Factional warfare - empyrean age and all that – an overview

[Phildo]

We're in the process of... waiting for the KB software to be updated accordingly.  It's a pain.

[ajax34i]

CSM Rep hits max rank in the Amarr Militia in 6 days, heh.

[SillyFish]

CSM Rep hits max rank in the Amarr Militia in 6 days, heh.

Kills 0.

[Phildo]

At least it got her out of the noob corp after five years.

[Gets]

"Due to all the promotions, my Amarr standing raised from 0.55 to 7.16."

GIEV! NAO!

Edit: On a serious note you can get above 8.0 standing doing all the Cosmos missions though, but faction standing doesn't really matter much, even though it feels slightly iffy to get it so easily now. Once you stop being able to dock in stations you have bad standing with, then it will matter. I'm not that scared of the enemy NPC navies.

Edit2: On a much less serious note - did achieving max rank get him a cool mount and a nice sword?

[lac]

Ah factional warfare!
Bravely I signed up with a fresh 820k skillpoint amarr alt, took my first mission and proceeded to trek the 15 low sec jumps to the  backwater minmatar system where I was supposed to kill some haulers.
Low sec was quite crowded with the tell-tale beacons signifying somebody was doing another fw mission in most of those systems and everything between 30 man fleets and solo pwnmobiles camping the gates. Strangely enough people signed up on the minmatar side didn't show as war targets on my overview but since this was low-sec anyway everyone was to be considered the enemy.
I arrived at my mission system, jumped to the bookmark and a beacon broadcasted my mission area in local. Promptly I was jumped by 3 minmatar in amarrian ships, having somewhat suspected this might happen I was aligned and jumped swiftly around the system while they tried to track me down. Finally I docked at a nearby station where I waited a while for the evil-doers to get bored.
After walking the dog, the minmatar scum had vanished and I proceeded to take out the minmatar frig npc's in the complex. It was about as hard as the toughest level 1 missions, requiring my fresh alt to jump out on occasion to rep up my punisher a bit. A notable exception was a 'chief minmatar something' that flew an assault frig and took me about 15 minutes and a lot of cap juggling to take out.
After killing him no npc's were left on my overview and I was a bit at a loss on what to do next, there were no haulers to be seen anywhere and I was still missioning at a beacon in low sec. I proceeded to pop some building and when approaching one I noticed a mastodon that wasn't on my overview. Apparently faction minmatar haulers didn't show up  on my pre-empyrean age overview settings...
Overall it was rather challenging pve to do with a newbie character. Coupled with a constant danger of getting pvp-pwnd it made for a rather entertaining mission.

[Yoru]

New Trailer out and.. well.. 

[Viin]

You gonna do some FW with us Yoru?

[Yoru]

It's gonna be a while before I get a chance to come back to EVE.

Once I stop traveling so damn much, though, then it's quite likely.

[Phildo]

Samson engages the Minmatar militia, lives (Irek does not):

In a fit of PvP boredom, I decided to head out to Amarr and link up with the militia using Irek as a liaison to get into the gang.  Later, Bastables and Miss Skripo from AM also joined me.  Anyway, we set out for Huola and later Kourmonen, to free them from the Minmatar scum.  Well, we start off by absolutely kicking their asses in three small skirmishes in Huola during which Jonny Damodred of Stimulus is taunting us in local.   He was flying a stabber so not really worth going out of our way to kill, but it would have been nice.  There were some excellent kills, but I only managed to get on five due to my having to manage gate sentry aggro and having capacitor issues.

CVA had a nice heavy four-man gang in the area with us, although there was some confusion over standings and one of their Brutixes was repeatedly targeted by the FC.  Furthermore, one of my fleet members was in Gunship Diplomacy, a corp that is KOS to CVA (and AM).

We moved to Kourmonen and some of the fleet moved on to Kamela while the rest of us camped the gate.  As we trickled into Kamela a few reds began to harry us at the gate and popped a few friendly frigates before the fleet warped back in.  In foolish haste I found myself 40km off the gate surrounded by reds as I had attempted to chase and tackle a rapier that I had been 15km away from before he hit his MWD.  My overview lit up red but I was miraculously able to get out of the fight.  I return to find our fleet being picked apart by coordinated sniper fire from several Outbreak ships.  Yeah, Outbreak showed up to help the Minmatar along with Ushra'Khan and all the rest.  I got out again sensing doom although we only lost about ten of our 30 ships.  Irek died.  So did Miss Skripo.  Bastables had logged by this point, lucky bastard.

As I'm writing this I'm sitting in the station in Amarr considering myself lucky to have gotten my ship out alive and learned a lot from the exprience.  I've also lost 2 whole points of sec status that I need to rat back tomorrow.  Still, I lived and got one some good KMs.

My page
Amarr Militia KB

[dwindlehop]

Impressions from the Minmatar side:

Militia chat is not quite as organized as a real alliance, but maybe some day it will be. For now, you get some reports of enemy movements, but they frequently neglect numbers and ship types. There have been fleets to join the few times I logged in this weekend, but I have yet to go that route.

There are way more neutrals in contested space than I would have expected. My only loss so far was to red blinkies in an outpost. A Sac and Vaga were harassing some folks in a plex so I zoomed in with my Cane, but my client locked up shortly after we exchanged points. By the time I logged back in I was in structure. Metropolis at least has a ton of neutrals, they outnumbered the militia (both friendly and enemy), though the friendlies were probably mostly docked or in fleets.

I played footsie with a Amarr militia  Malediction while I was in a Thrasher. We scanned each other and bounced around a bit in system. Finally, I found him at a gate but he failed to pop with the first volley and MWDed out of range of the second. Oddly he spent so long messing around at >150km that I deagressed and followed him back through the gate, but I couldn't get a lock in time.

Some systems only have a control bunker beacon, and some systems have a ton of beacons. I don't quite get why the VP beacons aren't in every system.

Time to work some contacts and get intel from the cool kids, I think.

[dwindlehop]

Almost forgot: this morning in militia chat some were desperately seeking anyone with points to help them. 

[Viin]

Almost forgot: this morning in militia chat some were desperately seeking anyone with points to help them. 

I've noticed that a lot too. I think a lot of folks are trying to defend/capture complexes but don't know how to shoot PCs and aren't fitted for it. So you have two frigs from opposite sides just sitting there looking at each other.

[nurtsi]

I've flown around a bit with Gallente Militia in my alt. There's a few good FCs (some are ex-SMASH, really old players) and then there's some crappy FCs. There's several fleets going on all the time, but usually one 'main' fleet. So far I've only been fighting against the Caldari (or squids as we call them). There's been some really cool fights, I experienced my first big ass fleet battle in the militia. We had around a hundred ships on each side clash on the frontlines. The lag was absolute horrible and my client was desynched for the whole engaged, we won, but I woke up in my clone afterwards.

In another fleet engaged we had around 50 ships sitting on a gate and around 80 squids on the other side. The standoff lasted for some time as neither fleet would jump through to the other (had a good FC there explaining the impatient people that the first guy who makes a mistake will have his fleet butchered). Surely enough, some time after that the squids got bored and jumped in on us with superior numbers. Unfortunately for them, the lag/grid loading/lack of discipline caused them to start uncloaking one by one and we could just slaughter them and they lost the advantage of their superior numbers.

As someone mentioned, there's a shitload of neutrals in the low sec systems as well. These guys are mostly pirates and scavengers. Once a fleet battle goes down the vultures appear quickly and start scavenging the wrecks. The pirates just pick off any stragglers. Although last night we had a four-way battle at a station with two pirate gangs, squids, and us. Everybody was shooting at everybody so it was pretty difficult to figure out what was going on sometimes. On top of that there were four pirate carriers in the system pissing about with their fighters. Unfortunately we couldn't muster enough forces to take them down.

Finally a tip for you traders out there. Last week, the Gallente militia killed 40b worth of stuff. That's a lot of hardware. I'm guessing other militias are doing the same. So:

1. Find the main staging system of a militia.
2. Haul in loads of T1 ships and modules (basic stuff that most people use).
3. Profit!

[dwindlehop]

On a similar note, our CEO killed an Occator with >300m worth of crap and 3 WCS in lowsec. Rich haulers in lowsec were pretty unheard of until FW hit.

A lot of gates seemed to have neutral haulers waiting on them. It seems unlikely that they'll have anything in them, though, so I'm not sure what to do with that information.

[ajax34i]

They nerfed how fast people can acquire ranks (scroll to bottom).

[Krakrok]

As someone mentioned, there's a shitload of neutrals in the low sec systems as well. These guys are mostly pirates and scavengers. Once a fleet battle goes down the vultures appear quickly and start scavenging the wrecks. The pirates just pick off any stragglers. Although last night we had a four-way battle at a station with two pirate gangs, squids, and us. Everybody was shooting at everybody so it was pretty difficult to figure out what was going on sometimes. On top of that there were four pirate carriers in the system pissing about with their fighters. Unfortunately we couldn't muster enough forces to take them down.

Well that sounds fucking awesome. 

[Gets]

No one really bothered to mention anyone that the FW enemy can camp 0.5 systems without the navy doing much. As such Niarja has been the root of not just hauler tears now, but also that of autopiloting Amarr militia pilots. If you could power a propeller with whine from alliance chat right now, you'd be flying to Tokyo.

[Endie]

Can someone accept my alt's app, please?

[Viin]

Spy!

[FatuousTwat]

There's been some really cool fights, I experienced my first big ass fleet battle in the militia. We had around a hundred ships on each side clash on the frontlines. The lag was absolute horrible and my client was desynched for the whole engaged, we won, but I woke up in my clone afterwards.

Ok, I haven't really been following this as I've been taking a break from EVE, so please excuse my ignorance... Does this mean that finding PVP groups is now in EZmode?

[lac]

Yes.
If you join a faction it's pretty easy to get into a pvp gang. I hope it continues this way, for the time being Fw has attracted more people to low sec warfare than I thought possible.

[FatuousTwat]

Yes.
If you join a faction it's pretty easy to get into a pvp gang. I hope it continues this way, for the time being Fw has attracted more people to low sec warfare than I thought possible.

Shit.

This means I'm going to have to start playing again.

[Simond]

Someone figured out how to camp the Jita 4-4 undock as Gallente militia. 

[ajax34i]

And here we go, players testing just how advanced the NPC AI in EVE really is (which is...  not very).

[lac]

The gist of the matter seems to be that there is a cap to the number of navy groups deployed in a system - no more than 10 spawns will appear in a given system.

[FatuousTwat]

Can I just join a corp to join a militia? Or would I still have to grind to .5?

[Viin]

You can join our corp, F13, which is already in the amarr militia, or you can join one of the militias directly (basically, joining a NPC corp specifically setup for militia).

[Ninja Sportz]

i think im going to apply to F13 with my alt...where are the offices for F13?

[Viin]

Btw, if you join the militia directly you do have to have .5 before you join. If you join F13 the corp overall needs .5, which I believe it still does.

F13 main office for FW is in Zaimeth, at the moon 5 station. It's 3-4 jumps from there to the lowsec contested areas.

[FatuousTwat]

Cool, thanks.

I'm gonna bring Tel Aran down to Zaimeth and sign up.

I would sign up my main, but I don't want to be locked into a certain faction.