The Poco Wars: the epilogue and the butterfly effect

It seems that my "best day in eve" was covered by Themittani.com!  

Tale of Wormhole Woe

This article is written from the No-Ho perspective, and is pretty entertaining.

Another article of note covers something I was going to write about but was beaten to the punch - how RvB found Gevlon's WH.  In brief, it seems that Gevlon ganked a miner a while back who got even by passing on information about Gevlon's WH to us :)

The Goblin and The Butterfly   (you should go to the site just to see the *hilarious* image :D )

But what lead to all this?  What lead to such a clash? 

It started with POCOs.  When the , the CFC and RvB decided to split the POCOs instead of compete for them, that way it would be more efficient.  We then would form a mutual defence pact to protect them.  When the great highsec POCO rush of Rubicon started this agreement paid off.  No one else was really ready for it, met little if no opposition, and we were quite successful: the CFC took control of a few dozens while RvB has *hundreds*. 

For the CFC, the POCO income was trivial.  I think they did this mostly to show that they could.  FOr RvB however, since we have no income, this was a boon.  We are now using the revenue for our loyalty point program, ship replacements and other fun activities.  This also has provided a good service to high sec industrialists.  Our POCOs (and so do the CFC's) have a very reasonable tax rate and are stable (ie not changing hand ever other week). 

Now here is where Gevlon Goblin comes in.  He has a *very* strong dislike of the goons, and he realized that their high-sec POCOs were a vulnerable target.  He started blogging about this and formed an alliance to strike back at the goon menace.  But when Gevlon attacked the CFC POCOs, the mutual defence pact was activated and RvB stepped up to the plate to defend them.  Gevlon was stunned - we were an unexpected obstacle between him and his goal.
 
At this point, Gevlon could have tried a "businesslike" diplomatic approach, basically treating RvB as oponents and not enemies.  Instead, he embarked on a propaganda campaigns with dozens of verbal attacks against RvB.  We were goon pets, no we were slaves!  No, we were a secret high-sec arm of goonswarm!  RvB is a scam!  etc etc etc.

This included a lot of dubious use of "statistics".  For example, Gevlon divided our losses by the number of players, and concluded that we were very risk adverse since the average RvB pilot lost only 30 million a month.  But Gevlon never bothered to do research to find out the context behind the numbers: RvB never, ever purges members (we are casual - if you want to pvp once every 2 months, we are fine with that).  So using the total member base as a denominator didn't make any sense!  For example, I'm a moderately active member and I lost 2.7 billion in one year...

Gevlon also hired Marmite to perma-dec the goons and us, and also hired Noir (a competent group of mercenaries) at times.

This "reverse diplomacy" is why RvB felt very motivated to go in Gevlon's WH and burn it to the ground.  We never would have bothered if he wasn't so antagonistic.

How does all this story end?  Well an end may be at hand. The CFC have grown tired of this nonsense, and transferred their POCOs to us (we purchased them basically, so they are ours, end of story).  At this point, Gevlon can declare victory, although it was one at tremendous cost (over 40 billions).  On top of that, he also lost his alliance (Darwin's Lemmings), which as far as I can tell has now become a sort of farm alliance for Marmite (I may be wrong).  

I hope that Gevlon will move on to goals in Eve that may be more suited to his talents.  One can only hope that he hasn't bought too much into his own propaganda... because if Gevlon decided that the best way to strike at the goons is to keep shooting our POCOs, that would be very silly indeed.

The Lion VS the Wolves

 This is the story of one of my favourite fights ever. 

In RvB, whenever a lone battlecruiser engages a gang of small ships by a gate, I've always seen it go one of two ways: One the gang is small and the BC squishes a few while the others run away. In the other, the small ships shred the battlecruiser apart in very short order. 

But what happens when the forces are almost perfectly balanced?

So a small fleet of us reds are in Josamento, by the Liekuri gate (I think). Most are in frigates, I'm in my arbitrator. A prophecy warps to the gate. We engage, and he yellow boxes me, and then agros someone else. He moves towards the gate, and we start pounding on him. He kills one of our tacklers, an atron - no big surprise there, these things happen. The hunt has its dangers.

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506500

I realize that he has some kind of guns and put on my tracking disruptors on him. We all expect him to de-agro and jump into the gate. We are confident - a lion cannot stand long vs so many wolves. But he keeps on fighting! Why? Because we realize, to our dismay, that he's killing us one by one - and fast!

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506511
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506503
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506509
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506510
http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506508

Some fleet members warp off and are urging us to keep him in place, that they are going to re-ship in something bigger. It seems hopeless though... but I have moved my arbitrator closer, and I have a point on my ship! The prophecy, piloted fearlessly by Horvick, has a point too and doesn't want to let me go - nor does he feel like running from an arbitrator!

A droneboat duel follows - I want to do as much damage as possible, but mostly I want to hold him long enough for the fleet to arrive. I have no guns to shoot his drones so I can't help that part. I keep TDing him and starts neuting him. He neuts me. Our drones are clawing at each other. He's confident he can destroy me and escape, he knows my tank can't outlast his... but he doesn't realize that my arbitrator isn't a pushover in the tank department, and he can't shake me off. This duel lasts perhaps two minutes at most, but if feels like an eternity. How long can a lone wolf fight of an angry lion?

Finally, helps arrives! Tommy, the first one to lose a ship, returns in a vexor, points him and starts pounding on him. I start burning away to warp off... but it's too late. I take more damage and explode.

http://rvbeve.com/red/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=506507 (32K ehp!)

Another tackler comes back. We expect him to flee, but he keeps on fighting. The cavalry, finally, arrives - this includes a drake and a tornado. This doesn't seem to phase Horvick, and he not done killing red ships, destroying the vexor:

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506502

This was to be his last kill however. Our firepower is now too great, and the mighty lion, despite his mighty tank, must now perish:

http://rvbeve.com/re...l&kll_id=506501

(looking back at this I can now see that part of his success was due to the double web, which slowed frigates to a crawl and is why I just couldn't seem to get away from him to warp off).

Following this, as usual "gf" were given in local but this was followed by a very friendly and animated conversation between the red fleet and Horvick. He said it was the best 70 million isk he's ever spent, and everyone agreed that it was a particularly good fight. He was surprised at how good my tank was, and we were at how well, vicious his prophecy turned out to be and were impressed by his fighting spirit. It really isn't clear who "won" here - the lion is dead, but he gave us one *hell* of a fight!

Fight like these are what keeps people hooked to PvP

A very good day in Eve

Days in Eve are not equal.

Most are pretty good.  A few are depressing and some feel like work.  And then, once in a while you have an *amazing* day.

(I will note that I had a background part about Gevlon's anti-diplomacy explaining what lead to this conflict, however it was too long. It will be in a separate post.  So for now suffice to say that Gevlon worked very hard to antagonize RvB).

After several weeks of ganks and skirmishes with the Lemmings, (Gevlon's grr-goons alliance), an opportunity presented itself to strike at Gevlon directly - we found the high-sec entrance to his C1 wormhole.  We passed on this information to CFC contacts and they went in and reinforced his POS and his POCOs. On Sunday, his structures were due to come out of reinforcement.

An RvB operation to evict him out of the wormhole was put into place, involving battlecruiser fleets and a very early morning fight for me.  Normally I never would get up early for a fight on the weekend (it's just a game in the end) but for this... yeah I was ready to make an exception.  I spent some time preparing a prophecy for the occasion, equipped with probes, a mobile depot and modules for almost any opportunity... only to learn in the morning we were a bit short on logi and I was instead given a T1 logi.  Oh well, more logi practice!

The fleet is gathered and eager to go... but there is a problem.  See, No Holes Barred (No-Ho), a powerful alliance of wormhole dwellers, has learned about this situation and is camping the wormhole entrance. They have several T3 cruisers and can easily collapse the passage.  (Yes... they are barring the hole...) This is a serious impasse... until someone in fleet remembers that No-Ho is *very* fond of songs.  We have a bargaining chip!  Diplomatic channels are opened, and a deal is struck.  We will get passage if we sing, and if after the POS-bash, we will fight them.  This is a deal we gladly accept.  

Yes, there is a recording of the song out there on the internet.  Go ahead and search for it, but your ears wont thank you when you find it ;) 

Gevlon was apparently offered a similar deal earlier by No-Ho... but apparently, he he didn't want to sing. 

We go in and attack the POS.  The guns are firing, but the POS is not manned, ie no human intelligence is controlling the guns.  As a result they are shooting all over the place, forcing us logi to constantly switch targets.  I get shot at a few times but my fellow logis keep me alive.  After a bit, the POS falls to our firepower:

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663066

Yes, that is me on the killmail - you think I wouldn't bring a few sentry drones so I could at least shoot a little bit? ;)

We started wrecking and looting, grabbing a hulk and a rokh, knowing that No-Ho would show up at any moment.

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663064

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663065

Aaand they did, with a few friends to boot - apparently our numbers intimidated them a bit.   My perspective of the battle was a bit "narrow" given my logi focus.  They opened fire on a myrmidon at first on which I started landing rep.  Thing seemed fine for a few seconds until I got severely neuted and fired upon.  Despite the best effort of the logi team, my ship was promptly destroyed.

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663084

My mobile depot, noooo.  Oh well, it was a free ship anyway.

No-Ho used the neuting power of their legions to quickly shut down and crush our entire logi team.  Our FC, Professor Clio, seeing this, the fleet now bleeding battlecruisers and realizing that our firepower was not going to be sufficient to overwhelm the enemy fleet, concluded that the fight is lost. The fleet withdrew and left the wormhole.  No-Ho didn't bar the way and looted the field.

Here is the battle from their perspective:  https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=328113&find=unread

So pretty solid fight and POS down, OP success no?  But we aren't done, nooo!  

We were to regroup at 1:30 pm to head back into the wormhole so we could bash Gevlon's POCOs.  This time the order was for more agile, high DPS ships, and I was planning on bringing a Vexor Navy Issue. However, when I log back in I learn that the POCOs had come out off reinforcement earlier than expected, the fleet has already left *and* that a war with the Lemmings (Gevlon's alliance) had just gone live - a 20 jump trek alone in a VNI was risky.  It was suggested I bring something fast and high DPS and asked if I could fly a stealth bomber (no).  So the FC said "hey, why don't you bring an Enyo? In fact, here is a contract for one".  I take the Enyo and it has techII blasters, which I can't use...  BUT I have the skillbook!  I start training in, buy a ton of void ammo, bring some antimatter just in case and start burning towards the WH entrance as fast as I can to crash any potential gate camp. This plan of "fly and learn" amuses the fleet.

By the time I reach the WH I can now use the guns, and I'm startled a bit to realize that with void ammo my DPS is about 350!  At this point, 2 POCOs are already down. Our 45 man fleet keeps on destroying them quickly at a rate of about 1 per 10 minutes, and soon enough Gevlon now has 9 POCOs to add to his losses.  Here is an example:

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663155 

We head back home.  I thought this was it for my day of space violence, but no, there was going to be a bonus round!

I keep my eyes open and gave intel to the fleet as I'm ahead of some of them.  I'm almost home when I see that about 10 Lemmings are in New Caldari.  Furthermore, they have a tackle and a prophecy on the NC gate in Josameto.  I'm able to evade this small gate camp.  This looks like a trap, with the prophecy acting as bait.  I inform the fleet, and a plan is quickly hatched.   We pick a bait of our own and send him into the trap.  The Lemmings take our bait, jump on him and we land on *them* in a battlecruiser fleet.  The Lemmings attempt to scatter, but not quickly enough - six cruisers, two battle cruisers and 2 pods are destroyed -one worth over 800 millions. Despite only the Red Fed being able to engage, no ships were lost on our side.

http://red.rvbeve.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=663164   

I really like the Harbinger, I really do. 

I logged out of RvB, very satisfied, only to realized that on my trader/industrialist account, 3 battleships that had been on sale forever had *finally* sold all at once, netting me a nifty 90 millions in profit.

So to recap, wormhole adventures, singing diplomacy, POS down, unknown amount of modules destroyed or looted, 9 POCOs down, minimal losses, flew Enyo for the first time, spotted enemy fleet, defeated said fleet and profit!  Yeah, Sunday was a good day. 

Edit:  Apparently No-Ho is going to reimburse RvB's losses.  You folks rock.

Eve, Winning, and Tears

It seems that a lot of EVE players enjoy tears to an obsessive degree.  This has given rise to the notion that "EVE players are mean".  Is this true?  And *why*?  I think it's because of the way EVE works. 

EVE is complicated, and one of the complexities is "who won?"

I think we can all agree that many EVE players are intensely competitive.  This is great, except it's not always obvious who "won".  Say Bob is flying around in a vexor, and Joe (in a retribution) and Mike (in a hurricane) hate his guts.  Joe finds Bobs, points his vexor, and Mike warps in and blows up Bob... but not before Bob blows up Joe's retribution.   Who won here?

Well obviously Mike and Joe accomplished their goal of ganking Bob.  However, depending on the fit, it's very possible that Bob won the Isk war.  Trading a t1 cruiser with a cheap fit for a faction-fit assault frigate is a good trade.   But even that's not clear.  Maybe Joe is super space rich and doesn't care about losing dozens of AFs, while Bob is dirt poor.  

Or maybe Bob knew damned well that Mike and Joe were going to gank him, and was distracting them so that Jane's Iteron V, filled with loot, could go by unmolested!  So, who won here, how can you tell? 

In a way, the flexibility of "what is winning" is good.  It leads to very varied and creative gameplay.  In RvB for example, "winning" is defining by having a good fight.  One of my best fight ever is one of those where no one could figure out who was the winner - except all of us (a fight dubbed "the lion vs wolves", I will definitely post it later).

But it can also lead to less positive aspects.  Because in such ambiguous cases, often who "won" is decided by who's upset and who's not - ie tears.

And this is why many EVE players are so obsessed with tears.  Tears are proof of winning.  Tears mean victory!  And EVE players are always ready to "game the system", so whatever is needed to create tears is the path to victory.  This leads to griefing and aggressive forum posting - the easiest, best way to get tears often doesn't even involve logging in!   If the other person is upset, you know you won... doesn't really matter how you made them upset.

Can we change this?  I'm not sure how.  But I don't think it's a great thing.  Yes, it's just a game.  But you can never, ever get tears from a hurricane, or a hulk or a billion isks...

Only players shed tears.

Frigate Fitting 101

So, let's put some actual content here.

A while ago, I wrote a fitting guide for my alt's corpmates.  They were miners and missioners but they were willing to fight (we do periodic low-sec roam).  It wasn't realistic to give a disparate group specific fits, so I wrote a general guide.  I then realized this would be useful for RvB members and well, anyone new to PvP. 

1:  prop mods.  It's debatable if afterburner or microwarpdrive are the best (I prefer the latter), but for the love of god, have one!  Speed is life in PvP, especially for frigates.  If you do want to use a low slot for a speed module, nanofibres are better than over drive because they also make you more agile.

 

2:  Tanking.  If there is logi support (ie a ship that can heal others, ie a "cleric"), it will help if you have the same tank type as the logi is repairing (this mean shield or armour).  Active tank can work, but only in very small gangs - even a medium fleet will completely overwhelm your reper, and buffer is better.  For the love of god, do not dual tank (shield or armor, never both)!  There are some rare instances where it makes sense, but 99.9% of the time, it doesn't.  If you can fit/afford a t2 tank, do so.   Lastly, the most important tank mod you can have is damage control, having one on your ship will help you survive longer.

 

3:  Damage:  We will not be shooting rats for hours - rather other people for minutes, and they will be trying to blow us up too!  It's a race.  So don't cheap out on ammo - get t2 ammo or faction ammo. You won't need more than a load or two, you will get blown up sooner or later anyway.  If you are concerned about running out, bring t1 backup ammo.   Tech2 drones are also really good.  Seriously consider training Thermodynamics  so you can overheat your guns to get that 20% dps boost when it really matters.  (it's really a good skill to have for PvP in general, not just gunnery).   I recommend to have one rig or one low slot devoted to DPS boost - don't go nuts, but it really helps.

 

Of course, *please* use the appropriate weapons for your ship - whatever your ship gives a bonus for DPS, use that!  Also, your weapons should match.  Never ever fit a mixture of short and long range weapons.

If you have a free high slot, put some capacitor warfare - neut or nos, or simply leave empty.

 

4:  Rigs:  It's a good idea to use them, but use t1 version, the t2 are too expensive for t1 frigs.  Rigs allow you to "fix" weaknesses in your ships - tank, dps etc, or to enhance a strong point.  

 

5:  Tech levels:  If you can use tech 2 modules and can afford it, go ahead.  If you want to save money... don't use tech 1.  Use meta 1-2, its frequently cheaper and gives you better performance.  Meta4 are easy to fit and give good performance, but sometimes are more expensive than tech 2.   In some cases (esp ewar) meta4 are strictly better than t2.

 

6:  Mid slots:  It's absolutely essential you have some kind of tackle mod - a web and or a warp scram/disrupter  The only exception is if you are a sniper (and I don't know many sniping frigates...).  If you have room to spare, strongly give thought to some ewar ( turret disruption, sensor dampers or target painter).  You will note that doesn't leave a lot of room for your tank if you are a shield tanker - again, rigs and damage control will help make up for that. 

 

7:  Speaking of capacitor:  you don't need to be stable, only last a few minutes (again, this isn't PvE).  However if you only have capacitor for 20 seconds, use cap boosters (NOT a cap recharger).

 

8:  You may need a fitting low-slot mod to boost CPU or Power grid (or a rig).  However if you need more than one, you are either trying to do "too much" with the ship, or need more fitting skills training.  If you are very close, try using a better meta-version of a mod.  For example, one corpmate was 0.5 CPU short of being able to fit a damage control on his frigate.  By switching his web and his prop mod from tech 1 to meta fits, he was able to gain enough CPU to fit it and thus greatly improve his tank.

 

9.  Look up EFT (see https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=24359).  It's a bit tricky to use but will allow you to test fits without having to actually buy anything. 

10: Stacking penalties.  Apart from weapons (ha), adding several of the same modules will give you a penalty to the bonus provided.  The first module is 100% effective.  The second one will be 87% effective, the third one 57%... on a ship with several slots, it can make sense to have say, 3 ballistic control systems, but on a frigate, slots are few.  It's rarely worth putting more than 2 of the same module.

 

To many PvPers this is pretty basic, even obvious advice. But a newcomer to PvP may not know about all these "rules" and make mistakes.  There are also things that work well for PvE that are disastrous for PvP, and I hope they may help avoid some of those.

I say "rules" incidentally because these are more guidelines than rules.  They can be broken if you know what you are doing!  But in general, these will serve you well.