May 262012
 

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger”

 

Saturday 19th May was the 26th Ganked roam, and was also guest FC’d by Azual Skoll, the author of the eve altruist blog and ex director of Agony Unleashed.  For the nights theme  Azual had chosen the lowly breacher as our vessel of choice. 

After getting some emergency supplies of breachers freightered to Rens, we formed up and moved out pretty much on time – obviously Azual learned this from his time in Agony as I am sure on my nights we never leave on time! It turned out, that our destination for the evening was to be Providence.  Before we had even jumped in to nullsec, we came across (yet another) smartbomb fit battleship that tried to take out brave band of pilots down, we are so used to them trying this, that we know to kill them from range.  So we did.

 

 

 

We had just jumped into Providence, un molested as ever, when a scout mentioned a cyno and suddenly Azual began acting funny, so much so that he WARPED US TO IT!  However unlike when I do that, most of the roam survived, and some bad guys died. Obviously, I lost my first hound here as I was so not paying attention.

While I was reshipping, the roam killed a few more duders, including this really expensive pod. I was soooo jelly. Anyway, we bounced around RP space demonstrating the power of the Breacher, killed yet another smartbomb fit battleship – plus his buddies – and generally wrought a path of terror with a hull people just did not expect. However it was not to last, it seems Azual’s earlier channeling of my spirit never really left him.  He found another cyno at another pos, however this time it cost us everything! 

However, while some may see this as a low point we had been roaming for several hours, taking names and generally having a ball in our lowly frigate hulls.  Thanks again Azual Skoll!!

Once again, the amazing folks over at Somer.Blink – who by the way are currently celebrating the 200 TRILLION isk mark & will be sponsoring the RvB team in the 10th Alliance Tournament – provided prizes for the roam.

Scouting Distinction – Cheetah, Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher & 10 Sisters Combat probes per award. (Glepp, Judontknowme, Tigran Petrosian)

Corpse Collector – Sabre. (Akjon Ferguson – whored his way onto 15 pod mails)

Spot Prizes – 10 Hounds. (SubRazor, Rexorr, Captain Fantastiic, Shish Tukay, MaximusDog, Fewell, Ethersapien, Seismic Stan, Miccio Kaku, The Howch)

Combat Distinction – Scythe Fleet Issue. Max of five. (Mizuka Asakura, Vora Dumem, House2twist, Phantom OfKrankor, Blasharga)

Combat Excellence – Sacrilege. (Mactabilis Maero)

Best Local Spam in Elizabethan – 1000 Breachers. (Khador Vess)

May 072012
 

ECM.  

Who knew it could be so much tasty, sticky fun.

Ganked knows of course.

Around 110 pilots attended Ganked 25: Jammin’ which conveniently was held on the same day that EVE turned 9 years old. Even better was at least 90% of the fleet was utilising ECM of some sort, be it jammer modules on a bonused hull, ecm drones or in my case boosting the ecm strength of the fleet as a whole. Such a uniformity of purpose made kill mails look so amazing. The size and composition of the fleet did mean we had a very hard time getting fights, but we did manage to roll over a couple of unsuspecting groups, mainly consisting of drakes and scimitars. Best encounter was a fight up in Geminate with the Goons, who valiantly nanoed their drakes around while we used our scouts and fast tackle to great effect to get warpins on their logistics, slowly but surely we got them down, for losses of “cheap” ecm platforms on our end.  Good fight Goons!

A few of us – after many realised it was late and we had done around 80 jumps so far – reformed in Rens and plowed through some Providence locals before trying to provoke a fight in HED-GP. Where, surprisingly no one would even talk to us in local, and we only had 30 or so at that point, mostly frigs and ecm cruisers, with a few BC and 1 Scorpion thrown in. If I was the locals I would have fought my fleet, as surely a fight is better than spinning (meat or ship, exclude as appropriate)?

Thats the up and down of Ganked I suppose, either way the night was really really fun, ESPECIALLY for Kalaratiri, a Ganked regular who turned 19 on Saturday, and as a result found himself enriched via the generosity of his fellow Ganked pilots.

 

Special shout-out goes to myself, for totally raging at the fleet before the encounter with Solar Fleet drakes. Long story short, those ECM drones I demanded pulled in before I fleet warped us, were mine. I am the best.

 

Vidya Flavour Jams by Geddonz & Jaymes Welty

 

As with Ganked 24, the wonderful boys and girls over at Somer.Blink sponsored several prizes last night, and without any fanfare here is the list of winners!  Congratulations to you all!

Scouting Distinction – Buzzard, Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher & 10 Sisters Combat probes per award. Max of three. (Jamie Banks, Green Gambit, Thecla Elarik)

Corpse Collector – Flycatcher. (PVDNS77 with 17 pod mails!) This is the same as last weeks highest scoring pod whorer!

Spot Prizes – 10 Kitsunes. (Codename Par, Damien Smith, Dragon Venom, Canidy, xXThe EntityXx, Klapen, Raubrey, Tiaggo, Klown Walk, Sativa Divipwnum)

Combat Distinction – Rooks. Max of five. (Luckyccs, Angelus Infirim, Tigran Petrosian, Xinnax, macgyver 3rd)

Combat Excellence – Scorpion Navy Issue. (Nyu Trustan) For trying so hard to let me lose your Scorpion!!!

Heretic – Falcon. Most killmails with a non-ECM bonused ship. (PVDNS77)

Yes PV being the whore he is, managed to bag two prizes!!!!  Thats some dedication! You too can be that dedicated guys just by attending future Gankeds! And guys, if you are yet to try Somer.Blink, remember if you join today using the promo code “Ganked” then you will receive bacon – not really, but you will get 2.5million isk blink credit!

May 022012
 

Ganked has now been operating for over 18 months, and it has been noted that inside of our very insular community, we may not be as understanding of newer players tagging along as we could be.  So I am going to try with this post to layout some of things that folks should be doing before joining one of these roams and what they can expect during a Ganked roam.

 

Before thinking of attending:

1) Read up on the history of Ganked;

2) Check out all the previous nights and the kill mails we have gotten;

3) Watch the video’s and learn just what you are in for;

4) Join the in-game mailing list “RVB Ganked”. This way you can keep abreast of upcoming nights;

 

So after checking the videos and this blog out you still actually do want to attend?

5) Setup a Jumpclone. This is a “new” body with no implants, that you can “jump” to and use instead of your current body and its implants.  On these roams, you will eventually get podded, so get a jumpclone from either the RvB Jump Clone Service or Estel Arador Corp Services. Both of which are cheap and quick to use;

6) Install Mumble. This is the Ganked comms of choice, learn to love it.  I am occasionally on EVE Voice as well, but for those on there, its just not as fun a night;

7) On the evening of a roam, join the in game channel “RvB Ganked” and wait for Mangala Solaris and other’s to start taking x’s for invites to the Ganked fleet;

 

It’s the big night!

8) Get some beers in;

9) Using Mumble connect to the Ganked server and make sure you are using Push To Talk;

10) Get in your jumpclone;

11) Move to the start system for the nights roam. If in RvB people often move to the start system together as a group;

12) Insure and rename your ship(s) as per the theme of the night, which is always linked in the fleet message of the day;

13) Undock;

14) Join the inevitable conga;

15) When the fleet moves out, you will usually be fleet warped. DO NOT JUMP unless told to by the FC;

16) Kill what you are told to kill when targets present themselves;

17) Enjoy yourselves.

 

We died.

Yes, on Ganked’s this will happen, and usually happens once or twice during a roam. Not as spectacularly as when we run into a Rooks & Kings smart-bombing battleship super trap, but we still die. Usually we die because we run into a fleet that is taking things much more seriously than us, and are fielding a large number of logistics vessels or ECM of some sort, or is oddly a perfect counter for our mixed bag of ships. However, this often takes quite a while and along the way we inflict a silly amount of damage on the locals of which ever null sec region we are roaming at a given time.

Dieing is one of the aims of the night, we get some juicy kills then karma bites us in the ass getting us killed. Then we roll out again if it is not too late here in the UK. So do not be angry or upset if you do die. It happens. Get in a new ship and we will go out again. If you die early enough we may even be able to help you catch us up if the large part of the fleet survived. Ganked has a large core of experienced pvpers who come along with us, and who understand death is part of the roam, if they can do it, you too can do it!

 

I am on comms and hearing all these new terms.

For those new to EVE or new to PVP and nullsec PVP in particular, following comms can prove to be difficult with all the terms bandied around. The list below (that will expand over time) hopes to clear some of these terms up:

Bomb. Always means the area of effect weapon launched from Stealth Bombers. If launched at our fleet while on a gate, we have several options. We can jump back through if in jump range, scatter WITHOUT using MWDs (these increase your sig radius making the bomb more effective against your ship, or if we are really lucky, we can lock the bomber and kill it which results in the bomb deactivating if we kill said bomber before the bomb “lands”.

Bubbles. These are items that prevent anything inside of them from warping.  The best way to counter them is to MWD out of them and then warp away.  We usually have some “bubblers” with us (Heavy Interdictor Cruisers or Interdictors (T2 Destroyers), and try to use them as efficiently as possible.  There are also such things as anchorable bubbles, which can be placed in such a way that you warp right into them instead of the gate or station or planet etc they are positioned near, there by allowing any cloaked enemies to get easy kills. Sometimes if we find some anchored bubbles in transit systems we will camp them and get easy kills ourselves. 

Cyno. This is otherwise known as a cynosural field and is one of the methods by which Capital ships move around. I have a small problem in that I like to randomly warp fleets to them (Past couple of times, we have killed rorqual and shot a titan at these fields).

 

 

I hope all the above helps you make the decision to come along on a Ganked roam, and enjoy all the fights and losses you WILL experience while roaming.  

See you in the conga!