Team Liquid wins at Internet Spaceships, Join Now!

So I was first told about this game EVE Online in November '10 by a friend who said it was a good way to make real life money by playing a game and he was going to start. I downloaded it and created a trial account. After two days of cluelessly wandering around, I said 'fuck this' and alt-f4'd.

A couple weeks later I was scanning TL when I saw 'EVE Corporation' in the Sports and Games column. I scanned through the OP and read a few posts here and there. I also read motbob's post on why you should play EVE. I asked if it was a game a student could play while still focusing on studies, etc. I was told it was a game that you did not have to grind for yet still could be quickly useful. I had also read the massive Metagaming in EVE thread about the war between Goonswarm and Band of Brothers. I became really interested in this game that could somehow come up with such epic stories.

So I gave it a shot. Immediately upon joining Hatchery I already had a much better idea of what to do, what to aim for and how to play the game. However we were still a hisec corp in those days - deeply clueless at pve (even though most of us were silly missioners) and all attempting to nano against bigger guy without any real idea of how to do it. We were terrible back then. Since then however we have improved in leaps and bounds and I often wonder what it would be like if we could go back to our previous home and fight our previous enemies like Necrophiliacs etc, but that's another story.

It started out slow for me as a Rifter in hisec (it is rather different now for newbies - you get thrown into the thick of fights on day 2) but once I stepped into my Hurricane, the game was on. We learned to pvp, thrashed the shittalkers in Aralgrund then made our big move from Emol to Oddelulf, where we were exposed to Gunpoint Diplomacy, Dark Rising/ANZAC/Executives and Russians. We were fighting against huge blobs and winning. We started fighting carriers, previously just 'something we'd heard about out in nullsec' and at one point killed 4-5 in a week with our rag-tag gang of battlecruisers and rifters.

It's not just the PVP where we have grown. We have gone from mediocre pvers to, well, pretty damn good pvers. We have figured out the best ways to mission and many ways to make isk (money) that others don't even believe possible. Some of us have become traders (I have only just started trying it out this week), some of us manufacturers, some of us explorers and I know at least 2 or 3 of us that make our money through rather unscrupulous means. There are just so many things to do in this game.

Thanks to the Hatchery we have all been able to support each other through this. If it wasn't for Hatchery, I would never have experienced the deep game of EVE. I now spend a lot of time helping newbies in the game get the most out of their experience hoping they get as interested as I am.

I am currently at 8.5 million skillpoints on my main character. Most of the mediocre corps that take in new players require 10 million at a minimum to even be considered for membership.
The best part about that is that I have experienced far more of this game than most people who have been playing for years. I have had a great number of successes in combat, along with a few failures that I am no longer ashamed to admit. My combat efficiency is something most people have dreams about. I command (along with Firebolt) a market venture currently worth many billions, with no end to the profit in sight. I own the best missioning ship in the game, and I can make hundreds of millions in a single hour in multiple ways. I also am starting to run tournaments for the corp, with prize pools in the hundreds of millions, because I like giving back. All with less time spent playing the game than it takes to even get in to the most mediocre of corporations.

And you know what?
All of that is pretty standard in The Hatchery.

I started out just as you will in a rifter, not much money, not much sense, but I had free rifters :D
What came after was a plethora of successes, a number of failures, and I eventually learned how to fly thanks to every single person in the corp. That first phase may have been a bit harsh, but I learned to just laugh and learn from my mistakes. Looking back on it though, I realize I enjoyed it, and as a fellow TL member I'm sure you will enjoy it as well (plus, it only gets better once you get good ).

Today's festivities, from my point of view, started off by logging in while Kwark and Co. prepared to battle near EC-. Unfortunately I was logged off in the ass-end of Fade due to certain ops gone bad last night involving an Erebus. After somebody informed me that the way to Okagaiken (closest lowsec) was clear, I start warping to the outgate. Local +1s. Okay...

As I land on gate, I see a Heretic pop up on dscan, at which I conclude I'm quite fucked (odds of "solo heretic" are, in personal experience, quite low). He immediately bubbles, I lock him up, point/web, game on. Luckily, I had loaded CN thunders, and the first volley smacked the Heretic for 1800-ish damage. I start burning out of the bubble, and the second volley takes him out. Crow decloaks. Unfortunately, an interceptor runs down a Drake easily, and even worse, it has a scram (why????). I web it, and prepare to face it in a glorious duel to the death. But this is not to be, as a dishonour Falcon decloaks and jams me, at which point Kwark helpfully advises me to self-destruct. Alas, I do not have the time, since a pack of feral Canes and Vagabonds come to assault me, and a second Heretic appears to ensure my pod express home.

gf

(That Drake had about 70 kills to its name. RIP brave honourwarrior o7)

**

I join up with the Saranen crowd, waiting to fight an FA gang consisting of many Canes and whatnot, while some PODLA people come from Taisy to join us. Our plan's timetable is moved up by the announcement that said FA gang is beginning to leave. Before arriving in EC-, Kwark and Karah attempt to 'bait' a rather small (5-7 man) Spacemonkey's camp, presuming that the giant FA cane army will come in to save the day. What really happens is they end up murdering a Vagabond, Fatal Ascension never arrives, and they scatter, leaving us to ungentlemanly blob the last man on the field...

We cruise on over to FA headquarters, looking for a fight. Eventually we find the remnants of the FA gang camping the path to Goonland.

We have 8 BCs, a Zealot, and a Tengu. They have 11 BCs, Lachesis (hello obvious primary), and 3 Scimmis. It is, perhaps, going to become ugly, as overheated Lachesis scrams will be a huge issue if its not taken care of quickly.

Luckily the Lachesis is armor tanked and he dies in a fire. Their gang has little in the way of tackle after that point, so the initial burnout is accomplished with no losses (rifter pilots don't count because they aren't people anyways), their poorly positioned battlecruisers are chased down and killed, and the enemies eventually make the call to deaggress and jump. Mandini carries out podding duty. Michael fails to catch any scimmis on the other side.

Bonus round - some FA member, having escaped the carnage, manages to get caught on the way back home, gfgf: http://teamliquid.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10998036

**

We head back to EC-, where a sizable camp is reported. With some nice probing we manage to get the jump onto one of their harbs before they warp on us. Luckily, none of us manage to get caught by the Mordus Angels' secret weapon, the nano-ODI brick cyclone, and from there, its a matter of seeing what we can kill before they leave the field.

Bonus round - some guy warps to Torrinos, presumably expecting friendly forces to be camping the always-bubbled gate. Instead, he dies: http://teamliquid.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11003579.

gfgf

We cruised off into null with a few drakes and a rifter or two, heading for VFK (goon central). On the way we stole a 10/10 plex off of some goon but the Guristas Maze takes forever, pays fuck all and is near impossible to gank someone in so we abandoned it and kept going. VFK didn't give us any action but we ran into some FA (goon pets) doing an escalation nearby so we stole it and got a vigilant bpc and some other nice loot. Then, with goons unwilling to give us any action, we headed to C4C to see what was up with FA.

Meanwhile an unrelated PODLA fleet was had been fucking around in C4C and was heading over to VFK. We had a broad familiarity with them having spent the last fortnight killing each other (-2 drakes and a harb on our side, -2b isk tengu on theirs) so we had a fair idea of what each other was capable and how we flew. We ran straight into each other and they killed one of our drakes. Some banter in local chat developed into a private convo and the appearance of a 40 man fleet nearby forced us together.

Now just to clarify. The Hatchery doesn't blue. We have no blues. We want no blues. We see it, we shoot. However we're as opportunistic as the next man and just because they killed one of us thirty seconds ago doesn't necessarily stop us from working with someone. Our fleets merged and I was left in charge of a fleet twice the size of my usual smallgang shit (18 man) along with some pilots I didn't know who were undoubtedly more experienced than I. Funtimes -_-.

We formed up in VFK and FA instantly fucked off leaving us massively blueballed. We were flying an awesome composition of web nanodrakes, tengus and dual links with huginn + lachesis and the area was dead. Fortunately we soon found a Fidelas Constans gang (which coincidentally had blueballed and trashtalked us not 24 hours ago). We jumped on in to their bubble but they immediately gtfoed and we weren't able to kill much. No losses so their fleet doesn't appear on the mail.

http://teamliquid.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10623755

We were again out of targets and actually defleeted to go our separate ways after that fight. Half of PODLA went home but 90 seconds later the other half ran into a 20 man gatecamp in CR. They convoed me, we reformed the fleet and sized them up.

On our side we had a huginn, lachesis, vaga, harb and six drakes. On theirs, broadsword, huginn, zealot, two sleipnirs, two lokis, thanatos, nidhoggur, approximately six drakes, six canes and some assorted cruisers and frigates. They also had a mael and scorpion placed 150k off gate to ruin our day further. Anyway, we jumped the gate into their bubble.

Both sides immediately alphaed the huginn of the other side off. I am assured by our huginn pilot he was the narrowest margin imaginable from escape but alas he didn't make it. However once we were through the gate the worst part was over and we were out into open space where our nanodrakes could really make themselves felt. The blackbird and the scorpion went down in seconds with the maelstrom following it. Pilots who had burned off at strange angles due to bad spawns (next to a loki in my case) were able to merge back into the pack and in a tight group the webs defend all of them. We proceeded to drop canes while kiting the loki webs (made infinitely easier by a lachesis) and the hostiles seemed incapable of reforming themselves into a cohesive blob. Our scattered burn from the gate left them isolated while we were able to regroup and start smashing ships almost immediately. Our lachesis was forced off the field by fighters several times but where we were able to disengage and burn behind the rest of the pack they simply suffered mounting losses.

A hostile hawk was able to land a scram on one of our drakes who got isolated while the rest of us were busy dropping a loki whose heated Fed Navy Webs were proving a bit of an issue. They warped everything they had to the hawk (including recently reshipped pilots) and although our vaga dropped it quickly they had secondary tackle and tore a drake down. To make matters worse the long burn combined with some neuts left the vaga hurting for cap some 80k from the rest of us and he dropped too. This left us with a lachesis, a harb and five drakes. Bad times.

An ongoing skirmish for control of the field emerged, possibly as a result of a dozen t2 and t3 wrecks on the field with FN webs, domination webs and RF gyros among the loot (all dropped by them). The sheer quantity of wrecks in every direction made it hell to nano and we were forced to nano out and reform countless times as they swamped over us, although each time we sustained no losses and created several more wrecks. Fortunately we'd had the foresight to bring a covops with 1k nanite which we put in a can at a safespot and used to continually repair and redistribute ammo as the fight simply refused to end. We also emptied loot into it over and over, there was simply too much to carry.

Eventually they slowed down, plussed local a bit and organised themselves. When they next threw themselves at us they had four scimitars, two basilisks, two huginns (complete with kin hardeners), an arazu, a linking claymore on the station at 0, a trio of scorpions (all caldari jams) and around a dozen each of canes and drakes. This caught us a little off guard so we dropped a huginn (somehow?!?!?) and mwded out, losing a cane (reshipped from lost drake) to the huginn arazu combo. We made a valiant attempt at alphaing the arazu and achieved armour damage but with the jams and six logis it just wasn't happening so, after ninety minutes, we were forced to concede the field.

http://teamliquid.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10624213

On September 18 2011 16:03 419 wrote:
The battle commences with the forces of good (Hatchery + an inebriated PODLA Tengu) smashing a Tempest and Hurricane in quick succession with missile spam. However, during the initial burn-out phase Firebolt’s Tempest gets tackled by Rifter (scram!) and two Rapiers. While Rapiers are nice and expensive explosions, we are working against time here as nearly 100% of their fleet (probably outnumbering us 2 to 1) is focused on downing our lone battleship. The Rapiers are quickly called primary and one falls due to Caldari Navy Scourge imbalance. Unfortunately, the Tempest is still very much scrammed and super-webbed, and the flagship of the Hatchery inevitably disintegrates under the firepower of the Fatal Ascension infidels.

To make matters worse, Nou gets caught in some Sabre drag bubble while warping back from a celestial. Isolated and away from the bulk of our forces, he is quickly murdered. Our Rifters proceed to do their job – scramming things and dying in horrible fires.

Fueled by righteous anger, our drunk Tengu finishes off the other Rapier. By this point the enemy fleet is getting spread out, and we manage to drop their fast tackle pretty fast (Stabber, Taranis, Sabre). Isolated BCs are pointed out and destroyed (5 hurricanes, 1 drake), a lost Ishtar pilot who stumbled his way onto the battlefield is quickly deprived of his ship, and a Scimitar arrives just as his comrades flee back through the gate. Splash one (1) Scimitar. The last enemy on the field, a Scorpion, is dispatched.

There’s a lot of loot on the field, and after 20 minutes of fucking around FA returns for round 2. They bait us with a Brutix, who scrams Orandos, and we manage to kill it and run before his 20+ compatriots arrive. On the other side of the gate, our crack anti-Recon squadron, consisting of Aeth, Body Shield, and our Tengu manage to smash some random Arazu who was doing some ineffective Recon-y things (sensor dampening and exploding, I guess)…

We manage to splash some fast tackle, a Dominix and Hurricane who both get caught. In a nice turn of luck, we also get their safe spot location and point the last man there, who happens to be the Hurricane carrying all their loot. After this, FA takes the jump bridge express, conceding the system to us.