Why "Counting to Potato"?

Counting to Potato started with a shitty meme, but in Fweddit it takes on a completely different meaning.

My relationship with potato began when I joined Fweddit and went on my first roam with them. We were flying around some system, I forget where, and the FC called for a count to potato. As I had just joined, I was not aware of what this laughable call to action meant and sat in amazement as I saw local chat rapidly fill with our fleet typing out numbers in ascending order. All this while the local list of the system we were in was mainly pulsing orange with hostiles and a bit of purple from the fleet intermingled between all the names.

See, this game is used to work the enemy into a frenzy, causing them to either undock from their station or come join us for a nice brawl. It is a fun game with simple rules, wherein you have to count from one to one-hundred by typing the whole word out without misspelling anything. One misspelling will force you to start over, but successfully completing the count will award you with a medal from the corporation and bragging rights until the end of time.

While the game is where I lifted the name of this blog from, it is more the idea of it that made me chose to use it. The sheer lunacy of having the fleet members counting in local while waiting for an enemy fleet to land on us was a good reminder of why we play this game, and why community is such an integral part of it. Yes, we are serious fighters, miners or whatever, but in the end we all want to log in to have fun and sometimes all it takes is counting from one to one-hundred.

#potato

Warzones

Having moved to low sec, my sec status has dropped rapidly to -4.5 and continues to fall  as I aggress neutrals in the Combat Zone. I don't have any problems with my sec status declining, it comes along with my NBSI mentality in low sec. Nobody is forcing me to pull the trigger on them when I'm out solo, but nobody is forcing them into my locking range either. That's where my thinking lies regarding sec status.

I don't feel that militia pilots should be getting sec status hits for firing on neutrals in a Combat Zone. The whole concept seems odd to me. That neutral is, knowingly or not, traipsing through an active war zone and essentially putting themselves out in the line of fire. Had I been alive during World War I, you wouldn't have seen me trucking over the trenches just because its the shortest route through an area yelling "SAFETY BE DAMNED!" I would be an idiot to think I would not get shot.

Don't get me wrong, I think that losing sec status is an integral part of low sec and Eve as a whole. If it were to be removed all together, it would essentially get rid of piracy - effectively killing off the fun of a portion of the playerbase. If you want to roam around and pick fights, you should have every expectation of losing your sec status.

My thinking is that pilots or corps actively participating in faction warfare battles, or at the minimum plexing, should have either reduced sec status hits or have it capped to just above being able to dock in high sec. Pilots that are following the rules and ideals of faction warfare shouldn't be expected to sit there and tank the first shot fired by some bear that ambles in to your plex to wet his paws in pvp. If i'm orbiting the warp in at optimal, and you come at me bro, you should be expecting to be shot up. I shouldn't be punished(?) for essentially defending myself from a threat. Maybe this should only apply in plexes and near the acceleration gates for them, since that is where you are doing your duties as a militia pilot. Maybe the mechanics should stay the same on stargates and stations, where it isn't necessarily an "active" combat area.

Obviously sec status is an important part of the game, and I in no way would want to fully change it. I have an alt for moving around in high sec for the time when my sec status inevitably bottoms out. This is just a thought I had after a night of flying.

o7

Fweddit

As a Redditor, I had previously joined Dreddit and moved to null but found the experience boring. Its very likely that at that point in my career I wasn't as interested in null as I thought I was. I don't care enough about sov, ratting or blobfests in large ships. I wanted small ship battles. Frigates and the like. As my interest waned rapidly, I didn't bother to log on. Ultimately I just set a long skill, let my time expire and didn't think of Eve for the longest time.

Since I returned as Retribution was about to land, there were many changes to both faction warfare and the ships that I like to fly. This piqued my interest in faction warfare, and I started looking into joining it again.  I had previously dabbled in faction warfare, but it was quite a long time ago and I was solo in an npc corp. I think I lasted one day in the Caldari Milita before calling it quits.

Upon returning I visited /r/eve,  my go to place for info, meta and tips. Looking through the posts I discovered that there was now a Redditor faction warfare corp called Fweddit, and they came highly recommended. They give free ships out to welp in and have a very friendly approach to newbros. While i don't consider myself a newbro, my skills in solo and small gang pvp were rusty at best. Looking for a way to get some instant action, and having met the fairly lax application criteria, I applied and was promptly accepted.

From this time forward, my blog will be focusing on my experiences in faction warfare and flying with "I Whip My Slaves Back and Forth."

Druuuugs

I'm working on fleshing out a couple of posts, but the cold medicine I've been taking has been muddling my brain a bit. I'll have updates when I feel better.

Fly safe