F13 in EvE: Band of Brothers headshotted! Come help us in Delve!

[Endie]

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

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


Why play Eve with F13?



Story - Everyone in Eve is in one world.  Resources are scarce.  Opposing sides truly detest each other.  If you want a game where the ongoing, player-created storyline is vibrant enough to repeatedly make it into the New York Times then this is the only MMO in town.  CCP have set up a sandbox game with meaningful PvP in a world with up to 40,000 occupants at a time.

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

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



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

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

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

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

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


What does it cost?

It costs nothing to try out Eve-Online.  You can download a free trial client from here http://www.eve-online.com/download/ .  This gives you fourteen days to try out the game and see whether it is for you.  In that time you can join up with us in 0.0 and get yourself into fights.  If you're a newbee, we'll set someone to look after you and answer your questions, you can tag along with us for the big fights, and generally experience neophyte bliss.


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



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

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


Do I have to PvP?

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



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


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

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

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

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

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


What Do F13 Want From Me?

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

Download the client, create a character (use this guide to avoid self-gimpage) and join the F13 channel in-game.  Scream for help there, and post who you are here if you like.



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

[FatuousTwat]

...

[Endie]

...

Yeah, cheers for living up to your name.

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

[Slayerik]

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

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

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

[JWIV]

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

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

[Endie]

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

Empire Wars

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

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

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


Aegis Militia - Our First Alliance

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

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

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

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


The Catch Deployment

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


Vanguard

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

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

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


Goonfleet

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

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

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

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

[Draegan]

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

[Predator Irl]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

[Nebu]

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



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

[lamaros]

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

I do commend Endie's efforts though.

[Endie]

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

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

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

[Faust]

/de-lurk

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

Eve for Me

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

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

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

F13 for me

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

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

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


/lurk
 

[tazelbain]

Endies been talking about this for a while.

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

[Soln]

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

examples/details?

[schild]

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

[Brogarn]

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

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

[Valmorian]

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

[Slayerik]

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

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

[Phildo]

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

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

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

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

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

[Endie]

Endies been talking about this for a while.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So logistics are much improved for us, now!

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

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

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

examples/details?

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

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

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

[Velorath]

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

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

[Phildo]

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

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

[fuser]

I gotta say you guys are great at helping out. I was perusing the goonswarm wiki info last time out, READ IT.. IT HELPS!

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

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

[Kirth]

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

[Ghambit]

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

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

[Draegan]

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

Nice analogy.

[Endie]

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

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

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

[FatuousTwat]

...

Yeah, cheers for living up to your name.

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

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

[Predator Irl]

You don't mention how hard it is to find a corp that is half decent at pvp (no I didn't play with f13 or BAT).

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

[Comstar]

Damm, Endie you're persuasive.

Couple of questions:

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

Can you point out where you guys are based on the influence map? Is that part near Etheral Dawn/Interpid Crossing/KIA?

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

[TripleDES]

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

[Endie]

Damm, Endie you're persuasive.

Couple of questions:

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

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

Can you point out where you guys are based on the influence map? Is that part near Etheral Dawn/Interpid Crossing/KIA?

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

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

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

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

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

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

[TripleDES]

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

[Miasma]

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