.

When I joined up I was a fairly normal happy person.

Since joining I have developed rampant obesity, type 2 diabetes and chronic insomnia. My family want to have my committed and I can bearly talk without a headset anymore.

So come on and sign up!

Yes.

Lots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYBLP9hxWVE - Early planet graphics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC6umiqm3gY - Newer planet graphics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V8OVunp5Sg - New Avatar & Erebus Doomsdays.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7Jxv4lJSzk - New Ragnarok and Leviathan Doomsdays.

you need to be an SA member to get on the Goon wiki, so you need to buy an SA membership I believe.


yeah ISK is not easy guys.  It sucks to be a new or middling experienced player, sorry.  You need a giant nestegg with each new ship to not only buy, for example, a Raven, but keep the money coming in to have several more on hand.  And the ganking did not abate the last (3rd time) I was back.  Also, I never figured out how to make a jump clone -- to register with your bases you need to move from Empire across several real-time minutes (an hour?) to get to a LOVEU base.

I'll shut up now.

You know the basics about local and stuff right?

In all my years playing Eve, and ratting in the pirate infested Venal space, I got ganked once and that was because I was reading on f13 and not paying attention. If you know about local and safespots, you have to screw up or get yourself stuck on a rock to die. Watch your defense channels, and local like a hawk and you'll make mad cash.

No on all counts (except the shutting up part  :grin:).

Any member of Goonfleet (including pubbie corps such as us) get access to the Wiki. Even many of our allies have access.

Money is pretty easy to come by. To begin with you'll be given free PvP ships as well as cash, later on you'll be able to make up a fleet BS loss very quickly: After insurance and reimbursement I am out of pocket by about 30m Isk every time I lose a fleet fit T2 equipped Megathron. That's about an hour or so of slow paced ratting.

You don't need a JC to move down to where we are also, after tomorrow's patch you won't need to find an office. Simply apply to the corp from anywhere, once accepted set your clone to our station and then pod yourself. A second or two later you'll be in the heart of Goonspace.

You just need to join the Corp to get access to the wiki - no need for an SA account (I don't have one).

Getting to our space is easy and doesn't involve travel time. You set your medical clone (ie respawn point) to our station and blow yourself up. If you are a veteran player who wants to bring a load of stuff with you then it's a bit more complicated. For new players it's dead easy and someone can talk you through it. Once in our space you can buy what you need and we'll give you isk - much more than any newbie without friends would expect to have.

If you already have a lot of stuff you can just sell it empire space and use the cash to buy replacements in our space or have it bought up in a freighter.

(http://i47.tinypic.com/t8vjwn.gif)
 :grin:

Why is this not in the EVE subforum? JustWondering.

This makes me sad because I want to play EVE, but I lost the last time I played. Like, seriously,  just like you might play a hand of cards and lose, because I died so horribly and helplessly to an NPC in a low-level mission.

I felt like I was supposed to cancel and uninstall, so that's what I did. This looks like fun though!

People that play or have played Eve hang out there. This is looking like a drive for true noobs. More exposure here I suppose.

I died half a dozen times on the introductory mission line myself and nearly quit.  In fact, it drove me to play WoW for about a month before I decided to give it another shot.  Having people around to help you figure out the basics of fitting a ship and using the modules on it is really important.  Absolutely no one should start playing this game by themselves without at least a friendly chat channel (not Rookie Help) where they can ask questions.  Make joining the f13 channel your first priority after creating your character and we'll help you get squared away.

Your spelling isn't the Mae West either.

It's worth it to do a stint in LOVEU just for the wiki access.  It's basically all the mechanics of Eve the way they really are, without all the misleading ambiguity that floats around the rest of the internet and in game.

Seems Steam upped the price to $20 before I could get past the first day of the trial.  

I last tried Eve in early 2007, and it is a alot different today.  The Career trainer missions were great and taught me a lot more, and the combat is a lot deeper than I remember it being in 2007.

If I'm still bored by next weekend I'll give it a shot... again. 

After yet another evil endie post I may just have to resub. and rejoin you guys, especially after the station patch releases (when is this coming out btw?).  Alas, all my gear (like 3 big indys and a loaded Dom) is still stuck over by the damned Space Penix.  Is LOVEU still operational in that space?  Or is it totally abandoned for Delve (ironically, my stomping grounds b4 joining the swarm)?

I bet if I relog my entire cache will be floating bits in space.  Buy me a cap. ship and I'll resub.    :awesome_for_real:

Sorry for screwing up the thread.  Some excellent responses though that may help new folks.

I was never ever able to access the Goonwiki.  Waited a couple of weeks, never got in with my account name (from the game).  

One really needs to be taken by the hand in the game when starting out.  And frankly, even after playing repeatedly for awhile.  It was never getting over tier2/3 hump and into 0.0 and <0.2 that did me in.  Buying some ISK on top of the monthly fee is definitely the way to go.  The grind-more-velspar-and-guristas is not realistic.  Anyone joining should take the advice to spend more real cash on time cards.

It's in this forum for a couple of reasons, but the main one is that we're interested in playing with f13 posters, not with people who read about eve and want to join4guild. We could recruit 100 members in 2 days no bother: everyone seems to want into goonswarm these days. But we don't want them.

In a serious post, I';ve had a pretty good time in goonswarm. its probably one of the best if not the best alliance to be in in terms of raw fun.

I did a kind of video journal of my adventures in the great war II. Some are better than others.

Starts with this one

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

Continues for 10 videos (Good one here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro1mCcEVhHI  )

The fall of BOB http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFFnO5oPlWU

And the end of the war http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPMWv_D-2VE

And Part 9 is narrated. Might explain some of the tactics and mechanics involved for those interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEkd8uf5usA

I had about as much fun watching one of my turds float around in the toilet this morning.

I will probably grab a trial account to check out the new stuff (well graphics etc.). I gave my old acct away and not sure I want a mmog right now as DA and Torchlight have me busy but who knows!

I've done time in Eve a while back. From the perspective of someone who studies these things, it's the most interesting virtual world going. From the perspective of someone who plays them, I found it hard to get rolling. Partly because of my particular gang of eggheads, the ones who play Eve most heavily were not the people I was closest to. Endie is pretty convincing, though. I may have to re-up sometime in mid-December after my current crunch time is over.

You make it sound like prison time. :grin:

Endie: I assume most of the guys wanting to join goonswarm these days is mostly of the same persuasion as those joining the GBC in the olden days of BOB, i.e. "I want to be on the winning side", or am I wrong? I didn't really pay much attention till about 6 months ago when I started reading the war thread.

I've been playing almost 6 months and have 6.2 m SP.   I've been looking for a way to get out of Empire space and get into 0.0 space.  This sounds like a great way.

Spy.  :awesome_for_real:

Look at this bitter vet, right here.  Why don't you resub and say that to his face?  Seriously, come play with us again.

  Hmm, so how firm is the need to be an existing poster on F13 forums?  I've been lurking the War thread for, oh, uhm, say 2 years or so.  Two years of drooling over missives from the front and wishing I had the time to play.  It's not like I have the time now, but honest to god, that recruiting post got me right in my soft underbelly.  I passed on the newb recruiting drive that came up a while back, and regretted it.

  I'm a total Eve virgin, and couldn't put much more than a night or two a week into it, but damn, a chance to watch the fight rather than read about it?  Plus I'd get to live out my total man-crush on Endie.   :grin:

  So is one post on F13 enough?

I think we should boot Nerf and make this new guy CEO.

He should send Nerf a PM explaining his lack of posting and express his desire to join. :why_so_serious:

We have a celebrity endorsement.  Is there a poster here who is not encouraged to try a game when Grunk says it is awful?

My fear would have been that he said he'd have had a great time.

Edit: also let's pretend that I quoted Thump's post and then posted the "Don't be a pussy, this guy looks legit" picture with the "Free Candy" van.  What I'm actually going to do is quote this bit:

Celebrity is a bit of a stretch ain't it ole boy? I'm all about pushing for more internet spaceship folks, but let's not get overzealous.

Also Endie, I love you.

Are the Eggheads in question the TN group?  I know that Nathan Combs plays Eve (he was on the other side of the Great Southern War from us), but I always thought that interest was light on TN from others considering Eve's sandbox nature, player content, non-diku gameplay and so on.


Yes, that is a problem.  BoB died for several reasons, but one was undoubtedly diluting their numbers with people attracted by success.  You lose a lot of resilience and resistance to shock if you have people who start edging towards the door when things suddenly get bad.

Goonswarm has, on three occasions that I can think of, been in positions that would cause the first stages of failure cascade in many alliances: when camped by Bob in Syndicate, when driven back to the Detorid border in early 2007, and when our JB network was lost after almost the entire South attacked us in late 2008.  There were a few factors involved in why we didn't collapse each time, but I do think that the cultural cohesiveness of our out-of-game, forums-based identity was key.

It's worth noting that, despite having only been in Goonswarm for a couple of months when the AAA reset occurred and the second, intermediary phase of the Great Southern War started*, f13 posters from our last recruitment drive played a big part in that fight, with LoveU taking on half of arch-villains Red Overlord alliance alone for most of the time.

----

*You see, Eve is a lot like the Peloponnesian War before and after the peace of Nicias and then the invasion of Syracuse**...
**Except that our Syracusan invasion worked.

You forgot about ZAF coming to lend a hand. We do have some really chill allies.

I don't understand why more people haven't PM'd me with their e-mails for a buddy trial. It's like you hate free stuff. Unlike Nerf my money has come from honest labor doing absolutely non-consensual things to blood raiders with my golden shaft, and I have hundreds of millions to give out. Some of the people I've helped get into the game earn more ISK than I do, which comes in handy when you can remind them who helped them on their feet :pedobear:

Let a bro hook a bro up.

Edit: People with Gmail accounts can use plus operators, e.g. 'evetrial+firstname.lastname@gmail.com', to get a 21-day trial without making a new e-mail account if you've used your existing e-mail to get a trial in the past. See, look at how helpful I can already be.

Yeah man, don't mind Endie. PM me in-game and we'll get you sorted. I'll give you a discount off the application fee because you came through F13.

Funny funny  :awesome_for_real:

Pred knows a lot about moon mining but if you want to get in the corp you need to contact me in-game. The character name is the same as my username (without the _ in the middle).

 :hello_kitty_2: :tantrum: :angryfist: :mob:No scamming in the recruitment thread. :mob: :angryfist: :tantrum: :hello_kitty_2:

Thump, you'll not get in, for the reasons mentioned in the OP and reposted above.  Anyone that asks for money is scamming you.  There is no fee to join for those we accept.

But..but...that's the best part of EVE.  :cry:

Baaaah! *sulks*  When I started EvE joining LOVEU and all the people I "knew" from the War thread in 0.0 seemed grand. I'd still love to, but now I feel too loyal towards my current corp to jump ship. Oh well...

*greetings and hugs from Umokka*   :heart:

Calapine

Oh, I'm still in. Quiet, but still in.

Now THIS is a great spy.

It's the avatar, isn't it? Show a bit of shoulder and :bam: :grin:

The one thing that is intimidating about EVE is the history behind it all.  Yeesh, talk about having to research a history book.

I really have to practise my posting... I thought that it was a blatently obvious piss-take  :awesome_for_real:

  It probably was, but I was all "they love me, they really love me".   :lol:

We still love you thump.

I am a bitter malcontent with a raging neckbeard, is ISJO right for me?

I think the comments that the new player experience is impossible solo overstate the case.

I've been playing about 5 months. Mostly solo. I believe the new player experience is easier now than it was before so that's why our experiences are different.

The game starts out with a pair of very simple missions. Fly somewhere. Win a fight by turning your only gun on and watching it gradually destroy the other guy. Fly to base. Get mission to fly somewhere else and dock.

All of this is with little windows that tell you exactly what to do and give you free stuff.

Then it sends you to another system where you can run through 3 tutorials. Each gives you ten missions, again with windows explaining exactly what to do.

If you do all of those missions you are in great shape to solo pve or go to a station and trade.

For all that it's probably more fun just to hook up with a corp that is basically winning the game and prioritises giving its members a laugh above all else. But Eve is certainly not unplayable if you want to solo, you just have to read the pop-ups.

No, Eve is not un-possible to solo, it's just really, really boring to solo.

If anything you sound over-qualified.

This. I've tried EVE a few times and while I never had a problem (And never understood the huge cries of ZOMG THE LEARNING CURVE), it was boring as fuck. Usually ended up mining or running missions for a while, then hitting /cancel within a few weeks. Exploring 0.0 was fun, but never found anyone that was interested in killing me.  :heartbreak:

Joining a good corp seems to be key. *shrug*

I'm dicking around on a trail account to see if I have the taste for this again.
Like the improvements. Lots of tiny GUI changes I'm digging.
Pubbie tears still taste great.
Sounds like the next chapter in EvE is going to change the game abit. Dust-514 and In Station Walking coming out around the same time. Pretty awesome.

Page 3 spaceship porn from Delve War II.

That one is awesome, I see a hilarious shop in the making. Or even a best caption competition.

The first picture there just yells "om nom nom". That face...  :ye_gods:

Must see shop to be convinced of humour  :why_so_serious:

Re-subbed an old low SP character. Applied.


...

I hate you people.

Vader: "All too easy..."

Oh god. I've been talking about that avatar being the "imma chargin' mah lazorz" for so long, and I forgot it here? and thought of "om nom nom"?  :ye_gods:

I will perform seppuku now.

Application is in.

Edit: posting this from ingame browser  :drill:

Lies. NOTHING displays on the ingame browser (bar furry comics...)

Yes haha :why_so_serious:

Not sure if anything can top that.

The new sovereignty map is sweet. I'd post a screenshot but it might melt your face.

Any one thinking of taking up on this offer - stop thinking now!!!!

You get the opportunity to get with possibly the strongest alliance in Eve, with a great group of players, many of them F13 posters.  The goons are childish and ADHD but always amusing and you have the opportunity to get into 0-0 space and be looked after.  It doesn't get better than this. 

It's the chance to get into an end game 'guild' and be mentored - this is a very special deal, offered afaik to no-one else on this little planet.

I'll try it if Signe will.

(It's sort of like going to the ladies room - I don't want to go alone).

Edited to add:  I tried downloading the demo through Steam, but I'm having this problem:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12331610

Verification Failure

Makes it hard to demo!

Room for one more?  No, I'm not a long time poster so yes I'm a spy.  

In my defense my Eve resume may just win the saddest sack ever award so if goons don't take me seriously who would?   And it's not like I don't have the proper experience.  I jumped right into 0.0 space by joining Sylph after only 2 years  in my rookie corp.  I know, but a few of they guys I'd come up with had already left and with the president of the Applied Sciences division retiring Sylph made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and remember this was back when Catch was Awesome!

After I'd been in 0.0 for about 10 minutes my corp decided it was not satisfied to be just a little bad and jumped ship for IRC, just beating the goons to the Drone Regions by oh... a day.  Yeah, wish I were lying...

So anyway, in empire again and undeterred I managed to catch on with Haladas mining corp.  My first professional corp and wow what a difference.  Of course that was only my first impression because 2 weeks later I woke up to a post-it note in my mailbox saying that I wasn't LSJV material as I'd "Exceeded the maximum allowable ship deaths per month due to non-PvP combat."  I had in fact doubled it, and in half the time.  Since I don't remember autorunning off a cliff pretty much ever, I think they mean non-fleet actions.  Yeah, when they told me about that policy at first I pretty much thought they were kidding.  Apparently not.

The humiliating 39 jumps back to empire were more than my Eve account could bear at the time but wtih dominion I was thinking about making a comeback.

Yes it's too snarky and yes I'm trying too hard.  But c'mon.

Hi, I'll try Eve again. I'm pretty sure I'm not a spy. Can I kill people?

You can, Lum.

You certainly can.

Hey, I got a laugh out of it. Careful with those mining macros!  :wink:

Well, the tutorial got better!

Well to be fair, that was not exactly hard to do.

I could not get the Steam Demo to work, but I could get the regular demo downloaded and installed.  I really hated the UI and graphics when I tried it the first time, but it seems much improved.  Now, if I can just keep better track of my objectives and stop forgetting to put things into my cargo hold, I'm sure my game will go more smoothly!

The tutorials are excellent and the first Epic Arc gives loads of isk while going through the long story.  Really enjoying Eve thise time, and I subbed.  Is a slick well done game now.  Combat is still on the slow side, but is strategic and am enjoying it.

Probably would have given it a try if steam had discounted Eve before fallen Earth... always been curious.

There is no "Steam Demo". There is no reason to use Steam to install the client at all. You can get the 21-day Steam trial however by using the link in the Properties window of the game. We've pretty much all been in the "forgetting you have a cargo hold" phase. The "not knowing there's a station hangar" phase is less common, but more comical.

Right you are - Trial, not Demo.  Sorry about that.  Is there a point to using the Steam Trial rather than the regular trial?  I guess 7 extra days... I think the regular trial is 14 days.  That ought to be enough for me to decide if I'll sub.

Standard deal to f13ers that join, I'll give you 10 million if you start playing.

20 to Lum, just because.

If you're going to get a trial then get one of the current players to send you a buddy invite. You get a 3 week trial and if you subscribe then your sponsor gets a free month. The 'Steam trial' refers to the fact that you can get Eve for $15 on Steam which comes with 2 months of subscription time and still counts for the purposes of giving your sponsor their free month for referring you.

Whoops.  I didn't do this.  Is it too late to do this?

Not really. Can always reroll.

Pick me pick me! I'll give you loot !

Well, I tried moving out to Delve, but I kept getting my frigates shot out from under me. Which is a pain in the ass even when insured because there's no centralized place to actually pick up new equipment, at least for rank newbs.

Maybe I'll reroll and dork around hi-sec space for a while getting my cruiser legs first. Because getting podded just trying to go to buy new blasters without being able to do anything about it, and then looking at about a half an hour of jumping everywhere just to re-equip? Not that fun.

Goonfleet has, or had, a free frigate policy for newbee's.  If you ask in the corp channel someone will either give you a couple (fully fitted out) or point you in the right direction.

Are you in LOVEU yet Lum? I'm pretty sure that once you're in you can set your clone to one of their stations and then podkill yourself to travel there instantly.

I'm tempted to re-sub just to remedy that problem and likely make a bunch of isk in the process.  :awesome_for_real:

You can re-equip in Delve easily enough - the main industry hub is four jumps from our home station. The trick is to use the jump bridges, which let you jump long distances in one go.

Next time you are on, I will show you, or anyone who is online will do it.

Once you know how jump bridges work, life in 0.0 becomes a lot easier. There's a network spread throughout our region.

I gave Apparaat a bunch of fitted frigates yesterday. If I'd known you were hurting for stuff too I'd have brought a few more down with me.

This is my fault.  I left a second post below the OP meaning to put instructions for people who get accepted, but I am a very lazy person who deserves nothing but opprobrium.

Do not hang around in highsec.  Dock in a station with medical facilities (as in F13 and someone with access to the Goonswarm mapping application will tell you the nearest one, or try two or three stations and you'll hit one).  Set your clone location to what I think is currently called "C6Y Not A Martini" from the list that follows, leave your ship, undock in a pod, warp to a planet, right-click on your pod and choose self-desctruct.  A couple of minutes later you will be in Delve in a pod.  Get some free ships.

I'll write this up properly with screenshots and stuff but anyone who is not a newbie should ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOUR CLONE COVERS YOUR SKILL POINTS and ALWAYS UPDATE YOUR CLONE AFTER PODDING.

If you really want to you can start hanging out and making money but far better would be to check the War Room for fleet ops and, failing that, ask in corp if there are any gangs or fleets running around or use the fleet finder to see if any fleets are running nearby.  If you do that then you'll not be very bored and leave.

Did you ask how to get to Delve in the F13 channel, btw?  Because if nobody told you this then they are even worthless than I thought.  If you didn't ask then it's you.  You're the worthless one.  Sorry.

He got to Delve. I think Lum's problems came from flying around Delve without any knowledge of the JB network or the various intel channels.

and prolly how you set a jump clone  :oh_i_see:

Get your ass to Delve.

(http://www.shrani.si/f/2X/Wk/3t5FUJxE/yesmittensdid.jpg)

This lengthy history of the great war was a lengthy monologue more suited to my blog, so I moved it there: http://www.endie.net/wordpress/?p=6

 :heart:
I'll pay you 5 bucks a month if you keep me updated about the game with stories.

And how dare you stop there. 

It gets better.

Being in Goonswarm means that you have stories to tell.  For many of us, that is the most scintillating, dazzling attraction.

This lengthy history of the great war was a lengthy monologue more suited to my blog, so I moved it there: http://www.endie.net/wordpress/?p=14

 :popcorn:

This is completely sucking me in.  Plus, the UI doesn't seem nearly so bad as it did the first time I tried it.

Countdown to Avaloc getting this story printed and selling it in this very thread.

I'm running a frigate op on Saturday, so anyone thinking about this can come on that if you pod yourselves to Delve in time.


I'm in talks about him recording it as an audiobook.

Fuck, guys. Stop tempting me. I don't have enough times as it is.  :ye_gods:

I don' think this has been posted in the thread yet...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDVEHE10nHc


That's the latest CCP trailer. Unlike many CCP trailers it isn't far off how a good fleet op goes down. Key things it is missing:

Swearing
Dogs barking
Idiots who jump through gates too early
Rifters
Swearing

That's incorrect.  Everyone knows that the dog is the best FC in the whole alliance and some idiot keeps talking over him.

I don't think most people understand just how funny this is.  My first experience with avalloc was on teamspeak, when he joined the fleet, said something, and I immediately yelled into the mic "What the fuck, why is there a deaf guy on teamspeak?"

Someone find a recording of him, please.  Don't they record the CSM vent meetings?

I'm too much of a cynic to think that's true. :/

Good story though, what was CCP doing exactly to help bob cheat?

There were devs in BoB and they were helping them with rare and expensive blueprints, iirc. Also possibly tipping them off to upcoming changes, but I'm not sure if that was ever proved.

Where do rare blueprints come from?  Farm em from pirates and stuff?  I never did any of the industrial stuff in the game.  I thought they were learned via the skill system or just sold on random planets.

Way back all T2 blue prints came from a lottery. You earned R&D points by doing missions for R&D agents and periodically a random T2 BPO would be raffled using your R&D points as tickets. Remember that these were BPOs and not BPCs so that they could be used for an infinite number of production runs and could be researched to make them more efficient. The guy responsible for designing and overseeing this system happened to be the Cap Director for BoB. There's evidence that he rigged the lottery in BoB's favour as well as directly spawning BPOs for them.

Nowadays, T2 BPs are created from invention, your R&D points are used to purchase datacores which are used up when you attempt to invent a T2 BPC. You put in a number of datacores and a T1 BPC and there's a random chance (based on skill levels) that you'll get a T2 BPC out of it. BPCs can't be researched and invented ones have a negative material efficiency so anyone with a T2 BPO still has a massive advantage in the T2 market, not only can they save themselves the (considerable) costs of invention, their T2 production is a whole lot more efficient than their competitors who are using BPCs.

Your first mistake would be that you thought I knew what a BPO and a BPC were.

A BPO is a Blueprint original with this you can makes copies or BPCs. You research the BPOs to make the BPCs better quality.

I would probably actually buy that as opposed to the crappy one he's asking about.

I'm perfectly serious that the biggest draw for me is that I get to play a role in some huge, sweeping storylines.  I've even played a noticeable part in some of them, even on the big scale.  Quite a few people here have, too.  I'll get to those bits.

And for me, the biggest problem with CCP wasn't the free BPOs, or the free supercapitals, or the rigged in-game events that were revealed.  It wasn't the advanced access to game developments on the private test server (before hitting the public test server), nor the MSN access direct to senior developers when they needed a corp thief stopped (that was a bad one, though) or a problematic POS cleared up immediately.  It wasn't even the heads-up they got about a region being hugely buffed and their resulting move before anyone else knew.  It was simply the fact that their capital fleet commander was a developer - one who we now know cheated and gave himself money and rare goods - with potential access to perfect knowledge about the location and attributes of anything in the game.  Funnily enough, he won all the time.

I skimmed over that in the story because it's in the past, and hey! We won despite it all!  And because I didn't want to start Himo off.  But it remains the case.

I knew one of the people who broke the details behind the story, and it made him into an insufferable, ranting fanatic about the corruption in CCP.  I wouldn't like to end up like him.

POS is such a terrible acronym for something serious.

Hmm well as Amarr says, a BPO is a blueprint original and a BPC is a blueprint copy. Any item that can be built by players is built from a blueprint for that item. Originals can be researched to make them more efficient and have no limit to the number of times they can be used. Copies can only be used a limited number of times before they are used up and cannot be made once more efficient once created. When you invent a T2 blueprint you get an inefficient blueprint copy (typically they take 50% more materials to build than an unresearched original blueprint). Producing these invented BPCs is also very expensive and not guaranteed to work. Someone sitting on a T2 BPO can make an unlimited number of those items and can research the blueprint to make it even more efficient as well.

As an example, it costs me 130m to build a Hulk (T2 mining barge). About 8m of that is invention costs and the rest is materials, plus I can only use that blueprint 9 times before its used up. Someone with a researched BPO for a Hulk could build them for as little as 65m and has no limit to the number they can crank out - even an unresearched one would only cost ~80m to build.

As mentioned above, the guy who was designing capital ships for release was the head of BOBs capital ship construction program.

Bob were allowed to wargame with the devs on the private developer server when they were developing Pos mechanics, a privilege afforded to no-one in eve. This is probably where they found the bugs they used to shoot through tower shields.

When Bob left/were driven out of the north the place they moved to, delve, was utter junk. Within months it was upgraded to the best area in the game.

In 2005 CCP announced they were upgrading 0.0. This project began with Delve and some of Fountain. They then forgot about the rest of 0.0.

Delve was upgraded with NPC space, uniquely among all regions. BOB insisted that this was terrible as this would interfere with regional sovereignty (which has never been implemented and never will) To compensate them for this horrible loss, CCP gave BOB a mass of faction ships and items for free and set their standing to the blood raiders at a very high level. This meant that any member of BOB could immediately access high level missions without grinding through the lower level missions. Thereafter every member of BOB had pirate implants that came from those missions, vastly increasing their power in combat. A letter was published from Dianabolic to CCP demanding even better standings and Kieron, CCP lead dev and public relations guy, personally responded and said he would take care of it. Kieron has since resigned very quietly under mysterious circumstances.

As NPC space combined with normal space, Delve had the highest amount of static complexes in the Game. However these complexes were all bugged and fully respawned every hour rather than every 12 or 24 hours. This continued until a member of FIX (one of my enemies at the time), Dark Shikari, published this on the eve-o forums after months of trying to get ccp to fix this privately. After this the level of faction equipment in BOB fleets dropped like a stone.

When Dark Shikari was examining the Database dump of CCP he noticed unusual. Every outpost has a unique descriptor in the database, which is normally funtional like "yz-9 Caldari reserch outpost" The station in NOL, which was originally a conquerable station, which means it became a fully upgraded station for free, had a very strange descriptor. "Tis mine biatches" Guess who set up the outposts in Eve and where they are? The same guy who was head of BOBs cap fleet and told BOB how the t2 lottery really worked...

Delve has the highest amount of high value moons anywhere. Aradia beside Delve has almost as much high end moons as the rest of empire combined. These moons were seeded after BOB moved to Delve.

BOB got a high ranking member of ISD kicked out when he refused to obey their orders in local during their war with KOS (which they lost). In local was the sequence "Petition him" "No Petition. MSN is enough" The next day the guy had been thrown out of the ISD program. The senior dev that ranted at him before he logged off was the same guy that said to BOB after the destruction of D2s titan "Enjoy killing some D2"

CCP later published what they said was the petition against the ISD member, but oddly they forgot to include the time and date of the petition.

In response to this Dianabiolic posted an arrogant post about how the Devs and the BOB leadership were personal friends and people always complain about bias but they never see how many things are fixed because of their feedback "Devs need friends too". In a desperate attempt to smooth over that shitstorm DBPreacher started talking about the fact that its fine, he knows Devs as hes a game developer and he can separate that. But in the same post he started talking about Grand theft auto and how great it was to have devs of that game on hand to answer questions...

I can go on and on about this but you get the point.

Too late Endie  :drill:

It's not every day that a group of players get so fed up with the dev's outright corruption that they declare war on their chosen people and after years of blood, sweat and tears, win.  Personally I think there's a franchise just waiting to be created.

3 movie blockbuster SciFi trilogy by Michael Bay. Episode 1 starts in the east with Lokta Volterra and the destruction of their baby titan. Episode 2 with the BoB counter attack and ends with the destruction of Molle's Titan (and the revealing of the gods working on BoB's side) and Episode 3 with the culture victory of Haggorth's betrayal and the final destruction of the Evil BoB empire. Lots of CGI space battles and explosions.

A Saturday morning kids cartoon where every week the poor Newbee learns one of Eve's lessons from a more senior smurf Goonswarm Bee (LogisticsBee, CapBee, POSBee, RepairBee, TacklerBee, FCBee, DBRBBee, MinerBee, BLOPSBee, BusinessBee  etc etc etc) while simultaneously foiling  Gargamell Molle's plan of the week to destroy Goonswarm.

Live Action TV series:  Agent of Goonswarm. An member of Goonswarm Intelligence Service goes under cover to foil GS's foes. With help from Q Branch GARPA and overseen by the Mittani (External threats) and Vio (Internal threats). Sometimes working with and somethings working against French Galentee super spy Krugsman.  Half the plot is taken up by not knowing if Vio is working for or against Goonswarm.

This sounds just like playing a mud, only with better graphics!

So how long ago did all this vice and corruption come to light?  Is BoB still intact?  Does the scandal continue or is it over?

I'l let Endie finish his story of the war. I will say that CCP has become far more professional in the last few years.

I want to tell you a little story of mine, if I may.

I was a member of IAC at this time. We were squaring off against the whole of the south in FAT-6P. What Endie didn't mention is that When BOB abandoned the south they invaded Catch to try and quickly knock IAC out of the war before the Redswam could reach their new borders. 25S had fallen in a week and everyone expected FAT to follow fast. BOB ahd allready dropped towers there. I was the favoured covert ops scout of every IAC FC at the time, and I was in FAT. One of the CEOs contacted me and asked me to sit over the station and check gates as he was going to start dropping our own towers to fight back, and I was the only scout he could trust and I had a good scouting rep. I wound up hovering over the op to drop towers for the next several hours relaying intel and telling him when it was safe to come out of hiding and plant another tower.

Becasue of me bieng there they were able to plant those towers and start fighting back. When the system did not fall everyone took heart and started fighting back hard. This was the beginning of the 3 and a half week fight for FAT that stalled the BOB invasion and allowed Goons to devour Bobs territory. It burned all their precious time in a Stalingrad style fight, that sucked in all their allies and alowed Razor to deploy in Querious and start knocking out FIX while BOB was demanding their ships in FAT.

One person can make a difference.

T's E-credit has skyrocketed! ;)

Only thing I've been a part of is killing shit. Some minor wars, but fleet battles used to be giant lagfests back when I was into it.

I am very close to joining you guys.

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c156/PinkFlagg/Eve/everyshipcounts.jpg)

It really does. When Molle lost his 4th(?) Titan in Delve on the day of Gotterdammering (the day they lost 10 carriers and a mothership at a gate, and the day before the start of the month long PR- siege) it was because some random Goonswarm HIC pilot warped himself to the wrong spot, at the right time, and locked the $US5000 ship down long enough for the rest of the fleet to arrive. Molle lost his 1st Titan to a random MERCHI Inty pilot who saw him cloak just at the right moment and burned in the right direction.

$5k USD? Is that just the cost it would be to convert in game currency (isk?) to IRL dollars at the time, or what's up with that number? Is that common for people to drop a lot of RL money down?

This thread definitely has me signing up and learning more about this game, but this has me curious.

For those entirely lost in the acronyms, check this out:  http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9832.0 (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=9832.0)

Also, some of these are place names, like FAT-6P and 25S which are star systems in the Catch region.  IAC is a now-(mostly?) defunct alliance.  FIX (Firmus Ixion) were residents of Querious (next to Delve) and BoB renters for a long time until they had a falling out at some point.  Our very own Mahrin Skel was associated with them.  Maybe he can shine a light on some of their history.

fake edit: MRCHI : Merch Industrial, a Goonswarm corp from the Penny Arcade forums.

The 5k USD figure comes from the conversion of timecards into isk, which varies based on market conditions. You can pay someone in game currency for a game time code.  When I was playing it varied from 500 million to around 750 million isk for a 60day code.

real edit: url-ification

It's probably the cost to buy that much in game currency with USD.  The game has a legit method of buying time-cards with $ and then selling them in game for in game currency so things like that can be figured out very accurately.

Thanks, about what I figured but $5k is one of those outrageous numbers imo for in-game stuff. Damn that must have felt good to destroy  :grin:

To further the breakdown, a 60d timecard is about $30 USD.  That divides out to between 15-20 million isk per dollar.  That puts T2 (tech 2) fitted battleships at in-game current market prices at $2-4 each (60-100 million isk).

Someone translate that to L4 missions or ratting isk/hour. I forgot how to make money in EVE that way since I usually played market games, import/exported, and occasionally ganked for my cash.

Ratting in Delve goes around 15 to 30mil an hour. Level 4 agents in empire space works about the same, but empire is safe from random hostiles stopping you doing it (and is probably really more like 20 to 40mil an hour).  A time card costs about 500-600mil a month.

Some people play the game by ratting for long enough (about 15 to 30 hours) to afford a time card per month (meaning they don't pay for the game except in their own time). However, most people who make enough money in game to cover the time card do it via trading/large scale manufacturing/scamming and you still end up spending a lot of time to do it (though once you get your trading empire setup, it can be only a few minutes a day work to keep it running).

Joining LOVEU means you get full access to Delve, the richest and easiest place to make money ratting there is in the game. The Goonswarm and LOVEU infrastructure in place means it's also pretty easy to be a small scale or large scale manufacturer with easy access to empire and a large market to fill with nitche's still to be found and some moongold still to be mined.

Doesn't the hike up to a Level4 agent take weeks/months though?  Is it faster now?  That's post-Battleship, correct?

Really depends. If you have decent social skills and you haven't wrecked your basic factional standings, then you can blitz missions for 3 or 4 nights to build up the corp standings you need to use a L4 agent. That's assuming that you can fly a ship big enough to instapop the stuff in low level missions and you aren't wasting time with looting and salvaging - when I was grinding standings for my R&D agents, I was doing 8 or 9 missions an hour with my main combat character.

That's a YMMV kind of statement though! :)

As a relative newb I'm finding that in a Caracal with heavy missiles I can make about 2.5 mil an hour ratting. Anything BS size and up just takes way too long to drop. I expect once I save up enough to get a Drake I should be making more. (the difference for me is between killing rats worth 250,000 to killing rats worth 1.7m).

Where is the money in ratting?  Looting and salvaging?  Or is there some sort of mission/bounty thing?

Yes to all.

I should qualify that I don't have salvage yet, have been too lazy to go to Empire to get survey skill.

Clarify: 10 to 15mil an hour in a Drake/Hurricane/Harbringer, 15 to 25 in a Battleship. That's just the bounty and using reasonable skills and mods. In theory you can double that with salvage and loot, but I find that takes too much time (and there's usually a poor-newbee who will be happy to clean up after you). With crappier skills and mods reduce the amount by about 1/3.

The Poor-newbee who asks if anyone would mind if he scooped up the loot and salvage would probably get half the ISK in bounty with the salvage and loot refined down to minerals and you can do that in a destroyer.

And mind you, ALL OF DELVE counts as -1.0 so you can rat in a out of the way system just as well as anywhere else in the region.

If you want to mission instead, Delve is ALSO broken as it contains NPC stations, giving out missions all the way to level 4. The security isn't so good from roaming gankers, but there's only 1 system at the end of a pipe that is infested and most other NPC systems are pretty empty. Note that if you rat you'll end up digging a hole in your stranding it will take a long time to get out of, and the Blood Raider LP rewards aren't as good as empire LP.

PM me (I'm the character who sent the corp email about the slosh op on Saturday) and I'll send you some cash so you don't have to waste your time ratting for a while.

I didn't want to bump the Dust thread with Endie's big recruitment drive going so I'll just put this here. Edge had a 6 page spread covering Dust this week and can be read in full right here. (http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/enter-planet-dust?page=0%2C0)

Also, for you potential salvagers, get your science skill to IV and GET A TRACTOR BEAM! It takes a ton of the suck out of salvaging. Destroyers make spectacular salvagers and are dirt cheap to fly both in cost and SP's.

Oh, and for all you who think you should refuse offers of cash (like I thought at the beginning) - just take it. It's really a drop in the bucket to an established player. Endie, for example, is trying to go broke but failing miserably.  Most likely a month's worth of fun for you is a few minutes per day, at best, to the established player with access to resources that you will only learn about in time.

A million times this.

New player - "Sweet, I managed to kill a BS spawn, I'm 1.7m richer.  OMG so much money!"

Established player - "Oh look, I killed the officer/complex spawn and he dropped 1.7b worth of stuff for me to sell.  Cool." or "I made about 2 bil in profits this week on my production." or "I just scammed Joe-blow-idiot noobie out of a cool billion with an hours work." etc. etc.

Episode IV starts with a description of the other fronts as they developed.

Hrm. Ok I'll rethink my "Thanks, but really I want to earn my way..." response.

Earn your way right to the point where you need to buy the Tier 2 training skills, then beg ;)

"Earning you way" in EVE is a sure fire way to hate yourself and the game. The difference between having to scrape by for every 10k ISK during that first month compared to an established player just throwing you a few million or whatever is astronomical.

The True Newbie experience is much better then it was way back when, but it still sucks a whole bunch.

I don't know... I have been in a week and doing the newbie Epic story Arc and I have 10 million ISK and 2 fully kitted out Destroyers + 3 or 4 Frigates.  I think the newbie experience now certainly doesnt present a problem with money.

Congratulations, in one week you have 10 minutes' worth of cash an experienced 0.0 player can make in 0.0 even if she isn't sophisticated about it.


Not to poop on your achievement, but really EVE doesn't shine for its epic story arcs (not the ones the developers put in) (leaving aside the developers commanding enemy cap fleets  :awesome_for_real:). 

I expect you would have more fun in one evening's roaming gang under a good FC than you've had all week in your story arc.  That said, they do have some value for getting you used to the interface. Once you feel comfortable with it, take a few (ten) million from someone and get thee to Delve.

Cruiser skillbook 400k
Cruiser will cost you 3m ish probably.
Battlecrusier skillbook 1m
A battlecruiser about 30m
Battleship skillbook 3.6m

So thats another 28m to make before you can even think about buying a battleship, not at all considering all the fittings, insurance and skillbooks to use your fittings.  :oh_i_see:  Your certainly doing well but if veteran player offers you isk, take it, no reason not to.  10m is probably 10 minutes worth of work for an established/experianced player.

I dont disagree... what I have is a pittance.  But I am not scraping by for money just yet.  I dont feel poor like I did in Aion, WoW, EQ2, etc etc.

I am really just making sure I understand game mechanics before I jump into a PvP corp.  I would love to join LOVEU but am wary about being in Aussie timezone and having nobody to blow shit up with.  I am not a solo player of MMOs, and always prefer to run with a pack.

Also Comstr's poster about one person making a difference.  That's the stuff that sells this game.

Best money in Ratting is to have a full dps fit battleship (typically an apocalypse class ship) that doesn't loot, doesn't salavage, just blows crap up. But you need a couple of months to gather the relevant skills. If you get in a system with enough belts and without too many other ratters, that will turn over 30M an hour.

Next best money ratting is to be following the fully dps fit battleship around in a smaller ship, salvaging the wrecks. You'll make around 70% of whatever the ratter makes by salvaging and looting his wrecks. Thing is, you can do this after two weeks tops.

Missioning is a little better than ratting, but you are in NPC space, so occasionally you need to dock up and shelter from fake Russians raiding our space. Plus you need to build standings and you'll want to fly something you can mix up damage and tank according to want you are fighting (ie. You'll want a Raven)

BS? Hell I'm looking to get a Battlecruiser and it''s about 30+M without skills or fittings. I will be begging. Figure it's more tax for the corp god and I have frigates for the throne...

I had a bit over 15$ in my paypal account.


I hate you people.


edit: Install complete.

Of course getting a handout gets you ahead. No question about it. Take it, it will make your stay that more pleasurable.

But by all means, do the newbie story arc, it's great. It gives you the basics to you to make your own fortune in Eve and write your own tale because in the end it's you, a spaceship and whatever you decide to make of the empty space that lies before you.

All these great null sec moguls tell you the greater excitement lies within the depths of their conquered territories and their great wars. And they are right, it's on the right side of awesome. If you get a chance like the one this thread offers: mentored end game access, near infinite resources, experienced guiding. Take it, taste it, it's a rare good and whatever you end up doing later, it will give you invaluable experience.

Yet there are other ways to play this game.
Truth is, most Eve players don't ever venture into the savage wilds, they stay within the borders of the known world and PVE.

Hah, you say, why would I PVE when I can be a newbie in a rifter tackling a dieing titan that sinks the moral of my enemy below quitting point and thus sees me gaining an epeen rivalling said titan.
Well there is none, of course, you should be enjoying your PVP exploits.

But there is something else in Eve, dwarfing the null sec player base.

It's called PVE.

There is market PVE, which I don't know anything about. It's what the clever and subsequently rich do. Some of our f13 posters are masters of it. Maybe they can share some of their excitement about it.

But that's just the PVE for smart people. There is also PVE for people like me, who aren't really cut out to be e-warriors but do enjoy some space pew-pew against unreal targets of various programmed intelligence.

There are the regular missions which are a certain income once you do level 4's.
You can do exploration encounters, which require some effort to find and are a total lottery but can make you a lot of money.
There are also cosmos missions which you can only do once but boost your standings quite a lot.
Wormhole spaces which are great fun and quite profitable but have some of the hardest PVE enemies in the game.
And of course epic arcs which are long storyline missions who pay quite well but require a certain standing.

70% and more of Eve players are enjoying PVE content and don't bother with null sec warfare. While the great wars are something you'd really want to see. There is also a whole lot going on in the civilised part of the galaxy for people who aren't PVP oriented.

Heh. ISK PLZ?

Don't be confused, there is no market PVE in Eve. All market interactions in Eve are the distilled purist form of PvP.

Every time you sell or buy you are doing battle and there is a winner and a loser.  That's why the market system in Eve is so robust and so many people never undock from Jita 4-4.

Okay, fine, I threw twenty bucks down a hole and will never see it again.

So someone bring me up to speed.  Are these new cruisers worth a damn?  I have sufficient skills to start training into the Legion and Proteus, and sufficient savings to buy one, though it'll be a painful dent.  These are the skills I'm rocking at the moment:


I was getting pretty cozy up to battleships and was starting to branch out into more esoteric ship roles like covert ops and probing and command modules when I quit last, and was running level 3 missions.  I wanted in on the Amarr faction PvP but never got around to it.  Don't even know if that's still going on.

I'm still trying to tally my fleet, as I'm a bit fuzzy on what I owned.  Ships that I know I own are a Harbinger, Arbitrator, Dominix, Armageddon, Retribution, Anathema, a couple Punishers, and that anniversary Apotheosis shuttle.  And I don't remember how to fight in any of them worth even a teensy damn.  Definitely gonna buy insurance before undocking, as I'm very liable to get my ship blown out from under me in under an hour.  And that's in highsec.

Short answer: Just buy a zealot or an arazu.

Long answer: The t3 cruisers can do some cool shit, like be immune to bubbles and give out battlecruiser fleet bonii while still being somewhat effective combat ships.  However, for the most part, they aren't worth it unless you're just hemorrhaging cash, because they certainly aren't good enough to justify the expense except in a few niche roles. If you really want to fly something expensive and great, train up minmatar cruiser 5 to go along with that gallente cruiser 5 and fly a cynabal.  Post-dominion the cynabal is a vagabond on steroids that just did a massive line of blow off a very attractive hookers ass, and the vagabond was already not to be fucked with.

Anyone wanting in on this, and who is likely to be accepted, should stop shilly-shallying in empire and get their ass to Mars avec toute vitesse because I'm running convoys to the front lines of our new warzone on Saturday (nobody be dumb enough to post times or places ffs).

This is your chance to have fleet and gang PvP on tap from the start.  Make sure you have the skill Propulsion Jamming trained to 1 and your racial frigate skill (eg Amarr Frigate, Minmatar Frigate etc...) trained to 3.  Anything else is a bonus.  We'll get you free tackling frigates sorted out.  Just remember to slap this on the side:

(http://endie.net/img/eve/tackling.jpg)

I made a spreadsheet tonight.  I feel dirty.

Signed up for pew pews.  :grin:

Anyone still looking for a newbie to recruit/throw money at? Toss me a buddy invite. I've wanted to try Eve for a while, and I'm finally burnt out on WoW enough to give it a proper shot.

You need to PM one of the people who are playing and give them your email address for this to happen.

Ok, got my buddy invite. Is Steam still the cheapest place to purchase, or did that sale end?

If you follow the link in Nerf's sig you can get pretty good prices, that's where I buy mine.

So, looks like I'm going to join up with these guys. Poor bastards....

I'm going to resub  :awesome_for_real: .  Tiracar is the character.  I already tried this once but never got the chance to do anything fun.  Perhaps this time will be different.

I forgot all about buddy invites. You get 21 days free play (and if you eventually buy a subscription, the person who gave you the invite gets some free time added to their account too).

So anyone who wants a buddy invite should PM an active player, like me.

With LoveU/Goonswarm, can you bring one toon in and leave others in other carebear corps or is it all or nothing?

Everyone uses alts for empire stuff.

Anyone able to send this evetrial+ to the email in my profile? I'll update this post once I receive a referral

edit: done, thanks Palmer.

Got started playing earlier this evening, still going through the numerous combat tutorials. Should I bother with the Industry, Business, and Exploration ones before heading out to 0.0?

I'm also following the training guide (http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Recommended_Skill_Training_Guide) on the wiki; should I stick to that?

Your e-mail is hidden in your profile. Send me a PM.

Doh, thought it was only from public viewers, not members. My bad. PM sent and editing first post.

OK, I'm down for being part of the many, the barely competent, the tacklers.

I'm very tempted to bring my Gallente Inty/'dictor/BC pilot over - is there much action for Aussies or is it outside our TZ?

PM me your e-mail if you need a buddy pass code, I can set you up.

This is the pivotal time. If you manage to get that one, sweet tackle that causes the death of a ship 100X the value of your Rifter, it could be curtains. I went from that, to now being the owner of 3 accounts.

Being an Aussie as well, I am hoping there is some action, since I have already signed up.

So I've logged on for the first time in almost a year.  I have 100 mil ISK, 2.5 mil skill points, and an omen.  Tell me where to go, and what channel to join.  I've forgotten everything.  (I'm good at obliterating brain cells)

(this was a drunk post.  I now have figured out how to join the f13 channel and apply in game through the mystical art of reading comprehension)

This episode of the (vast) history of the Great South War should always have been a blog post.  I've moved it here - http://www.endie.net/wordpress/?p=23 - and updated it.

To the new guys that have been accepted, I am making a carrier jump tonight from empire to Delve. Feel free to PM me ship requests and I'll hook ya up. I can fit some cruisers and frigs, hell I'll even buy em and fit em for ya. Yeah, I'm a pretty sweet dude.

More aussies is very good. LOVEU gets quiet around 4-6pm (AEST), myself and maybe a couple of others online. But delve is still busy (goonfleet has an anzac squad) so stuff is always happening.

When I started way back, I mined till my eyes bled to earn the 150M isk to buy a megathron. I was using a cruiser with 5 mining lasers, when the cargo hold was full (after about 5 mins) I would warp back to the station, empty hold, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat ad nauseum. No one should ever experience that sort of grind (except Koreans because they're hardcore).

So anyone starting out I want to give you money, as does Slayer. We want you to experience the fun stuff and we want you to do that as soon as possible. Please to be not worrying about your ships and mods and your isk.

You see, Providence and CVA are kind of like the Fins in 1941...

I'm willing to give it a third try if you still need more cannon fodder.  Playing solo while running missions in Empire did indeed suck.

Somewhat hilariously, IT has timed their one and only station to come out in Aussie Prime time this weekend.

Also CCP continued a fine tradition and a bug allowed IT to shoot that supposed-to-be-invulnerable STOP's until a GM arrived and put a stop to it. 

1940, but basically yes. Strong fortifications and a well-chosen battlefield coupled with the motivation of defending their own ground and superior leadership.

  Figuring that if my kitchen renovations have waited this long, why not another six months, I signed up for the 14 day trial, and I've spent the last few days wandering around.  My main achievement thus far has been buying a frigate and laz0rz and flying happily into battle, only to realize that "requires frequency crystals" means "REQUIRES frequency crystals".  However, I did escape, so when I said "main achievement", I wasn't even being sarcastic, I quite enjoyed the whole experience.   :awesome_for_real:

  At any rate, figuring out fitting by trial and error is amusing and all, but I wanna see some war (even if only from my pod) and I'm totally brainwashed into goons = good guys (Endie = Sun Myung Moon afaict).  Soooo, given that I have insufficient postage (ho!) for LOVEU, are there other corps that will get me into the fight on the right side?  I'm reasonably laidback, so I'll do the newb hazing as needed, but ... well, GS does have something of a rep for scamming, and while I'm wanna be a part of GS, I'd rather my part not be strictly financial...  :ye_gods:

  Also, I'll be upping my trial account to a paid sub shortly, if someone wants the free month (or however that works), let me know, ingame name is Thumping.

Spy.

Yep, as an Aussie, so far there has been enough happening in my timezone to make the choice to try LOVEU a good choice.  There are always a few LOVEU members on (to answer my nub questions) and GF is always happening.

  Man, you goons are locked up tighter than a drum!  I'm gonna report to my BoB overlords that spies aren't allowed in the goons and go back to playing WoW...

No, I meant what I said. You'll really not get in now or in the future. The point is to play with f13 posters who share that culture. Not people who are prepared to put in the hard work of posting a lot for several months so they can join the (currently) winning side.

Nor spies.

It would be nice to join in with you guys tonight.  I am very good at dying a lot in EvE.

Will my application get processed in time ?

Would this be a good place to insert a facepalm?

Yes, but only because you can't slap people through the internet yet  :oh_i_see:

  That's cool, I understand.  My post may have come across as disingenuously sycophantic but my question was (intended to be) genuine: given that I can't join LOVEU, suggestions on other corps to join?

Well if you are a real newbie, Eve University is still around i believe. You can get some good training in there.

If you're serious about joining a forum just to join an Eve corp, Goonswarm's primary recruiting thread is here. They also require you to be active on their boards for a few months, but at least there's many people who do that specifically to join the 'winning side' (note, I can't see the Goons holding together for longer than a few more weeks before dissolving into anarchy for grins)

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3210674

My understanding's that the godless russkies are a formidable force, maybe that'll give the goons something to stay focused on for the near future.  But yeah, once the game's run out of big windmills to go after, something awful's going to happen.   :oh_i_see:

IT Alliance are our current targets.  That's big enough to chew on for now.

We've had two probing, diversionary attacks on our southern flank in the last month, but if AAA get motivated we can expect some sort of more serious conflict in Querious in the east at some point.  Failing that we would be delighted to go north and help the NC against Tri, ROL and their bloc if requested, and if the Fountain situation is stabilised one way or the other.

At the moment we've got four big fleet ops advertised for Fountain and I've just finished running a "fun" op (it wasn't much fun for us but the various huge gangs we kept bumping into enjoyed it), which was one of five going on at that very moment according to the fleet finder.  There's a lot to do with hostiles on our northern and eastern borders.

...disappointed I missed it.  I guess the answer to my previous question was no then.


Having got past the bit where you collectively wag your fingers at Thump...

..perhaps ...
.....I may reiterate...



 :dead_horse: ??

Wow, that's a great spy cover, making an account years before the corporation existed.

Maybe even... too great.   :tinfoil:

Look at the creation dates.  Obviously, it's one of Endie's alts and he is just trying to create a cover for it.

Yes, you are beating a dead horse.  Go try to infiltrate battlestars, they'll take anyone.

Didn't Schild wipe the user list once? (Presumably November 8 2005).

Edit - as my own join date is 2004, I guess not. I'm saying Endie alt.

Just to make it clear, the offer of a buddy code and free game time applies to anyone, spy, join4guild person or long-time poster. Just PM me with your e-mail - as discussed, you can make a gmail account if you don't want to share your real e-mail.

I agree that it's a startling coincidence, but that one's not me.  Schild would mock me.

Can you get more than 1 free trial over the years with the same email address?

I ask since I have played half way through the tutorial easily 4 times and would likely be reusing an address I've already done a trial with.
You'd think that would be enough of a sign, but you folks really know how to make this game sound interesting... or successfully point out that I was doing it wrong every other time.

Just use a disposable e-mail account.

Edit: Give it to me first for a 21-day trial. Too many scrubs not taking advantage of the buddy program.

Not sure why they are hatin' on ya man. Get in game and hop on the f13 chat channel and hang at least.

This (hugely lengthy) history of the Great Eve War should have been a blog post.  It's been moved here: http://www.endie.net/wordpress/?p=34

In the 2nd great war I was sitting in 6-24 and an allied cruiser was sitting outside the shields. He didn't have the password but 6-24 was dorment and seemed asleep. I think he blue was afk and just orbiting the guns like a cleaner fish orbits around the teeth of a shark.

BoB warped in a fleet of recons and long range sniper hac's in to get an easy kill. 6-24 had no gunners, but we all watched astonished as it immediately targeted the hostile recon ships and blew them up quicker than the enemy fleet could lock the lone blue AFK cruiser.  Eventually the few remaining ships of the BoB fleet withdrew, leaving a trail of shattered and wrecked ships behind them.


Only then, with the enemies defeated, did 6-24 pod the blue AFK cruiser. Not only was that thing evil, it had a sense of humour.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18473.0

From the eve forum, on the importance of not staying in Empire.

I got an email for a five day free activation anytime from now until the end of the year. If you resub during it, you get first three months for 9.95 each.

For those of the Voyager I & II generation who like pretty fly-bys of planets, here is a tour of some of the new planets from the Dominion release in an official CCP video: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/videos/gameID/14/videoId/1578

Ahh 6-24. I actually made a video that showed it in action. Its at 2:45 in this. That was when it had just awoken and people had nievely named it "Witness the awsome firepower of this fully armed and operational battlestation" What you are seeing there is it shooting carriers that are trying to repair its shields back to strenght. Of course people had to try and repair the the carrier which meant that 6-24 turned its rage on them for denying it its kill. They eventually had to spider tank each other just to repair that bloody thing.  :awesome_for_real:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEQcSCtgU4k

That's gorgeous. I did a few flybys of planets like those last night when I bought my gift ship in from empire.

That said, Eve needs some orbitals now.

5 buck Eve subs are back! http://store.steampowered.com/app/8500/

Time for a few months on my mains at $5 a pop and some 51-day jihad alts!

You can use this for your main?  How do you do that?

The accounts come with two months worth of PLEXes, you just give them to your main instead of using them on the new account.

so if I buy one of these, where do I find the plex?  In other words, don't you have to login the game to sell a plex? 

Could you enlighten the masses about how to use the Steam version to gather $5 PLEX codes?  That's something of a fair l'il bit of interest to me.

[EDIT: Okay, I threw five bucks at the problem to solve it myself, and now understand Nerf's scam.  Here's the deal:]

Step 1: Have an active EVE account.
Step 2: Make a free 'Buddy' account with 21 days of playtime, registered under a different mail address.
Step 3: Buy EVE on Steam for $5.
Step 4: Right-click on EVE in your game listing in Steam, select Properties.  You'll see a window with a note saying that you need an account.
Step 5: Click on the 'Go to account website' button.
Step 6: The EVE website will ask whether you want to make a new account (you don't), or add the thirty days of play to an existing trial account (you do).
Step 7: Put in the username and password of the buddy account from step 2.
Step 8: 30 days playtime will be added to the buddy account.  In addition, since the buddy account is now a 'paying' account, you get 30 days added to the main account, too.
Step 9: (Optional) Use the 51 days to train the buddy account up as high as you can in some useful trade.
Step 10: (Optional) Pay $20 to transfer the buddy character into your main account when the 51 days are up.
Step 10a: (Other optional) Sell the buddy character to someone else for in-game cash.

So in the end here, $25 gets you an extra month of playtime on your main account, and a decently-trained alt who can be off doing something money-making like research while your main character pew-pews.  Not a bad bargain.  Alternately, if you don't give a damn about having a research mule making you money, you can just take the month of playtime for $5 and consider yourself ahead on the bargain.

We spent a few hours in highsec tonight.

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/441204 - This is a pricy loss for the target, but we just did it for fun after...

https://killboard.goonfleet.com/km/441177 - This made us more money each than if we'd just spent the entire time with every single one of us doing PvE.

Now we have to go try and win a war  :awesome_for_real:

For those interested in the scale of ths ships we fly, here is a short video:

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

It starts off with rifters and kestrels, which newbies fly.  They're the sive of large houses.  Then through cruisers up to vast battleships that dwarf tower-blocks.

I hope that a spin-off of incarna is the ability to walk through your ship some time.

Gods you people are evil. Can you set a clone out there or is it travel by suicide?

You can podjump or fly manually if you want to bring a few things with you. In the latter case you need a scout though, but it's easy and only a handful of jumps from Empire using bridges.

Jumpclone installations also cost nothing if you want to save time travelling in the future.

that was thoroughly awesome  :awesome_for_real:

Though there rarely any need to bring stuff with you.

Delve is as well stocked any secondary market hub, and either you are a new player who doesn't own anything worth hauling, or you are a vet who can afford to pay a hauler.

How quickly things change.

Still, I intend to give Eve a try at some point.. so once the dust has settled and you are not in "lockdown for war" maybe make a recruitment thread with the new reality.

There, fixed.

Well, we're going to be space-poor pvping types now, but I would suggest to the rest of the corp that now is a very good time to be more liberal in accepting F13 posters again.  After all, we're no longer fighting The Great Struggle, and spies don't matter a fuck when we hold no sov!

not sure if the offer still stands, but if somebody has a buddy trial I'd love to give EVE a serious shot.

  Woo, I knew there was a reason I was still lurking this thread!

  If my still super-low post count qualifies me, I'm interested.  I've been playing since last December, and have most recently been dividing my time between doing level 4s while bored out of my tree and doing level 4s while losing drakes, in about equal proportions.

I'm also inclined to say welcome aboard more freely now, but that's not official policy yet.  I'll have a word with the important folks.

You have six posts in two months and every single one is in this thread.  I wouldn't hold my breath.

  lol, hopes stymied again!  FWIW, I read the war thread incessantly, I'm just not a forum-posting kind of guy.  But I understand that the focus is F13, and just reading does not an F13-er make.  Not to worry, thanks anyway.  :)

Funny you say that. I got the game and jumped into the F13 channel and the first thing somebody said was "well it would be kind of dumb if you were a spy ..."

And boy did I love saying it.  :grin:

Wait, we are allowed to talk in the f13 channel?

Why wouldn't you be allowed to talk in the F13 channel?

I think he is unironically saying noone talks there.

Maybe he should just grow a pair and join us :)

It's probably more fun to shoot us anyway, so just move near Syndicate and remain unaligned!

Indeed I was.

Maybe they'll drop and I'll join you guys again. It depends on where you go next. The big fleet fights thing never was my cup of tea.