New Alliance, New Home, Same Business

On the 22nd of February the stockholders of Dee Void Merc Syndicate joined Villore Accords ticker [GMVA]. So far the move has felt good. The reason for the move out of a the general Gallente Militia Federal Defense Union was that we were already flying in GMVA fleets and we liked the FCs and guys there. After talking with the leaders more and being in even more fleets we felt that Villore Accords supports the type of culture that we wanted to grow in Deep Void.  GMVA started in late January of 2012. As in their mission statement they wanted to provide a place for Gallente Militia pilots to find fleets and better prepare for the forever war against the Calidari State. I have since talked with Julianus Soter the current CEO of Moria. and Villore Accords. 

Julianus Soter GMVA CEO

How long have you been playing EVE and been involved in Faction Warfare?

I've been playing since October of 2007. I have done faction warfare on and off since faction warfare began. 

What keeps you playing EVE?

The intense action, friendships I've made in the corporation and elsewhere in game, and the awesome fun I've had with them in and outside of the game.

Why was Villore Accords founded, and who were the line members? Whats its history?

Villore Accords was a standings bloc and wardec shield created several years ago before alliances could join the militia. The main contributors to the original coalition were QCATS and SOTF, along with Genstar. 

What are the goals of the Alliance?

The Alliance's primary objectives is to be a motivational engine in the Gallente Militia to counter and punish Caldari plexing and PVP operations throughout all of lowsec. 

What is the greatest moment in New Eden you have had?

Wormhole operations in Moira., we found a Hydra Reloaded control tower in w-space on directional scan, in class six space.
This wasn't very unusual, they had a few in several systems we had scouted already. However when I checked the scan output. . . I didn't see a force field. The tower was offline.
Over the course of the night, Moira 'evacuated' the assets of the tower, fending off a Hydra emergency respose Orca and Pilgrim, gaining around 3 billion isk in various faction modules. Was a good night.

What is the plan for the future of the Alliance?

The Alliance seeks to grow and expand our pvp and plexing operations, increasing in effectiveness to rise to the challenge Ev0ke poses in the Gallente/Caldari front of Faction Warfare.

Several squids read my blog, do you have any word for them?

To the Caldari: stop taking credit for the Ev0ke successes and perhaps try to fight us more often, instead of running away ;).

As for DV-MS the move to Villore Accords home system has been done quickly. Most members are current there and simply a waiting orders. Here is Julianus for answering my questions and here is to Villore Accords.  Finally Deep Void has a home, now just in your Comets its time to get back to work.

Fly Safe #15

Rule of three.  

When stacking the same module on your ships it best to follow the rule of three. As the effectiveness os the modula decreases with the more of the same type of module then after three of them you are at under 50% making the 4th one useless. 

1st Module = 100% effectiveness 
2nd Module = 87.0% effectiveness
3rd Module = 57.1% effectiveness
4th Module = 28.3% effectiveness

"New Eden Superstar" February ~ Adriel Malakai

Pilot Note

In New Eden there are many many different pilots and many different ways to play. It is the greatest sandbox, where your dreams come true as well have you watch as they are crushed into thousand pieces. New Eden superstar is a look at a different capsuleer that Phox has encountered in New Eden and their take on EVE Online. I do not fully support them, but I feel that their views of the game are important to get a greater grasp of the New Eden Universe. New Eden Superstar are those chosen players that play EVE their way 

New Eden Superstar 

Adriel Malakai

There are thousands way to play EVE Online, no way is right and no way is wrong (unless you put small guns on a battleships then you are very very wrong).  Late in fall of 2010 I was still budding in New Eden and trying to become more focused player. I had my first taste of PVP a fail fit Brutix in a Wormhole fight with Noir. Mercancary group and I wanted to more. 

To educate me in the art of PvP in New Eden was Adriel Malakai although it was not in a way that I would have wanted. After a nearly 50 day wardec, I had lost a few ships to is corp, but I gained a huge amount experience and a drive to learn how to PvP. From talking in chats and watch how Shoulda Checked Local [OOPS] set up fleets I gained better understanding of PvP and knew that I didn't want to be a carebear anymore. So for the month of February I give you Adriel Malakai a New Eden Superstar. 

   How long have you been playing EVE? What got you playing?
I've been playing consistently for about three years (since May 2010), but first played as part of Goonswarm on my original character in 2006-2007. Adriel has been my main for about two-and-a-half years (since October 2010).

   What role do you play in EVE, Pirate, Griefer, Education officer, Etc...What job did you start out with?
   I currently play a combination of a Merc and a Griefer. Some of what I do is griefing for hire, though a lot of our contracts are actually defensive decs, where we are paid to come in and shut down the aggressor quickly and efficiently.
   When I first started playing on my original character, I was just a random grunt in Goonswarm dying in merlins. I only played for about nine months between 2006-2007, and came back in May 2010. When I came back, I actually started a HS mining/missioning corp with some RL friends and did that for a while before getting utterly bored and decided to start killing people. About that time (October 2010) I founded Shoulda Checked Local with four of my in-game buddies to be a pvp corp. We all used brand new alts (Adriel was a few months old and just had learning skills at the time) and started killing people after about three weeks, teaching ourselves along the way. This was hands down the best decision of my EVE career.
   What makes you keep playing EVE?

   The part that keeps me coming back to EVE is the fact that I can truly play the mean, terrible person who ruins people's days and absolutely crushes everything people have worked for. In most games, it is expected that all of the players are relatively friendly, helpful, and working to make the game a fun time for everyone. In EVE, I get to absolutely ruin someone's game - and it's both expected and encouraged. It's a fun place to let loose and just be someone completely different to how I normally am. Then you add in the adrenaline rushes from big fights, and you've got quite the addicting game.

   As a Wardec corp what is your favorite war and why?

   My favorite war is probably the one we had against Axiom Alliance. It was our first major war and we kept getting fight after fight. In the end, we destroyed well over two hundred ships (close to three hundred if you count an alt corp we used in the beginning) and had several very memorable fights. I'm sure some of my recollection is through rose-colored glasses, but it's definitely the war that we compare all other "great" wars against. A link for our campaign can be found here.

  Favorite kill you have had in EVE?

   I have quite a few favorite kills from the last few years, many of which were rather cheap, but caused a very large number of tears. But, I have to say one of the most profitable kills, that happens to be one of my favorite is Kill: Brooksy2005 (Bhaalgorn), accompanied by this Kill: Brooksy2005 (Capsule).
   Brooksy was actually a guy we were interested in recruiting, who claimed to have massive PVP experience, and was coming to HS to try out decs/mercing for a while. His previous character was ~5k/500 in LS/NS, many of which were small gang/solo kills, so we were quite interested. He claimed that he sold his previous character and bought this one due to the incredibly low standing with the Gallente and Minmatar (both -10.0)
   Once we got him on comms, we began to realize that he was absolutely retarded, didn't understand anything regarding PVP, and was somewhat annoying. So, being the assholes that we are, we convinced him to jump in his retardedly expensive slave set (originally meant for an Avatar by the previous owner) and to fit out that incredibly expensive bhaalgorn. As a final test to determine whether we would kill him or boot him, we instructed him to put the second MWD on the ship to "Dual prop to ridiculous speeds." He enthusiastically fitted it to the ship, and his fate was sealed.

   Once we had him safely moved to our staging system at the time, we brought him into an alt corp in the alliance for his 30 day probation, so that he couldn't AWOX anyone. Once in, I asked him to duel my Vindi to test how good his Bhaalgorn was. Since this was pre-Retribution 1.1, I convinced him to go suspect so we could legally shoot each other. Once he went yellow, we locked him down, kicked his corp from the alliance, killed him, and caught his pod. We then proceeded to ransom him for 1b ISK before podding him. he then went to join The Ghost Army, before they kicked him for being terrible and losing expensive ships.
   Everyone has a favorite time in EVE either a roam, op, or just a certain place in the game, what was yours?

   My favorite time in EVE is whenever I'm FCing a fight - the bigger, the better. I get a real thrill from fleet fights, and love fighting outnumbered, and still pulling off a win. There's nothing quite like the adrenaline from taking a fight you're sure you're going to lose.
  Last one, what advice do you have new players or new pvpers?

  The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to fight smart and to pay attention to what's going on around you. Many players get super focused on the one dude they're shooting and get themselves killed because they weren't watching local, their overview, and d-scan. Part of fighting smart is knowing when to run, and what not to engage.
  The next biggest thing is to pick a ship and fully train it. Once it's fully trained, then move to another ship. Jumping all over the place ends with you having a bunch of terrible ships instead of a few good ones. Other than that, you should never stop PVPing. =)

Though it started out as a rocky one at gun point, I consider Adriel to be on of my good friend in New Eden. As a member of Axiom Alliance I saw first had what a well trained and organized group could do using small numbers. In the best way I could, I tried to follow her example and continued late night chats about fitting and tactics. And after nearly two years of asking question and seeking help. I finally made it into a Shoulda Check Local Fleet.  

Late night Flights...

"The Piranha Brutix" 

"There's a man going round taking names..." opens up a Johnny Cash classic "The Man Comes Around", an old world favorite. With that tone in the back of our minds we set out to create a Low Sec Gank ship, that in the gang could take names. We looked to the "Wolf Pack" Talos of null with its speed and high DPS, what we wanted was a cheaper ship with higher tank, and could be thought of as a light weight brawler.  Enter what we call the "Piranha" Brutix fitting code HEB-ASB-MSF-VI. Un-boosted it has 30k EHP with okay shield resistances for an armor hull, and with Null ammo and Hammerhead II hits for 640 DPS, with the booster the EHP hits 40k with a 1500 shield recharge.

I know that I will hear that we are not fitting the ship right and that we need to use the armor bonus, and while most of the time I will agree with you, what we were going for is a bit of speed and gank. For long 26 jump roams we want to be able to get to gates quickly. With the armor ship we are not able to catch cruisers class ships and or burn back to gates before we are webbed and bumped off gates.

The Man Comes Around....

So we began our roam from Nisuwa, 26 jumps through Black Rise, Placid, and Essence.  There were three of us with a Tengu Booster scout.  Six jumps out in Aivonen our scout comes across a Myrmidon that is looking for a fight, we send the booster and two "Piranhas" into the system next door Pavanakka while the "bait" waits at the stargate on the other side.  The Myrmidon lands on the gate and our bait jumps into Pavanakka with the Myrmidon following where we are ready. The Myrmidon pilot is thinking this will be a easy kill Myrmidon vs Brutix, but when he finds three of us there now he is not as excited. With 3v1 he holds his cloak and sends an message of help to his alliance. Being at 0km on the gate we wait for him to uncloak, once he does he becomes the primary. As we apply DPS and move to bump him away form the gate, he has a Loki booster and two Tornado Attack Battle-cruisers jump in. We are unable to make it the Tornadoes as they pull range to apply their high Alpha Damage nearly 13k a volley. 

Quickly we switch back to the Myrmidon hoping that at least we get him down before the High Alpha eats through our low tanks. We are successful killing the Myrmidon usually fast for a hull of its class.  Myrmidon down we began to burn away from the Tornadoes hoping to get out of warp scram range, but with the Loki on the field and their Warp Disruptors over heated they manage to grab one of us before we get out. 

 Minmatar Attack Battle-Cruiser Tornado  

        Caldari Tengu Strategic Cruiser      

 Minmatar Loki Strategic Cruiser

                         

20 more jumps...

The downed pilot reships to a "Piranha" Thorax and we continue our tour of Black Rise. The rest of the flight we don't meet any more pilots that want to fight our small gang even in one case where they had 14 pilots in system to our 3.  Ending the roam, we finally look at the kill mails to see how we fared. Our Burtix lost was 80mil isk while their Myrmidon netted 90mil so the isk war was won. But looking Myrmidon I start shaking my head as I see why it died so fast to our gang. Only two reps and no Ancillary Armor Repairer this ship was lost before the fight started. If it would have dual repped and ARR it would have been much harder to kill and could have killed at list one of us before going down.

I like flying the "Piranha" Brutix and want to do more of them in the future. They lay out nasty DPS and in larger gangs can really ruin peoples days. Here is hoping for more of these gangs. 

You Never Know How Strong you Are....

You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.~Unknown

While on evegate (Yes, people post on evegate) and looking at what some of my contacts post I came across this. It was the second time that I had read it in a couple weeks the first being on facebook.  I thought about it and make sense in some ways. Then I thought about EVE and forever war between the Gallente Federation and the Caldari State.

After 6 months of owning the battlefield, we began to believe in our strength  We had became the Kings and Knights of Black Rise and Placid. Our immortality was sealed we would never die.  We conquered all the fleets we saw. Our Armada sweep through the stars, bring death on swift wings. As the numbers of Star Systems crept up and we began to own it all we saw that had arrived. We achieved that greatness that few have tasted, not as a single alliance or corporation, but as a coalition of free pilots that sought to spread the glory of the Federation. But we wrong, we not who we thought we were. We were not the Kings of our Destiny, we were in fact pawns, on an ever growing board. 

Slowly the State began to take systems back as we looked in the mirror of our greatness. Their horde from the depths of 0.0 roared. Yet we still did not wake from our apathy. We still believed that we were there, we were unstoppable, not seeing that we stopped ourselves.  The tides of the war turned. 

With the flood of Caldari State Plexers and Combat Systems invading our systems, we have no choice, but to stay strong  

Stay Strong Gallente Militia, Fight on.  

NEWS FLASH

Maybe the war won't happen at all just released on the THE MITTANI.  CFC-HBC have hugged it out....

Link below

HBC/CFC Drama

HBC vs CFC....The Next Great EVE War???

I have read several different blogs on this subject and I don't really feel like i should muddle the waters any more than they are. At the same time, I feel that is I didn't address it in my blog then my whole goal of trying to show some of the politics in EVE to people that are not aware of them will be lost as any conflict with Honey Badger Coalition and Cluster F*ck Coalition is worth noting.

First I will take a quick look at the two coalitions, I will mess some things up here, so bare with me. Basically the CFC is  Goonswarm Federation, Razor Alliance, Fatal Ascension, Tactical Narcotics Team, Fidelas Constans, Spacemonkey's Alliancse, Excutive Outcomes, Gentlemens Agreement, and Gent Off my Lawn.  Honey Badge is made up of TEST Alliance Please Ignore, Pandemic Legion, Tribal Band, The Intiiative, Raiden. THORN Alliance, Li3 Federation, EntroPraetorian Aegis, Banderlogs Alliance, Squee. Hig Rollers Dark Therpy, Unclaimed., Kill it with Fire, Executive Outcomes, Out of Sight. Test Friends Please Ingore, Initiative Mercenaries, Mistakes Were Made, The Gurlstas Associates, WALLTREIPERS ALLIANCE, Insidious Empire, and Zombie Ninja Space Bears.  While both coalitions have a lot of members the real players to watch here is Goonswarm Federation and TEST Alliance, as either coalition will not do anything without one of those two alliance's blessing.

All of the drama that is going on right now with these two has to with TEST and Fatal Ascension where TEST thinks that FA was the cause of another alliance falling apart, do to some backhanded and under handing. What this caused was TEST leaving the CFC and forming the HBC and resetting the CFC to Neutral while keeping a non conflict pact of some sorts. The only member in the CFC that was not reset was GoonSwarm Federation, who TEST says is their BFFs.  The ideal about the non conflict pact was to have "good fights" with other the CFC while still working with each other to conquer other parts of Null Sec.  At first this seemed to work but over time it fell apart and with both FA and TEST claiming that the other has broken the deal.  I will not go future into it as it really is it that important to me who started the bickering what I will look at is what it will mean for EVE and who I think will win.

First I'll say is that this will be a good thing for EVE.  EVE is an universe that is based on fighting. It is the only game out that had dedicated it self to fighting and finding more ways to open up conflict. EVE is based on the ideal of the WAR Economy, and in times of conflict the economy in EVE has grown well as 2012 showed. Also Alliance like TEST and Goonswarm were started and founded on such conflicts, so the raise of new alliances and old ones to power will come as well. This is all good for EVE and the people of EVE. Personally I hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.

Second what the CFC and HBC have done is created a giant blue doughnut around empire. While on paper this looks great, what happens is you start to get people who are bored. I think back to the Mongolian Empire when it started declining because they had nothing more to conquer. That is what has happen with the Fall of AAA in 2012. With no more enemies outside they have begun to look with in. For TEST is FA is a good choice cause of past bad blood. And as with all true empires they never fall from the outside but from within. Do not kid your self while most hate each other the CFC and HBC both have craved out and Empire in Null Sec together.

The real question as one EVE 24 news blogger put is "not if they start but when they start the war?"  My guess is that sometime around the middle of May this year.  The reason I have put it off for that long is because this wars take a lot time to plan and in terms of moving ships and supplies and gathering wealth it will take a bit. I also think that each side is going to try and grow in numbers, I will not be surprised if both the HBC and CFC add members to side.  To me the real wild card is Pandemic Legion in that whole set up as they have traditionally went to who ever could pay them the most. While BFF's with TEST I think that Goons could bring them to their side if they made the right offer. The reason PL is interesting to me, is they have a large Capital and Super Capital Fleet.

The last thing before I pick the winner, is what will this fight be for. First it will be about size of the victor's Epeen and bragging rights. While some will say it will be about Tech Moons I do not think so the CFC does hold the most Tech Moons in the game and I am sure that HBC would like to have them. But I don't think the HBC has it them to go and crash all the CFC Pos'es. What I think this really would be about the the destruction of the other side. While TEST and Goons are both cut from the same cloth, if they went to war then it you be to destroy everything about the other. I do not think that it would end in a sue for peace. Both side would seek the complete destruction of the other.

This is why I think that the CFC will win. While yes I know that TEST and HBC has numbers, Goons has survived these kind of war before, Band of Brothers, NC. Dot, the Russian Block, and IT Alliance have all tried to kill Goons out of EVE. But have failed.  Goons will not be killed out EVE by HBC as much as they want to believe they can. Goons are a fleet inside and out side eve. They live in somethigaweful.com, that is where their game takes place. So trying to break them in EVE if pointless in my opinion. While people will shout about Dreddit where TEST leaves and that is true, TEST does exist outside of game, I feel that it not the to point of Goons. And with surviving other fights before this I feel that Goons understands what is going on and how to act better than TEST.

To read more about it there are two links below that talk about the tensions and where the two coalitions stand.

EVE 24News
The Mittani