f13.net forums - Eve Online - Fly and Die with F13's own Bat Country In Eve Online [recruitment]

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June 20, 2025, 10:06:30 AM

we're back, baby

We are the Eve alliance who started off as lost, lonely newbies being bullied by the most powerful alliance in the game. And we are the people who became the most influential power in the game, who destroyed those enemies and who tainted their memory. And we are the alliance that exploded beautifully, survived, and are rapidly becoming a terrifying, griefing power again. We have been in the print media and online news too often to count, because we do stuff nobody else does. We are utterly unique in Eve. We can offer you the chance to do things, alongside other goons, that nobody else in Eve - nobody else in gaming - ever gets. Join Bat Country in Goonwaffe.

WHAT IS EVE ONLINE?

Eve is a game in which you can steal thousands of dollars' worth of someone's stuff and be applauded. It is a game in which you, a newbie, can scam a corporation of a hundred people out of everything they own. It is a game in which you, a newbie, can play a key part in destroying a ship that took years for someone to get into.

It is a game of wolves preying on sheep, and we will teach you how to hunt. It is a game where the smart make others into victims. It is a game where you, a newbie, will have nothing to lose and can rely not just on finding a target but on a furious storm of anger and rage when he discovers what has happened. It is a cruel game of fraud and theft, and yet most of the people playing don't realise this until it is too late, and you own all they have worked for.

Considering that it is a marketing trailer, the video CCP put out with their Dominion patch is surprisingly realistic in many ways. If you think that the audio is a little stylised, then watch this film, playing the real soundtrack of a classic Goonswarm operation (when we killed the first manned titan ever to die in the game), while at the same time accurately portraying the mighty myrmidons and glorious paladins of the swarm: role models that with time, thought and abundant calories, you can aspire to mimic.

JOIN F13 IN EVE

"Right, they've not scouted our fleet, and I don't want to scare them. Frigates from squad one only, jump into them and try to tackle something valuable. Shout when you have someone trapped and we'll come in after you."

Along with three others, you approach the stargate and activate the jump sequence. Within seconds, you are hurled light-years through space, the blue-white light of the system you left replaced by the angry glow of a supermassive red giant. Around you, hanging silently in space, are a dozen battleships and heavy assault cruisers, their targetting systems active and waiting to ambush the small force that just appeared on their local scanners.

You remain cloaked for a few seconds, and have enough time to look around you and select a target: an Absolution. Packed with electronics to enhance the performance of its fleet members, it is the terrifically expensive flagship of their fleet. Half a kilometre in length, it dwarfs your tiny frigate.

Selecting it on your targetting computer, you issue the command to orbit the Absolution. Instantly, your ship uncloaks and you engage your microwarp drives, hurling you forwards at almost 2 kilometres a second. At the same instant, you see your three gang-mates appeasr on scanners, each with another target in mind. One makes it only a few thousand metres before exploding in a fury of fire. Another misses the tackle and overshoots. But within seconds you can announce to your gang "one point on an Absolution".

The hostile fleet sense the trap: four frigates against a gang like this? Even Goons wouldn't be so reckless, unless...

The gate virtually erupts with the dazzling rays of jump-ins. Desperately, the enemy try to get a lock on you and your surviving friends, trying to scrape you off for long enough for them to flee, but you have their warp cores shut down and are circling them at dizzying speed. Your overview explodes with yellow and red warning data as a dozen ships train weapons on you, but they cannot even track you at these speeds: they might as well try to shoot a mosquito with a rifle. A lucky shot peels away your shields with a single impact, but the fight is already won: the hostiles are dying and you're looking for the next target.

WHY PLAY EVE?

The Eve universe contains over 350,000 people, all playing on the same server. No shards, just a single, massive universe where everyone can affect anyone else if they decide to do so. You can fight to take their space; you can grief them where they think they are safe; you can trade with them, hunt them down or compete with them in the marketplace. No other MMO comes close to the richness and complexity of Eve Online. Eve is too big for anyone to do everything.

Eve is probably the only MMO that has, over the years since its release, grown almost constantly. There is a reason for that: you cannot exhaust the content. A sandbox environment with a universe that the players themselves can shape and alter; conquerable space that engenders wars that last for years; grudges that outlast the alliances that spawned them; charismatic leaders followed or vilified by tens of thousands of people. This is the ultimate in player-generated content, and other MMO developers cry themselves to sleep about it.

CCP have a dream that Eve will be the ultimate sci-fi simulator, encompassing everything from the individual on the ground to the miles-long supercapital in the skies. There is a long way to go on that dream - we only just reached the planetary surface - but it's an enticing prospect.

There is no grinding. Skills train even if you are not online. You don't need money, as the alliance or Bat Country will give you what you need in order to fight. We have reimbursable operations every two days, minimum, and are trying hard to get our Euros involved. If you can't find a Goonswarm operation then do what I do and join an NC one: there are gangs pretty much running 23/7.

While player skill can matter a lot, Eve is not twitchy. Think of yourself as the captain of a ship: you order the crew where to go, who to shoot at, what ammo to use and so on, but it is the crew that actually carries out your orders. Eve works much the same way.

WHY JOIN BAT COUNTRY?

There are reasons that Eve is one of only two MMO subforums on f13 that have not ended up in the MMO graveyard subforum (the other is WoW): we are fun to play with and we do ambitious things.

We are a pvp-oriented corporation in an alliance that is almost always at war. It is also an alliance that shapes the entire gameworld just by existing: we are loathed or feared by most of the universe of Eve, and barely tolerated by many of the rest.

As an alliance, we have swapped from the strategic PvP of the last couple of years to small-gang warfare, skirmishing and griefing. In April, we moved to the south (along with our French allies) to attack a massive group of second- and third-tier alliances. Over many weeks, we made their lives miserable. Eventually, others tasted blood in the water and joined us and as a result something like six or seven thousand hostile players have had to leave their space, driven out by the sheer unpleasantness of having us as neighbours. All without mandatory operations or tedious sov warfare.

If you need funds for ships, or if you want to explore the industrial parts of the game, then we just acquired a new region of our own: Deklein. I did that. It's cool, don't thank me...

WHAT CAN I DO IN GOONSWARM?

As a big alliance with lots of willing leaders, Goonswarm has a wide variety of stuff to do:

TopGoon - Anyone can do this, from day one, and it is ideal if you have other stuff to so. You sit beside a titan, with headphones on waiting for someone to give the order to go. Meanwhile, a bunch of scouts are out finding you fights. When they find one, you get instantly bridged by the titan pilot to the targets, you fight, then you get back and wait for the next victim to be found. It absolutely terrorises the people who live near us, as every ship is a potential ball of 20 goons waiting to burst onto them.

Bomberwaffe - Goons are the best Stealth Bomber pilots in the game, thanks to Mister Vee. Last week, one hostile alliance - Atlas - turned up to fight someone aligned with us (PL). Atlas and friends sat on one side of a gate with 350 people, knowing that they would have the advantage if PL jumped into them. So 20-odd Goons took on the 350 Atlas pilots, killed about one hundred of them with only a single loss, and drove them through to get slaughtered by PL. Evem the Goon that we lost got 94 kills.

Black Ops - One for the more experienced PvPer: these small-gang specialists fly fast anc cloaking ships and disrupt enemies' home space. They drove a couple of corporations out of 0.0 entirely by themselves last month, and have killed alliances in their time.

DasBoot - Are you a bitter vet, scarred by your high levels of Gallente skills? DasBoot fly Dominixes, Absolutions and Guardians against superior numbers, relying on organisation to survive. They also hot-drop enemy capitals at hostile towers. This is a new group, and we're still learning.

Small gangs - We just destabilised a huge chunk of the map through a combination of the above and running daily gangs through enemy space. Amok in particular run great gangs which are fun ways to learn about PvPing.

But there is more: you can build the ships the alliance needs. If you are unexcited by PvP then you can run trading empires, indulge in regional arbitrage or make a fortune hauling or importing goods to where they are needed.

You can use the new Planetary Interaction features to play, well, Farmville in space, logging in each day to run industrial installations on the surfaces of planets. Or you can set up a complex series of installations to create industrial components others use to make stuff; or explore constantly-shifting wormholes to uncharted space; or build the expensive new T3 cruisers. CCP's goal is that virtually every aspect of the Eve economy be player-run, eventually, and this leaves gaps in the market for the savvy entrepreneur to exploit. Acting on the recent advice of economically-minded alliance members, for instance, many goons recently joined the ranks of the super-rich following the Tyrannis patch.

I'M A VET: WHAT HAS CHANGED?

Bat Country, freed of the baggage of the Ultrapolite socialites, are genuinely popular members of the alliance. On the alliance level, The Mittani is now CEO and over the last couple of months has reinvigorated and revitalised the alliance in general and the directorate in particular. I'm now a director, now, and I can tell you that we all log in and play Eve, which is a novelty both for goons and for most other alliances.

Planetary Interaction has gone live: it lets industrialists "colonise" planets and run networks of factories and mines on their surfaces in order to create goods that were previously sold by NPCs.

Lag, which became very bad after the last patch, has been gradually improving again. While not quite back at the level where we can throw 1500 people in a system and expect a lag-free fight, I have been in two one-thousand-person fights in the last two weeks and have got on thirty-plus kills in each.

BUT I'M NOT A PVPER

You will be after you hang out with us for a while. You'll reluctantly allow yourself to be dragged along on a big op, telling yourself this is dumb. Then you'll start locking up hostiles and experiencing the thrill of watching them explode under the guns of you and your fleet, and then you'll realise you're dying and you'll freeze in panic, and you'll die. Then someone will give you enough cash to buy the ship again without loss and you'll realise that that fight lasted 15 minutes and it seemed to pass in two, and that you can't wait for the next one.

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. Walking in stations - leaving one's ship and exploring the orbital outposts in which players dock - was slated for launch last winter but was pushed back, but is still in development and a 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.

TL;DR

Free ships, round-the-clock operations, rich space, one of the most active alliance leaderships in the game and a corporation with a great and growing reputation.

OK OK I WILL JOIN IF YOU WILL SHUT UP

Glad to have you on board, pilot. Just follow this link: http://wiki.goonfleet.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Remember that you can try Eve free for 14 days by following this link for the free download and trial. Also, if you know a Goon well enough to give him your email address without anticipating a flood of coprophagic porn in return, you can use this link to get 21 free days of trial instead (he gets a free month if you end up subscribing).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2oxt7Nrxo - The Butterfly Effect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzVjggarRns - Dust 514
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfv1QtZDirY - Little Bees, without which it would not be a recruitment thread for Goons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAmK84ur9AE&hd=1 - Querious - a campaign from a bit over a year ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2Sye46MEUk - 5 virtues of the successful goon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5TIFjKdcik - The traditional old-school Stahlregen video with Nine Inch Nails music and plentiful jump-cuts.

This is us.

And if our recruitment post seems to borrow from the Waffe' one on SA don't accuse me of plagiarism since I wrote them both (this one first).

Also, bitter vets and keen Eve-haters, please do not shit up this thread: we have places in the Eve subforum for you to offer your no-doubt well-grounded critiques of the game design.

Hi Endie, I'm an aussie, have 57M sp, like to fly logistics (Oneiros, Guardian and Basi) and can fly Gallente capitals. My skills, jump drive cal and jump fuel con are both L2 so I have to get them up to L4 to be fleet ready. I am an experienced PvPer but am not an FC. Whilst in Shiva I flew in goon fleets during Delve 2, had a lot of fun and I think I could be a useful Bat Country pilot. I've been hoping that you would start a recruitment drive so I've been biding my time in Amarr space.

As it happens I'm a paid up member of SA forums but predominately lurk so I don't have much of a posting history. One of my friends is a director of hirr, (who would be willing to give me a reference), but I would prefer to fly with you guys. I check the F13 forums everyday and enjoy the community, although I'm not a prolific poster.

If you think I would be a good fit could you tell me what I should do next?

Ugh, I'm getting the itch again. This always happens when I burn out on WoW.

I have an Idea, some may think its moki-ish, and that's ok. As a newbie, with the boring grind of learning skills, why not do some simple market trading, play the 1 isk game, with MY isk. Yes, that's right, I will loan you enough isk to be able to afford to buy your ships when you have trained the skills, and after paying me back, you should have alot of isk leftover.

How does this work? It's easy, train up trade to get a few more market slots, then pick a few...5 or so (depending on trade skill) T2 items that have a large (>10% ) difference between buy orders and sell orders. Place a buy order for say....10 of the item and find another item. Check it often via my orders tab and make certain you are the highest buy order (meaning you will pay 1 isk more than the next guy). When orders are filled, immediately place the item for sale and make certain you are 1 isk cheaper than the cheapest seller (so your item will be purchased first). You should make about 100,000 isk or more for each item that you buy/sell.

Whoopie, 100,000 isk is blah. I am currently running 10 items on buy/sell. Overnight my wallet increased substantially. For example, a few days ago I purchased a Jump Freighter for 3,300,000,000 and if I were not going to use it, could turn around and sell it within hours for 3,750,000,000. The more you have to spend, the more you can make. You cannot lose this way, the worst that happens is your (or my) isk is tied up in items as you play the 1 isk game.

This does give you something to do while training the boring learning skills, and does provide some 'passive' income between missions. This is not truely passive, as you do have to occasionally check to see where your orders are in the 1 isk game, but other than that, when the items sell, your wallet grows.

How do I get into this? Join us in Bat Country, then convo Mo Ki, its that easy.

Quote from: Trigona on August 18, 2010, 05:45:02 AM

I am in BC and had fun (until the twins showed up). I have a lot of respect for Shiva, I used to fight against them back in the day.

Being an Aussie may be tough in BC or GS, but don't let me discourage you. Hope you fly with F13, NC spy ! :)

I actually was in the Eve beta and I probably tried it at least once a year. No luck. I think the only time I made it more than a month was with the Hellcats pirate group, where I made it like six weeks.

I joined up with the F13ers in January (on a drunken whim) and have been playing since. The people are fun. We have a good time. There are things to do and you're well supported. And you're part of the entire big game that you read about on the forums.

If you wanted to play the game you read about instead of the one you played when you tried Eve, join up with us and I think you'll find it.

Grats on being a director Endie, even if you do go against tradition and make reasoned and thoughtful posts on Kugu :)

I meant to point it out before. The goonfleet "rules" page referenced in the main page is not public... maybe intentional, but no point directing potential new recruits to it if so.

Flying as part of f13 sounds a pretty good way to explore eve, just some questions.

Are both goon's / BC pretty much inactive in post-downtime periods and their homelands occupied by revenge-seeking euro's or is it just quieter?

What sort of activity level counts as acceptable / useful? I'm got some other commitments that need some time invested over 6-8 months (plus that job thing)... while I'll try and advance and take part where needed I know I'm not going to be able to match some of the people I see in the f13 channel.

If you are reading this and perhaps thinking of trying Eve, you shouldn't even consider doing it outside of joining up with Bat Country/Goonswarm. If I could paraphrase the OP, it opens an array of avenues to new players that would seem otherwise unattainable and the only true way to enjoy Eve is with a good community of players, we happen to be in particularly good position at the moment.

Do join our ingame channel, "F13" for any questions or comments.
I think we are more than happy to answer your questions and debate why Amarr race is superior to others.

Quote from: Trigona on August 18, 2010, 05:45:02 AM

Regarding aussie TZ, we do have ops around the clock, and if we dont have one ongoing NC sure will have a fleet flying around shooting hostiles.
I'd think you would make our other aussie members more than happy to see a new face flying with them. Come join F13 ingame channel if you have any more question or just send an application to join Bat Country.

If anyone is on the fence or played EVE before alone and hated it, I would really suggest playing with these guys. It's an entirely different game and you'll be sure to enjoy it for at least 6 months.

Quote

What sort of activity level counts as acceptable / useful?

My life has been in chaos, so I haven't put in much activity other than showing up for maybe one scheduled op a week when I knew something was going to be going on? But I managed to get 8th in kills for the corp in June and July.

Quote from: Trigona on August 18, 2010, 05:45:02 AM

Comstr is the guy to speak to about Aussie TZ activity, off the top of my head. It was really quiet for a while after we lost Delve, I know, but there is an upswing happening. Also, you can do everything you could do in MM: I jump in on their ops from time to time through a combination of fleet-finder, their TS, and Razor's Jabber server alerts. There is stuff on literally 23/7 if you can be bothered. I keep one alt with a JC over in Tribute (currently up by Cobalt Edge, actually) to jump in on this whenever I fancy.

Yeah, I've seen you guys on the IRC offensive.

In Bat Country we don't call "red pen" or put timers on our players. We realise people have lives outside of the MMO world which is totally normal. The important thing is how you use your time when online and we try to make that as productive and destructive as possible by offering something for everyone, new and old.

Quote from: Kageru on August 18, 2010, 06:45:16 AM

What sort of activity level counts as acceptable / useful? I'm got some other commitments that need some time invested over 6-8 months (plus that job thing)... while I'll try and advance and take part where needed I know I'm not going to be able to match some of the people I see in the f13 channel.

Acceptable levels of activity are making good posts.

At one extreme you have people like Uriq who will merrily rank up 100 kills and more every month. Then there are a bunch of us who tend to clock somewhere in the 40-50-ish level most months, and a long tail of people whotag along on a drunk roam or a fleet op when they have a free evening every few weeks.

We're one of the most consistently active corps in Goonswarm (the directorate has graphs for that, which are public). We've been quieter for a few weeks as we babysit the handover of Deklein region to us but things should start to pick up as that comes to an end.

Oh, Bat Country also has its first outpost (yes, spies, the timers have been properly set and are Xttz-approved): http://evemaps.dotlan.net/outpost/S-DN5M

Quote from: Kageru on August 18, 2010, 07:45:37 AM

Yeah, I've seen you guys on the IRC offensive.

A few of us have made the trail over there to pick up some kills, including myself. It's a bit more of a trail at the moment since the TCF Jump Bridge network is down and ours are not yet up, but Cobalt Edge has been a welcome distraction.

Quote from: Endie on August 18, 2010, 07:53:56 AM

and a long tail of people who tag along on a drunk roam or a fleet op when they have a free evening every few weeks.

... that's a wonderfully tempting recruitment line. Though I plan to be a bit more active than that some of the "srs bsns" people from other corps are terrifying.

So reading the goonwaffe pages it looks like I first apply to -BAT- (using the in-game method I assume) and then use the "Member corp" path on the link from the wiki?

Quote from: Kageru on August 18, 2010, 08:15:55 AM

Quote from: Endie on August 18, 2010, 07:53:56 AM

and a long tail of people who tag along on a drunk roam or a fleet op when they have a free evening every few weeks.

Yeap, thats correct first apply ingame to Bat Country and after you have been accepted you can use GF's auth page to gain access to their forums and wiki.
Please state in your application your F13 name/you are from these forums.

Fuckers. This is one of the best recruitment posts I have ever seen and I actually almost clicked the trial link even though I have no interest in this game and would not know where to start or where I'd find the time to play. Bravo.

Allow me to give you a story in pictures.

Prologue: LIVE FOOTAGE OF GOONSWARM ATTACK ON ~~A STRIP CLUB~~ AN IMPORTANT STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE!!!

I, long time eve player, resub and join these people. At the time they were fighting off an attack by Russians due to goons taking this important objective inside Goon territory. 3 days later BOB invades and I'm stuck in the middle of the Second Eve Great War. I blame myself

SO I start the southern war series of youtube videos to chronicle my adventures. Stand by for overdramatic movies with some (fuck the haters) great music

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

First video. This is us attacking AAA towers that they had planted in one of our home systems. And then Band of Brothers, the self styled "Best PvPers in the game" turned up and we counterattacked... and they ran away. This became a theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTbluOwmwX4

Ahh the beginning of overdramaticness. What happened is fairly self explanatory. Stain had been attacking towers in C6Y for literally weeks. After all that someone inevitably fucked up strontium timings with the result that they managed to blow up towers and plant their own. Despite our fightback they ultimately took the system. This stands as the only station system taken by the enemy in direct combat in the entire war.

Second half is the fact that AAA only held an important station system with 2 towers. They fought off this attack by shoving 7 titans into the system 24/7.

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

Our enemies tried some stratergy!

Basically they attacked 2 sides of our space at once to try and break us, as our jump bridge net had been broken. Needless to say, we smashed BOB, causing them to lose pretty much their entire capital fleet, then took a side trip to AAA space to help out an ally, then raced back in time to smash the AAA fleet that was trying to kill our towers. AAA logged off then mass logged back in at downtime and ran for the gates.

BOB explanation on that was they were testing our response time by using a moderate number of Dreads, and they did kill one tower (out of 10 that were coming out). Did I mention our enemies are... uh... veridicalitly challenged?

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

Just some general combat footage. The main fight here is fighting over a vital system that we had to keep SOV in as it was vital for our jump bridge links. We won every fight but it was lost due to game bugs. So we muddled along regardless the old fashioned way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCG7VgFWVCE

Killing a titan happens sometimes after 2 and a half hours of boredom sitting on a gate. This video caused me to upgrade so lag was better from then on.

Actually I'll stop waffling and just give you the rest of the vids

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFFnO5oPlWU

That one is significant as it was the one that BOB imploded after months of fail. Also I started that vid in a ship you could be flying on day one, a rifter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LY-feGmVLw

Shows the progress of the war. Also The mighty BOB spent longer sitting in a station telling everyone they "COULD kick the shit out of us BUT they JUST didn't want to right that second" than anyone ever before or since . Didn't bother me. I bought a carrier in the firesales...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEkd8uf5usA

This is narrated by me on my own, as youtube was fucking me around. If you want to see my comments on the fighting and learn something about the tactics involved have a listen to this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPMWv_D-2VE

The end of the war. Sung to the national anthem of the Russian Federation. :)

General combat footage:

Killing Carriers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZJININMCOM

One of the best fights I was ever involved in in Eve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNj7-ysT9z4

So, the question is, what will be your story?

In all seriousness, Goonswarm is probably one of the best places to be in Eve right now, and Bat country is a very good corp. If you want to try Eve, join these guys.

Aussie time zone is the quietest for Goonswarm, but fortunately there is neatly always a NC gate camp set up before downtime at the EC-P8R gate. I've setup there as a Hurricane with a insta-lock-insta-pop sensor booster and had some fun there. There's also nearly always a NC fleet doing something somewhere. The EC- gate gets a lot more hostile action after downtime too.

From my post on the SA thread:

Quote

When I was in Goonswarm, I have seen things you people wouldn't believe.

A Titan on fire off the 319 Station.

I watched the 50 Bubbles glow around the PR-/NOL Gate as the strongest and and most corrupt alliance ever created lost their space to a couple of Frigate's.

I left Eve after Goonswarm died.

Then I came back to Goonswarm Federation: 2010.

Our fleets now have command ships giving out mindlinked bonuses to every combat wing, including EW - this means your 12 day old free Blackbird cruiser can jam other pilots who have spent 5 years training popsock skills. Your free Rifter frigate will be fast enough to stop a 1 billion ISK tech 3 strategic cruiser from escaping and cause him to lose 20 days worth of his training time. Your reimbursed Drake you can use for PvE gets the same amount of shields as a Battleship. For vets, Command ships are now paid for by the alliance, and you even make some money over the Jita price.

If you ever wanted to play a ship like it was an Xwing, train for Stealth Bombers. Bomberwaffe attacks enemy fleets like Death Star Trench Runs and TopGoon conducts Hit'n'Fade attacks on hostile carriers while they think they are safe and secure in their home space. Remember those Xwing and Tie Fighter missions where you attacked a Star Destroyer? Stealth Bombers do that. Granted they take more skill training than a Frigate, but Goonswarm Federation has the best Fleet Commanders in the galaxy leading them.

And if you're lucky, you might get on kill mails like this. CCP now allows PLEX cards to be moved in space. That kill mail is $1000 dollers US in PLEX cards that got blown up.

I go through stages of playing, usually on the weekends. I'll get on some ops in the Morning AUS time (Prime US time) during the weekdays, but are more active on the weekend, when there's a US or Euro op every day pretty much. When I'm not flying the 110% reimbursed command ship and giving everyone 20-30% shield or tackle bonuses, I'll fly a fully reimbursed Hurricane or Drake with replacements on instant sale on alliance contracts, or a 1mil costing Bat Country corp cruiser. I make my money buying mineral's from local goons (Please sell me minerals in S-D!) and using that to build tech 1 mods and selling them to local goons (who, unlike some alliances like BoB/Kenzuko/IT, actually use tech 1 mods). It's slow going but lasts all month without needing to rat. If I wanted to rat, I can do it in "our" system that's off pipe but only 4 jumps from Goonswarm Federation Central and upgraded with encounters that can be done by anyone between a tech 1 Rifter and a Carrier (though, please don't rat in a carrier).

Quote

This is one of the best recruitment posts I have ever seen and I actually almost clicked the trial link even though I have no interest in this game and would not know where to start or where I'd find the time to play. Bravo.

Goonswarm has the best wiki and help manual that exists - it goes into great detail about anything and everything in Eve. You'll always have a Ship fitting suggestion, guides and help on how to do things and an amazing political and historical section to read afterwards. Probably half of Eve 0.0 use ripped copies of it in one form of another, the CCP version is a pale and outdated shadow.

The Goonswarm forum has a calendar listing all up coming ops with the local time it's starting and the time left before it starts, with direct links to the op thread detailing the ships needed, form up location and overall mission. So you can normally see several days ahead when there's a fleet op happening.

What I Did in Eve Online Last Night

First, I played Rock Band for thirty minutes while CCP unexpectedly rebooted the server. I almost five starred Deluxe on my first attempt with drums. So close.

Then, my Sigma squad brosefs called an operation for fast moving ships. Everyone was welcome, as long as you brought something small and fast. We had a few newbees with us and they were given free Rifters. We set out for a system about twenty minutes from home and raced there in our tiny fast fleet.

When we arrived, our scout reported that the destination system had a small fleet of larger ships than ours and a warp disruption bubble anchored on the other side of the gate. The fleet commander ordered us to jump in. Our fast fleet was on top of them before they could warp away and we easily blew them to bits. We shot the bubble so that we could warp freely. A scout reported more hostiles flying outside of the station and we quickly warped to him.

About this time, I noted to myself that we were in a dead end system. The gate we came in through was the only way out. We came out of warp at the station to see another small gang of mid sized ships and we quickly tackled them, getting a few more kills. A single Drake remained outside the station. His shields finally failed and we were quickly tearing his armor down when an ally of his undocked in a massive capital ship and instantly restored the drake's shields. Knowing that this carrier had drone ships that would rip our tiny ships apart, the FC ordered the fleet to disengage and return to the jump gate.

We landed on the gate at zero kilometers, ready to jump through. But then the gate lit up once, twice, three times and three ships appeared on our overviews. We were engaging them and laughing about our good fortune when the gate hissed and started lighting up again and again - it was an ambush. An enemy fleet twice our size uncloaked between us and the only way out. With nowhere to run, we scrambled to escape to random planets and, shortly after, to safer spots deep in space.

The enemy fleet sat on the gate with interdictor ships constantly launching warp disruption bubbles that would trap anyone who tried to escsape. We were debating how to get out when a scout reported a ship had drifted far enough from the enemy fleet that we could kill it. We aligned for the gate, ready to warp in at the FC's command. The scout decloaked his ship on top of the target ship and tackled him. As we were about to warp in, he reported that the enemy interdictors had foolishly dropped their warp disruption bubbles to come to the aid of their ally. With only seconds to get out, the FC ordered us to the gate. Palms sweating as only Eve can make them, I clicked warp.

We landed on the gate surrounded by the enemy fleet. Unable to stop us, they watched as we jumped through to fly home. We had killed a few and lost a few, but most of us had escaped thanks to their stupidity, our awesome scouts and a quick acting FC. On the trip back home, someone pointed out that the Eve map showed that the system we had just escaped was now the most active system in terms of pvp since the server had come back online two hours before. Thus is life in Goonswarm.

<grumble>
Fuck no. I aint doin it. Stop it. Endie. Damn your recruitment posts.

Quote

Everyone was welcome, as long as you brought something small and fast. We had a few newbees with us and they were given free Rifters.

This can't be emphasized enough. Eve-Goons is the only MMO where you can participate in the "end game" the same day you log in. People love newbies.

Grats to all you kids on getting out from under the LOVEU banner and into GF on your own. That whole drama was one of the driving forces behind my latest EVE hiatus. No urge to come back just yet (hooked up with the goons in Darkfall, so that should whet my PvP appetite for now), but I am glad to know there is a good spot should I choose to return. Enjoy!

Quote from: Endie on August 18, 2010, 07:53:56 AM

...a long tail of people whotag along on a drunk roam or a fleet op when they have a free evening every few weeks.

It's me. I'm the long tail. Or at least part of it. I've had a on and off relationship with F13 in Eve for a few years now. It's a great bunch of folks to fly with and very helpful in game. Come, join us, see the universe, kick some dicks in.

There's always something going on in. Just last night I logged on to spend an hour quietly making some cash when a hostile showed up in my system. He was flying a stealth bomber which is a small ship that can fly around undetectably cloaked and do large amounts of damage. Rather than let him hang out there all night harassing our allies, I hopped in a frigate of my own and chased him out of the system. Right into the waiting arms of the friendly gang that had been waiting for him to come through.

One less ganker to worry about.

One thing to note is that all the GoonWaffe corporation members on that killmail are being run by one person. He's four-boxing expensive, diverse PvP ships.

SOLD.

Sign me up. Me and my 56k skill points are ready to be blown up.

Gentlemen, some questions:

1) is there a free trial / welcome back program for previous subs?
2) how much ISK can I get now for an in-game time card? Going back with many millions would be best.
3) Goon forum. I bought an SA forum membership and signed up for Goon Wiki but never got a reply. Should I register again or ping them (again)?
4) Where are you guys? I really would want to make sure I could be within a few minutes (ie. 5-10mins!) of travel time for any fun corp stuff.
5) What's the best way to move down to where the corp works? Shuttle AFK (frequent podding) and make Jump Clones along the way for safety? Or is there another way to fix your clone/rez point?

Whee, tried to log into my years-old account (I don't want to pay 20bux for a new client - sue me) and I'm being prompted for the name of a character I haven't played since, like, 2005.

This is gonna be fun!

Every so often I take a break from Eve to play some other MMO (most recently Age of Conan to try out the expansion), but I always come back.

Quote from: Soln on August 18, 2010, 11:15:41 AM

1) is there a free trial / welcome back program for previous subs?
2) how much ISK can I get now for an in-game time card? Going back with many millions would be best.
3) Goon forum. I bought an SA forum membership and signed up for Goon Wiki but never got a reply. Should I register again or ping them (again)?
4) Where are you guys? I really would want to make sure I could be within a few minutes (ie. 5-10mins!) of travel time for any fun corp stuff.
5) What's the best way to move down to where the corp works? Shuttle AFK (frequent podding) and make Jump Clones along the way for safety? Or is there another way to fix your clone/rez point?

1) I'm not sure, honestly.
2) 60 day TCs are going for 600m and up.
3) You get onto the Goon forum after joining our corporation in-game, you don't need an SA membership if you fly with Bat Country.
4) We're in Deklein, and you can get up here within minutes of starting the game by joining our corporation and podding yourself. Though I'd suggest spending some time shopping in empire and taking advantage of one of our several hauling services so you can get cheaply priced ships.
5) Pod or clone jumping, as mentioned above. Our jump bridge network is currently down as we take over the region from our french allies Tau Ceti Federation, but should be back up within the next few weeks.

E: The very first thing any one of you should do when getting in-game is to click on the little icon in the top-right corner of one of your chat windows and join the f13 channel.

As far as number 1 is concerned, I know CCP occasionally sends out reactivation emails for a free week or weekend or something of EVE, and now I'm wishing I'd taken advantage of them, if only to remember my goddamn account details.