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

[NiX]

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

--Dave

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

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

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

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

[eldaec]

It's incredible how the 100k players can generate more drama than 20M WoW players combined

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

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

Maybe the price of herbs might shift a little.

[ClydeJr]

I'm a regular on ars, but their corp sounds way too carebearish to me.

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

[Endie]

I'm a regular on ars, but their corp sounds way too carebearish to me.

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

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

[Slayerik]

SPY!!!!

[Soln]

HAI GUYS   


Edit: sent PM to Endie

[Sir T]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will edit in some high quality video links earlier.

[MahrinSkel]

Here's a link to a very old video (2006) for the closing stage of Operation Prohibition.  It's big (about 240MB), so here's a lower quality YouTube of it, which unfortunately chops off the last minute or so and is so low-res you would have to really know Eve already to understand what you're seeing (a sped up version of a couple dozen engagements spread over three hours).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Dave

EDIT: Fixed the first link

[Phildo]

Nice story, Mahrin!

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

[Fordel]

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

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

[Endie]

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

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

[Fordel]

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

[Gets]

Crossposting to inform of the Frigate Club Birthday event open to all players who frequent this board and want to play EVE. If you've been on previous Frigate Club ops you know what to expect. If you haven't then you've missed some pretty good times. Don't make that mistake this year!

[eldaec]

f13s 1000th ship kill for the swarm:

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

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

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


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

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

[Slayerik]

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

[Sir T]

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

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

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

[Hoth]

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

[Endie]

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

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

[Hoth]

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

[Phildo]

You'd be wrong.  Pay up.

[MahrinSkel]

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

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

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

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

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

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

--Dave

[Jayce]

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

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

[apocrypha]

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

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

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

[Endie]

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

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

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

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

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

[Jayce]

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

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

[Endie]

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

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

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

[trias_e]

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

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

[Nevermore]

Re: new thread title

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

[Raging Turtle]

Old hand Chrome Coyote requesting details on that headshot!

What happened??

[Endie]

Old hand Chrome Coyote requesting details on that headshot!

What happened??

It starts on page 108 of the War thread.  For the casual observer, that page number should give you a clue to the length of time this war has gone on for.

[Fordel]

It is truly internet history. 

[eldaec]

Old hand Chrome Coyote requesting details on that headshot!

What happened??

SPY!!!

No really, that's what happened

[nizar]

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

[WayAbvPar]

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

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

[nizar]

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

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

Thanks for the help!