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OOG – Postcards from TCF Land
Disclaimer: This post is entirely out of game. it has nothing to do with Eve whatsovever
So you may have noticed from the disclaimer at the bottom of my last two posts that I have been away in France posting using pre-scheduled posts.
Now I have a habit of taking screenshots wherever I go and this time I took over 700 over the course of a week, that’s 100 a day!
I hereby present you with some of the more significant/better looking ones.
Christmas markets on the Champs elysees
It’s made out of frikking rock!
“wut?” I like cemetaries… I’m seriously not emo, I just like them
The Museum of rodin was closed, so we had to take a photo of “The Thinker” from behind through the fence. We hereby dub him “Buttcrack Man”
Ohm Nom! Nom!
Group Identity
For those of you who have fought against a Mostly Harmless alliance fleet of some sort and lost, you will know that we have a habit of filling local chat up by having everyone in the fleet type “ook”. The story behind this is as follows: When Mostly Harmless went to help rid the universe of the Band of Brothers, Sir Molle, leader of BoB said in local:
“Hello northern monkeys, this is your god speaking”.
to which we all replied
“Ook!”
This was unfortunately before my time in MH, but since assisting in successfully driving out BoB, the alliance has taken the theme up and now identifies itself as northern monkeys. This is why I’ve named myself evemonkey and this is why, after every successful battle we ook in local.
This whole monkey theme, combined with the existing hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy theme (our alliance ticker is “-42-”) gives us a keen sense of identity which I think is extremely important if not crucial in keeping the game fun and helps us not take everything too seriously.
An example propaganda poster summarising our fight against Pandemic Legion over the past month. Ook!
And so, I can really understand how alliances like CVA and UK can inspire loyalty in their members, with a strong group identity. If I were a psychologist I would write something here about maslo’s hierachy of needs or some such thing and eloquently spell out how all this is just an extension of human nature, but all I can say is, it works.
Disclaimer: This post is not a stealth-subliminal recruitment advertisement for Mostly Harmless Alliance, the most Froody alliance in the entire EvE universe.
also disclaimer: this article was posted automatically while I’m off in RL visiting the land of Tau Ceti Federation
Serpentis Outpost (by starlight)
The lonely outpost
Stares at the sun with a smile
ahh, serenity – Akura Kawanaka
This post was scheduled automatically while I’m off in real life visiting Tau Ceti Federation’s homeland
E-peen: I haz it
Oh no! what have I done?!? After constantly ridiculing people who buy T3 ships as having too much isk to spare, and having further ridiculed the ships themselves as nothing more than expensive e-peen… what do I do? I hear they have dropped below 500mil fully fitted and after a large glass of wine I go and buy myself one on an impulse…. what a complete tool.
Corp Chat:
Akura kawanaka > anyone fly a tengu?
AAAAA> I can fly a tengu
BBBBB > tengu is t3
Akura kawanaka > I realise – I’m looking at buying one
AAAAA > You can bassically solo plex in it fairly easily
BBBBB > you can do that in an Ishtar at a fraction the cost
AAAAA > yeah I know but you know everyone hasn’t got gallante trained up ect
Akura kawanaka > I want it for e-peen purposes
BBBBB > can’t argue with epeen
Akura kawanaka > at least I acknowlege I’m doing it for that reason
Of course, I must now think of myself as far superior to all you tech II-flying Neanderthals. It certainly looks hella cool though:
Tengu Strategic E-Peen Cruiser by starlight
Of course, in order to transport it out to nullsec, I also made a bit of a more sensible purchase. Previously I had bought myself an Occator for the massive cargo hold, but in combat operations it is better to be flying a cloaky ship, and in order to support black Ops incursions I need to be flying a blockade runner, so I bought myself a Viator which has a not too shabby cargo hold of 10,279 with rigs and my skills, but the warping cloak is the main use.
Viator blockade runner undocking
Undocking from jita I was actually more fearful than I am in nullsec…. I seriously hate carrying anything of value through heavily populated areas but anyway…. on the way from jita to my home region of Pure blind I was actually targeted by a crusader, although because I was flying manually and cloaking immediately he didn’t achieve full lock. it was actually a relief to get to the friendly gate camp into the first 0.0 system.
With the tengu at the moment it’s a probing/remote repping/interdiction nullifying monstrosity but I’ll be turning it into a t3 command ship shortly. also at my stop in Jita I bought the Wing command skill and warfare link specialist so I should be able to fit a decent warfare link Tengu within a month or two.
anyway – more pictures:
Battle Report: Evoke Spanked Hard – Screenshot Extravaganza
Over the past weekend the Northern Coalition banded together to get rid of the evoke stain that had spread into lower Cloud Ring.
Evoke had taken sovereignty in a few systems while we were off dealing with Pandemic Legion
On Saturday night we didn’t have much luck, taking heavy losses in the initial few skirmishes with evoke fleets as Sons of Tangra and Pandemic Legion joined in for the pew also. I lost my brand new Megathron “Mr Pew” on the saturday night and was out of the fight for the rest of the day, however our luck didn’t improve. I’m told that later that night we Doomsday’d our own fleet – the hostile fleet warped out just as our fleet was bubbled and the DD went off.
Multi-alliance fleet burning to the gate (by starlight)
There was more fighting on sunday night and due to our absolutely awesome Alliance-level replacement program was in another fully fitted Megathron with zero out-lay on my part. This one still has the designation that it came with: “42.10″ I like it, it’s clinical. I have another three-and-a-bit days to go until I can use tech II large rail guns so I went and bought some tech I ones and joined the fighting.
This time we took out a few Pos’s in the station systems of G8AD and 9-4 and disabled the station fittings in G8AD. I was told that earlier in the day we had managed to successfully doomsday an evoke battleship fleet. most of the evoke pods went to the station in G8AD, which we then proceeded to siege.
By the time I joined we were shooting the station fitting and cloning services to prevent their use by the evoke pilots inside. The undock point was permanently bubbled by a Heavy Interdictor. over the next few hours we attacked POS’s in G8AD and 9-4 as they came out of reinforced mode. In addition to the 150+ battleship fleet we had what looked to be a fleet of about 30-40 dreadnoughts helping us so they went down very quickly. the couple of times that I was targeted by the POS I didn’t even get into armour because the tower was destroyed so quickly.
Northern Coalition Capital Fleet Pew (by starlight)
While waiting for another few POS’s to come out of reinforced we camped the station, killing anything that undocked. This of course got very dull and someone had the brilliant idea to start a conga-line. It took nearly 20 mins for it to get properly sorted but in the end, the results were worth it.
My megathron near the front of the battleship Conga-line
I also made a post that night with more pictures that I won’t repost here (Click here to see them)
Poor broadsword pilot doesn’t get to join the conga line (by starlight)
That night I logged out at a pos in 9-4 and on monday night it was on again, once again killing station services and three POS’s. By Tuesday the Northern Coalition had forced Evoke out of XZH and G8AD.
Success! (by starli…no wait!)
The massive effort by pilots in Mostly Harmless, Tau Ceti Federation, Morsus Mihi, Magesta Empire and Defi4nt (oh, and yes I think we saw one Razor ship…I think) over the weekend was truly amazing. We Northern Monkeys Still fight together as one!
Disclaimer: Not A Screenshot and/or does not contain starlight
As one of our alliance members said on our forums: “Never have I been more proud to be related to a group of people that eat bugs out of each others fur and fling poop for fun.”
Holy page views Batman!
When I started this blog I decided that I wasn’t going to do any monthly updates or any blogroll posts or anything related to meta-type things, but I had to post this.
My blog was trundling along nicely at between 50 and 100 views per day until Sunday night…..
The NC were laying siege to an evoke-held station (battle report post comming in the next few days), we made a battleship conga line with approximately 40-50 battleships and I took screenshots and put them up and posted the link in my corp channel for people not in the fleet to see what they were missing out on. A corp member then posted it in alliance chat, where it got posted in fleet chat and then local chat, and then a Magesta Empire guy posted it on COAD.
This was the result:
Battleship Conga-line
yay! a siege at an Evoke-held outpost – we formed a conga line to ease the boredom
Mr Pew Dies Horribly
So the NC had a big push this weekend to try to force evoke out of cloud ring.
so far it’s gone fairly well – lots of fighting – pandemic legion, sons of tangra, evoke, cry havoc, white noise and all the northern Coalition alliances joining in the fighting.
I brought Mr pew, my new megathron. I had previously thought that in a battleship slugfest I’d likely get primaried due to my name starting with A. well it certainly turned out to be true – I got about two shots off before being skmushed..
the night went a bit like this:
got blob?
blob warp
death
such is life – perhaps I’m better off as a Hic pilot or a scout.
Thankfully due to our absolutely awesome alliance battleship replacement program I’ll get a new one fully fitted and insured. Got to take advantage of the high-end moon goo while we still have it.
CCP deploys dreadnoughts
So I was reading up a bid on the history of the politics in Eve, specifically the north, where I live, and I came across this little tidbit.
From http://wiki.eveonline.com/wiki/Dusk_and_Dawn_(Player_alliance) fourth paragraph.
E.R.A consisted of member corporations from the powerful fighting alliances of The Five and The Forsaken Alliance, who had been brought together after a previous war that first saw the two as adversaries, then partners in a strange twist of fate. E.R.A wanted the north for themselves – and certainly had the will and ability to take it. What followed was a fearsome war, which in many cases due to the recently shifted political landscape saw friend pitted against friend. Of note during this conflict was the decision by CCP – for the first and, to date, only time in the history of Eve – to become involved in a player vs player war by deploying a fleet of Guristas Dreadnoughts on the side of E.R.A, citing the reason that the Guristas did not want D2 to control their area of space. This intervention fell outside of the scope of D2 military plans and halted an otherwise steady progression towards victory, sparking heated debate on the forums. In any case, it was not enough, and D2 forged onwards – pushing E.R.A out of the north with a prolonged attack and securing the entire north once again under the banner of a Northern Coalition.
This was way before my time, but I seriously want more information about this, it sounds awesome.
Nullsec Pets
Having recently read a post by Kirith Kodachi here I strongly resisted the urge to write an entire blog post on the subject (you can see my long comment), but one of the other comments posted a link to an article in ten ton hammer (here) regarding “pets”, alliances that pay rent in order to exist in space conquered by more powerful alliances. I highly recommend you read that article, it raises some interesting points.
My first set of 0.0 experience (apart from that gained from living inside a wormhole for 1.5 months earlier this year) was gained by being part of one of these pet alliances. I joined a corporation that was one of the first corporations I joined as a newbie because they had recently moved out to Deklein to join Defi4nt Alliance, a fairly small alliance which was at the time, renting space from Tau Ceti Federation. I spent about a month there, before moving to Mostly Harmless.
Pet Alliances have many pro’s and cons. The article I linked earlier seemed to very lightly brush over the pro’s and harped on about one specific example where the pet/master relationship went poorly. I think their example was particularly poor because the master alliance at the time was undergoing full-scale attack by the most powerful coalition that the eve universe has ever seen.
My experience within Defi4nt alliance convinced me that being a pet alliance can be a very good thing. and I’ll attempt to state my reasons why here along with some other discussion.
Motivation:
Firstly, the motivation of the alliance considering renting space needs to be examined. why become a pet alliance when your corporation(s) could just join an existing space holding alliance?
In the case of Defi4nt alliance, there were a bunch of corporations who either decidedly did not want to be absorbed by an existing space holding alliance, or could not meet the requirements for joining one (as was the case with the corporation I was in). The end-goal was to eventually become a space-holding alliance in their own right.
Benefits.
Although the Ten Ton Hammer article mentions all the way the pet alliance gets screwed (and a lot of them are true somewhat) there are a lot of benefits that can come from this arrangement. The most tangible benefit is access to better ratting, better minerals, better complexes than would normally be available to the alliance elsewhere, without having to fight to acquire it. Ten ton hammer says this is a raw deal because they don’t get the high end moons, I say that if they weren’t pets, they wouldn’t have any 0.0 space at all.
Prior to the dominion patch a certain levels of sov were required to build supercapitals. renting space gives the alliance everything necessary to build a capital fleet in relative safety (who wants to try building capitals on a large scale in lowsec or npc regions?)
Nothing builds ability like experience. In becoming a pet alliance, the previously empire-based Defi4nt exposed themselves to significant PvP and became closely acquainted with the rigours of 0.0 living. The members learned and practiced things that 0.0 residents take for granted such as paying attention to intel channels, learning how to care for pos’s. learning good discipline in defence and attack fleets, experiencing POS warfare, managing null-sec logistics. There is no way an empire based alliance could hope to take and hold sovereignty without having a good portion of its members with this experience, and it’s not like they would tell their members to go join a 0.0 holding alliance for a few months and then reform again.
other ways of getting experience?
Although an extremely good place to get exposure to nullsec, CVA space is not the answer for everyone.
Moving into an npc region is another way to gain experience, but it is still different. never having to actually defend your space (unless you hold strategic moons with your pos’s) is not the same as the “omg we’d better defend this system or we won’t be able to dock at this station anymore”.
Towards the future.
Not every pet alliance is happy remaining a pet. Defi4nt alliance always had the goal of eventually holding its own space. This sort of began happening before the sov changes in dominion were announced. With the help of their master alliance TCF, Defi4nt began taking sov in some of the systems in cloud ring despite heavy opposition from Evoke and Cry havoc. In the time that I joined them about 5/6 months ago until now, they have progressed from struggling to get 15 cruisers in a defence fleet to being easily able to field 50+ battleships for POS defence operations.
Prediction:
I actually predict that there will be more pet arrangements post-dominion…. I know, the dominion expansion is supposed to make nullsec more accessable, but the fact remains: there are huge alliances out there with lots of isk and lots of combat experience. Then there are alliances coming from empire and npc space with perhaps a lot of combat experience but either without the resources or without the discipline of the current space holding bloc’s. There is no way that they will be able to just walk in and take territory without negotiating with the current power blocks.
It is certain that a lot of existing alliances will have to shrink the space that they hold, but their military capabilities will not diminished in the slightest. With the possible guerrilla-like disruption tactics that will become available post-dominion it will be difficult to gain any space your neighbor doesn’t want you to.
