Blood Bowl – “Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?”

Watership Down aside, the Skull Takers had a fairly easy match up next in comparison to the strong Severed Eads in match 1. The Bright Crusaders, a human team who will not play dirty and who are interested in the ball and who will applaud and congratulate you if you win the match. Good team players with good clean attitudes towards the game of Blood Bowl. I can’t see a team like that being much of a threat to the Chaos band that are the Skull Takers.

I wonder if their team symbol brings luck hmm.

The first event of the game makes TooNu look very bad, Brilliant Coaching and only the Bright Crusaders coach is awarded an extra re-roll for the half. The Takers distrust of their coach is ever increased, some of them plot to eat him after the match if they lose.

TooNu's clearly not as brilliant as the Crusaders coach.

Clearly the Takers don’t want any part of this bad luck, this sign from the gods that demands blood as payment. Straight away the hurting begins in the very first turn as a Crusaders Lineman does something stupid and turns his back on a Beastman who forces the Lineman to think about his mistake from the medical area on the sideline. Not that he will get much thinking done with his fractured skull but he can at least try.

NEVER turn your back to a Beastman, they don't play nice.

The rest of the demonic horde take notice of this and begin punching, chewing, kicking, gouging and damaging anything humanoid as much as possible. The Crusaders first half resembles a battleground more than a football match. Is anybody or anything interested in winning this match?

In Chaotic text, the sports name stops at 'Blood' in Blood bowl.

The more players the Crusaders lose, the more chances the Chaos team has at using numbers to their advantage. This poor lineman never stood a chance.

"4 vs 1? Those are not exactly fair odds there mates...NO PUT MY ARM BACK AIIIIE!!"

With the pitch slowly clearing of humans there was lot’s of room for the Beastman to really get their game on. If they blitz, their horns give them an extra strength modifier which helps in hurting the intended victim. Though at times the charge doesn’t go quite to plan.

The trick is to keep your eyes on the target at all times during your charge, not seeing the spiked shoulder gaurd on this Blitzer was this beastmans first and last mistake of this match.

After so much fighting and blood lust, occasionally a beastman will do something that surprises you. First he will hit something really hard and send that thing flying across the pitch.

A Beastman rams a poor human in the stomach sending him down hard, then checks another player giving the Chaos warrior some assistance in ass-kickery.

Next, he will pick up the ball and run with it and keep running with it until something bigger get’s in his way. This guy had only green grass, stained with blood for the next 30 yards scoring the first touchdown of the match. 1-0 Skull Takers.

An easy walk in for this Beastman with no humans close enough to stop him. Scoring of the touchdown was just for the coaches sake.

2 more turns of mayhem ensued with the ball seeming to remain around centre field. One team trying to survive the match, with the other team trying hard to appease the gods with blood. Half time couldn’t have come fast enough for the Bright Crusaders. They would use the time well, to forumlate a plan and get the tea on to brew. However some of their less fortunate team mates wouldn’t be drinking or eating anything without assistance from heavy doses of painkillers and mechanical machines that help move jaws and digest food.

Half time, or as the Bright Crusaders call it, "Oh thank the maker!!"

The Skull Takers had this match well in control. With the Crusaders fearing for their lives, and being a point down it would be hard for any team to come back and come back stronger than this ravaging horde. though nobody was really thinking about such things as the crowd were loving the half time show put on by the slave cheerleaders, who to their credit have avoided being eaten.

No, those are not pom-poms, yes, they are heads.

Sometimes a team needs just the right amount of luck to get through a game. Sometimes that can take the form of sickness on the other team, sometimes it can take the form of a rousing speech from the coach that inspires victory, and sometimes it takes the form of something else entirely. The gods were feeling playfull it would seem as the second half gets underway.

A change in the wind, but what does it mean?

Well the first couple of turns went fine for the Crusaders. Not a single more member had been sent off with an injury or reduced to a concust state. Those terrible things were left for the pleasure of the Chaos team, with yet again a Chaos Warrior proving he can’t decide who he wants to hit more, himself or his opponent. The human Lineman made his mind up for him and smashed him into the ground before the Chaos Warrior could think up anything nasty.

Injured?! WHAT? oh it's nothing serious, ok that's fine then.

This moment seemed to rally the Bright Crusaders as they forced the Skull Takers line to compensate for this loss of strength. Spreading the chaos boys thin over the field, a hole was opened up leaving the entire back field of the Takers half available for some quick feet and sure hands. The previously ignored ball was scooped up by a Blitzer and ran down field. His legs who were previously trapped under the weight of an armor clad chaos warrior moved like jelly but he was going to reach the endzone if it killed him. Honour was at stake here, his, and his team mates. The crowd could be heard as one long intake of air as 15 yards turned to 10…5..! TOUCHDOWN CRUSADERS!

He can't quite beleive it either.

With only 3 turns each remaining to go; the match was looking to be a 1-1 draw, something would have to be done about it, an example made. The Skull Takers got to work and formalised a plan of attack so devastating that the Bright Crusaders would not dare to score another touchdown again, here, or in another match. The Scoring Blitzer was singled out and cornered as his team mates could only watch from their positions allready under attack. He stood no chance, and in 3 single camera flashes we can see the entire incident here.

1. First you get a big Chaos warrior to smash him to the ground. 2. then you get a group of Beastmen to gather round. 3. You block the Ref's view and you kick the snot out of the Blitzer sending him off the field with a broken collar bone.

He won’t be playing Blood Bowl again that is for certain. Blood was asked for (suprise, suprise) and blood was delivered. The match….the battle was over and both teams headed to their locker rooms for either medical assistance or fresh meat.

A game fans will remember for years, the game that retributious acts were carried out in the name of false gods, lives crippled and ruined, coaches given a second chance at being brilliant.

Strangley enough, the MVP was also the Beastman that injured himself against the Blitzers shoulder gaurd. I guess the commentators thought that moment was hilarious…the sadists.

Unfortunate name no.2 get's his MVP award.

Blood Bowl – Blood for the Blood god.

...annnd we're back!

A new season and a new team, that is what I need. The last time I did some Blood Bowl-ing was great fun and my team the Littul Runtz Goblin’s were REALLY fun but my tactics tend to favor bashing heads in in just about every game I play because why be subtle about it? So I’ve always wanted to try a Chaos team and they are awesome at bashing heads in and being a bit special. Without any more to do, a fresh install of Blood Bowl and a couple hours later and I have my first game and my first report, awesome.

Original team mantra right?

The 3 cheerleaders come from Middenheim, the doc’ also comes from there and all 4 were just unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and so ‘sequestered’ along for the duration of the rest of their lives. We are currently looking to increase the number of cheerleaders to a full squad, that is if I can stop the players from sacrificing the poor wenches after every match. A local wizard was paid to place the players in stasis so we could get this locker room shot, without him, it would not have been possible.

For 200 gold you can hire a magic user to get a similar effect, though, to get your gold back you lock the wizard in there and wait for the spell to wear off.

Coach TooNu and the Skull Takers head to their first match in the Clean Cup. Chaos Vs Orcs.

Skull takers and severed heads...similar team themes, coincedence or god meddling?

Both teams take to the field and the coin is flipped into the air, and so is the Ref by an Orc Blitzer too eager to start the fightin’ resulting in The Skull Takers getting an automatic win and choose to kick off the first half. Before the ball even gets half way across the field the right side of the pitch moves straight into the Orc defensive line opening it up ready for a stampede of unstoppable chaos.

It was a legal move, the ball was over the half way line and with the Ref paying more attention to mending his arm the Takers take full advantage of the Orcs.

The early Blitz makes for a great advantage leaving the Orcs with fewer options in the first turn but like all Orc teams the options are usually the same, just different ways to bash a head in, but still bashing heads in. And so the dramatic chaotic opening is left out in the wind with nothing watching their backs. Despite the early bashing the Orcs get, the Takers line gets a hammering.

Orcs doing what Orcs do best.

With nothing but fighting and breaking of bones happening, the players tend to forget why they are there in the first place. The one holding the ball is generally the safest player out there. Unless of course he gets in the way of a charging beastman, which this unfortunate Orc did.

A large bloodstain is all that remains of the ball carrier who is taken off the field. The ball is still largely ignored and play resumes to kicking faces down necks.

The most powerfull players a team can field are generally placed in the centre of the match to stop any large gaps from opening up, and pushing to the right or left if the game swings one way or the other. Dead centre of this match was a heavy Chaos player who after the first 7 turns was only seen surrounded by Orc blockers throwing them back across into their own half. He was a juggernaut of unstoppable rage, until he got it into his head that the only thing taking him down…is himself, and so instead of stopping an Orc litzer with the ball, he punched his own face in to show the Orc exactly how tough he was.

He sees stars now, later he will see release papers.

And with that oh so very smart move the first half comes to a close

Lot's of blood for the blood god indeed.

The half time talks were brief. Don’t let the greenskins run the ball in, don’t eat any mroe spectators…you can’t run on a full stomach, don’t hit yourself to impress a greenskin. The trick to getting them to listen is to hold a knife to your assistants throat because they pay attention..or rather salivate at the possible slaying. You say the words quickly and loud, then you let your assistant go and throw a bucket of sheeps entrails onto the floor to distract them. It’s a hard job coaching a team who only play for blood. Which is why the tactics used are few, one formation seems to stick in their heads though. It is based on the ancient ‘Shotgun’ formation but if you yell, “SLAUGHTER THEM!!” before the kick off, the players quickly get the message.

How it works is quite simple, the ball is retrieved and ran up the right side of the pitch quickly. The right side break through and push to the left while the left side scoop behind the front line and cover the ball carrier.

Of course the quick fire play usually has it’s moments, such as our Chaos warrior proving once again that he is the toughest SOB on the pitch which quickly hands the game over to the Orc team who see what the Chaos team are trying to do.

At least this time he took the Orc in front down aswell.

In the 11th turn the Chaos drive break through the Orc line leaving a pattern of tackle zones for the Beastman to pass through safely.

Orcs are not the most agile of creatures preffering to go through a player rather than around. So by using the tackle zones to their advantage, the Chaos team protect the ball carrier.

And by turn 12 and with the endzone in reach, for once the Skull Takers decide to do the best thing and run the ball home scoring 1 Touchdown and taking the lead with 6 turns remaining.

He cheers..but the spectators are either dead, eaten or too big and stupid to understand why they are their in the first place.

The last few turns go as expected. The ‘Eads recieve the ball and try to push forward but the Skull Takers are not interested in giving up their ground and a large fight breaks out in the middle of the field. The balls is left to a hapless Orc who decides he can’t run fast enough and so also joins in with the centre field rumble. A nasty cheap shot is delivered by no less than 5 Beastmen on one unlucky Orc Blitzer but only recieves a minor concussion. A fellow lineman doesn’t fare any better and takes a hoof to the head putting him out for the entire game and onto the injury list, though badly hurt he suffers no long lasting effect. Nothing in his head to damage I assume. With only 2 turns remaining, both teams continue to fight until the Ref calls time and the match finishes 1-0 Skull Takers.

The last injury of the game brings the match to a close.

The Skull Takers gain some fan following, I suspect the cheerleaders have something to do with that.

Injuring opponent teams players gives more experience to your players. Hence the love of fighting towards the end of the match. It can be risky if your player instead becomes injured but it’s like coach TooNu always says, “Hit them first, then stand on them…sacrifce the chicken later.” More experience is earned by winning the MVP award, which is given out by the commentators to a player on each team. I’m not sure what this Beastman did to deserve it but perhaps he ate more spectators than any other player?

Laly Tusk...unfortunate name number 1.

And so the locker room was emptied and the Skull Takers go back to…well where ever you find such players, we best not think about that too much. I hear that the locker room had to be burned to the ground, bulldozed and sanctified before being rebuilt. I wonder if the field owners realise the Skull Takers will be back?

Awesome free games in links 2.

Ok so this post and the previous post are nothing more than my attempt at having a permanent place for links to these awesome games. Nothing revelatory about linking, but I have frequently deleted my bookmarks and forgotten about so many cool things that losing them would be a bit shit…again. So links and a small explanation, though everyone of these is 100% awesome.

Physics based hand drawn awesomery where you build machines out of the available parts to get you from A to B. Sounds simple but the execution can really test your brain.

Fantastic contraption

A random world is generated and your small band of dwarfs must build, build, build and dig, dig, dig. Ascii based game so it will run on a toaster. This game is very very hard, but the long play is oh so worth it.

Dwarf Fortress

Angband is incredible. Again, ascii based game but it’s the gameplay that sells it. A random dungeon is created and you must explore it, but you won’t get far because you will die, and then restart and go explore again but you are again dead so you try aga..DEAD. (I want Zangbandtk but I can’t find a copy that works damnit >_< you might have luck with this one, it won’t work for me You want to play this version –> though I will leave the angband version here also,  Zangbandtk , You MUST move the root of the folder to your hardrive, too many folders causes it to crash upon startup.

andband

Everybody loves this one, it’s addictive as heroin but cheaper.

Desktop Tower Defence

1 single button to control your man who must run, he must run and he must jump to get away from the bad thing that is happening. Just look out for window, window is a bastard.

Canabalt

The hardest thing to do is to start on the first mission and not lose a marine so that you have a small chance of completing the second and third mission. You won’t do it, I have REALLY played it and only come close to winning twice, close mind, not actually won. I’ve never won.

Aliens: The board game

Awesome free games in links.

Here is a short list of games to play while the server is down, while at work and looking to be fired, while at work with a PC and your lunch, while at relatives whom you don’t want to speak to so much, while on the bus/train to work, while poor and bored.

All of these are very good, very VERY good and worth the time to play. N is a jumpy ninja game, iji is a sci-fi platformer, Spelunky is cave exploring wonderous death, Alien Assault IS Space hulk and also wonderous death.

N

iji

Spelunky

Alien Assault

EvE – Low Security Space.

In the words of a Canadian friend who no longer plays, “right off the bat” I want to get two things off my chest. 1) That post title is awesome; Low security space, it even looks badass. 2) I am not even sure if these ideas are my own or I am having the same awesome ideas as somebody else, either way, I did think them up and so I want to write about them. So here we YARR! and here we go.

1) Gate guns.

Basic run of the mill sentry gun, a total pain in the foetus maker to a pirate, a DPS helper for the rest of you.

Living in Low-sec for prolonged periods of time means you have no idea, no fucking clue how gate guns work? I think that is absolute horseshit. If my character can hack into ancient technologies inside a wormhole, if my toon can operate capital starships and complex modules, if he can produce chemicals and understand scientific stuff that would make your mind melt like diarrhea* in a diaper, if he can use the guns and modules around his very own control tower then why can’t he figure out someway to mess with the NPC gate guns?

The messing with could take the form of some sensor disruption which disrupts the guns ability to lock/track/fire. Something that would ruin the threat-o-meter on the guns so that they can no longer tell the difference between an aggressive pilot and a victim. That last one would be fun, because it would open the option to let players control the gate guns and use them to help destroy innocent victims/players…no I was right, ‘victims’ is the correct term.

Hmm let’s rule out controlling the guns, while most likely fun, forum trolling would occur seconds after an announcement of such changes. Though forum trolling happens anyway regardless of change or not. I’m here to keep the peace, not oblit…ok yea fuck it, I want to control the guns if that option was in the game, who wouldn’t? more guns = more dakka dakka = more awesome . Of course CCP would never allow that because it’s probably not possible due to the archaic code they use but also because Akita T would no doubt find reason to stop it during Beta testing.

How about instead another science/electronics skill that let’s you hack into the gun to turn it off and on but with a time limit. So train the skill and you get 10 minutes of gun downtime, train it to each level for further 10 minute increments. To be honest it could be 5 minutes then 5 minute intervals with a 30 minute total limit, I don’t care. (then why not 23 hours knobhead?) Well 30 minutes to an hour would make it another thing to think about and something you HAVE to do. Just having them off would make having them in low sec pointless. Making a task out of it would be a way of say, every 30 minutes having to reroute the hack as the gun compensates for the loss in control. Almost like the T800 does in Terminator 2 when he reroutes power after being wtfpwnd by the T1000. Perhaps give the guns a period of none hackness, if a gun was hacked for only 10 minutes, it gets 10minutes of being left alone before being allowed to be molested once more.

Oh and if somebody hacks into while you have it turned off, it turns back on and has the immunity timer.

Some ruled out ideas were these.

VANITY MIRROR. The turret does nothing but stare at its own reflection for hours at a time ignoring its duty. THE OLE'PAPER BAG TRICK. Place a paper bag over the turret so it can't fire, genius. GIRLFRIEND. WIth all of that extra nagging to do things and go out for walks the turret won't have time to shoot anything. HUDSON. The most logical step to shutting them down is to let Hudson run a bypass to turn the thing off, clearly this is the best idea.

In low sec we get 2 guns, in high sec they get 6 guns. It is a bit weird and I think something is missing.

2 guns, placed equally apart to cover as much space as 2 guns could cover.

You can tank that if you want. A high enough passive shield tank has no problem sitting there while it PvPs. A gang can sit at a gate with local tanks while the guns rotate around the group, so everyone gets a shot at tanking for a bit. It’s not impossible but it is just a bit annoying over a game mechanic. The challenge isn’t even there, it just limits the ship size to Cruiser with enough buffer to last a short time, battlecruisers and above have it easier. Why not just stick with the high sec 6 guns and be done with it? AHHH right, because then the gate camps wouldn’t exist because that would be too much firepower to tank wouldn’t it? well if low-sec gate camping is an important part to the game, why not give it some due attention? Here is a screen of the puffy-funfun-happy-no cares high sec gate WITHOUT rollers/wankers in shot.

Incase you couldn't tell, the fluffy pink nice nice circles indicate the high sec guns.

2) Bribery.

A much simpler and shorter idea but much less fun would be to allow the player to pay ISK for a gate gun immunity timer. A low sec agent of conspicuous origins is available to those players who have sufficient standing with that faction. In Lisbaetanne for example the NPC pirate faction is Serpentis and so clearly the Serpentis should have agents kicking about, but they don’t at the moment, so we introduce the Bribery agent. You would pay these scumbags some bribery ISK so they then pay off their corrupt contacts on the high sec side to simply have the guns ignore the player for a time period. The payment cost could be based on your faction standing. It would mean no skill training and no possible use of sentry turrets.

I don’t honestly believe that the 4 major factions in the game have any control of the lawless space considering how large the pirate factions are in comparison. So why should the high sec controlled Sentry turrets have any place in low sec and be completly immune to alteration? I have another idea to but it’s crazy and requires it’s own post at some point.

*diarrhea – Difficult word to spell.

EvE – Your Liar perfectly hits Mountain view tower for a hundred bahzillion damage

I alluded to betrayal in the last post, it was quite a word to put in there considering I had no explanation as to where the word came from. Betrayal is a great word if used in a game like EvE, especially if you are the betrayer and not the betrayee. I think it takes quite a mind to accept the fact that you are weaving lies in conversations, overlapping your deceitful ways so that you eventually believe them yourself. My corp mate is quite good at that it would seem. Upon moving into our new system it was his job to make friends with the neighbours who were allready established in there. His approach had much more subelty than my own which is akin to some steroid absuing barbarian using his own kneecaps to drive metal spikes into helpless wheelchair bound epeleptics. He thought talking would be the better option and so had about 1 month of being friends with the neighbours before this shit got real.

If I had to imagine what he was saying and how he went about it I would imagine it like this, in steps.

Step 1, Being friendly. An obvious first step. Smiling and saying pleasant non-aggressive things. Staying well away from topics that involve fighting and being very open with your carebearing, industrious ways.

Step 2, Offering. Be the helpfull guy by giving advice and making it clear that you can probe really well and will be more than happy to copy bookmarks for wormholes that appear.

Step 3, Shared security. Having a shared intel channel that keeps you and your neighbours informed of neutral pilots that come into the wormhole and monitoring the system at all times. Using the channel to chat about common interests in the down time between actual intel.

Maintaining a routine of steps like these can make the gullible amongst us fall for it everytime. There is no other reason to disprove your persona that they know of unless you give it to them. Likewise, even the most suspicious of people given enough time can trust somebody who seems like an friendly, honest hardworker. And it is that moment of trust, that single opening in the paranoia that a lying scumbag rat fuck is waiting for. Not that I am calling my corp mate a lying scumbag rat fuck but because of his evil ways we were given an open buffet to a less secure wormhole for them. Had they suspected anything, they could have mustered a few battleships and players to sit in the wormhole to try and deter any action from us. As it happened they obviously didn’t care a great deal otherwise they might have done something.

Clearly you need some sort of groundwork done before you even undock a ship to help make your victory as easy as possible. So, where were we? Oh yes the tower…(was that question necessary? you make me sick)

Still shooting at a tower...just doing nothing but shooting a tower.

The 24 hour period came and went and the Phoenix was back at her spot unloading citadel cruise missiles into the forcefield like a monkey throwing poop at childrens faces. Secretly we were hoping that the tower owners had no Strontium in the tower thus allowing for a much faster POS takedown but sadly for us, it was not the case and we had the full 24 hour waiting period. During the next day one of their pilots was repairing guns that were incapacitated which to his credit was admirable because who would not want to defend their home? I am not sure if the guy is unemployed, a student, a retired person or whatever but he spent a large amount of his day in a Drake with remote armor rep’s and shield rep’s to bring the guns back online. Which later on I destroyed again in about 20 minutes. Sorry to see you wasted an entire day off there…ok no I am not sorry, at all.

With no guns to shoot and no online ECM, my corp mates were allowed to warp to the POS and help directly with removing this tower from our sight. Which they did WITH GUSTO!!

More PEW for your ISK. the more the merrier! In the midnight hour she cried more, more, more! Good MOREning Vietnam!!!

Having my corp mates there helping with this was quite nice. We still had our scouts watching the entrance wormholes and we had my alt running cap charges and ammo back and forth for the battleships. To say that we are efficient is an understatment. And though it was not the most exciting evening of our EvE games it was none the less a great couple of nights over quite a long operation.

The corp worked together to get our shit out of the old, middle of fucking nowhere Class 4 wormhole, we sold it and made some new friends as a result. The new wormhole had been found a month prior and setup in and the weaving of lies had begun, pretend-friends were made who are now obviously lost. Our second corp capital ship had been made and we actually skilled up pilots over weeks and weeks to fly them both just for specific evenings (One single night of Ore compression, and 2 nights of POS sieging). I’d like to say that was dedication to something we enjoyed but I think the reality is closer to idiocy because you can’t explain that sort of shit to a loved one. “Oh yea honey I trained this ‘pilot’ that I pay for with real money to fly this ship and do this one task and then never need to fly that ship again, cool huh?”. That doesn’t wash but I dare you to try it.

Here is what Onyxia dropped this time. Yes that is a WoW reference, what you gonna do about it eh?

So yes to cut this long story short the tower was destroyed along with dreams, karma and exhausted sleep deprived bodies could finally get some sleep and take an EvE break. Something that bothered us more than anything was that despite the knowledge that the POS was going down, these people didn’t even vacate their hangars which I thought was a really sweet thing to do. I mean siege ammo and siege fuel don’t pay for themselves so it is nice to get something out of it. I stole the POS mods that were looted but they are still corp assests and everything else has been sold off and it comes to under 100mil. 100mil is nothing to get excited about but really, it is a small fortune that some people who play EvE never even get to see. Or do but then lose their ship and so get to see 100mil a few times but never more than that. Anyway, 100mil is quite nice and the POS modules were an added bonus.

Oh and one final thought on this post. When the tower was done we had a new wormhole appear that gave our corp an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. It was an instant “of course we need that!” sort of thing, as we moved our HQ from whereever it was to somewhere with a much cooler sounding name.

Lazer...that is just awesome.

EvE – Wesley Snipes character from Demolition man has the same last name as the central figure in this blog post.

“I think that I REALLY messed up guys…*15sec pause*…yea I think I’m going to lose this, if I do I will give you my stuff and just quit because I can’t live this one down.”

I said that, it was the most melodramatic thing I’ve said whilst playing EvE to date and at the time the feelings of what was happening were quite terrible. My body was shaking; I felt nauseous, the pulse of my heart was audible to my ears…overall it was an experience like John Hurt’s ordeal on the table of the Nostromo. I had made a terrible error and not only was I going to pay for it but my corp mates were going to pay for it, and we would all look like useless morons.

Ok, from the start, a little back story.

We moved into our new wormhole a short time ago and while a couple of us were still getting organised, one corp member decided to go ahead and setup base camp anyway and make a start on our next project. The new wormhole has it’s benefits that suit our playstyle a little more but it also presented a further obstacle that we would have to tackle. Anything that furthers our game is something we look forward to and so plans were made and the course was set. The first hurdle was to vacate and sell our older wormhole, which we did quite nicely. The ISK from the sale was reinvested into the corp once again and construction of our 2nd capital ship went underway. A ship built for a singular purpose.

Sometimes you buy a house in the country and everything is perfect except for that one small cottage you can see from your window that spoils the view. You decide to explode it with your home demo kit and live your life in peace. Well unlike that unrealistic scenario, EvE presents them to you and actively encourages you to do things like that. The Phoenix (home demo kit)  was delivered yesterday and the time had come to show our hand. The neighbours would not be impressed.

The scene where this all happens, and DAMN that is a nice screeny.

The time before the actual event that took place was spent making sure any signatures in our system were scanned out, bookmarked and then any wormholes were to be brought to a critical stage. 2 of my corp mates got to work on that side, putting battleships into and back through so that that the mass would eventually bring the wormholes to a critical stage that meant anybody entering would have to think twice about entering less they become stranded. Bubbles were anchored around the critical wormholes and scouts were set up to keep an eye on them.

Meanwhile the Phoenix came rumbling out of the assembly array ready to be fit with the according modules, system checks, filling of drinks machines, Ice in the cooler and the BBQ grill turned on. It was going to be a long night and these sorts of things make for a much more enjoyable monotonous, grinding, bore-fest.

I like waking up early, putting on my comfiest clothes, walking down to the local bakery where the first batch of hot Phoenix Dreadnoughts comes rolling out of the oven.

When you search for ships on the market, as one does, you tend to type in ships that you just want to look at. So you click the preview button and have a quick look, spin it around a bit and generally admire it or dissaprove. I would do this with the Phoenix and the Chimera and many other ships I wanted to fly just so that I could see what it would look like rendered out in my game. Well, when this beast just sat idling next to that Orca in the forcefield next to all the POS modules and the tower, I can tell you that it looks much more impressive and much bigger than you can fathom. It’s fucking giagantic and it’s awesome.

Here is what I was fitting to this monster.

Doesn't look like much but that is one heavy list of modules, you need a large transport ship to carry all of that and the Orca makes for a great fitting and module carrying ship.

The ship was fitted, armed and ready to do the mission it was born to complete. The exact shooting spot had been picked out earlier in the day and due to the wormhole penalties the exact spot was closer than it really should have been but luckily for us, the owners of the POS had placed their modules…ALL OF THEM in a circle that went directly around the circumference of the forcefield in a sort of halo effect. This meant I could have a shooting spot of 112km from them all and avoid the autocannon turrets. Leaving a grand total of 4 Medium Artillery turrets. I could tank that easily. The scouts reported everything was clear, the N.A.D. Sulaco engaged her warp drive and Operation Space Bastards had begun. She landed and engaged the siege module, then started her locking cycle of 2 of the 4 artillery turrets which is exactly when a terrible realisation struck me. Instant sweat began pishing out of my armpits and spine. My throat dried up and my palms began to shake. I said something that made everyone else worry, something else about quitting EvE and giving my shit away to pay for this loss whilst dissapearing underneath a rock for a few years. I had not fit a shield booster. You can see in the screenshot above, that it is missing but did you notice?

She was allready pointed by the ECM, she can’t warp while in siege, if she comes out the ECM will have her. Without a shield booster, there is no way I can tank the arty long enough to kill all 4 turrets before her shields die. I think. I haven’t actually done the math but it would be pretty damn close is my guess. I began by destroying the warp disruptors of which there were only 2. I think that if I could kill those off and warp off I would be fine. And so unlocking the turrets and starting on the warp disruption became my primary goal, but my shields were taking quite a pounding so coming out of siege might actually reduce my chances of survival.

What the fuck was I going to do? It was more or less impossible to think straight at that moment, no maths were ever done to confirm the longevity of my tank for a situation such as this. The only option I had was a really stupid idea and it meant quite a huge loss for me personally, but at least the corp wouldn’t suffer. I found the Capital shield booster in the Corporate Hangar array where I left it and warped my alt directly to the Phoenix with the knowledge that the Orca was going to get pointed and die.

A nice short summary from the only corp mate without a mic' helps to illustrate the awesomeness of the Orca.

So the booster was jettisoned, the ship fitting menu on the Orca meant that the Phoenix could fit the shield booster and be safe afterall but had to suffer sitting there watching as the hero of the day took a beating by the POS. While pvping in low sec it is important that if you are going to die (it is defiently inevitable at some point) anything you can do to help get your POD out is beneficial. So I did what came naturally and that was to align the Orca out and mash the warp button like a Korean Starcraft player. I think the shields on the Orca were at 60% when she hit warp, and I think also that my corp mates hearing has reduced by 60% by having me scream my lungs out “SHE WARPED SHE WARPED SHE IS IN FUCKING WARP!!!!!”. It was glorious, not the screaming part, but the Orca getting way part. The POS kept it’s webs on the Orca but switched the warp disruptors back to the sieged Phoenix allowing for an instant warp for the Orca. The Orca was free! the Orca had done it! The Phoenix would live after all!

Instead of grouping the launchers it was decided that screenshots are better if you have a nice string of missile spam. I guess it does look awesome.

The warp disruptors and all but one of the artillery were incapacitated which left the shield of the POS to face the bombardment. It took a beating for about 4 hours, 4 REALLY long hours. It was quite fun though in a twisted waste of time kind’a'way. I liked flying such a ship and using it for a job that it is built for, rather than some fancy toy.

Pew pew pew ! Big numbers are impressive yes?

The Autocannons and the ECM were the only real threat remaining and they were not even a threat to the Phoenix anyway. Being in siege mode means the ECM can not effect you and as she was out of activation range on the autocannon turrets it meant she could sit there happily for the rest of the op’….all 24 hours of it. A corp mate decided he wanted in on the shield killing and so pulled this stunt a few times which was quite amusing.

Jock: "Oh my god JC, a bomb!" JC: "A bomb!"

The siege lasted for some time and as we had the one Dread you can’t expect it to go quite so smoothly or fast, not having the dread would mean a much much longer campaign of sitting out of range with cruise missile ravens or something stupid like that. Nobody wants to do that. Building the dread was the best way of removing the neighbours POS from the system, amiright?

Sneaking through the cosmos delivering presents to all the dreadnought-children.

Somwhere in that screenshot is my Crane cloaked up with a carghold of Strontium to refill the siege module when needed. Nice to have such available assests to make the job a lot smoother.

Eventually the night came to an end and everybody was very relieved to have the first phase over, a few problems came up and it was almost as if the game deliberetly wanted to sabotage our operation. Though we got over them and bounced back to finish the job. The job that took about 1 month of planning, backstabbing and ISK collecting.

The last arty goes down leaving the POS defenceless.

Now that the tower was reinforced, all of the ECM would be offline. So tomorrow the objective would be to remove the autos first, then start on the tower again. Hopefully it wouldn’t take quite as long as this night.

EvE – Suicide ganking, wtf is it?

Here we go full force with Captain Obvious at the helm writing a blog post about a subject that people REALLY want to attempt or REALLY want to avoid or allready understand and know about. Well I’ve done this over one evening only ladies and gentlemen and I can assure you that it is neither A) really awesome and B) Hard to learn everything about instantly because it is really simple. For those that allready know, there is nothing new here except my opinions so you should read it anyway and for those that know nothing about this subject, you should probably read this to avoid looking awkward at parties.

First it is probably best that I get this niggling pain in the cock name out of the way. Suicide ganking, I mean…is it really the best EvE came up with? Firstly Suicide is the taking of your own life; however in the practice of this gameplay you don’t lose your life, just your ship. And the plan is to lose the ship anyway so there is no real consequence unless you think of your security status as something of vital importance to your game, in which case don’t bother your pretty little head taking part in such activities because you will get shafted by the security drop. Ganking, is the only true part of any of this. You do something so overpowered to a target that is ultimately helpless and incapable of recourse. Of course the name is more accurate depending on the way the ganking operation was carried out and if you are willing to look the other way to the meaning of suicide.

If your gang is smartbomb battleships and you get podded by your gang mate as you explode before he/she/it does and then get caught up in his/her/it’s smartbomb explosion then yes you do indeed die. You didn’t kill yourself though and thus it is not suicide. I would prefer I’m an Idiot Ganking but then it doesn’t really roll off the tongue, not so buzz word like as Suicide Ganking. Ok so I’m done venting about that and moving on. Here is one such way of ganking and being a space bastard.

You will need:

1 Destroyer of your choice

T1 small Guns such as Pulse, Blaster, Auto. The long range types are not prefereable. About 5 rounds in each gun.

Damage mods in the lows that correspond to your gun type which are Heat Sink, Gyroscope, Magnetic stabilizer.

These tools and the skills to use them plus overheating skills are the only skills you need. The most over riding factor in this endevour is that you need friends/gang mates to help you because 1 destroyer can not do it alone. Infact the only thing a destroyer can do alone is salvage, die or make a sandwhich. A shit one.

The first objective is to find an unwilling target and because you are a space bastard your target is a mining vessel of some sort like a Hulk or a Mackinaw perhaps. You want the expensive ones so that the loss of all of your gang in the cheap ships to Concord is at least 95% less than the cost of that one single mining ship. Yes, everyone in your entire gang is going to explode but with any luck you have also destroyed your target so it is not so bad.

What fine selection you have. May I have a 1969 Mackinaw please?

So one of you on an alt account will go to a high sec system that borders your low sec system of choice where your gank gang is waiting. The alt would be great in a covert ops ship so you can warp to the asteroid belts and not be spotted. A large carghold for any modules that drop from the recently deceased would also be quite nice so think about them carghold expanders. Now the alt is not only to find the target but also to provide a warp in for the gang in the low sec system. The idea is to position the cloaked ship behind the target so that the gate where the gang will approach from is in direct alignment. If you stay at range, make sure it is a warpable range and be 100% clear to the gang of what range to warp to. I.E. if you are 20km from the target you would say, “ok warp to me at 20km and you will land right on top of the target.”, this way there can be no mistakes in the jumping range. You must be right ontop of the target remember. Even better if the Fleet/Wing/squad commander can do a gang warp so there are no individual mistakes.

Incidently your gang must enter the system together so your gang/fleet warp is perfect and nobody is left behind for Concord to melt. Also a local spike of about 6+ pirates is going to give the game away so do it together in synchronous timing to minimise the possibility of the target sniffing out impending doom and logging off or docking up.

"Overheat them modules!!"

While in warp, every member of the gang must overheat their guns. It makes no difference what your Thermodynamic skill is at, just overheat and enjoy the extra firing rate. You will never see those guns again and even if you did, repairing them is not on the cards because the ship will be exploded to death by Concord so who gives a shit? The trick is just to overheat while in warp and have the guns cycled (turned on and flashing ready for lock) and ready so that when you land you begin to fire at your maximum potential straight away. DAKKA!, DAKKA!, DAKKA!, DAKKA!, DAKKA!, it is that fast, 8-10 seconds of life and then BOOOM!

You've got mail is one of my favourite movies. Tom Hanks is a great actor.

The target is destroyed and with ANY Luck on your side perhaps you have managed to shoot at a secondary target, but only if your gang is big enough is that possible. The sheer lagfest that happens when a massive blob of Concord and Navy enter the field is staggering. I can lock 2 targets but rarely can the second target die before I die, though, it is the thought that counts right? Have your spotter pick a good spot so that you can possibly engage and destroy a second target anyway, just incase. Calling out the primary and a possible secondary leaves no room for guessing who you all should be shooting at.

The insurance payout is only slightly comparable to the loot that could drop. A strip miner II sells for about 2.5 mil or so which is 5 of your destroyers and their fittings. The insurance also helps but if it helps you see the ISK potential, we killed 6 T2 mining ships at about 740 mil lost and approx 24 million in loot that we picked up. We lost 38 Destroyers and fittings which is about 10% of the ISK lost in comparison. I think those scores are quite nice but the ships lost overall probably equal what dropped in loot so we are even. The fun factor in doing this was quite cool, as pirates drinking and talking shit on Ventrilo while anticipating the kill to follow I have to say it was one of the most enjoyable evenings of EvE. I guess part of that is down to the Hellfleet crowd and part to the giggly excitment though. FYI, drunk pirates really do mumble about their Rum.

Really out of Control pirates being out of control.

So to recap.

1) Fit a destroyer with the cheapest T1 guns and damage mods only. You do not need the other shit. Take only 5 rounds per gun in your ship, you won’t be firing any more. Insure the ship because you are 100% going to lose it.

2) Be in a gang of at least 6 people to take down a Miner with enough alpha before you all pop.

3) Have an alt get you a warp in by using a cloaked ship to avoid detection. Be clear who the primary and secondary are.

4) Jump into the system together. This is vital for a suprise attack.

5) Have the commander warp you all to the warp in. Have your guns cycled and ready. Overheat the guns so they fire at your maximum potential so when you lock, you do maximum carnage straight away.

6) When your ship pops, don’t hang about. Get your pod out of Dodge fast and head back to Low sec.

7) Repeat as desired.

POP goes the weasel?...um, Snap Crackle and POP? no? ok how about bring back 80's POP music?

One last thing to mention is like good fishing, you don’t take some massively overpowered netting system to your favourite riverbank just so you can haul home every decent fish there is. You take your time and hopefully you get a bite and perhaps you do not. Clearing out your fishing spot so that no more fish ever come back is something you do not want to happen. The same can be said about EvE online. If you were to constantly gank the crap out of miners in a system, then perhaps they all just decide to mine elsewhere. What would you do if that happens eh? Anime porn or 4chan evenings? Yea exactly, so maybe it would be nice if you did not gank all of the miners all of the time but instead treated this hobby as a once in a while thing. Something to pad your killboard statistics every month or so just so you can feel all proud that you can gank somebody and ruin their day while profiting. You big fat bully.

EvE – Bring out your dead!

If only EvE had achievements

Something I forgot to mention a while back due to being heavily busy and in emmense pain was this continuous hobby of mine within EvE. I’ve spoken about this before a couple of times so here is an update starting with a rather large collection of glued together screenshots to form what should be a flawless image of the corpses in one container.

Not only do I have over 1000 corpses, but many many air freshners.

So the math doesn’t add up (1048), somewhere the screenshot has gone a bit off so instead of adjusting it I will leave it be. The total is definetly 1000 because you can only have 1000 items in a container and so my catacombs have spread across 3 containers. The original catacombs houses 1000 bodies, the second catacombs houses 132 corpses and the “celeb” graveyard houses 29 corpses giving me an exact total of 1161 corpses. Not bad eh? I was so happy to finally hit 1000 corpses that I used it as an exucse to put this Zealot.gif into my post just now for no apparent reason like some innapropriate ninja Zealot.

Zaaap...dead...Zaaap...dead. 1 ship DPS army.

Of course I haven’t managed to find these all myself so I must acknowledge Turelus; Tyson, Brandon and Arcy who have contributed the most to this weird hobby of mine.

Oh and one final last thing. A nice EvE friend/player by the name of Damar Rocarion gave me a corpse of which I could never aquire myself, a one Val Erian which is awesome because he had menaced us in the Caldari Militia and so I can remove him from my deathwish list. Chatgris, Bad Messenger and Daniel Jackson still to go.

EvE – How to grow your very own Alt.

:::EDIT::: 26/05/2011 – This post contains information that is no longer relevent BUT it is a good guide how to start at least

I’m gonna try helping once again to alleviate the bad shit I do in game, I swear I have more pod goo on my hands than a masterbation specialist at a porn expo. So here is a quick post about creating a new and usefull alt which will become invaluable if you pirate like I do. This really is me being nice here, helping and everything. Look I even bolded key words here. Aww I’m nice aren’t I? (Hey dickhead, how about you get on with the post eh?).

Yes, moving on.

Sometime ago I bought a new EvE account via STEAM in some sort of summer promo they had going for the specific purpose of making a hauling/trading alt. I Think the promo was like 5 Euro for an account with 30days gametime, and then 14 days gifted to one of my other accounts due to the buddy programme. The aim of this was to do it as quickly as possible while still having other options for the future. It was really a no-brainer and she is allready into her 3rd and final month of EvE before I transfer her to one of my existing accounts.

The goal for my alt was this ship.

Truckasaurus retails at $56.95 available from all good toy stores.

Being a pirate means you can’t get into high sec to shop, which for me sucks because I like the “mini-game” of shopping. Not only do you lose the ability to shop but you get shot at and totally fucked over by the feds in system. A clean non-corporation’ed* alt that can haul things back and forth from Low sec means you have no excuse for not having a specific ship, or running out of ammo, not having various available modules you can fit, thus you can shop to your hearts content. The cloaky version of the transport ships such as this Viator offer you the security of not having your shit blown up along the way, by friends or by random EvE players. “oh that was your alt? sorry but he isn’t blue “, <– never fear shit like that again!

So with the pre-requisites identified we start our skill plan. A skill plan that like all skill plans starts with a few skills we all love to hate but love to have. Yes, learnings.

"hey guys I just started playing, what should I train?". "Learnings", "learnings", "lernings", "teh learnnig skills", "get your learnings and then train something fun like guns or missiles".

Everybody fucking hates these MUST DO skills but why is that? well because if you spend time to train them, you gain training time overall and thus save time. Every skill from then on is faster and easier to train. So yes I didn’t NEED To train them but as a vague sort of perfectionist the possibility of keeping this toon beyond the 3 months was always up in the air so having these skills done just makes my life easier down the road. And you don’t need to take them beyond LvL 4 unless you are really going for it.

I trained them up while I took a few days vacation away from home. So it fit quite nicely into my time frame.

Over the next 2 months or so I trained up the rest of the skills and am now just putting the finishing touches to her overall ‘must have’ plan. Here are the rest.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that this hot pink U.I. is awesome.

So that is what her history looks like. We have the Industry skill to V, the Gallente Industrial skill to V which are the 2 biggest bastards to train on the entire plan. The rest are for fitting purposes such as Hull Upgrades to II so you can fit Expanded Carghold II’s on. Afterburner to III so you can inject and then train High speed Maneuvering for your 10MN Micro Warp Drive. Various other upgrades and things just for fitting purposes. The last few fitting skills that are underway right now which are (in order of requirement) Mechanic skill to III, Jury Rigging to III and Astronautics Rigging to I which are all for Carghold Optimisation rigs which should increase the carghold from it’s 7,773 m3 to 10,279 m3. Which is quite enough to carry a packaged Cruiser and it’s modules. Or I guess, tonnes of molested corpses.

What is not shown on the history there are the Covert Op’s cloak skills. I did that as my first goal so it was out of the way but it really only takes Electronics I-IV and then Cloaking I-IV which is 1d 0h 3m 32s and then 6d 0h 21m 14s so 1 week and you can then covert cloak around a system lolling like a clown. If you add 5 days onto that and train Electronics to V instead, you can can then train Cynosural Field Theory to I which gives you a handy Cyno pilot if you ever need one in the future.

The first undocking and the first cloaked warp for Truckasaurus (withit'shotpinkU.I.thatisawesome)

Next for this alt character is the Spaceship Command skill to V then Advanced Spaceship Command to at least III and finally the last bolded part of this blog post Gallente Freighter to whatever I can train it to in the last 2 weeks that this account will be open. If I can also sqeeze in some trade skills then I will but I think the possibility is unlikely and had I used up her attribute remaps of which she has 2 of, I probably could have gotten way more out of her but then I might have screwed it up and had her training take longer. Either way, a really usefull hauling alt is now at my command to help my pirating ways and space bastardry on TooNu. Now if only STEAM would have another EvE deal I could have a mega trade alt to hmmmm.

*non-corporationed – Seriously is this even remotely correct? am I just mashing together words in the hope that they could be correct?.

(Awesome Hot Pink U.I. – Red: 255 Green: 29 Blue: 147 Transparency: 149…anything close to these numbers and you should have it).