Dec 282012
 

gankedyr2mk2

2013 is almost upon us.  

Which means we must start looking ahead to the Ganked roams happening during the first few weeks of the year, I think I have a “fun” selection of themes covered for those in January, however for the others, I will not be here so am looking for both themes & Guest FC’s.  

So please comment here or eve-mail me if you wish to Guest FC – remember as FC you pick the theme too! – or have ideas on theme’s we can do (they have to be inclusive as possible so no one is missed out intentionally) once January is out of the way.  

Maybe we’ll get enough to keep us going all year!

Ganked 52: SHAFT!
Thorax Hulls
Sunday 6th January 2013. FCd by Mangala

Ganked 53: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
Venture Hulls / Followed by frig hulls
Saturday 12th January 2013. FCd by Mangala

Ganked 54: MOAR DOTS
DPS & ECM Hulls (BC & Under)
Saturday 19th January 2013. FCd by Mangala

Nothing on 26th January due to another RvB MASS FFA. A potential 26000 frigates to be exploded in 1 weekend!

Ganked 55: Saturday 2nd February 2013 Needs FC+Theme
Ganked 56: Saturday 9th February 2013 Needs FC+Theme
Ganked 57: Saturday 16th February 2013 Needs FC+Theme
Ganked 58: Saturday 23rd February 2013 Needs FC+Theme

Ganked 59: Wulfpax
Destroyers
Saturday 2nd March 2013. FCd by Mangala

Ganked 60: Fraction Warfare
Empire Faction Night. Cruisers & Under.
Saturday 9th March 2013. FCd by Mangala

So, quite a selection of nights arranged by me in the new year.  Lets hope our guest FC’s can do their nights justice too!!

On a personal note, 2012 has been an amazing year for Ganked and I hope that we can better the “good fights” found during the past 40 roams or so!  See you all next year!

Nov 192012
 

Another week, another RvB Ganked roam.  And as with several during November & early December, a Guest FC was in attendance allowing me to be “just a guy” along for the ride.  This week it was Roigon, from Agony Unleashed.

And here are his words on the evening, although I am pretty sure he glosses over just how drunk he got as the night progressed!

As this was my first time FC’ing a largely uncoordinated ball of death and destruction known lovingly as RvB Ganked, I opted for the safety of frigates. I know frigates, I like frigates, also frigates warp pretty fast when mistakes inevitably get made.

The fleet headed out at around 21:00, moving towards Oddelulf to pick up our blinkies. Unfortunately because of faction war I – the FC – had to do some buggery (Mangs note: OO’ER) to get out of the station safely, since certain Minmatar FW members had noticed that I was a war target to them, and were convinced it was a good idea to try and kill me. Luckily Geddonz, who is also a Minmatar FW member, decided to betray his faction and provide me with an impromptu undock bookmark. Free from the shackles of these slaves (lol RP), the roam was on.

While quickly catching up to the fleet that was waiting for their not so glorious leader, I once again made sure everyone understood that while I am in Agony, I was also slightly intoxicated (Mangs note: This became a bit of theme on the night) and this will just be Ganked as normal. This was met with horrible puns on my corp name and a count every time I mentioned beer. The tone was set.

For the first leg of the journey through nullsec we would be heading into the Great Wildlands, a place known for being devoid of activity and I was pretty much convinced we would just trail blaze our way through it and just leave dust and space debris and fallen of bits of Minmatar ship behind.

Apparently I was wrong.

As we went into NIH-02 one of my scouts reported a pilgrim on grid with him that appeared to be off gate and not doing all that much. Then he called point. Cue mad dash to UNJ-GX to gank ourselves a recon.

Meanwhile another scout in M-MD has been giving intel about some ships playing on the undock, among them a Machariel which was getting further and further from station. So after the gang successfully reduced the pilgrim to a smouldering cloud of gold plated space dust we went back to NIH and sit on the M-M gate for our scouts to report the ever so pleasing “point mach”.  When it came, we piled in and warped to the cloaky who had gone for a hero tackle on the Machariel. His cov-ops had to die for this, but to exchange a 30M cov-ops for a 1.3B Machariel isn’t a shabby trade at all.

With the jubilation of the Machariel kill we sat on station for a bit for people to repair and potentially get a replacement ship, and we headed out again. As we sat on the E02 gate in M-M a rapier was reported coming our way. Warnings were given that this particular player liked to be bait for a bomber gang. These warnings fell on deaf ears as “point” was reported on the rapier in E02 and we started piling in. The rapier however was trying to make a break for the gate, So I ordered my merry band to crash the gate as well in hopes of catching him on the other side. At that point multiple bombers decloaked and dropped their bombs. “Keep crashing the gate”. A technique not only helpful for catching ships but also for avoiding bombs.

I am sure some aggressed members of our fleet had to give their lives to the bombs at that point, however a fair portion of our fleet made it back into M-M and as I told people to spread out the rapier uncloaked and cloaked again. He was in a bubble however, so he wouldn’t be warping away, so I called to burn at him. Seconds later someone successfully decloaked him and we burned him down. Our comrades avenged and another juicy recon down.

Somewhere around this time we also killed a badger. Or so the killboard tells me. I remember nothing.

Because we took some losses we decided to dock up again in E02 and have a 5 minute break for people to reship and what not. There was some tomfoolery on the undock, as well as another bombing run, but not much came from it.  After the break we sped on towards Curse. Our goal was to get to Doril to rendezvous with some RvB members that had attended the Agony PVP-U PVP-basics class and would be getting out of class at around 23:00 and would be escorted by Greygal to Doril to meet up.

On our way down to Doril we managed to kill a coercer, chased around some cynabal’s but unfortunately but not unexpected failed at catching them, then eventually made our way to doril. Scouts reported a small camp on the sendaya gate in Doril. A perfect party to crash. A cynabal vexor and drake. I didn’t think we would actually manage to get the cynabal, but our scouts came through and we managed to kill them all, including the cynabal.

For the second leg of the journey I had planned to go into Solar Fleet space, wanting to get away from the now quickly becoming default destination of CVA space and ending up in HED-GP. Unfortunately in my cunning plan to be original I had failed to grasp that Solar Fleet is Russian & it was way past their bedtime. Along the way we managed to gank some ships here and there, we even stumbled into a machariel fleet but were unable to get the drop of them despite good effort from our scouts. As it was getting a tad late and the fleet started bleeding members. I caved and decided to burn for HED-GP, in the hopes TEST could give us the fight we wanted. During the trip to HED we managed to again kill some ships on the way, but once we got to HED the response was lackluster. We managed to stop a rokh and kill a maelstrom that were being bads on the kerbs gate, but however much we poked and prodded TEST they were unwilling to budge. Eventually I simply called the roam. With no one left to fight us it was becoming pointless to stay.

As such I have failed, for most of you lived. Even the Armageddon that was cleverly disguised as a frigate survived. Perhaps someday we will do this again, and on that day I will promise you death, and potentially some glory.

However, even though I failed, through the power invested in Mangala by Somer.Blink I will give out some prizes.

Mangs Note: All in all an enjoyable night, even if the people of null sec are yet again proving themselves worthless and yellow.

Scouting Distinction – Helios+Launcher+Probes x3 (Christopher Scott, Thecla Elarik, Lady Irradiance)

Corpse Collector – Sabre (Angeylahdevi)

Spot Prizes – Comet x10 (Greygal, macgyver 3rd, Catalyst XI – for bragging rancer is easy, then dieing there, House2twist – for conga, cosmo blink – hero sniper tackle, hyper max, Armenius Lennelluc – home made beer, Zantai Arji, Green Gambit, Nismosis Anduin – the earth is round apparently)

Combat Distinction – Gila x3 (PVDNS77 – “For bubbling and doing a good job of it”, phantom ofkrankor,  Angeylahdevi)

Combat Excellence – Dominix Navy Issue x1 (Xallaxa)

Heretic – Caracal Navy issue (Willfightforfood – Because geddon shaped frigs are baws!)

Aug 062012
 

So, you have been on an RvB Ganked roam, seen me whelp us repeatedly and still have people fly with me over and over again, and now want to run a Ganked yourself?

Then you are in luck!  This post is going to cover the basics you should understand before attempting to “FC” a Ganked roam, and I may or may not ramble off on various other Ganked FC related topics along the way. We shall see.

 

Theme:  Try to pick something that does not limit the ability of others to take part, for example do not say “Stealth Bomber roam with Blops support” as suddenly 50% or more of regular, and potential RvB Ganked attendee’s, are unable to attend due to skill & experience levels. Any ship type that has a low barrier for entry or at least a T1 variant is your best bet to be as inclusive as possible.

Meetup Location: Use a hub, or somewhere close to a hub, that also has a reasonably close low sec, so that even the less law abiding amongst us can aid us in our eternal quest to locust the hell out of the market in every region we start from. In addition, try to ensure your meetup location gives you access to several possible regions.  Saying “lets go from Stacmon” for example only really gives you Syndicate as a viable target region, whereas Rens gives you Providence, Great Wildlands, & Curse. Dotlan is very useful for helping with this decision.

Scouts: Choose them wisely.  Green Gambit, Evilian, Kaeda Maxwell, Thecla Elarik, Daneel Trevize & Lorkin Desal (in one of his many guises) are amongst the best the regular Ganked line up has to offer. However, more are always appreciated, especially if they bring combat probes.

Local Spam: Ensure it is mostly in line with the theme, see if you can get a couple of handy images “shopped in time for the roam, and as usual YouTube will provide relevant videos. One thing to note, try not to let your fleet mates go TOO FAR in regards to spam, it can get them warned or even banned and we do not want any negative publicity or views when it comes to Ganked do we?

Once this is all done and you have passed the info to me, I will make the post on the RvB forums, mail the mailing list and begin the weeks twitter campaign, as well as edit the RvB Ganked channel MoTD to ensure as much coverage as possible is given to the roam. The more the merrier on these things after all.  I’d suggest if you are Guest FCing a Ganked roam you also work on publicity from your end and your in game social circle too, as occasionally I do slip and either forget or get too busy to push as much as I normally do. 

On the night, set up your fleet, use the Fleet MoTD for all the important information, have your route(s) communicated to your scouts and then herd your cats to glory! While doing this remember:

  1. Lemmings will happen. Make sure they link their losses;
  2. Gloriously running away is a GOOD thing if you want to avoid a needless whelp. If 20+ logistics will ruin a fun whelp, then bail. No one will mind;
  3. People may expect broadcasts, try and do it, means more people on the primaries therefore more chance of winning the isk war;
  4. Shinies are a great way to “win” a Ganked roam. Primary them at all costs, especially if they jumped to you before their logistics did;
  5. Ensure there is a prober around;
  6. Never go north, they just are not as fun as the rest of null-sec space.

And most importantly, try to keep the following two images in your mind at all times, one to link & one to just keep you smiling no matter what the fleet actually does:

 

 

 

And its all over.

It is now the day after and the roam was a success, you killed stuff, stuff killed you, and people got very drunk playing internet spaceships.  I would love it if you mailed me your prize winners so I can get our wonderful sponsor’s at Somer.Blink to pass their prizes to them and if you can write a few words about the roam and I’ll post them on my blog/Reddit for publicity – any publicity is good publicity after all.  

After you have done this, you can have your life back.

Not quite the same as it was before is it…

Feb 122012
 

Not really going to write much about last nights Ganked.  Suffice to say taking out over 100+ arty thrashers is as fun as it ever was.

Despite this:

Which was a very very well executed trap by Rooks ‘n’ Kings.

And look they did not even scoop our corpses:

Following the above, we reshipped, lost a few members and then went back out, and slowly meandered from Syndicate to Fountain to Delve to Querious and eventually Catch, ending up in HED-GP.  Along the way we had to smack everyone to get any sort of action, and in HED, we did not get any till half of the few we took there had logged off and gone to sleep.

I am seriously doubting the will to fight of so much of null, those people who spend all their time claiming to be pro, and yet will not fight a rag tag group of thrashers lead by yours truly. I think I’ll do some words on this during the week, so stay tuned.

Anyway, Geddonz frasped, so enjoy it! He does a great job of condensing 7 hours into 10 minutes.

Ash Veratis also frasped:

Feb 062012
 

Let me tell you managing 220 people, some of whom have never flown together, some of whom have never flown in anger, is an experience.

Yes folks, it was Ganked 15: All Back of the Bus last-night and it was a memorable one.  

First off we had advertised the roam on the EVE sub-reddit and it had also been arranged that EVE Radio would be in attendance, as a result we opened up the fleet to the listeners of Tranquillity’s premier radio station, which resulted in over 220 in fleet at its peak.  Which was a glorious sight, especially as 90% actually turned up in the hulls suggested by myself: Brutix, Cyclone, Ferox & Prophecy.

We managed to leave Rens back on time – and hit the low sec meetup to grab our blinkies, then piled into Great Wildlands and moved down towards Curse, with not much happening along the way, until we get into K-B2D3 where there was a large gang featuring Machariels!

It was here that the size of the fleet, the general unruliness of comms and my obvious sobriety came into play, with a total clusterf*** resulting from messed up fleet warps, to scouts calling stuff for other scouts to bits of the fleet trying to be warpins – and failing; we did score some kills, but lost a fair few folks along the way while doing so. But thems the breaks I suppose. I know now that my limit for “command” is around 150 at most for a Ganked, maybe 100 for more serious affairs.  

And so we moved on, having realised that -A- had retaken HED-GP and are usually good for the under the shirt, over the bra action we all really craved we headed there.  Your’s truly decloaked first when we jumped into a gang of Zealots off a gate, luckily House2Twist took the reigns again and did a marvellous job from then on including a good fight in HED itself.  Awesome work as ever!

By this time the fleet had dwindled downwards to much more manageable numbers, however apparently there was a sporting event in the USofA and many folks logged to prep for that. The best of us stayed on and ventured through Querious and into Delve, were we messed up some locals – we hoped they would bring friends but they didnt. Since we had not yet died, we decided to visit Test again, this time we went to Fountain.  Took us some time, and some local spam, but the locals agreed to fight us.  

We who are about to die salute you!

Except we did not die, we fought a drake heavy gang with logi support that jumped into us, and won. Well that was a new one for us.  

Suddenly it was 2am and we meandered out of Fountain and through Aridia and into high sec space again, 30+ of the original 220+ left standing, having roamed over 100 jumps from the south east corner of empire to the north west corner of null, taking over 100 names along the way.  

Overall a brilliant night as ever, very messy early on, but that improved along the way, and I know I need to drink more at the start of the nights now…

Next week we return to Saturdays, with the Kaley Cuoco Principle. I shall see you in Stacmon at 21.00 on the 11th February.

Videos:

Jaymes Whelty’s Us V TEST

Geddonz of the whole night:

strongfarce (Not sure who you are in eve fella) did a couple of vidyas:

Jan 312012
 

If you a regular reader of this blog, follow me on twitter or know me in EVE, you will have been aware that from the 26th to the 29th January 2012, RVB was at war with EVE University. 

I have outlined why we went to war in my initial article on this – linked above – so I will not go into that again. This article is to detail my opinions of this war now that it is over.

There was a couple of large fleet fights, and plenty of skirmishes in between both around RVB’s base of operations and in the pipe from Jita towards Hek.  Here is a video of a large fight that happened in Hagilur:

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I think it is safe to say that as far as the actual pvp is concerned RVB won this conflict, just by taking a look over the RVB killboards:

Blue Campaign

Red Campaign

As it turns out shooting yourselves every hour of every day really pays off.  I know as the FC in various engagements, that even being rusty as I was, I could trust the RVB fleets to get things done.  From our frigate and cruiser pilots tackling the large ships and taking down the Unista tackle along the way, to the logistics pilots knowing what best to rep and what to ignore, to everyone who was utilising dishonour drones understanding without prompting exactly what targets they had to be let loose on. I still like to call for dishonour however.

This experience certainly gave us a leg up when facing EVE University’s fleets, however that is not to say the Unista FC’s and the older pilots in their fleets lack a similar level of experience, they just have less opportunity to apply their experience in an offensive environment, given – at least from my experience fighting in the first EUNI war – their primary directive is to be defensive in nature, which usually pays off.

I do feel that with more offensive wars under their collective belt the Unista members – from the FC’s right down to the rank & file – could become a much tougher force to face.  They have a good understanding of certain tactics outside of “turtling” up and did try to make use them of from what I saw, however such tactics still require a modicum of experience and calm from the rank and file – and I can pretty much guarantee a large number of the Unista fleet members had the adrenaline shakes as combat started. Hell I still get them after years of this.

Anyway back to what I was saying about some of the tactics the Unista’s employed or could have employed during this conflict.  Obviously this is all my opinion, not knowing how exactly the Unista’s work.

Soon after the war went live, I noticed some excellent uses of the “cloaky warp-in” tactic, and more admirably – done without probes – then again the gang hit by this was only at a gate tac, so patience was the only thing really needed on the part of the cloaky.  The first time did go badly for the Unista gang however as the RVB gang had plenty of tackle and lots of dps all sitting together which meant when they warped in at a range from their cloaky, we grabbed everything we could. Second time around using this trick, they landed on us as we were spread out, so plenty of us managed to bail – not yours truly in his bomber however – which suggests to me the cloaky knew what had gone wrong the first time and over compensated.  Given what the Unista fleet had on field, had I been in their position, I would have warped onto the bulk of small fleet rather than a ‘cane that was pretty much alone.  Assigning frigs to tackle “everything” and then utilised the scorpion and other ewar to jam the big stuff we had on field.  However, just for using a cloaky with a pair of balls (of steel), Debir gets an A.  

The second part of that rumble did teach me to keep my fleet together where possible, with frigs orbiting at varying distances and drones assigned to various fast lockers as well, anything to help force a decloak on a cloaky that may not be using probes, just patience. So I certainly learned a new trick.

Over the course of the war I noticed a few things done right and a few things done wrong.

Right: Lots of tackle around the gate – cruiser and frigate sized. However, did these get tasked before hand, or did they need to wait on primaries? In my opinion the best way to learn to tackle is to be thrown in at the deep end with vague orders to just point everthing.

Wrong: Obvious battle-cruiser DPS squads practically sat right on the gate.  Keep these way at range behind your tackle wall, preferably warped in from a safe they are aligned too, that is not near a handy celestial. This resulted in your frig wall dieing to mine as our heavy tackle grabbed your dps. Nothing was running if we could help it.

Right: Logistics well set-up and running their cap chain – and from the AAR I read knowing what exactly they had to be doing.

Wrong: Logistics within range of not just the few ECM platforms I had, but WELL inside of the drone range of your average user of Dishonour drones. Once they reached your Basilisks, it was pretty much game over for them. 

Right: Getting off the bait once my logistics appeared and hitting them. Not that it made much difference in the long run, but kudos. Sometimes bait is too juicy to pass up, but it looks like you did. Especially given he survived in 40% armour.

Wrong: Logistics that either had little experience or fleet members not broadcasting. Even before the dishonour reached them, everything EXCEPT the Logi’s that I called was melting without any reps hitting them.

Right: Battleships sitting at range and pre aligned in most cases ready to bail if needed.

Wrong: Taking on a frigate gang using shield fit myrmidons armed with 425mm guns.  No webs+poor tracking=dead battle-cruisers right after the enemy finish with your frigates. Good try however, but again RVB+frigs=unstoppable force ;)

Wrong: When roadtripping, bring more ships. Have them all pre-fit, bring plenty of ammo (I saw a quote or two in AAR’s that suggested people did not do this) and just treat everything as lost already.

A good idea during the first fight would have been to have had the Abaddon fit a single large smart-bomb and sit in front of the logistics blob, so as to smartie any drones rolling past him.  Given enough distance off gate, and a careful pilot he could have negated the effect the dishonour drones had – I know mine were jamming on every cycle.

As it turns out the biggest reason the Unista’s went down the way they did in the first fight – other than our experience/ nearly equal numbers – was Steve Fire (the Unista FC) getting hit with an overview problem right on contact, following which I understand he tried to call regardless before passing off to his secondary. This may have helped the fleet somewhat stay focused, but it would have been better to have passed control immediately to the secondary.

Which is something an RVB frigate gang could have learned when they fought a Unista fleet I joined to be nice! When the FC dc’s all it takes is 1 person to step up and carry on – including primarying me. As it was the Unista’s capitalised on the confusion and prevailed, HOWEVER watching Debir broadcast, I am still unsure why some of the targets were broadcast, as they were miles off the gate – and therefore the majority of their tackle and dps (except Syd and myself in drakes). Then again that is a well known downside to FCing at range.

In the second big fight down in Hagilur, you were set-up much better however and scored more kills, but still got beat quite soundly, however enough of you got of field, and we were in some disarray (and tired after rolling for five hours) so we bailed leaving you the field. I think Steve had learned a lot from the night before and tried to plan to avoid a repeat of that fight too, which did work in my opinion. Although I would have used your local knowledge and used a small bait fleet to keep us busy in Bei, while your main group landed on our Battleships and Battle-cruisers using a cloaky/neutral warp in, but each to their own – given we were set-up on the Hagilur gate for quite some time.

Regards the overall conduct of the war by the Unista’s – I think you did well, you got out of your home area’s you came looking for us and despite some blue-balling by both sides when you all brought it, you brought it.  If you wanted fights more often I would have had smaller gangs rolling around led by one or two older players – frigates, cruisers mostly – just trying to hunt RVBers along the pipe and get smaller, more frequent actions.  It would be an excellent learning experience for your members to, send them out into the world as more than an Incursion or Nullsec drone as one of my RVB mates puts it ;)

This also works for us, as I know the fleet sizes we formed up did have some of your fleets docking up and waiting on reinforcements, had we done smaller more independent gangs it would have been even more fun for us – and it was a huge amount of fun as it was.

===============================

To RVB, I hope everyone who took part in any of the fights from the large fleets I FC’d to the smaller gangs that rolled around in the off hours being lead by Varc, Dragon and others had an absolute blast.  I would say however, that if we have future conflicts with the Uni lets try and do small gang stuff, for example hit and fade on their fleets in staging areas and so on, as often times we blue-balled ourselves by just wanting to get MOAR bodies!!! And we are very good at small gang actions now aren’t we?  After all the last time around, we had big set pieces & lots and lots of small gang hunting. Given they staged near us this time, harrassment actions should have been the order of the day until the Unista’s wouldn’t undock anymore!

I also hope that this Purple action taught both Red & Blue that we are all in this together, I know I saw some people who are usually the bitterest of enemies in regular RVB stepping to the plate and working awesomely well together, lets try to keep this up!

Jan 302012
 

Last night saw the latest RVB Ganked, and the first to run on a Sunday – apparently some folks like to use Saturdays for things in game and real life too – and it was one of the best to date.

Which is saying a lot after 7 months of these roams taking place. 

(Quick aside in that 7 months we have killed over 700 ships doing just a touch under 50 Billion ISK in damage)

Our theme for the night was Assault Frigates – which have recently been rebalanced by CCP to great effect – partnered with Electronic Attack Frigates, which are just fun to have on your side.  When we departed Rens, we had over 100 pilots in fleet, with the plan being to move into Providence and pick a fight or two with the robe & wizzard hat crowd who live there. However on jumping into G-5EN2 it turned out there was a bit of a tussle over the ownership of said system, with CVA facing off against a Darkside gang.  After some warping around hoping to whore ourselves onto some mails, I kind of oops us into some bubbles and we lose a portion of the fleet.

Then dear readers, we ran away.

To Curse and beyond.

It was here that the night started picking up – despite some of the fleet rage logging at losing 30 million isk Assault Frigs – as we still number over 80 guys and are eager to find a glorious death.  We burned through Curse – being chased by a significant number of Battleships with support. Eventually we get into the Great Wildlands and we get word from Kaeda, our scout without a point, that he has just warped to a cynofield and found a Rorqual at a Customs Office!

So I call on comms for us to get into system and WARP TO KAEDA ASAP – mainly so we had some points on the Rorqual, while the gang all made their best efforts to whore on the resulting mail.

77 of us got on that killmail. Shame there was a few guys still one or two out, and in some cases taking an alternate route through Scalding Pass, but them’s the breaks on a Ganked.

After much spamming of the mail across the internet we moved on, eventually holding up in N-RAEL while some folks went for a smoke, rejoined us after a race through lowsec from Rens and so on. While here we utilised the bubbles some kind locals had left behind to kill some stupids who landed in them.

And then I chose our final destination for the night:

BWF-ZZ in Geminate.

We made our way there with a small speed bump being a UPS gate-camp  that we rolled over with our usual aplomb – seriously guys, keep failing to us please. Upon jumping into BWF-ZZ, we warp to the Oijanen gate and start shooting the small TEST camp that is there, scoring several kills, and snagging a few of their tacs – and more kills as TEST warp to those.  After some friendly banter in local, I move us up to the station as TEST promised to fight us – they did have 100 in local after all, while we numbered around 75.  TEST undocked some carriers at first, then a whole bunch of Battlecruisers and various other ships.  Committing ourselves to the fight we worked on what we could while they killed us until we were all dead.

We all died, but that was the whole point, and TEST were really good about killing us, no serious faggotry on their part. Much respect to them for that. I know that we will be back to BWF-ZZ at some point in the future.

Overall, this was one of the most fun Ganked’s we have done and was as ever hilarious to “FC”, despite the initial WTF we all experienced on that first jump into G-5 back in Providence. 

As ever Geddonz has a youtube video of the fight. Now please before watching this forgive me for the rather lackadaisical way I was running the fleet lastnight, I was feeling a little tired after my shenanigans doing “serious” FCing against Eve University earlier in the week. 

And one filmed by Roigon a regular attendee of Ganked:

Jan 272012
 

As many of you will know, I have been a bit bored lately, only really logging into EVE for Ganked roams and rare skill changes (30 day skills are fun!), so I decided to spice things up a bit.

By approaching the Eve University CEO and the RVB CEO and asking them for a war. 

To my surprise – especially given the actions that caused the last war to end early – everyone said yes! We added a couple of rules for this conflict however, no HQ area camping/shooting of pos and no killing of pods (to encourage attendance), both of which have been at least to my knowledge well received. Unless you are Captain Hurrdurr.

The war itself went live at 10.59am GMT yesterday and is to last 72 hours till Sunday at 10.59 GMT, and there has already been some fun fights had between the terriers of RVB and the lazy, left wing students of EVE University.

The first couple of fights took place not long after downtime yesterday in Uosusuokko, a small gang of RVB pilots in a mish mash of frigs and larger took on a bigger gang of Unistas in frigates, battlecruisers and even battleships.  First fight (11.57 to 12.17 or so) we won as their use of cloakies or spies meant that when they came in, they landed right on us at our tactical and RVB does like to brawl up close, however the second  (around 12.40) went less well as we were much more spread out, we still took names just not as many as we could have done.

Here is the battle report for this – I am using EVE kill as linking it from the 2 new RVB boards is effort.

Following this, and knowing they had a large gang sitting in the Funtainen system, we reshipped into a mainly Abaddon focused group, gathered some more folks, and headed over there hoping for a good brawl with lots of pew. The Uni guys then disappointed me by not coming out to play despite both sides being fairly well matched, this went on to be the pattern for the afternoon and early evening.  Disappointing, but RVB at least had itself to shoot in between our fleet assembly sessions. So all was not lost.

Oh and along the way we may have spammed the inbox of one CSM 7 candidate with 

[20:26:41] Mangala Solaris > NO FIGHT NO VOTE 4 CSM7

Later on in the evening, I got word from Kelduum Revaan the CEO of EVE University that their force in Funtainen had found an FC, and wished to fight my vicious terriers. So I quickly setup a fleet and got everyone assembled in record time and took a wander over.  My force was primarily ranged hurricanes, a drake blob, three battleships, some logistics, ecm platforms and the usual RVB frigate and cruiser squads.

After some he said she said with Steve Fire, the Unista FC, over whether his group would ever jump out of Funtainen – I even gave him some advice on a way to do it that could mess up my group – eventually I forgot this was serious business and called a leeroy into them (their fleet being close range fit did not come into play at all in my mind…) with a shiny uncloaking a few seconds ahead of us to draw the Uni fire, while my fleet began to burn off grid a ways.  

10 minutes later it was all over.  

75+ Unista vessels had been taken down quickly and methodically for 15 or so RVB losses.  I had only spent that fight calling the big ticket items, having left my cruiser and frigate pilots to do what they wanted / keep ships locked down – and RVB’s pilots are pretty damn awesome in smaller hulls.  Everything I called melted when looked at. All in all the best near serious fight I have had in a long time. We even looted the field, despite them having supplies to reship to in system.  

And that – for me at least – was the end of Day 1.  I had a really good day, despite the waiting around from time to time, that ended in a fight that I thought would go much worse for us – especially given how I have not FC’d RVB properly for some time now and how rusty I felt in general about FCing serious fleets.

I look forward to more action.

 

Jan 242012
 

Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake, Drake,

That was basically my scan of the Ganked 13 fleet, of course some funny guys flew other things, including your’s truly who was in this:

[Tengu, Flying Coffin]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Shadow Serpentis 100MN Afterburner
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier
Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor
Large Shield Extender II
Photon Scattering Field II
Invulnerability Field II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Warhead Rigor Catalyst I

Tengu Defensive – Supplemental Screening
Tengu Electronics – Dissolution Sequencer
Tengu Engineering – Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Offensive – Accelerated Ejection Bay
Tengu Propulsion – Fuel Catalyst

Yes, folks I really flew that on a Ganked, no one ever said the ships had to be cheap!

We moved out with the aim of visiting Providence – and this time nothing would stop us. 120 ships is quite the key to any door…

Apart from a speed bump or two along the way the path to 9UY4-H and the homicide of a fleet member, Providence was eerily quiet, almost too quiet. We passed through 9UY and headed deeper, but with no signs of anyone anywhere really, until a scout found some fella’s holed up in a pos, a kronos amongst them. It would have been rude to not say hello.

And what a hello we gave them.

[ 2012.01.21 22:22:18 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Local : K1I1-J
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:29 ] Hoarr > LOCAL SPIKE
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:32 ] tgl3 > WHERE
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:35 ] Robertson Nolen > HIGH
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:39 ] Varamuin Aroota > AS FUCK
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:39 ] wiLik > JITA
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:40 ] Hoarr > ON THE SUN
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:40 ] House2twist > WHAT?
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:44 ] Varamuin Aroota > DERPAHERP
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:54 ] silent terror > wait what we’re in null? FC!
[ 2012.01.21 22:22:54 ] Robertson Nolen > IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?
[ 2012.01.21 22:23:13 ] Varamuin Aroota > DRUUUUUGS
[ 2012.01.21 22:23:28 ] Bunniy > locl spik guiz!
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:02 ] Mangala Solaris > whats a spike?
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:16 ] Korenchkin > y u no come out to play?
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:32 ] silent terror > oh hai!
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:37 ] Hoarr > lol
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:39 ] Hoarr > gonna melt
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:40 ] Mangala Solaris > fight us
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:55 ] Bunniy > we takin over this space!
[ 2012.01.21 22:24:59 ] Sofia Fraga > heya guys
[ 2012.01.21 22:25:10 ] Luc Fawkes > GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY
[ 2012.01.21 22:25:14 ] Luc Fawkes > We’re going to clean up your PoS!
[ 2012.01.21 22:26:07 ] House2twist > don’t mind us.
[ 2012.01.21 22:26:10 ] House2twist > training gang
[ 2012.01.21 22:26:18 ] Diana Valenti > all your bases belong to us!
[ 2012.01.21 22:26:41 ] Sofia Fraga > today?
[ 2012.01.21 22:26:53 ] Mangala Solaris > yup we are training
[ 2012.01.21 22:27:00 ] Mangala Solaris > please come out and train us
[ 2012.01.21 22:27:03 ] LizzVicious > what do i shoot?
[ 2012.01.21 22:27:05 ] LizzVicious > again
[ 2012.01.21 22:27:11 ] House2twist > anyone wanna 1v1?
[ 2012.01.21 22:28:18 ] Calyse > we’ll leave the pos alone if you sacrifice the kronos~

Upon landing at the POS we noticed:

  1. It was at a TCU;
  2. It was a small POS;
  3. It had 2 small lasers for defence;
  4. It was a small POS at a TCU with 2 small lasers for defence.

So we did what any drunk group of blood thirsty pilots would do and let our missiles fly.

[ 2012.01.21 22:33:00 ] Mangala Solaris > RVB HAS TAKEN THIS SYSTEM
[ 2012.01.21 22:33:09 ] Mangala Solaris > WE ARE NOW RENTING IT FOR 10B a month
[ 2012.01.21 22:33:11 ] Mangala Solaris > or that kronos
[ 2012.01.21 22:33:18 ] Mangala Solaris > your choice

Reinforcing their tiny, insignificant pos over the space of 10 minutes seemed to make the locals very confused. Ganked is not an alliance…

[ 2012.01.21 22:36:56 ] entroncas > we wait for u here in 2 days
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:05 ] Anunna Morgan > DEAL ;)
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:23 ] Diana Valenti > challenge accepted
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:32 ] entroncas > just because u gather 115 man fleet doens’t mean ur ally still pathetic as it is
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:38 ] tgl3 > umadbro
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:38 ] Growler Dude > puta espanya o com?
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:48 ] Mangala Solaris > guys weve been told
[ 2012.01.21 22:37:51 ] Mangala Solaris > what alliance?

I do wonder if they – in their obvious delirium from all that ratting – have formed up a defence fleet to fight us off and they are sitting around getting more and more worried about when we will show up, and in what…

This little excitement kept us going till we got word of a couple of ratters in a station system that DID NOT dock up when a neutral entered, so we raced over there and helped them learn a very valuable lesson.

Word then came down of a CVA group heading towards us… 

[ 2012.01.21 23:20:25 ] Certissian > guardians and a bunch of abaddons
[ 2012.01.21 23:20:51 ] Certissian > i just passed by, looked like 20+ bs plus 3+ guardians

Make that 8 guardians. 

And what a fight it was.  CVA’s response to our little incursion jumped into our group of drunk missile spammers. And it was glorious! I rattled off the Guardians as primary and 5 of them melted in no time at all. Then I was primaried and melted along with a couple of other tengu’s in our fleet.

[ 2012.01.21 23:40:05 ] AssassinationsdoneWrong > Manga I think dey don’t wike Tenguus :(

Luckily House2twist stepped to the plate and took over calling the remainder of the fight. He did a marvellous job, helped by the CVA HICs bubbling their own fleet. However they had the ability to reship fast, so we were whittled down until few remained.  

We had WON! We had found a fight and died after many kills to our names. 

And my scanner now read:

POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD, POD

All in all a really really fun night, lots of boozy antics on comms, couple of fun kills along the way, and then CVA bringing it to a close in the best way possible. 

Jan 152012
 

Take 90 bloodthirsty folks;

Throw in a dash of Rifter Hulls;

Soak in a few gallons of Beer;

Then mix well together for several hours and you get the perfect frigate roam.

That pretty much sums up Ganked 12: We Come For Our People, the most recent Ganked outing which saw us get back to our Rifter roots (yet again) and run into Null-sec.

This time around it was decided (by me!) that we would go to Syndicate, and not because there was also an Agony PVP class heading there too on the same night (okay okay…). So we formed up in Stacmon several hours before the off, eventually the fleet grew to around 90 pilots, with around 50% in Rifters, and many more in Wolf & Jaguar hulls.

And yes we conga’d, or rather tried too. The fail was not me this time. Although I do fail, in that I never ever take pictures on these roams, or even video then myself… See tgl3’s Rifter er Blog for pictures.

Eventually we moved out on a small loop through low-sec towards one of the many Syndicate entry systems – I had chosen MHC-R3 for this particular night – and it was largely uneventful except for some smartbomb fit BS which failed at trying to kill us, however we derped and did not get enough points on them to defeat their warp core stabilizers, so they bailed too. 

When we got into MHC-R3, to our surprise and our eternal glee was the Agony class and after some milling around, and the decimation of another dumb smartbomb fit battleship and its pilot, we got down to it, by warping to the sun and engaging the Agony class that was nicely sitting there waiting for our ragtag band of drunks.  I called “Buttercup” in local which was my codeword for everyone to primary Azual Skoll, as well as spamming “Azual Skoll is Primary” over and over on comms.  We got 55 of our band on his first mail

Great success!

Then our fleet set about the business of mercilessly destroying the Agony class with our usual élan, especially those RVB members who had taken part in the said class and the roam. Traitors to the Ganked cause fear our wrath! (We still love you though.) I pretty much only called when I could lock stuff – I spent some of the fight jammed (I love to hate the hydra principle when its used against me) and the rest trying to lock ships before they died. With some occasional calls to primary people I “know” from RVB or elsewhere. Then as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

We held the field.

After a while we moved back to Harroule to lick our wounds, store the loot and corpses, and let the few losses reship.

Then off we went into deepest Syndicate once again, this time sharing intel with the Agony class, who had notice of a couple of carriers in the pocket near the Cloud Ring pipe, so we made our way in that direction, only – after a bit of a wait – for the intel to not lead to anything. By this point we were itching for a fight – and after some allusions to Azual that we would kill a friendly carrier – we said sod it and moved towards CR & Pure Blind, with a few kills along the way, some station services that needed shooting, and then suddenly a report of a Razor+other PB residents gang heading towards us, a gang of Hurricanes, Scimis, Drakes and the like. So basically the usual over the top welcoming committee you find amongst the risk averse denizens of large parts of null. 

We joined battle, killed a few things, bitched about logistics, and slowly got whittled down or bailed ourselves back towards high sec, calling it a night.  Was a great fun roam, even when stacked up against the highlights of Ganked 11, where we shot a titan.  I look forward to next week and the sight of hundreds of missiles streaming towards their targets.

I shall leave you with another Ganked video, made by the illustrious Geddonz, one of our committed regulars: