Nearly five years ago, RvB took on the duty of offering the people of New Eden a regular NPSI roam. You may have heard of it, it was known as RvB Ganked. Somehow, “Ganked” very much became my baby, something I managed for years until the time I stepped away from EVE, following which the Ganked mantle was taken on by the good people at Spectre Fleet. Even when I came back, I was (and still am) happy to see Ganked continue with Spectre and show my face from time to time to fly with friends new and old. I was happy doing that, I thought I was out of the limelight.
They pull you back in!
Recently, Vision Thing Achasse got in touch with me to say RvB was starting up a new NPSI roam as part of their efforts to rebuild the RvB brand following some drastic changes late last year, and offered me the chance to FC the first roam/event.
I checked my schedule, gave it some thought, and agreed. I put 5 years of my EVE life into RvB, its a time I’ll never forget and to be offered this opportunity to help them just made so much sense.
So on Saturday 19th March, come join me, Mangala Solaris, and a host of other pilots for a roam in search of DEATH & GLORY, in the inaugural RvB Memento Mori roam.
As FC I got to choose the ships and what not for the night, and following a long look at all the options available (NAUGS, Eagles, AHACS to name a few), I decided to rock it old school. To bring back that insanity that signified the early days of RvB Ganked, when my RvB experience still influenced how I ran those roams. Namely, FRIGATE HULLS.
Yes, you read that right. Its a kitcken sink frigate fleet. Break out the frigate hull(s) you love the most and lets have a great night in support of RvB and it’s future within the EVE community.
Small print:
You will all die eventually, you’ll lose your ships, get shouted at by me, and you’ll enjoy it. Meet me in Oisio/Hysera from 20.00 on 19th March. Comms will be an RvB Mumble server:
server: public.rvbeve.com
port: 43224
pass: RvBLives
As the article says this POS will be exiting reinforcement on Sunday evening, and the folks of EVE are invited to come and fight over it/kill the POS and take the goodies. I know Ganked 205 will be there under Jayne. (Grumble, Grumble about him getting the name in first!). However someone somewhere decided it would be fun to get me to FC something for this, and well the old schoolers here will know I do like shooting POS with drunk fleets.
Anyway, I was thinking originally I would just do a “fly what you want, it’ll die anyway” fleet, BUT I have had a long, stressful month, and to be honest thats too much chaos and would simply end in me calling you all names and logging off! So we’re gonna do Drakes. HML slinging, shield bearing, DRAKES! With shield logi, support frigs, caracals and what not in attendance. Fits can be found in game on the RvB Ganked mailing list. Not on it? Ask someone who is to forward the mail!
Yesterday, Saturday 3rd January 2015 saw an in-game player organised event take place in the system of Ishomilken. As ever with player events Ganked attended.
The event itself was titled “Titan Smash” and was hosted by Nashh Kadavr with the backing of the folks at iwantisk.com. The event was to publicise the upcoming EVE_NT EVE meet that Nashh also organises. As is obvious from the name, the entire premise was that a titan would be sacrificed somewhere in space with a hefty of prize of 20 billion ISK being awarded to the character with the final blow upon it. Coincidentally this event was to take place on the same day as Ganked 150 and very close to Spectre Fleet’s First Birthday, as a consequence of this fortuitous alignment Douglas Aurelius, Jayne Fillon and myself decided to have our celebrations together and fly something ridiculously special.
Golden Fleet was born.
We asked for our communities to wherever possible bring Navy Apocalypses, Apocalypses, Armageddons and so much more. On the day all three of us were blown away by the response we had received. We ended up with several fleets as Ganked and Spectre’s respective channels hurled x after x at us. Doug took one fleet, I took another, Jayne handled the capitals he had arranged to support us. Other folks started third, fourth and even fifth fleets to come along with us to the event.
The Titan Cometh
Arriving in the event system, we were greeted by the event titan – an Erebus – sitting in a large FW plex (unlike other FW plexes these do not have gates so can be warped into by anything) with a defence fleet consisting of many, many tech 3’s, t2 logistic support a small number of carriers. To our utter surprise (not really) it was our old friends in Snuff along with Shadow Cartel, Dead Terrorists and others. Groups who have in the past proved very tough to fight, but from whom we have never shied when taking that fight.
All our fleets – hostile and friendly – got stuck in to the subsequent engagement and it went back and forth for hours upon hours, with hundreds of ships dying across the grid while the Erebus sat majestically in the centre of it all. NPSI being NPSI we couldn’t quite push them away from the Erebus – despite a tremendous numerical advantage overcome the awesome organisation displayed by the defending force, even though we were inflicting horrendous losses upon them (and any other fleets stupid enough to land around us – say a prayer for CFC Harpies & CO2 Ruptures everyone!) especially their logistics and carrier support.
Now, you may be wondering what I mean when I state we were unable to own the field, this when we had multiple fleets and they had one fleet. Basically, NPSI fleets are often made up of people who do not fly together a lot, who have a vastly different amount of pvp experience and even massive SP differences; and in this case we were engaging a fleet consisting of some of the best that lowsec has to offer, flying a composition they do very well when operating as individual entities, let alone as the voltron they had formed. However, despite this we in the NPSI fleets gave it an amazing try and in my opinion we performed very well considering the patchwork job we had to do for organisation of the multiple fleets. Yes, we yielded the field to the defenders but not without seriously bloodying them.
I have said it repeatedly this weekend, but seeing what the NPSI community pulled together for this event has yet again reaffirmed my faith in our communities and their future in EVE. We have grown so much from small groups of pilots getting together for drunk roams in shit ships.
Drama llama
Now, the titan itself did actually die. Golden Fleet had pulled off – as it turns out a couple of enemy guardians too early! – and the defending fleet turned their guns upon it. Doing so caused tears of rage from so numerous parties, many of whom are part of the NPSI communities of EVE. Claims of “rigged” started to whirl around iwantisk and EVE_NT, especially when the titan died while fitted with civilian modules and the pilot with the final blow was in the defending fleet; Claims that EVE_NT / iwantisk supplied ships to the defenders appeared; Generally a stupid amount of butthurt over people’s apparent lost opportunity to whore a titan/win 20 billion ISK.
With every new claim and accusation I have seen, I have also seen Ganked and Spectre name-checked specifically as being butthurt about how the event ended, which frankly has annoyed me and continues to annoy me. Speaking for myself as the Godfather of Ganked, and for my close friends in Sash/Spectre command, last night was truly spectacular. We took our numerous fleets along to this event fully intending to get you all into a fight, a fucking HUGE one at that and thats what we did. We killed, we got killed, we had fun, we got stressed (sorry Encord!), we came away exhausted but satisfied. Somehow, we all thought you felt the same way too.
Below I address several of the complaints levied at EVE_NT and the defenders by people purporting to represent Ganked and Spectre:
We expected to simply get there, own the titan and leave with our pockets jingling.
Anyone expecting this was – and continues to – deluding themselves. If previous experience has taught us anything is that there is always a defence fleet. Given the chance, I would take you all along as a defence fleet on a similar event (oh wait…)!
Our numbers should have made it easy.
Try herding around 1000 pilots, across several comms setups, and multiple fleets, many of whom do nothing but complain about tidi, or shoot the wrong thing. Yeah….
The defence fleet should have rolled over and let us kill the titan/there should have been no defence fleet.
Originally I “think” Nashh planned to have the titan supported by a few friendly carriers flown by his Bastards, however we threw a spanner in that plan by being the largest groups to confirm attendance shortly after the event was announced. Can you imagine how quickly 1000 pilots would have destroyed the Erebus and its support had he gone ahead with that plan? Then can you imagine trying to find a fight from someone in lowsec for our hundreds of BS and support? As seriously I would have let none of you go home without getting my blood up.
The event was rigged
No one in the defence fleet wanted prizes. They wanted killmails, which they received. They wanted to test themselves against the blob, which they did.
Bloo, Bloo, the titan was civilian fit.
As I understand it the titan was fit out of Nashh or the titan pilots own pocket, so taking the fit off when it was to be killed by its own defence fleet made perfect sense. Especially in an environment where the killmail may not even generate (sounds familiar yes?). Frankly does the isk value of the titan matter when its a god damn titan on your killboard? No. Unless its a Leviathan as those things are like fucking unicorns.
As to whether iwantisk should be accountable for any issues arising from this tiny bit of drama, I really do not care enough to give it thought beyond saying that sort of decision should be between Nashh and themselves. As far as I am concerned, iwantisk provided something fun for an event run by Nashh in whatever way he wanted. Reading his own coverage of the thing, he basically got what he wanted, which nicely dovetailed with my own ambitions for last night too.
As for iwantisk, you guys have heard the saying “Any publicity is GOOD publicity” right?
Everything ends sometime
The tl;dr here is that the vast majority of the attendees in the NPSI community were there to celebrate G150 and Spectre’s birthday. A titan killmail and/or some isk would have been icing on top of icing on top of icing on an already awesome cake. That some people are complaining simply shows they were not there for the fight, they were there to get them dollar bills, which is entirely the wrong focus to have in such events.
Thats enough of that though, let me leave you with more awesome screens from last night and a great video too:
You all know the history of Ganked, you all know what we have become over the years, and you have all experienced our ups and downs as we have gone into space on over 150 occasions. As every week has gone by, our fleet size has grown, our Saturday roams are now The Event when it comes to regular NPSI events, and we often get into memorable fights – intentional or otherwise.
Despite loving everything that we have become when it comes to fun filled Saturday nights, I want to have those memorable fights happen more often. However a 150 – 200 pilot fleet, in increasingly more serious setups, will NOT get those fights all the time. It is the nature of EVE that people will run and hide from such a thing, especially if they see it often and/or have no friends.
In an effort to both solve this and my recent lack of contact with EVE (and all of you) outside of FCing a roam from time to time, I announce Ganked: A Spin Off. I could wax lyrical about what I think this is, what I hope it will become, but even I get tired of my own words from time to time. Just read the FAQ below!
F.A.Q
What is Ganked: A Spin Off?
A limited numbers roam to take place on a week day, flying very specific, and often very serious and expensive doctrines.
Limited numbers? Doesn’t that go against your support for “open to all” public roams?
Yes it is limited. Specifically they will be limited to 52 pilots (One FC and one full wing with a wing commander). Smaller numbers should ensure that interesting regular fights are found often, without the need for our opponents to over-ship, or batphone EVERYONE!
I still support open to all NPSI, however sometimes, one has to do things differently. This will still be NPSI.
Doctrines?
Ganked has over the years begun using doctrines, some self designed, others cribbed from entities across EVE, however we are still loose about enforcement of these. For Spin Off, we will continue to use doctrines, including more of our own devising, and I will be ensuring that doctrines are followed 100%. No more will sebo spam be tolerated unless the doctrine calls for it, no more will any old amount of logi suffice – if we do not get a particular amount, the roam will not happen.
Of course, I will be using Spin Off as a proving ground for doctrines I want to use on Ganked in a larger format, so while I do say expensive, not everything will be.
Ships used on these roams will include HACs, Tech 3’s, Battleships, logistics, capitals, and many other ship types especially T1 cruisers.
You say week day, but how can I join, I am x timezone and you are in Gods Own Timezone?
I envision these roams to change time zones weekly. Initially they will be limited to GMT/UTC and EST on an alternating basis either on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Crims and PST pilots, I know I am missing you out, but come on I have to sleep sometime. Honestly though, Mate Roams have your backs anyway!
What about RvB Ganked?
Ganked is still very much alive. I – and our guest FC’s – will never stop organising our famous weekend roams, and getting us into the massive fights we end up in.
Over time I hope to see many of the doctrines used by Spin Off, utilised by Ganked. Even if they have to be tweaked to be more usable by all, I know you will enjoy flying them.
Ganked will also benefit in that pilots who fly on Spin Off, will undoubtedly see their piloting skills improved, as well as seeing more pilots take up the logistics mantle, or even step up as FCs.
How do I get involved?
You do not need to sign up to another mailing list. These will be advertised via the RvB Ganked mailing list. I will use a prefix to mark them as what they are. So folks do not get confused and show up to the wrong thing in the wrong ship. The information for these will never be displayed in the RvB Ganked channel MOTD, that is always going to show the Weekend roam information. They will not be advertised via the RvB forums either.
You do have to have a fleet-up.com account with membership of the RvB Ganked group. All Spin Off roams will require that pilots RSVP via the Operations section of the Ganked Fleet-up.com group. This will enable me to track and balance logistics/deeps/support.
(Optional) RvB Ganked has its own forum, found here. I will be using this to discuss doctrines for Spin Off as well as allowing folks to have their say when doing Spin Off after action reviews. Allowing involved pilots to determine whether a doctrine would work within the larger community is a key aspect of Spin Off.
I’m a newbro, can I take part?
Yes. In many doctrines newbro’s have a place. Even if that place is tackle (suicide or otherwise) or being a bro a T1 logistics cruiser. Obviously from time to time a doctrine may not offer newbro’s or low SP folks an opportunity to fly with Spin Off, thats just how it will be. We’ll always have the weekend roams, and of course the good work Spectre Fleet does every day of every week, along with Redemption Roam’s new newbro series.
When is the first Spin Off roam?
I am tentatively penciling in October 28th. This may well change, so keep an eye on the mailing list/our fleet-up.com group. Regardless, this program will go live after EVE Vegas.
The leaders/FCs of various NPSI communities in EVE are currently discussing a brawl to be had between fleets lead by FCs from all of those groups.
Would this be something you are interested in? Answer the poll so we can get a read on things.
[poll id=”8″]
Notes: Fleets limited in numbers around 50 per fleet – maybe more if the interest is there; Most likely in lowsec; Close Range fits so we’re all in each others faces. All fleets are NPSI to one another and so on.
Green Gambit was the guest FC for the past weekend’s Ganked roam – Ganked 121: Big Numbers – and from the looks of the killboards, he got you into some fun engagements. He wrote a few words about the night, and I am copying them below for your perusal.
Taking a break from the usual start points, the fleet gathered in Khanid Prime, with our blinky friends sitting at a safe-spot in Efa. The first big number of the night is the size of the fleet, over 200, and a lot more than I’ve fleet-commanded before.
Almost as soon as we departed scouts reports finding some Gilas in space 5-jumps into null-sec in BX2-ZX. The fleet started making best-speed to Efa as the Gilas were found, engaging some Dominixes in an asteroid belt. More scouts went to support with the bulk of the fleet still around eight jumps out. We’ve travelled little more than another jump, when it’s reported that two Archons have warped into the belt to support the Dominixes. The race is now on to get enough of the fleet into the system to hold the Archons in place…
Meanwhile half a dozen Vexors have setup on the gate in I1Y-IU – I expect them to run as the fleet pours into the system so tell people to ignore them – the Archons are our primary concern.
Unfortunately we’re just a little too slow, and the Archons manage to warp out of the belt. The Vexors are still there, so the rear of the fleet takes out those, and the front of the fleet kills the Gilas. A good start with us already scoring more kills than I expected from quiet Querious.
We regroup in Z-UZZN and the scouts head back on ahead looking for things to kill.
The rest of Querious is, as expected quiet, but the scouts report an INK Tengu/Scimitar fleet sat on a gate on our route in 4-07MU. Sounds up our street, so we jump into them, and the fight is on. Their logi is around 40km away, so that’s our primary. At the point the FC’s internet connection start to play up and he gets disconnected from the game – however plenty of people step-up and call targets during the fight. A huge thanks for that.
We’ve got a lot of battlecruisers in fleet and chasing down the Scimitars is slow progress, meanwhile we’re steadily losing ships. Cosmo drops a can on-grid, 300km from the fight that allows some of the slower ships to bounce into the middle of the fight and we start to make better progress on the Scimis. The fight continues for nearly 20 minutes, with us steadily burning down Scimis, as they slowly take our fleet. It’s a fairly even match and seems like it could go any way until we get down to the last few logistics, we’ve still got enough DPS on the field to explode them, and as the last Scmitar explodes, we catch a handful of Tengus before the rest of them warp off. Only 36 kills.
The remainder of the fleet are scouted back to Khanid Prime, and the fleet reform three jumps away in a Ganked regular location, Agil for part two. We have a bunch of ships left-over from part one, meanwhile everybody else re-ships – mostly into frigates.
We set off for part two around 22:00 with over 100 pilots still in fleet (roughly the same number we started with the first time I ran Ganked) and head down to Keberz and HED-GP. Surprisingly there isn’t much of a camp and what’s there flees. We roam along the Catch-Providence border to T-RPFU, catching a couple of kills on gates as we go.
Our scouts suggest that the activity in southern Providence looks more interesting, so we u-turn and go back into D-GTMI and then FSW-3C. As we’re warping across FSW one of the scouts reports that numbers in local in D-GTMI have increased, and finds a BNI Harpy fleet. We u-turn and warp back to the D-G gate meaning to setup as they jump in. Unfortunately we don’t have time and they start to come into local as we’re in warp. We’re landing at zero, so jump back into D-G to give us time to get setup.
There’s a BNI Flycatcher on-grid so it’s called target immediately, and BI start coming in. Unfortunately BNI have fallen for the general null-sec malaise where they can only win a fight when there’s no opposition. I’m dead and out of the fight before I even cycle my guns on the Flycatcher. However once again other members of the fleet step-up and call targets, and despite BNI’s attempting to head-shot everybody who speaks up, we actually get a semi-decent fight.
Eventually though BNI kill everybody willing to speak-up so I fleet-warp the remainder of the fleet to a planet, and we head back out to HED-GP. Scouts ahead report the route clear, however after a couple of jumps the Harpies are reported chasing us, with their ‘ceptors practically on top of us. We get to HED-GP and the remaining ships pause to kill the ‘ceptors whilst the pods run for safety. As the Harpies jump into system ew warp to the Keberz gate and jump out.
At time of writing we scored 7.63bn ISK dead from 77 kills, so all-in-all it was a pretty good night.
Leshrac86 was also present and he made this video of the roam:
Last night we formed up for Ganked 117: No Duck left behind. Yes, it was a Drake night. While we had many many Drakes, as well as logistics, other missile ships and plenty of frigates, we had a surfeit of something else: a high number of people 100% new to the NPSI scene. And even to large scale fleets. This of course did not stop us roaming, it just made for a strange experience, the vets were super relaxed, comms reflected this and the new guys were damn eager, this is all well and good until things actually began to happen.
Of course events did not happen immediately, word of 200+ russians in BS over in FDZ etc came down during form up, but Drake night being what it is, no way could I burn us there while still accepting people – many of whom are new to Ganked and/or pvp in general (downside to the theme I suppose), by the time we do arrive they have done what they were in system to do and gone, not even a vodka and black bread party in BWF.
Move onto my planned route, and some gate campers pick off stragglers as we free burn through lowsec, retreating every time we even think about sending groups of us back (GIS basically do this for a living as utilising their skill set in a better way is too risky for them). Eventually we get into nullsec and start moving only for 5 Titan Bridge Legion to come and play. After much “jump into us” “no U” went back and forth, with neither side being willing to give, my fleet scattered on grid to chase random shit, I got bored and fleet warp us off, however PL chose that moment to come in. They follow us to our out gate were I make a snap decision to fight and its on.
We brutalise much of the PL logi and take down a bunch of expensive vultures, then they bring in the triage. We could still land damage on targets, however due to varied amount of sp/experience of mass pvp/general “huh”, our positioning isn’t amazing and much of our damage is wasted as by now the fleet was strung out following me (good work following me though :D), and so range was all over the place – that’s a downside to missiles. Still we did better against a smaller superior force than other groups (HAI PROVI) have done without access to caps and/or reship ability.
Reforming we were to help Ceofore Aideron lose a dread, however PL Nyxed that idea – the result of lots of miscommunication between Ceo & myself, and me trying to keep 100+ dudes entertained. Lowsec was mostly a bust as well, and Providence was pretty quiet. Ended the night shooting Alpha :evil:
So a pretty quiet night. Not the highest scoring, although certainly well attended by pilots new to the NPSI scene, I just hope that all you new guys keep coming back and do not get soured on pvp by how the roam went. Seriously ask around, we often have stellar nights with good times on comms and awesome fights to be had. And if there is anything that Ganked can do to make the NPSI experience easy to pick up as a pvp newbie, let me know in the comments to this piece.
NB: if you know anyone looking to FC an NPSI roam, get them to contact me, Ganked is always on the look out for guest fcs.
Over the past two years and 10 months, Ganked has gone from strength to strength.
We have progressed from a gaggle of drunken fools with a shared taste in hulls liberally covered in sensor boosters, to an organised group of drunken fools with a shared taste in hulls that actually work.
Since July 2011 we have run over 120 roams (numbered and special events) scoring over a trillion isk in damage spread over some 13,500 kills, thats more than some corporations make in their entire lifetime!
Much of this success has been down to all of you.
The guys that come along week in, week out, or just fly when the theme is one you like the sound of. That so many you are willing to take part in the NPSI experiment, often flying ships considered expensive for such fleets, or in themes & doctrines that do not look they will work but that work anyway, is what keeps me FCing you all as often as I do and keeps me focused on making the NPSI scene in EVE, the best it can be.
However, it is not just you guys who have made the past 34 months some of the best times of my EVE career so far, but the many guest FC’s we have had along the way and I urge you as we push on into our third year of operation, to get your favourite guest FCs to step to the plate and take you all out to play. And if you know of anyone else who would be willing to guest for us, then get them to get in touch. Let all FC wannabe’s – existing guests or otherwise – know to check out our public schedule for Saturdays that they can do, and to let me know so I can get details from them for the roam they want to run.
(NB: For those wondering our past guest FC’s are Ali Aras, Alphastarpilot, Combat Mink, Green Gambit, Greygal, House2twist, Jayne Fillon, LuckyCCS, Mirrogod, Ne’rubis Tanthalas, Rebbeca Neresh, Roigon and Tgl3.)
It came to my notice while sorting the setup for Ganked 115 out, that many of you are HAC capable, or very close to it, and this lead to me remembering a brief chat I had with Jayne from Spectre Fleet (and the guest FC for Ganked 109) about such things. Jayne actually asked his FCs about HAC usage and had a positive response.
@awanderingjon poll results re: HACs – 64% for weekends and events only, 32% for being a regular fleet doctrine, and 5% for no HAC fleets.
So here I am with a poll for you all to complete too. So if you would love to bring serious ships like HACs (Shield or Armour depending on your skills/the theme) to Ganked, or just want to sway me from this course then vote in the poll below:
[poll=”7″]
For those concerned that this may see Ganked become more serious in future, do not worry, despite all the changes over the last year we have not – I may have but I am special – and we will continue to not take things too seriously as long as we get some epic fights doing what we do. We will continue to fly inclusive open roams with inclusive setups, its just that from time to time, the theme will lend itself well to HACs and other specialised hulls being flown in large numbers, while supported by t1 variants and tackle and all the toys you normally bring to Ganked.
Way back in the dawn of time – well 2006 – a forum was setup by a small group of EVE players called Scrapheap Challenge, which was to grow into one of the premier “fan” sites for EVE.
A number of members of this forum, started flying on roams together, roams that often had a theme and only 1 rule, if it is not in fleet – it dies; Eventually these roams grew in to the popular SHC Ganknights, which saw over several years hundreds of pilots attend them, and thousands of kills gained usually at the expense of some null alliance or another.
Then one day, Scrapheap was gone.
And with it the hope of hundreds that Ganknights would continue to happen.
However Failheap Challenge was created very quickly, and Ganknights continued, as nearly as popular as ever, until one day most of a Ganknight fleet found itself wiped out by the Terminus Stream, as a “joke” by its FC (not me by the way). Suddenly, these nights just were not as popular anymore, and attendance dropped off to nearly nothing, although other actions by certain developer parties could be to blame here.
At this point, a former RVB director had an idea that we in RvB would take the Ganknight idea and use it for ourselves, and thus RVB Ganked nights were born. Since our inaugural night back in August 2011, we have run over 100 successful nights that often see fleets of over 150 people, each following the given themes and each getting a silly number of kills, while the fleet has been entertained by itself and the local chats of those we go and visit.
To date we have over 10,000 kills with a value of over 1 trillion isk.
If you want to be a part of these, then just keep an eye on the channel RvB Ganked in game, or the RvB forums, Failheap, EVE-O and of course my twitter feed.
