The Fall of Dal

Ping. Ping. Ping.

In rapid succession, faster than blasters fire, my mobile filled with calls to arms.

"Mein Fellow Amarricans!

The Minmatar Russian BotFarm (Communist PigDogs) are back in the warzone because the powers that be (the Amarr/Caldari LP Store goods on the market crashed to shit) and they are pushing for Dal and the surrounding area (Lantorn, Amabukkake, Vard, Auga, Etc)." -Xolve

Under the looming threat of losing the system that I helped fight for, I scrambled over to our staging station as soon as I could to defend what was claimed for Amarr. Making my way through Sisiede and into Dal, I could see just how true the pings were. Where once the gates were quiet, there were gatecamps to be dodged and intel to be passed along.

Finally entering Dal, I witnessed first hand the scale of the Minmatar offensive. Dal was more contested than I'd seen it since we had taken it over. Local itself was a battleground for the different colortags. Blue, purple, green, orange and tagless, all mixed up and jockeying for control of the system.

Over the weekend and the following week, our coalition mounted a valiant and bloody defense. Our FCs tirelessly leading their fleets into battle did a fantastic job keeping everyone on task.

Ultimately Dal was lost. Had we been able to maintain a massive presence at all hours, Dal would still be ours. This just means we have something to focus on in the coming months, and I look forward to helping take it back.

So that's how being a outlaw works.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, my sec status is in a great decline. Since then, I've sunk to a healthy -6.5, making me an outlaw in the eyes of both Pilots and Concord. I now get a neato announcement when I go into high sec, show up on people's overviews, and can be attacked without provocation. I'm perfectly fine with all of this extra attention, and don't venture into high sec often enough to care. I'm also aware of the added risk of being attacked by other pilots without Concord intervention, which is where my lesson in being an outlaw begins.

I had just jumped into Dal, on my way back to Egg. Holding cloak, I saw a Condor and a Rifter jump into the system I had come from. Both pilots were neutral to me and looked like prime targets for my arty Thrasher. I decided to burn back to the gate and jump through. Back in Hof. As soon as the system loaded I watched the Condor warp off as the Rifter stayed behind. Armed with my superior knowledge of how gate guns work, I decided to see if I could get the Rifter to agress me. I burned over to him, gave him a nudge and puttered around a bit trying to look like a prime target. My plan was to get him to fire on me and then have the gate guns chew him up. From his perspective, I must have looked like an idiot.

What I should have done, in the wise words of Mike Birbiglia, is nothing.

While putting together my plan to get these two guys to welp to gate guns, I neglected to thoroughly think things through. Since I'm a criminal, the gate guns won't protect me. Since I was in an arty Thrasher, orbiting a Rifter at 500m put me right in his optimal and put him under my guns in a prime location to kill me. Oh, and the Condor pilot. Forgot about that guy...

The Rifter finally locked me up and fired moments before the Condor landed. I quickly returned the favor, but with him under my guns I was largley ineffective. At that moment the realization that I was going to lose by my own foolishness settled in. I actually laughed out loud as the Condor lit me up with his disruptors. I slowly removed the pants from my head as they chewed through my ship and admitted to my stupidity in local. I gave them a GF as I bounced my pod around waiting for my timer to expire and admitted that I had  forgotten about my sec status. Hopefully they found the whole thing as funny as I did.

I know the next time I try to do something like this, I will account for my sec status and not just sit there like a potato.

The Tuskers Death Race

I've never participated in any player run events outside of my corp. My experience lies mainly in fleet and solo engagements. Obviously these events are typically small scale and only impact a minute percent of the population at any time, essentially us and our opponents. Having recently started blogging and interacting with people on #tweetfleet, I've taken a much greater interest in things outside of my previously narrow view of Eve. I wasn't oblivious to the events hosted by corporations and alliances for all of eve, although I didn't have any urge to participate. Reflecting upon my previous view of these sorts of things, I was quite surprised at how excited I got by Rixx Javix's announcement of the Death Race in January.

DEATHRACE Announced! eveoganda.blogspot.com #tweetfleet #eveonline Coming in March 2013! Start your engines and tell your friends
— Rixx Javix (@RixxJavix) January 30, 2013

Reading that tweet got my blood flowing. Even though I didn't know anything about it, I was excited. Having never participated in such a thing, my imagination went wild. I imagined smart bombing Battleships lying in wait at gates, manned by Rixx's crew, ready to destroy any ship that happened to be caught in range. I saw myself in a frigate, dodging attacking pirates and trying to get ahead of the rest of the participants who were also trying to kill me and each other. I saw myself being blown up within the first 10 minutes of the race.

Well, the details are now out, and it pretty much looks like what I thought it would be. I will be making every effort to participate and win the race, but at the minimum I will be there for the experience and exposure to yet another facet of Eve that I've not explored. If anything, I'll get some great material for a blog post and maybe a little more exposure to people outside of Faction Warfare.

Please stop by The Death Race Info Post for the rules and info, and maybe take a few minutes to read some of Rixx's other posts as well. They're a good read.

-Ash

The Fear

I started my faction warfare career with minimal solo PVP experience. I had previously tried to roam solo, but there was always the fear in my mind that I would loose, and always did. I never fly anything I can't replace, so it wasn't the fear of all of my ISK tied into a ship. I think it was just the fear of failure and looking inept. I didn't think about whether or not the pilot in the other ship was feeling the same, I just assumed that they were better than me. Having done a lot more solo in the last two months, I've come to realize that this isn't always the case.

In my effort to conquer the fear, I started taking advantage of the free ships Fweddit offers. What better way  to learn than on someone else's money? The problem with this was that they weren't always available in a timely fashion and you were at the mercy of what was available. None the less, it was enough to get me started plexing and making ISK while putting nothing at risk beyond my ride back to Egg in a pod.

Sitting in a plex, in my free thrasher, I was running the timer down when I saw a hostile decloak. I admit, I panicked at first as I saw the torpedoes streaking toward my ship. The white contrails standing brilliantly against the starry backdrop of Sifilar. My head cleared when I saw the pitiful amount of damage he was doing to me, and recalled my days of wannabe bomber pilot - torps do terrible damage against small ships. Filled with adrenaline, I pulsed my MWD to close the distance between us and unloaded my guns into her fragile Nemesis. I think I destroyed it in maybe three volleys. It was my first official solo kill in the books.

From that point on, the fear slowly started subsiding. I've since stopped relying on the free ships as much and started shipping down batches of my own ships down. I'm still inexperienced for the most part, but I'm slowly understanding the way things work in practice. You can read hundreds of battle reports, write-ups and blog posts, but none of them assuage the fear as much as actually doing it yourself.

Since that fight I've lost a bunch of Condors, my current ship of choice, without batting an eye. I've learned how to break some kity ships and leave intact, how to better guess what I'm going to be fighting against, and best of all I've learned to give a gf and chat about it with my opponent.  All of the losses that I had been afraid of pale in comparison to the thrill of battle and the euphoria of winning.

I guess what it boils down to, as our saying goes, is YOLO.

Out of pod update

Going to keep it brief, as the pain meds are making me drowsy. I haven't been on much in the last couple of days due to some work stuff that pretty much had me tied up at all waking hours. That was promptly followed by me getting my wisdom teeth pulled this morning, which is no where near as fun as I had imagined.

I appreciate everyone that stops by the blog, even though there hasn't been an update in a few days. Hopefully I can resume some form of regular posting this upcoming week.

Updates from Egg

Busy weekend for me. Didn't get to log as much time in my capsule as I would have liked, but I did get to have some fun and get some kills.

As many Redditors are aware, we had a bit of a brawl in our home system, culminating with a hotdrop by PL. It began with one of our members, EC JuniorD, setting up a brawl with the newest Reddit corp "Brave Newbies Inc."  We weren't expecting much of a fight, considering these guys are totally new to the game. They ended up warping to a discogeddon, but smartly warped in at 100 and not zero. This probably saved a bunch of them, since they were in no way anticipating it. We ended up chasing them to a station and picked them off as they undocked.

Having given the noobs a quick trip home, we headed back to the loving embrace of the University Station to take up our post guarding the undock from all threats. EC was still talking to the Newbies, and said they were going to reship and come back. DHD, having come on comms, said that he was getting a hundred TESTies to come up in frigates to have some fun as well. As all parties made their way back from their home systems,  we spied some Shadow Cartel coming in to system followed by Tuskers. Intel stated that they were fighting at the sun, and that someone had spotted the monthly Uni Dragonslayer fleet out roaming as well.

It was decided that we would coordinate with the noobs and test, and see what we could kill. Uni streamed in, lit a cyno, and joined the fray. We warped to the cyno and unleashed on the Archon. Sadly I didn't get to see it go down, but I helped killed off a Mega. At that point a tactical retreat was called and I tried to align out as I got heavily scrammed, webbed, neuted and eventually died. I warped back in my pod, docked up and hopped in something I could point with. Seemingly lacking guns, I fitted the mids with a scram, web and AB and flew back out and was promptly dispatched. I wish I had more ships at my disposal, but I've been lazy about buying this week and didn't have much in my hangar that I wanted to welp.

This was by far the largest engagement I've taken part in. I had a blast, as did the Brave Newbies from what I've seen posted on Reddit. It was pretty awesome to have all that action right at our doorstep, but the TiDi hit hard, peaking at about 60% before slowly subsiding. Hopefully we can cultivate a relationship with the Newbies and either set up more brawls with them or bring them into the #YOLOCOLO for some welping.

Assets and assets and assets

I was browsing /r/eve the other day and came across the thread called "What is your Eve net worth? How do you make your ISK?".
I've never had more than a couple hundred mil at any given time in my wallet, and have never broken 1 billion ISK as long as I've been playing. This hasn't really bothered me, since I've always been able to afford the subscription and have had ISK to fund whatever I was into at the time. I'm sure everyone wants to be space rich, but as long as I am able to have fun and contribute I'm happy flying what I can afford.

Rich or poor, my curiosity got the better of me and I installed EveHQ to see what I was worth according to that program. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that all of the "junk" that I had largely ignored in my assets was actually worth some money. According to the software, I have somewhere near a couple bil just sitting around taking up space.

The problem, of course, is that my stuff is spread all over New Eden. My sec status coupled with my allegiance to the Amarr Militia makes it difficult for me to travel around to collect and sell my stuff. I don't leave the war zone anymore, except to trade LP for goods.

Fancy that. A combat pilot such as myself, afraid of high sec.

Fortunately, I have someone I can haul and move around high sec with easily. Beginning yesterday I started to consolidate and sell off the odds and ends that are accessible to him. I did notice that I have made no where near as much as EveHQ claims I should have. I'm not complaining. Liquid ISK is better than fifteen 1MN Afterburners which I will probably never use. Maybe if someone knows how EveHQ works they can give me some idea of what I'm doing wrong. For now, I'm playing the .01 isk game to offload as much as I can. I find this incredibly tedious but I guess if I want to make money, I have to do it.

As a final though, I must admit that hauling with an Iteron V equiped with a full array of expanders in the lows, full of my stuff, is possibly the most stressful thing I have done. Its like skipping through a mine field with gold bars in a wet paper bag. Just a matter of time before you explode and scatter your savings all over the place. I don't know how people do it for fun. They are much braver than I.

o7

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