Mar 122012
 

Every week for as long as I get fed words from RVB members, I will be posting a selection of their RVB experiences here on my blog.

And so without further ado, I give you RVB’s members.

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The Mittani wrote:

Red vs Blue is one of the coolest things in #eveonline, holy shit. Been riftering all day, can’t stop. source

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Delucian wrote:

Since joining RvB, I have had some very memorable fights and been involved in some very memorable events.

For most the lure and ease of getting into large fleet fights, which Mangala details here, are of course the bread and butter of what RvB is.

However, for some of us, there is the lure of solo and small gang (sub 5 man) guerilla warfare that really get us going. Yea, I still get in and even FC fleets from time to time, but my favorite thing to do is to go out on my own or with one or two more and see what I can pick off.

Generally, RvB land is rich with viable targets – if you can get in and get out fast. You don’t, and you die horribly to the fleet that your target is inevitably tied in with. Learning to cull out people from the pack and then being able to either do a lot of damage fast or call in a few Wolf pack members and bail creates both great fun (for the Wolf pack) and, at times, many tears and moans in local from the target.

I think solo and small gang, IMHO, at least provides some level of survivability for a target over the typical blob mentality. So my sympathy for the target is diminished. However, I am always game for a follow on 1v1 should someone feel the need for retribution. I get a lot of good secondary kills this way as well, and those I lose I typically end up with a 50/50 outcome unless I get greedy.

Small, fast and ganky is the way to go with these guerilla tactics. Tanky will typically just get you killed slower. In a recent fight with a frig and an Arby, our small gang was able to take down the frig quickly, then pop the Arby as two other cruisers jumped in. I was targeted, webbed and scrammed as I finished off the Arby, began to burn out with the AB overheated and break scram. However, I did not burn out far enough and as I realigned to warp out drifted back into scram range and got popped.
Regardless, it was a great fight with only me losing a Rifter and I learned a valuable lesson.

What I have found with both solo’ing and small gang engagements is a level of finesse and skill that I was not learning in larger fleets. My evolution from my early fights where I just died a lot in as heavily tanked frigs and cruisers as I could build, to better brawling skills and handling kiters, to both building ships tailored to a type of fighting style and tactics to the situation at hand.

I also cannot say enough about the massive need for situational awareness. I found as this improved my ability to manage the situation improved. I know that sounds very rudimentary, but it is amazing how exponentially simple situational awareness can improve your fighting skills.

[Mangala Edit: Too many words so I snipped]

Solo’ing, small gang action and full on fleet have taught me a massive amount in a short time. As I try to pass these tactics along in RvB NoobFleet and get new players to follow an FC the way they should, I am very grateful to those who have taught me (both in Fleet and 1v1 – like Mangala), who make RvB what it is.

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House2Twist wrote:

RvB is fun because I log on and can just go pewpewpewpewpew all day long 

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Ash Veratis wrote:

I love that RvB has let me get over losing ships. I blow up, i dock, i reship, and undock again. I’ve lost more ships, even a handful of relatively expensive ones, in the past week than i had in the prior year, and even though most of them were shit-fit rifters, it’s still been awesome. 

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Saint Cav wrote:

To this date I have been in Blue Republic for about a month and I have loved every moment of it. I can login and normally within moments join a fleet and start shooting at something. The problem I have now is keeping ships fitted to throw into the fray, but trust me that is a good problem and I wouldn’t have it any other way. With the limited combat zone (Lonetrek) for RvB I am still able to keep my jump clones and mission ships out there to when needed jump into them and do some missions, but it is not required.

Thanks to RvB I have found the reason why to keep playing Eve, my real life friends may no longer play but I have through RvB found a community that I enjoy flying with. So to all of you out there thinking is RvB for you, give it a try, you can come and go as you please, but remember to have fun and fly dangerously while doing it.

 

Join us again next week for more members stories, as well as some images and even vidya!

 

Mar 062012
 

House2twist took the reigns of  Ganked this past weekend, as I apparently needed to get outside and experience “real life” – which by the way I did and it was tons of fun.

So it falls to him to provide words for the Ganked roam. His chosen theme was nano + DPS. 

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House2twist writes:

21:00 GMT, Vaajaita, 141 people wanting to pew pew.

Roll out towards Pure Blind for some funzies and see what we can round up. Everyone is in nano-d ships, but being the intelligent people RvB-er’s are some thought I meant to use EANM’s not nano fibers. Either way, there were a lot of us and we were hoping to do some damage.

First jump into lo-sec has an aggressed proteus and drake on our out gate. We do what all ganked people want to do and shoot them. The drake goes down but the proteus was able to jump back and get away on the other side. We continue on. We keep moving until we hit X47L-Q where the goons decide to come out and play.

We were outnumber by their fleet who also had plenty of logi. Being the crappy FC I am, and not fitting arty’s to my nanocane, I had everyone stay in close instead of kiting. We took down 2 machariels, some scimis and miscellaneous other things but eventually the bulk of us died to their RR.

After this the fleet dwindled down to smaller numbers. Around 50 were left and reshipped into proper nanocanes and such with artillery. We headed out towards BWF (like we always do) and tried to rile up nulli. And we did. 

We hit MR4, and they were ready, also with a arty cane fleet but with scimi support. (Logi sucks, don’t be a vagina and pew against us for real). I get fleet aligned and pulse MWD’s to get some range and start picking off what we can. Unfortunately, they outnumber us and have scimi support so its hard to break them. We kill a few things but again succomb to RR

Overall, it was a great night and I just need some practice FC-ing. Also, it would probably be a bad idea to live stream our shenanigans on the interwebs before we even leave.

House out.

Mangala’s Note.  House did a good job regardless of how the night went overall, plenty of kills and some stunners amongst them to boot!

Mar 052012
 

So as you know I am in Red Versus Blue (RVB). For those that have no clue what this is, it is 2 corporations (well alliances) which spend 23.5 hours a day – except on patch days – killing each other over and over and over again. And we do this with only a few rules, the 2 main ones being no ECM and no Podding. Surprisingly its a system that works.

So much so that CCP created a splash screen for us this past weekend and as a result both corporations have grown over 20%! It also means that we have more and more new people joining daily who wonder what we are all about. So every week for as long as I get fed words from our members, I shall post a selection of their RVB experiences here on my blog.

And so without further ado, I give you RVB’s members.

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Bernadette Kasenumi wrote:

RvB has been an interesting experience for me. The first time I played Eve it was with a few co-workers and it was… overwhelming. Mining was about the only thing I understood, so that’s what I did. Eventually I got bored and stopped playing. One thing I didn’t stop doing, however, was watching the alliance tournament. That’s how I was introduced to PvP, and it looked like *fun*. A lot of fun. But the tournament made it seem like PvP was only for the elite. I had some picture in my mind of these players roaming through low sec (I’d never even heard of null sec by that time) stalking their prey like a cat. A space cat. I remember RvB in this tournament. I thought the alliance sounded like a fantastic idea; creating an group whose point was PvP and lots of it. But I still thought this was something I had to work up to. Until one of the co-workers I played with previously, Cameron Zero, told me he had joined RvB. He sent me a free trial and I started a new account. After a bit of training and some re-learning I too joined RvB.

At first RvB seemed scary. Really scary. You had a whole language I didn’t understand. Plus, half of you are not from States like I am (bollox this, wanker that), so that didn’t help me to understand you all any better. I was intimidated. I was scared. That is, until I joined my first fleet; blew up my first ship. It. Was. GLORIOUS! After that I was hooked.

After a few weeks of this I joined my first ganked. By this time I had come to better understand the difference between high sec and low sec, but this null sec… I was scared again. And I stayed scared up until the first time I was podded. It wasn’t so bad! And it gave me a chance to look at some of the kill mails we were getting:

http://rvbganked.co.uk/kills/index.php/kill_detail/1217/

HOLY CRAP WE KILLED HYDRA! I recognized this name from the alliance tournament as well. And his ship cost sooooo much isk (ha). Mine was practically free (my rifters still cost me less than half a million), but by golly I killed me a big one!

Recently I’ve finally developed the guts to 1v1 on my own, what with the SWOT event. A portion of my bravery is the 300m isk I won designing the ganked board header (which is in honor of my favorite ganked theme, arty thrashers) but most of my bravery is a result of RvB showing me that *I* am the scariest thing in space, because I don’t care if I go boom.

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Venuri wrote:

I thought I would jot down my experience of going from Carebear to RvBer. You may or may not find it interesting. If I had to give it a title it would be ‘How not to get into PVP’

Firstly my instinct is for flight and not fight so I am not a natural PVPer. I spent my time in-game mining in a Carebear corp. The corp decided to venture into null and needed to get the mining index up , so I volunteered. I undocked my Exhumer warped to the mining op and immediate lost my ship to a bomber.
After that episode, I did an Agony Unleashed Basic Course. I came across RvB from the Agony forum and through I would give it a go. I join Blue Republic with ten T1 frigates all T1 modules. It didn’t take the Reds long to realise I couldn’t fit ships for shit and soon lost my ten ships. I left RvB to get some isk for more ships and never came back.

I was getting restless mining and decided to try PvP again. This time I would do it ‘Properly’ I would go through formal training and where else to do formal training that Eve-Uni. After sending in my application and waiting in an queue for four weeks I eventual got my interview. I was reject by Eve-Uni (so that was four weeks well spent).

I then tried for Noir Academy. I was to late (I must have been in the wrong queue), the semester had already started. However they made an exception and let me in. I thought that the Noir Academy was great. It was very strict. no talking in local, You were told a ship type and fit and you had to adhere to it. I saw one guy have is ship blowed from under him, on the FCs orders because one of his modules wasn’t specified. If you lost a ship then you had go into chapter and verse on why you lost that ship. If it was felt that the ship loss was avoidable and you were on a contract you got kicked.

Despite this draconian regime I enjoyed my time in Noir Academy and graduated with a medal and a cookie. I was then moved into Noir Mercenary Group. Being in Noir was like having an in-game job, but wait I had a job in RL! I never screwed up on contract while in Noir but came very close, so decided to leave.

Okay so now I had the basics I needed some mileage under my belt. Agony Unleashed were recruiting I would give them a try. Agony go to great lengths to explain that they are a PVP corp living in null sec and the PVP Uni is a very small part of what they do. However only knowing Agony from the PVP-Uni I have to admitt that this disclaimer didn’t sink in and I also have to admit I did put them on a pedestal. I was with Agony in Venal. I was a little surprised to see lots of blues in system and most of the fleets were CTA. I was under the impression that there would be no blues and fleets would be small gangs. I don’t know if it was the time of month, but I felt I was really screwing up in Agony maybe I was just trying to hard and I became very frustrated. I decided that PVP was not for me so back to mining. I was much encouraged by the guys in Agony and yes I would give PvP one more try.

The MOTD in RvB chat said ‘EU players join Red Federation’ so I did. The RvB way is very simple and for me it works well (I still screw up , but hey who give a fuck).
This extract from corp chat sums RVB up for me,

noobie: “Hi just joined to learn PvP. What do you want me to do?”
RvBer: “kill shit”.
Noobie “I’ve never done PvP”
RvBer: “just get in a fleet and learn the hard way”

And that’s the RvB way*

Now that I have whored on over a 1000 kill mails and died in glorious fire many time. I thought I would try null sec, after all that’s where the real PvPers are. So I re-applied to Agony and yes I got an interview. So here I am sat on TS3 in the Agony lounge for over an hour and nobody from Agony is turning up.

Mmmmmmm! Here we go again.

(Mangala’s Note: Venuri is back in Red Fed for anyone wondering)

Mar 022012
 

Yes I am a couple of weeks late writing about Ganked 17: Pedro, but in between real life, other EVE attractions and generally being very very wound up about the overwhelming need to win that encourages the use of logi’s against my welp fleets, I found myself unable to stay hard while writing this.  However, I got my second wind – or found some viagra, who knows? – and decided to have another go at bashing this one out. 

We formed up Vaajaita, and that system made us go all vertical and it was a glorious sight to see, a DONGA of epic proportions, John Holmes would be proud to fly along side us I am sure.

Anyway, my plan for the evening was trawl through Vale and Geminate and see what we could see/kill/apply dong spray too and all said and done it was a brilliant night, we came, we saw, we splurged all over nullsec.  

As ever, Vale was pretty quiet, with only a brief tumble with Evoke to mark our passage through that region, and the matter of reinforcing a small pos while it’s owner sat inside in his Tengu with an unpiloted Charon sat at the side of him.

So I rolled us into Geminate, with the intention to go find these terrible former war targets of RVB’s, a small alliance named PINKED, and piss all over their cornflakes/stations.  We were in luck!

They had a pretty terrible camp set-up with some assistance from the fallen from grace Ushra’Khan, which we jumped into and proceeded to throw around the room like a cheap $2 whore.

We then meandered around a little until we got word of a Nulli Secunda gang that was pewing on the otherside of Geminate and well we just wanted to go and flash them! We head to their location, and just as I call a jump in, I get distracted by :fuckknows: and go warping to the other side of the system.  Luckily fleet jumps back out, however a mysterious voice (and I know it was not any of the usual folks who speak up on these nights) gets them to sit on the gate at 0…  

Eventually local spikes and suddenly Zealots and Lokis and surprise surprise, 18 bloody guardians, the chastity belt of killmails :( Just about the entire fleet welped and all we managed to kill was 1 lousy Zealot, who was a disconnect anyway.  I was much annoyed, I hate being teased like that.

And that was that.  A dishonourable death to a gang that had been having a stellar night anyway, and in my opinion did not need to bring the logis to beat us, after all I am a bloody terrible FC.