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July 19, 2025, 11:49:22 PM

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Join f13 in Eve

Watch the latest trailer for the new expansion here.

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. Yes, we're an alliance that makes its own animated features (and books, songs and videos). It's no big deal.

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.

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. 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).

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. 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. 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. 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 or from Steam (preferable if you have it). Steam currently has a 4.99 offer for the game.

More Links:

The campaign for Querious

Little Bees - Goonswarm cultural victory

Stahlregen's Five virtues of a successful goon

The Goonfleet Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Poluketes' History of the Great War (in the style of a Mogul text)

The story of how we killed Bob, took Delve and lived happily ever after.

Goodbye To All That - 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)

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.

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?

Quote from: kondratti on November 29, 2009, 01:47:47 PM

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.

Quote from: kondratti on November 29, 2009, 01:47:47 PM

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

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.

Quote from: kondratti on November 29, 2009, 01:40:24 PM

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

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 Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

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?

Quote from: Draegan on November 29, 2009, 03:55:33 PM

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.

Quote from: tgr on November 29, 2009, 04:32:30 PM

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.

Quote from: palmer_eldritch on November 29, 2009, 04:51:40 PM

our corp is very chill and full of nice people and me

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 Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

). 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. Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

I didn't get passed the first few sentences.

Quote from: Gets on November 29, 2009, 01:13:02 PM

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?