17 months after it all began, who would have thought we would make it this far?
And to celebrate, I really did try to come up with something fun, however as you all know I am going through a bitter stage with EVE (not the game but mostly with the people who play it!) and so I went the theme that had plenty of votes in a recent poll on my blog – Tier 1 Battlecruisers (Brutix, Cyclone, Ferox & Prophecy) – and as an extra twist I added in a very special guest hull, and arranged for that to be sorted on the QT. Surprisingly only a couple of people got it before the grand undocking!
For those who were not there, the Ganked 50 fleet was to escort a CHARON loaded up with garbage, booze, porn and dead hookers. When it undocked and showed in fleet the members went pretty crazy with lots of laughter on comms and general “wtf” from most, but luckily for me you all saw the funny side and we moved out!
We slowly but surely moved our CONVOY into null, running into several bomber wings along the way – and this really unlucky Tengu – that just didnt have as much success as they had hoped. We then got to the system of YPW on our way to C-J6MT and found ourselves dawdling around for such a long time that a Razor Tier 3 gang got a warp in on us and popped the CHARON However it had taken the denizens of null nearly 2 hours to do so, thus proving my point that such people are mostly garbage and lack any sort of mental ability that would have lead them to kill it sooner. Still, next time Razor, maybe bring us a stand up fight instead of exploding our garbage then running away.
The fleet was then able to move a little bit faster and that we did, moving through Insmother and into Scalding Pass, not really finding much as we did so, except this Hulk which we had some graphical fun with while ensuring we all whored onto the mail:
And then there was this Sleipnir we found in a mission too:
Nothing much happened after this until we got into VOL-MI, upon which we engaged a Devoter which jumped away, only for a PL Rokh to jump in. So we killed it, then its friends came in, many more Rokhs & logistics & 20+ carriers – from both PL & NCDOT. All for little old me and my drunk fleet. Finding ourselves unable to break all that faggotry and having had me rage a little over it too, I called a bail (and duly got targeted, the joys of open comms and a stream that is not delayed!) and most of the fleet got out. The carrier blob killed around 20-25 of us with some getting camped into 5E and others managing to get out via 8G-. After some time, we even got the guys in 5E out, via a long ass route into Catch and then back into Curse, but maps are not that hard. Unlike tackling the Fleet Phoon we had with us all night seems to be for ANYONE.
It was pretty late by this point and many of the fleet logged, still having enjoyed themselves, so a few of us reshipped to whatever and we roamed into Geminate hoping to get a fight out of BRICK. Turns out they dont fight even when we only outnumbered them 2:1 – and here I was under the impression that null pvpers believe themselves to each be worth many highsec scrubs as they call us? Brick did however give us couple of final fun killmails, in the form of a Vagabond and a Mackinaw that sat ratting & mining in a belt all the time we were in BWF-.
And that boys & girls is that. Ganked 50 was a good roam despite the issues that nullsec has for a roam such as ours, and I hope we keep going on as strong as ever and that the next 50 are better in every way. Remember guest FCs and ideas for themes are always appreciated.
Special Prize: The remaining RvB AT X Sleipnir. As flown by Cablex Dayspring. After a free raffle & using chribbas dice, INTRACTABLE is the winner of this prize!!!
A little over one month ago, an RvB member by the name of Torve Starduster made a forum post suggesting a “Free for all” fight, with a twist.
The FFA, would consist of 10,000 rifters.
At first I was not sure what to make of it, and many others seemed somewhat sceptical too, however as the thread went on, the original idea got fleshed out by other posters; Logistics of fitting and movement were sorted out, donations of hulls & modules were arranged, and then suddenly it was looking like it would become a reality. During the following month a POS was set-up by an RvB members alt, several SMA’s were anchored around it, and the long task of fitting and moving 10,000 T1 frigate hulls – the 10,000 Rifters tag was still kept as it has a better ring to it than 10,000 rifters and other assorted T1 hulls with random fits – began.
And on November 3rd 2012, all the planning came together, and RvB gathered to start the biggest continuous FFA fight in our – and probably the servers – history.
A juddering halt
While I said above RvB had got together for a very explodey party, and had confirmed with Mummy & Daddy CCP that we could have that this party, it turns out that jettisoning 6,000 of anything onto the same grid as a POS, is a VERY BAD THING, for anyone trying to warp onto that same grid. So come 19.00 EVE on the 3rd November, we could not actually start the party with a huge bang, more of a whimper before it came to a sudden & juddering halt. Didn’t stop Professor Clio from being the first kill though.
Basically no matter what we tried, the grid would not load for people – and even logging off & on, e-warping back & logging mid e-warp would not help solve this – we kept ending up trying to load that grid again. Everyone who could bail did so to a noobship race, & to take part in this killmail, while the rest of us kept hoping beyond hope the grid would either load or we could get off it. It got so bad for me, that I resorted to petitioning to be moved because I was “stuck”.
To say that the petition did not go quite how I expected would be understatement. This is how it went:
I petition to be moved due to being stuck on a grid;
Senior GM responds & says “nope” “system is fine” “unfair to others if we move you”;
I reply “have you seen the actual grid I am on?”
Senior GM is like “what grid, where?”
So I tell him and mention the 6.000 ships on said grid;
Senior GM appears in the local list;
Senior GM then asks me “who did this, why did they?”
I explain – and drop Torve deep in the brown stuff at his request;
Following the above the GM is all “We’ll fix it”
CCP Dev appears in local and makes 2500 rifters disappear [ 2012.11.03 21:07:49 ] CCP DeNormalized > almost 2500 empty rifters were moved;
System then gets reset and remapped;
CCP let us carry on [ 2012.11.03 21:09:52 ] CCP DeNormalized > i’d say do your worst… but well… we’ve seen how that goes :)
And within 20 minutes the rabid killers of RvB were pouring into the system & grabbing hulls from those on the pos grid and racing out into the wilds of Abagawa to explode and be exploded by each other. No matter how many exploded, and in that first “proper” hour we had exploded loads of hulls, the grid just wasn’t clearing:
So a fleet went up, an advert was spammed around RvB, and away we went. As more and more pilots poured into system, more & more ships exploded, the belts started to become clogged with wrecks & the locals could not get a word in edgewise in local chat. I checked the star map a couple of hours later and we were at 900+ ships destroyed in just the last hour, which roughly extrapolated to close to 1200 since 21.25 or thereabouts.
We apologise for any inconvenience
The carnage in Abagawa was short lived however as TQ fell over and needed a restart, which turned into an emergency multiple hour downtime. We were all so very sad.
Not really.
We decided to take the blame – and we will forever take said blame – for the server falling over. We just think that it wasn’t quite ready for the sheer volume of kills, or kills of “shit-fits” that were happening in an otherwise peaceful high sec system. Whatever actually happened we really do not care about.
And the beat goes on
Fast forward a few hours later and I am rested enough to log back into EVE and see how the FFA was going. To my pleasure it was as explosive as it had been since the emergency downtime had ended, with around 3000 recorded kills already, and more of the euro-shift logging on and joining in with the madness in Abagawa. And for the next 10 hours, I just kept exploding ships and being exploded. At peak we had 70+ members in the FFA fleet with around another 20 in local doing their own thing, and we were averaging 5-700 kills an hour as the time ticked past downtime and deep into the afternoon. The ships to help us on our way being jettisoned from the SMA’s every time the pos grid was too easy to warp into.
10,000 ships, surely they were not all well fit?
The nicest thing to say about the fits is that they worked. Not necessarily at helping you live, but you could at least whore things if you could not be as offensive as you liked. The fits themselves ran the gamut from no tank all gank rifters, to neutron blaster merlins to mining magnates to rail fit incursus and right on to multiple logi inquisitors. In fact excepting the merlins and incursus I used, I rarely found exactly the same fit twice. Fit-roulette really helped with the adventure of this event, what with no one knowing exactly what they would get or even how to use them half the time. I did get a few fits that worked well however especially the light missile condors with ewar mid slots – sitting at 35km or so and damping/tding/tping as many targets as I could while lobbing missiles into the fray just felt so good! A few of the incursus fits performed well too – rep/blasters/mwd/point&web for example, in one of these I had a really good fight tearing up several ships alone until 5 or 6 guys who were chatting with me on comms headed my way as my ammo gave out.
Who needs enemies with friends like that eh?!
This is the end Beautiful friend This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end
The FFA finally came to an end at 02.36am on November 5th due to there being no hulls people wanted to explode, except 1000+ bantams, of which barely any had seen use over the weekend. The last kill was this one. In total 8096 ships had been killed in around 27 hours of activity. A brief summary of how this breaks down follows this link to the killboard campaign:
To top this all off, the top 20 pilots (for november) on EVE-Kill are all RvB members.
In over 6 years of EVE, I cannot think of any organised event that has seen such a level of carnage, and in my opinion it was easily the single largest number of explosions seen in highsec ever. Not bad for t1 rifter alts. Crashing a node, getting it restarted and just keeping the carnage going for as long as it did without any drama – internally or externally – just adds to the epic of this event.
I’d like to thank the members of the Academy
The following individuals need to be pointed out for both my gratitude and that of RvB as a whole:
Torve Starduster – the man with the plan. He who started it all and was heard to exclaim “lets block out the sun” from his bathtub.
Zakhs – Logistical HERO! Set up the POS & moved 11888 fitted frigates to its SMA’s ALONE. He also seemed to ALWAYS be online when more ships were needed on grid. Did you even sleep?
Del Delvechio – for a huge donation of 2500 rifter hulls to kick off this whole thing. Without such largesse, would this event have really happened?
Random McNally, Mandelbrot Fracture, Rashino Zea and many many more – For fitting the ships with lol fits, troll fits and srs fits. You guys certainly kept us entertained during our 27 hour game of fit-roulette.
CCP – for not screwing us and removing all the initial wave of ships and for ensuring that node reinforcement actually happened. Without their assistance, we would have been “proper fucked”.
Everyone who attended the event and helped put us on the path to 8000+ explosions. I hope you all enjoy your time in RvB and treasure your memories of this event for as long as you play this game.
“If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.”
Here are a few images I took over the course of the hours I spent at the event. There is a mix of ui-less and ui-filled images. As I get more from other people I will add them to this post.
Also check out this stream by Sard Caid who was in attendance on his RvB alt. Forward to around 3 hours 20 minutes for footage of the FFA. Enjoy!
Way back in the dawn of time on an internet spaceships forum that is now lost to us, a few pilots had the idea to set up 2 groups that would be at permanent war and would have no rules on who could or could not join, as long as they wanted to explode/be exploded by someone. They named the corps Blue. & Red. and for a while all was right with the world. Explosions happened and good fights were had. Then after a few months, much drama and eventual leadership inactivity caused the experiment to come to an end.
Or did it?
Around a year later, on that very same forum a few of the original protagonists of the Red v Blue experiment decided to try it again, and this time it would be harder, better, faster, stronger than the last time. And so on 25th September 2009, a new war began between the forces of the Blue Republic & the Red Federation.
After a week, 2800 explosions had been made, and the rest as they say is history.
1127 days later
Despite several changes in rules, leadership and even location the war is still going strong, with hundreds of explosions daily. From the ubiquitous T1 fit rifters to multi-billion isk fit vargurs and everything in between, no hull is sacred in the eternal war that is Red v Blue. During these 1127 days, each side has passed 100,000 kills solely of the other, with Blue reaching it first, soon followed by Red in a flurry of activity – that happens when you offer 1 billion isk to each of the pilots who get the final blow – and much more recently this explosion became the 300,000th RvB explosion. For those interested, we have exploded the general eve populace over 20,000 times, several thousand of these being in third party wars, the most memorable for me being those against the good people at Ivy League.
As you can see from the tables above the action never ends. Yes, we have had our quiet months, but that has not stopped the war machine rolling on, keeping both corporations in the Top 20 on Evekill for several years, as well as several of our pilots up there too month in and month out. As we continue on this destructive course, our member numbers also keep increasing – helped along by our very own recruitment thread, live streams, hundreds of related videos & publicity courtesy of CCP:
So much so that Red Federation just inducted its 3,000th member. Say hello to Eanok:
However RvB is already – when combined – the single largest entity in high sec space, and we are the 9th & 10th largest alliances in EVE as a whole. And all that without holding space or making our members any money. Who knew a very explodey isk sink would be so popular, I certainly don’t think the original protagonists of Plave, Tron, Chakarai, Joe Appleby to name a few could have envisioned this 3 years ago when we first went “live”.
Wait, we haven’t always lived in The Forge?
Yes, RvB has not always lived in The Forge. We started off down in Verge Vendor, why I cannot tell you as even my memory gets hazy after three years, what I do remember is that it is a remote part of Empire space in todays terms and that logistics was an absolute pain when supplying yourself with toys. Since I seem to be turning into the “RvB Stats guy”, a few weeks ago I sat down & looked into our various homes, the explosions we made while living in each & how long we spent in a given region, unsurprisingly the closer we moved towards the economic heart of Empire, the more we exploded, the larger we got…
As I said above, three years ago we started off in Verge Vendor which was the scene of over 49,000 kills – valued at 740 BILLION ISK. We lived here until August 2010 when we made the jump to Everyshore, which if you can believe it, proved even more out of the way (despite being close to 2 market hubs!), but we still reached around 39,000 kills valued at 560 BILLION ISK in our time there. It was in July 2011 that we decided to leave Gallente space and so we moved to the much more populated Caldari region of Lonetrek, achieving 75,000 kills valued at 1.3 TRILLION ISK while living mere jumps from some of the busiest Empire & nullsec regions, however the part of the region we lived in was not well loved of the membership and so in March 2012 we relocated one region over to The Forge and we have been here since then. To date we have over 145,000 kills valued at 2.1 TRILLION ISK. Yes, in 6 or so months, we have killed nearly double what we did in the 9 months we lived in Lonetrek.
You’re obsessed with the number 3.
Keen eyed observers will have noticed that I keep mentioning that RvB is three years old, or has done x or y in 3 years, I do so because – & this should be obvious – the Red v Blue war reached its third year of explosive goodness on 25th September 2012. As with previous years – see the celebrations I organised for the 2nd birthday back in 2011 (Anywhere But, Sink the Bismarck & RvB Ganked 3: Time on Target) – I made a conscious decision to step up to the plate once more and put together various events to help the thousands of pilots who fly along side me, celebrate this past year and look forward to the next. Luckily, this year I was not alone in organising our birthday events, as over the summer I became one of the founder members of the RvB events committee – not really a surprise considering my events pedigree over the past few years of my time in RvB.
I personally organised a series of RvB Ganked roams: Ganked 40, Ganked 41 & Ganked 42. All of which were really good nights with very high numbers of RvBers attending and joining in the drunken nullsec fun, in addition I set running the third iteration of my Somewhere Out There event, which has recently come to an end, with participating RvB members taking home prizes totalling 30 billion isk. Quite the birthday present from me to all of you really. As well as my events others from the committee – and the general population of RvB – stepped to the plate and organised things too:
Mandelbrot Fracture threw us a Bantam Brawl with the addition of a Navy scorp to massacre. Much hilarity ensued.
Combat Mink organised 3 weeks of evening events, from Musical Frigates to a Conga Brawl to an Industrial FFA to Gladiators – which saw Wiiggls crowned as the current Gladiator Champion of RvB!
Cartheron Crust did a bang up job of organising the first RvB Cannonball Run. A race across space and back with the entrants misleading each other, getting one another killed and so on all in the name of prizes and birthday cake!!!
Connall Tara, Blue Rep member & host of the Fly Reckless podcast put together an RvB birthday special, which can found here. Combat Mink & Wiiggls (and lots of mentions of me) where his special guests, along with many soundbytes from other RvB members!
Now that the birthday celebrations are all wrapped up and over with, I think it is safe to say that even with a larger membership this years celebrations were bigger and better and more well received than ever before. Everyone who took part really enjoyed themselves, and found new joy in being part of the RvB machine. I know I did, and I mostly stuck with organising & publicity over anything else.
Huge thanks to all of you who attended & took part in any of the events over the past 4 weeks or, its people like you that keep us on the Events committee doing what we do. Oh and because our ego’s need sustenance.
To everyone who missed out, there is always next year!
What does the future hold?
We are now into our third year, with both the 5 trillion isk exploded & 500,000 kill milestones to reach, which in my opinion are well within RvB’s grasp during this year, either way its going to be very explosive! Helping us towards those markers there will be several RvB Ganked roams, including the 50th roam – for which I am taking suggestions – however before that, there is to be a very very special RvB FFA.
Special you say?
Yes, I said special.
10,000 fitted rifters (and assorted other frigates) being jettisoned in space so RvBers can grab them, explode someone, be exploded by someone, then grab another is pretty much the very definition of special when applied to our case.
This wonderful event is being put together by a very very dedicated team of people who have spent nearly a month fitting and moving the hulls around. I expect this to go off amazingly well and result in a giant red dot marking our little corner of space for hours on the 3rd November 2012. Hopefully hundreds of us will participate in such an epic event.
My final words.
My 3 years in RvB, have been the most enjoyable of my 6 years in EVE. Nowhere else can I get the instant action on offer here, alongside an amazing array of events and contests, setup and organised by some of the funniest folks I have met in my time in game – and by me of course.
It really stuns me to take a trip down memory lane in regards to RvB and see what small roots we have grown from and to turn and look at what we can become, indeed what we have already become in some ways. And to know that I have had a part of that and have helped guide us on the path to an even more explodey future really makes me proud.
As long as RvB keeps the explosions going, anyone of us, from Command to bitter vets to fresh faced newbies and even ex-Rvbers can take away the knowledge that they are and have been a part of something very special in a game as special as EVE. So thanks to CCP, my fellow RvBers and all the people I have met on my road.
A few weeks ago, RvB found itself needing to declare war on a small corp local to our bases in The Forge; This corp was called Rock Huggers Inc & depending on who you ask, they had either been flipping cans in RvB fights, causing the less aware members of RvB to become flashy to them or they had been “innocently” leaving cans of ammo around, and merely defending themselves when RvB pilots “borrowed” that ammo. Either way, Command deemed them a nuisance – all 8 of them – and war was declared.
Given it was a cheap war against RvB, several other parties a long the way allied themselves with Rock Huggers Inc and lots of explosions – on both sides of the fence – occurred. Eventually the combat wound down till only one of the enemies allies continued to fight, and only against Blue with whom they now have a mutual war, while the remaining allies finished their period of support and went on their way.
And then roughly at the start of last week, Rock Huggers formed an alliance, which inherited the now mutual wars with RvB.
It was at this point when the fun began. Following a short, sweaty & hot period of action in the form of the original war declarations, it seems RvB became a carrier – if not the Patient Zero – of the internet spaceships version of an STD.
Basically, should you hop into bed with Purple Legion or The Marmite Collective you will become embroiled in a mutual war started by RvB – wars which we freely admit to starting, for various reasons stemming back to the original war with Rock Huggers Inc. However, once you get out of bed with those entities, instead of leaving the war behind, you take a fresh case with you. No matter how much protection you use. Then when you meet a new alliance, go to dinner, maybe dancing and then back to their place for “coffee”, you give them a dose too, all the while continuing to play host to your own infection. And each time the alliances have new corporations back to theirs, they too leave with a new case of Aggressive RvB Mutual War Syndrome. Ad infinitum. Indeed, Rock Huggers Inc used the executor corp of Purple Legion to pass a solid dose of this syndrome on to Dec Shield, who are now spreading it to every corp that passes through their doors.
The following is the list of current wars caused by various entities bed hopping:
Mutual
RvB Blue v Skunk Works (Consequence of mutual war with The Marmite Collective)
RvB Blue v Kicking Smurfs (Consequence of mutual war with The Marmite Collective)
RvB Blue v The Marmite Collective (EDIT: Was mutual, seems to be changed now)
RvB v Belteaters (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Madre Del Amor Hermoso Corp (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Purple Legion (Consequence of mutual war with Rock Huggers Inc)
RvB v Impromptu Asset Requisition (Consequence of mutual war with Purple Legion)
RvB v Purple Legion Holding Corporation (Consequence of mutual war with Purple Legion)
RvB v Dec Shield (Consequence of mutual war with Purple Legion)
RvB v Ba’als Deep Space Mining (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Epicurus Philosophy (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v CEBEP DV (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Battle BV (Consequence of mutual war with Purple Legion)
None Mutual
(Should have gone mutual when these entities left various alliances, but did not, despite leaving after the mutual wars had gone live. Yet another bug?)
RvB v Beyond the White (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Pulsar Engineering (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Benedictus Ordinis Fessa Milites (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB v Army Ninja Society (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
RvB Blue v Lonetrek Salvage and Scrap (Consequence of the former mutual war with The Marmite Collective)
RvB v Entek Heavy Industries (Consequence of mutual war with Dec Shield)
As you can see, all the above have happened in a little over a week, think of what this could look like in another week, or a month, should this keep spreading like it does. Could we be looking at the eventual doom of peace in high security space, or will a vaccine be forthcoming?
Now here is the crux of the matter, is this a bug as the folks at Dec Shield claim or is it a mechanic working as intended with the usual lack of documentation? Answer’s on a postcard please. And if you do send one, wash your hands first.
So kids, protection does not always save you does it. Still, remember
EDIT: This is not me – or RvB – complaining about the wars, as we like to fight given it is the RvB raison d’etre, but merely me wondering exactly what is going on with mutual war declarations right now.
After a short hiatus due to the recent EVE meet down in London – see TGL3’s blog for more on that – Ganked returned last night. It was both the 40th Ganked, and the first of 3 roams to celebrate RvB’s third birthday. Originally I had planned that the theme would be based on the results of this poll, however Daneel Trevize had suggested a “max dps” theme, were we bring as much gank as possible, and I liked the idea so much that I ran with it.
And what a night it was.
Met up in Rens, had the usual conga shenanigans with a little can flip idiocy thrown in for good measure resulting in Blue Rep members being able to get this kill. Then we were off. Had a speed bump of some Eternal Evocations guys in lowsec, however not all of them went flashy on our broadsword, so we only got a couple of them. After jumping into G-5EN2 we got word of a sizeable Red Alliance Tier 3 gang over in 9-F, however they would not jump into us, and their use of spais – ON THE LEAST SECURE COMMS IN EVE WITH PILOTS WHO DON’T REALLY CARE WHEN WE DIE, JUST HOW (GG RED, GG. All of EVE remembers you when you were good!) – prevented us getting successful cloaky warpins, so we just moved past them and right onto a Black Ops Hot drop performed by Russian Thunder Squad, members of -A-. Our bait vindicator worked wonders. Their blops drop failed amazingly, in that we traded 1 Vindicator – that Green got for free – for a few Black Ops BS.
WIN!
I still do not know what exactly those pilots thought they could achieve. Yes, like 2 managed to escape, but that is only because traffic control caught a few of our tacklers & bubblers. Regardless, at that point it felt really good to be back in the Ganked saddle.
And then we were off again, rolling over a CVA gang that was sat at 0 on a gate, and did not cross jump us even when I and a handful of others killed a sabre of theirs that had cross jumped. By the time I got into ERVK-P, the CVA gang was dead, or had ran away really fast. Except for 1 Lachesis that logged WITH aggression and was probed down and killed by us. God knows how the dumb manage to dress themselves in the morning. Speaking of dumb, we crashed a Legio gate-camp later on which did not warp off despite most likely knowing we were coming, and also being in one of the few systems they live in.
We started to spiral down towards the Catch/Stain border, however while idling in QETZ-W, local started spiking with -A- and their various pets, so we jumped into BUZ-DB, hit the station, killed some stuff, bubbled it and waited. And waited. And waited. And then the drake+scimi fleet they had landed in our bubbles and it was on.
IT WAS GLORIOUS!
House & myself switched calling roles, with Dan and others helping out on warpins when needed & the majority of the fleet focusing on primaries when told, grabbing points and generally not being terrible, which warmed my cold bitter heart. As a group we calmly took down targets as called, or as they presented themselves as new primaries – why hello there Mr Scimitar – without much comms clutter or even your FC doing a good impression of a rabbit caught in headlights. While we did end up dead – around 100 of us were still going by this point – we out performed ourselves massively in terms of how we did in the whelp section of the roam. Overall, I was and still am, very impressed & can happily say that fight really helped me find my love for FCing and EVE once again. Now if only I would undock more.
And then it was 2 AM UK time and it was all over. As the dust settled we had done around 14 billion isk in damage with 130+ kills to our name. Pretty epic night considering I did the whole thing SOBER and that I ran out of smokes around 11 PM UK.
One last word before videos and prizes, however I shall let fleet chat from towards the end of the night say it for me (& my ego):
[ 2012.10.07 00:11:34 ] lolololol01 > we did amazingly well against all those logi lol. was quite suprised [ 2012.10.07 00:12:08 ] Whisp3r > thx for fleet and fun [ 2012.10.07 00:12:30 ] Caterpil > Thanks for the fleet :) [ 2012.10.07 00:12:32 ] macH eoN > cheers guys o7 [ 2012.10.07 00:12:48 ] Alayna Le’line > Thanks guys, fun as usual o7 [ 2012.10.07 00:13:30 ] Shish Tukay > fun night, heading home now, bye guys o/ [ 2012.10.07 00:13:33 ] Geo Vent > I’m off. Thanks for a fun evening Mangala Solaris [ 2012.10.07 00:13:37 ] Sir Yohnny > GF guys… [ 2012.10.07 00:13:50 ] Deea Noban > o/ great fleet [ 2012.10.07 00:13:58 ] Dece Goo’Ba > Excellent Ganked night :-) ttfn! [ 2012.10.07 00:14:00 ] Rokhaard Indiz > thanks for the fleet everyone [ 2012.10.07 00:14:02 ] Yori Yolanda > thx for fleet! great fight [ 2012.10.07 00:14:12 ] mimori > Thanks chaps, was fun. [ 2012.10.07 00:14:33 ] Morindius > thanks guys, my first Ganked and I enjoyed it thoroughly. [ 2012.10.07 00:14:34 ] Thash Isnit > was fun thanks guys! [ 2012.10.07 00:14:36 ] PVDNS77 > yeah nice ganked. even died \o/ thx for fleet o7 [ 2012.10.07 00:14:47 ] Ohpehk Doshu > great night. thanks RVB [ 2012.10.07 00:14:51 ] Osoi Shinu > awesome thanks everyone [ 2012.10.07 00:14:51 ] Himaro 1 > probably the most fun i’ve had on this game in a long time [ 2012.10.07 00:14:58 ] Andrew Koch > o/ thx for an awesome fleet [ 2012.10.07 00:15:17 ] Nutbolt > thanks for ganked, was a really good end! [ 2012.10.07 00:15:22 ] SoraXIII > yeah had a great time guys Mangala Solaris is an epic FC xD [ 2012.10.07 00:15:24 ] Ganage Be’des > Thanks for the fights! [ 2012.10.07 00:15:31 ] Solaven > Thanks for the roam guys. great fun. [ 2012.10.07 00:15:36 ] Janis Praag > great fight fly unsafe! [ 2012.10.07 00:16:57 ] Stickelback > was that a win lose or draw? [ 2012.10.07 00:17:09 ] Phantom OfKrankor > it was a good loss [ 2012.10.07 00:17:35 ] Mangala Solaris > WIN. We exploded, they did too. I didnt rage :D [ 2012.10.07 00:17:57 ] Strom Crendraven > thanks that was fun! [ 2012.10.07 00:19:46 ] Kast Agnet > Cheers guys thx 4 everything [ 2012.10.07 00:20:10 ] Jagtor > cheers mang got to go [ 2012.10.07 00:21:14 ] Dieter Rams > thanks for the fleet guys [ 2012.10.07 00:21:17 ] Furious Ginger > fun time guys gtg :D [ 2012.10.07 00:21:19 ] Dieter Rams > well done [ 2012.10.07 00:21:37 ] Bazanti d’Arys > Thanks for the Fleet RvB, I had a beautifull death! [ 2012.10.07 00:21:44 ] Mangala Solaris > glad you came! [ 2012.10.07 00:21:48 ] Michael Warsaw > Thanks for having me, awesome stuff! [ 2012.10.07 00:21:53 ] Johnny Vector > that was awesome. [ 2012.10.07 00:22:14 ] Henry Warsaw > Awesome is an understatement. [ 2012.10.07 00:24:09 ] Shepherd Riddick > great ganked thx mates
Videos to follow when uploaded
As usual, our friends over at Somer.Blink sponsored prizes and here are the winners:
Corpse Collector – Eris x1 (Captain Hurrdurr – for the awesome chain of friendly pods at the end of the night!!!)
Spot Prizes – Federation Navy Comet x6 (SoraXIII, Edvantage – “I CANT SHOOT THEM OR THEM OR THEM OR THEM”, Janis Praag, Rondra Juliaris, Rokhaard Indiz for this – “when fc tells you to take a piss, you ask how high”, Henry Warsaw for this “My first pvp roam. Lets for that guys!”)
Combat Distinction – Cynabal x3 (Green Gambit – for putting that Vindicator on the line so well, BigWierdo, Admiral Rufus – This pair did some great bubbling in the various fights we had)
Combat Excellence – Machariel x1 (Macgyver 3rd – topping the KB kills for the campaign, in the face of hard competition from many including several new comers to Ganked)
Somewhere out there beneath the blue nebulae Someone’s shooting at me and looting me tonight
Somewhere out there someone’s saying a prayer That we’ll find one another in that big somewhere out there
RvB is three years old shortly and as part of our celebrations for this wondrous occasion, I am running the third version of my “Somewhere Out There” event.
For those unaware of what this is, it is a month long – starting on the 24th September – competition, with the aim of encouraging RvB members to fly away from the “core” combat systems, either rolling solo, or in gangs of 5 or less, and find fights in the un-loved systems of whatever region we currently live in – which right now is The Forge.
At the end of the event I do some maths and other creative wizardry and award prizes out to people. The prizes this go round are as follows:
The Most Wanted (Top 10 Killers from the campaign): 1: 1 Billion ISK 2: 700 Million ISK 3: 600 Million ISK 4: 500 Million ISK 5: 400 Million ISK 6: 300 Million ISK 7: 250 Million ISK 8: 200 Million ISK 9: 150 Million ISK 10: 100 Million ISK
============================ Dancing on my own: (Most Solo Kills) 1: 1 Billion ISK + 1 PLEX + Medal 2: 700 Million ISK 3: 600 Million ISK 4: 500 Million ISK 5: 400 Million ISK 6: 300 Million ISK 7: 250 Million ISK 8: 200 Million ISK 9: 150 Million ISK 10: 100 Million ISK
============================ You found Fievel: (Most Event Points) 1: 1 Billion ISK + 1 PLEX + Medal 2: 700 Million ISK 3: 600 Million ISK 4: 500 Million ISK 5: 400 Million ISK 6: 300 Million ISK 7: 250 Million ISK 8: 200 Million ISK 9: 150 Million ISK 10: 100 Million ISK
============================ The Brucie: (Most Killboard campaign points) 1: 750 Million ISK 2: 600 Million ISK 3: 550 Million ISK 4: 500 Million ISK 5: 450 Million ISK 6: 400 Million ISK 7: 350 Million ISK 8: 300 Million ISK 9: 200 Million ISK 10: 100 Million ISK
============================ Gotta get the Bling Bling to get the Chi-Ching: (Most Expensive Kills) 1: 500 Million ISK + 1 PLEX 2: 250 Million ISK 3: 100 Million ISK
============================ The Gatekeeper: (Most kills in Null Sec entry systems): 1: 2 Pirate Cruisers 2: 2 Pirate Frigates + 100 Million ISK 3: 150 Million ISK
============================ The Terminator: (Most Kills with T1 (none faction) Frigs) 500 MILLION ISK + 50 T1 (None Faction ) Frigates of Winners Choice
============================ Where’s all the rum gone?: (For being all Yarr! – anything that mucks up your sec status excluding dropping ships bonused for mining) (So most kills of none RvBers): 1 Pirate Collection (1 Pirate BS, 1 Pirate Cruiser, 1 Pirate Frig. Has to be all from the same Pirate faction, Guristas/Blood Raiders/Sansha/Angel/Serpentis – assuming they all have a fleshed out line of ships ofc)
============================ The Loneliness of Command: (most kills of members of RvB Command – Team Leaders, Directors & CEOs only – Cosmo Blink & Panda101 count for kills from 18.00 EVE 01/10/12) 1 Command Ship of choice + 1 of each ganglink and mindlink (excluding mining ones).
============================ Big is Beautiful: (Most RvB Battleship Kills – BS have to be in RvB) 1 Pirate Battleship of Winners Choice (Or Value of most expensive Pirate BS split between all contenders in the event of a tie)
============================ Lord of the Firetails: (Most solo kills of Mangala Solaris) 50 Republic Fleet Firetails
============================ Scrambled, Fried, Poached, Benedict: (Most neutral pod kills) 5 of each bomber & 1 of each interdictor (not HICs)
============================ Wrecked: (RvB member with most losses) 250 MILLION ISK + 150 T1 (None Faction) Frigates of Choice
To take part you need to be a member of RvB and sign up in this RvB forum thread.
RvB has many many members all making pretty explosions on a day to day basis, however a small number of these pilots either “live-stream” or “fraps” their efforts and I figured I would highlight some of them here. If you are in RvB and have a stream or make videos and want to be included here, then let me know via private message on the RvB Forums.
==========================
Live Streams, just a note these guys may not stream every day, but when they do it’s usually very much worth watching – assuming you are not one of the people flying with or against them:
A player new to Eve online named El’ia Kusoni rolls this stream nearly every day and features RvB action from the view point of a low sp character. He gladly accepts donations to keep him in ships to blow up for your viewing pleasure.
Eve Online veteran Tribal Solidarity streams fights from the Blue Republic point of view, in addition he also is one of the live streamers for RvB Ganked.
Green Gambit – one of our usual scouts – chose the theme for Ganked 30: Everything But The Kitchen Sink, he also FC’d it, as I was not going to be available (and ended up affected by connection issues so couldnt even fight for RvB in day 3 of the 10th Alliance Tournament). And luckily he also wrote a few words about the roam:
Having had my first attempt at running a RvB Ganked fleet (on Ganked 23) end up a bit of a disaster – at least at finding something to die to – I offered to try another attempt next time RvB Ganked needed a fill-in FC. Mangala asked me to cover July 7th as he didn’t know when RvBs AT-X match would take place.
For the theme the aim was to try and get as many different ship as we possibly could – “everything but the kitchen sink”, and following the previous week’s fun in Delve I decided that heading south again would be the best way to get a decent fight.
So the bulk of our rag-tag fleet assembled in Rens, whilst I had to sit out – due to sec status – in the low-sec starting point of Irshah. The RvB Ganked fleet spent the now-traditional conga time trying to bump the AT-X camera which was positioned outside the trade-hub station. Honourable mention at this point shoud go to Combat Mink who managed out first loss of the night – a Dramiel – to the can-flippers outside station.
At departure time, the fleet made best speed to Irshah where they met up with us flashies and we all proceeded to head towards Curse. Combat Mink, scouting ahead of the fleet called a couple of ships camping Doril – the first jump in null – and whilst a few people jumped ahead they ran into low-sec and got away.
The fleet arrived in Doril to a clear gate and set destination for the middle of Curse. As we aligned to our out – the Jorund gate – evilian scouting the Utopia direction announced a Drake and drag bubble on the Utopia gate. Doing my best impression of Mangala, I warped the entire fleet straight into the bubble, meanwhile the Drake jumped out to Utopia.
The fleet started burning the 100km back to the gate, the first few to jump through the gate announcing that rather than a single Drake, there was an entire fleet of them on the other side. After a bit of further bouncing about the majority of the fleet was on the gate, so we jumped and the battle commenced.
With some very shaky target-calling from myself, we melted fairly quickly through the support of the enemy fleet, and turned to a Tempest which died very quickly. I started calling the Drakes, but it became apparent that they were dying quicker than I was calling targets so left it for everybody to mop up. All in all we got 53 ship kills, most of them with pods too – for 31 losses, mainly people who jumped in advance of the bulk of the fleet or small stuff. A good victory – but then again we did have a 3-1 advantage in numbers. In any case props to Eternal Evocations for giving us a fight and not running after we spiked Doril local.
After the fight, we regrouped and moved through Curse, chasing the usual shadows of gate campers who docked at the first sign of us, through to 0SHT, to B-3 in Catch where we had a 10-minute bio-break.
Following the break the fleet started to move further through Catch when one of the scouts called a point on a Tengu at the gate in X4. The fleet made best-haste to kill it, only to find it burning away from the gate at 3km/s – 100MN AB fit – with only a few faster low DPS ships able to keep up with it. Just as it was beginning to look like it was going to take all night to wear it down, somebody managed to get a web on it. More DPS was then brought to bear and both the Tengu and his very expensive pod died.
Revelling from the Tengu kill, we warped to the next system 4N only for a Devoter landed on the gate and jump with us. Immediately called as a target, the Devoter still had enough time to light a Cyno and allow a Thanatos and Armageddon fleet to jump through to us before he died.
It was a little later in the roam than I’d thought – but the expected hot-drop had arrived, by Against All Authorities (-A-).
We immediately started by shooting a Navy Geddon which was one of the first ships to jump through, but as the rest of the -A- fleet jumped through we turned to their Guardians. We steadily burned through all 7 Guardians, then turned back to the Navy Geddon. We got it down to 25% armour, when the reps from the carrier took effect, bringing it back up to 50% armour and increasing – so we looked for squishier targets and started on Canes and Oracles. By the this point we were starting to lose numbers badly, and I was called primary and pretty much insta-popped by the large number of -A- Armageddons on the field. My pod died before I cold clear the bubbles and I woke up back in Rens.
With me down, Major Floor attempted to call targets, but a problem with his mic meant that nobody could hear a thing he was saying. Nobody else remaining on the field stepped up to call targets, so the remaining survivors finished by killing an Arazu then fled the field and headed back to empire.
Part one was over and it was still fairly early – so we decided we’d go out again. It took a little time for the survivors to get back to Rens, but eventually, with around 70 pilots left in the fleet we set off for Providence.
Providence was quiet, we were three jumps in before we even saw another ship. We zig-zagged through the region catching odd ships here and there, but not getting a decent fight from the residents. I’d like to shout out here to Hoarr who briefly took over the fleet whilst I had to take a brief break from the game, and caught a couple of Talos camping a gate in 2V.
We took a bio break in Misaba, during which some of the fleet called it a night with the remnants deciding to head for Catch, as Dotlan and eve-kill indicated activity in that direction. We got as far as SV5 where we found a small gang bouncing around the system. Whilst we were trying to catch them we spotted a Nighthawk running into HED-GP. We chased it and it died, without providing us with a killmail, but not before taking down a couple of our fleet, including myself.
At this point I called it a night and departed to bed. Judging from the RvB Ganked killboard the fleet drifted apart after that getting a few more kills in SV5 and HED.
SOMER BLINK prize-winners (all win an Electronic Attack Frigate):
For jumping after a Drake, finding a fleet of them and dying first: Stingray1971 Jefferson
For pointing a 100MN AB Tengu: Daneel Trevize and Kaeda Maxwell
For running with the spirit of the theme and bringing something nobody else did:
PVDNS77, Athena Thea, and Bunniy (Faction BS) Nyu Trustan (Ashimmu) Azula Kishtar (Hookbill) William Western (battle Wreathe) tgl3 (Brutix) Major Floor and Garron Flintex (Keres)
The glorious RvB AT10 team faced it’s first opponent, the mighty null sec pet alliance, Get Off My Lawn. And RvB thoroughly mowed that LAWN.
Del Delvechio RvB CEO was very happy: Congrats and well done to our AT in their first match yesterday. In case you missed it they by far had the best match of the day, quickly beating GET OFF MY LAWN without suffering any losses. And they had Merlins to boot. Most probably don’t realize how much work goes into getting a good team ready for the Alliance Tournament, suffice it to say its more work than most of us (including me) have time for. So thanks to AT Team Captain and the rest of the team for their hard work and planning and making RvB look like pros on the first day.
Obviously the pilots who flew for RvB in that match had booze fuelled orgies to attend following their win – who knew that flying an internet spaceship makes you attractive to the fairer sex – but I did manage to get some of them say a few words about this victory:
Cablex Dayspring: The fight was about as clinical as it could have been, everyone performed exactly how we needed to, and our DPS was tearing everything apart in record time whilst our reps were able to keep everyone pretty comfortable!
Yankunytjatjara I’d say it was enemy fault more than our merit, what with them warping their scimi in at 20 and getting fixated on overheating invuln merlins ;) but yep we didn’t do any serious fuckup and the two factors combined got us the match.
Dracoth Simertet GO GO RVB!!!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!
While the pilots were obviously very happy with their win, the reaction of RvB members and our supporters was much more raucous. Of the 15 channels I was in that evening, 14 had lots of cheering and chatter about the fight. The last one was the EUNI public channel. Go figure. Here is a selection of the reactions – excuse the language:
Kast Agnet > omg sheer rapage. VWD rvb Mintax > woot! nice work Arctius > omg brutalized Selon Nivek > wow, that was quick!! Treides Darkstar > whoops i somer blinked and missed it
Federal Criminal > that was epic General Escobar > good job RvB roigon > rvb went for the scimi, killed the scimi. gg rvb Krytan Reborn > ANNIHILLATED nu11byt3 > welp, that was over before it started
Mr John22ta > wow that scimi melted Mortvvs > rvb best b Grarr Dexx > what the christ Grarr Dexx > happened ry ry > faceraped
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This emphatic victory is not however the end of this campaign for RvB, after much deliberation and figuring out of their own rules, CCP finally published the schedule for the second round of qualifiers and RvB’s second match in AT10, will be against:
Suddenly Spaceships on Sunday 8th July at 18.20 EVE.
I trust everyone will be watching and cheering RvB on once again, having the support of all 4000 of you and the many thousands outside RvB who are supporting us, means a tremendous amount to those who do get selected to fly.
NB: A few people asked why I was not flying on Saturday, and it was not that I was not asked to its just that I messed up a touch. I figured that since there was a long delay on Saturday I could move a ship around for later, and when the time came to be in fleet and moved by CCP, I was not close to our space to either plug in implants or get a ship ready! So I threw away an opportunity for glory all because CCP caught up with themselves during the break before our match! I did however get to shoot LAWN later on that evening, so all was not lost.
I’ll let Seismic Stan’s words speak for me as to what this is all about:
Like a gentle echo of last year’s acrimony, capsuleers have once again been voicing their dissent at changes brought about by the latest expansion. This time it is the removal of the Vagabond’s “frill”. Chief amongst those protesting is Rixx Javix of Eveoganda notoriety, but there has also been much chatter in Tweetfleet, on the forums and elsewhere. It seems that finding something to rage about is fast becoming a Summer tradition in New Eden, but this time there’s a distinctly more festival feel about things.
That’s not to say there isn’t a point to be made. It would be a magnificent showing of player solidarity if we could get a bit of a crowd together to tub-thump about the needless circumcision of the Vagabond, but equally to celebrate EVE and its communities, and also to remember that 20% of CCP staff lost their jobs as a result of last Summer’s mistakes. Whatever axe you’ve got to grind, bring it along, I’m sure we can blow something up in its honour.
As a result of this unannounced change to the Vagabond, there will be a “protest march” of sorts featuring the Vagabond (Does High Sierra still offer them for free?!) and its cousins the Stabber & Stabber Fleet Issue taking place on Sunday 15th July 2012 from 18.00 EVE time onwards; and I have been approached to use my organisational hutzpah to put some violence together during and after this march. Basically, the “protest march” will turn into Ganked: No Frills Edition (+1 internets to anyone who gets the reference).
Here is the timetable for the evening:
1800 ‘My Loot, Your Tears’ Prize Suicide Gank in Jatate 1900 General Stabber/Vagabond muster to form the “Frill Me” fleet at Jita Memorial to flash our knickers at the AT10 camera. 1929 “Thukk You” Outlaw/?RvB fleet enters Jita, performs monument alphastrike flyby. Pinata self-destructed. 1930“Thukk You, Frill Me!” combined fleet departs Jita on Protest March 2000 Rendez-vous with remaining outlaws in low-sec 2100 Fleet arrives in M-MD3B to deliver a sternly-worded letter of complaint to the Thukker Mix CEO. 2101+ Tea & Biscuits/Death or Glory
The “Outlaw/RvB” Fleet is basically the Ganked: No Frills fleet – along with anyone else who wants in to this evening too. We will meet up in New Caldari (Most of us will anyway) and enter Jita when planned. Following this we will race to Akora to meet the flashy members of the group and then head on down to M-MD3B in the Great Wildlands via N-RAEL. After a short “protest” at the Thukker HQ, we will move off and go roaming in our No Frills fleet of greatness.
As per normal if you cannot fly a stabber hull fly something useful – tackle/bubbles especially.
However it had taken the denizens of null nearly 2 hours to do so, thus proving my point that such people are mostly garbage and lack any sort of mental ability that would have lead them to kill it sooner. Still, next time Razor, maybe bring us a stand up fight instead of exploding our garbage then running away.
