Renahzor

Hi Everyone! There seemed to be at least some interest in a few more posts about the goings on in EVE online after Patrick's recent article. The stories players create vary wildly, and many of them get written up on private forums as an AAR. These serve as training tools, story propaganda, and many other things, and can be written for absolutely any engagement. Depending on interest, I'll transcribe some of the larger/more important (from a KiteCo perspective) ones and remove/explain more of the EVE jargon than we typically have to for internal forums. With that out of the way, lets get started!

KiteCo is a part of the Brave Collective alliance(BRAVE), a very large, very new player focused alliance. Their interests line up well with KiteCo in being newbie friendly and out to have a good time. Skipping some of the back-story, BRAVE and thus KiteCo are at war with an alliance called Usurper. On Friday afternoon BRAVE attacked a very valuable asset, a Usurper Player Owned Structure (POS/moon tower) controlling a very valuable moon. We had attacked this moon several times before, each time it was successfully defended by Usurper with some help from another alliance; TISHU.

When a POS is attacked, it becomes invulnerable for a specified amount of time. The defenders can adjust this timing, making it become vulnerable again at a favorable timezone for them to defend. Usurper chose to have their POS come out of reinforced mode at approx 12:30 AM Sunday morning PST, a terrible hour for US players. Despite this, BRAVE brought approx 500 pilots to the battle, KiteCo brought approx 15 of those. The stage was set for a big battle.

KiteCo had chosen to form up in Stealth Bomber class ships. These ships can remain cloaked, and then attack with one of EVE's few aoe damage weapons, Bombs. Bombs are launched without the need for targeting, fly 30km from your ships current facing, and damage everything within a 15km radius sphere on impact. This makes bombs very dangerous when used in large groups against clustered ships, doing massive damage to everyone around them and forcing Logistics (healer) ships to scramble to catch up with the damage. Approx 1 hour before the fight, KiteCo scouts were in system, marking possible bombing positions to warp to ahead of the battle. During this time we lose one pilot due to an untimely disconnect causing us to de-cloak.

As the POS becomes vulnerable, BRAVE warps the bulk of their fleet in and starts the attack, approx 250 ships land in a big ball right next to the POS shield. KiteCo Bombers take up positions cloaked at a safe spot, ready for the counter-attack. We only have to wait a few minutes, and see Cynos go up (beacon for other ships to jump to) and Usurper and TISHU jump into the fight, about 75 total ships. They're using their typical "Foxcats" doctrine, which are specific battleships with carrier support which are very high HP, very fast repair potential, and have great damage projection. This fleet comp had been very tough for BRAVE to fight in the past, and they landed nearly right on top of the bulk of the BRAVE fleet. Kite bomber fleet commanders have a quick discussion, get a warpin, and land at bombing range. We have to be *very* careful and aim for the back of the Usurper fleet so as not to kill off all the small ships from BRAVE on grid. We make our align, drop bombs, and warp out. Two full waves of bombs go off right on the edge of the Usurper fleet, dealing massive damage, and our spotter reports 3-5 battleships from the opposing side dead within minutes of landing on the field. Kite Bombers regroup to a safe spot.

At this point, BRAVE warps in the rest of their 500 man fleet, the reinforcements consist almost entirely of small frigate class ships which immediately surround the enemy fleet, and Kite bombers stand down and watch the rest of the fight. It's too dangerous to bomb with so many small ships around for fear of massive deaths for our own side. As we observe, it quickly becomes clear something strange is going on. Usurper ships are dying incredibly fast, and within minutes a cease fire is called. All Usurper ships are dead including 3 carriers, TISHU is allowed to warp off. Unknown to us, TISHU had some sort of Beef with Usurper over previous fights, and decided to turn against them for this battle, making it extremely lopsided. The remainder of the night consisted of mopping up the moon tower, and Kite jumped home after a very successful Bomber fleet. BRAVE took a very valuable moon which is now an important asset for the alliance, and everyone got to see some ships blow up, which is always the goal!

While the outcome was great, it would have been very interesting to see if the TISHU Foxcats could have turned away a fleet of that size. We went in looking for a bigger fight than what we got, but in the end the objective was secured, so Op Success!

The Battle Report for those interested: http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=21833006

One of our Pilots has some footage of the battle, and will hopefully be posting that soon as well to go along with this AAR.

@devil240z: @marnox: @stratesfear: @lordofthehills: Be sure to join the "Giantbombing" chat channel in-game, we have a good handful of new folks in there already this week. Also someone in there can probably answer any questions you might have. As an aside I know our corp had a small roam last night that ended in a really fun fight, letting some very new players get some nullsec kills (and losses) and a good time!

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=21749448

As far as the DUST 514 players, there was a separate corp for that. Unfortunately until something changes with DUST/EVE interaction its unlikely we'll have Dust players in the corp. However, you should still be able to join our chat channel in-game to BS a bit if you want!

@danin: YEAH YOU DO

@deathpooky: Yeah, "Jump"(move your own ship there) and "Bridge"(essentially open a portal for other ships) are very close to each other in the contextual menu, leading to these kind of mistakes semi-commonly.

@fobwashed: Agreed, difficult article to write for the non-eve playing reader, its way too easy to get caught up in the minutia of the game itself, he did a great job here.

@kinggiddra: Tomiko PLZ

Great article Patrick! KiteCo always looks forward to new EVE online content on the site. :D

I made this car in Forza 4 a while back after having made the vinyl in F3. Original artwork is from the Bombcast header image done by Kat Smith aka @turbo_toaster recreated in the Forza editor with several hundred vinyl layers.

I just wanted to take some time to post an update here, a trail marker of sorts on Kite Co's path through EVE.

Back around February, Dave mentioned he wanted to run a corp in EVE, and we saw an influx of players into our public channels. He had said he wanted to be a puppet master of sorts, without the major time investment in the game some of us had, as he is understandably a VERY busy man right now. After a couple weeks of not hearing any more about it a few people decided to make Kite Co in spirit, get it going, and grow the community corp so if Dave decided he wanted in, we'd be ready. A big catalyst for this was more and more people coming to EVE channels, looking for Dave's corp, and leaving after a few days. We wanted to make sure all GB duders have a place if they want one within the community.

We were living in Mani, mining the days away. Roams to CVA space and staged fights with TEST for pvp were the activities at night. Eventually we moved to Orvolle and joined Gallente faction war for something new to do.

Shortly after moving, Patrick live streamed playing EVE and headed to Fanfest. To say we were not prepared for this would be an understatement. The explosion of people necessitated getting more HR people, API check systems in place etc. They were getting 50-60 apps a day at this point, and we were the fastest growing corp in all of EVE. With the member count came wardecs. People love getting easy kills in eve, and we were a big target. We fought back, made videos, and hilariously killed ships worth hundreds of our own losses.

Recruiting slowed down, but we had and still have a large member base. We decided to try our hand at NPC nullsec. This is much like "Nullsec Lite" using all the nullsec mechanics except for sovereignty. They have public NPC stations etc, so there's not as much need for big ISK investment (or capital fleets) to survive. This first venture into null ended with mixed results. For the first few weeks we happily inhabited Poitot, bringing members down as best we could with limited logistics chains in place. Poitot is on a very active "pipe" of systems leading deeper into the Syndicate region, known for small and mid size gang pvp. After a couple weeks, a larger and more experienced PvP group moved in, and eventually members grew frustrated with the situation. We plotted a new course, looking for deeper, more secluded areas to try out and looking for people to live alongside if possible.

Our new home was not as busy, and on scouting attempts appeared relatively secluded. Leadership and diplomats reached out to corps that seemed to call the area home to check on living peacefully alongside them. This effort was again mixed, and a mid sized German alliance declined, essentially brushing us off. Leadership had meetings, discussions, and concluded that we were not going to simply take "no" for an answer. We made more plans, got better logistics setup, and moved into the new pocket.

During this time we had also been in discussion with Brave Newbies[BRAVE], and they were talking about moving. Whats more is they were talking about moving near us, have a member base very similar to ours, and seemed a GREAT fit for our pilots. After a couple weeks of dunking Germans alone, the BRAVE plans were made public, and we joined the alliance. We had been holding our own easily against the Germans, killing 3 fold more than we were losing. However this new alliance presented eager noobs with some targets, and a few days later, we took down 6 undefended German structures (4 POS and 2 POCOs). This was an unexpected turn, we had not planed on attacking structures for some time, but we jumped at the opportunity.

And that leads us to today. 5 months after creation we sit, living in NPC nullsec, BRAVE living nearby in lowsec. Plenty of PvP, expanding industrial strength, and an active member base who I hope are having a blast! BRAVE has provided us with endless fun fleets going all hours of the day, and our home always has PvP opportunities. We're integrating into the BRAVE structure while maintaining a strong, independent community corp for Giant Bomb members. This will give us expanding opportunities for all different professions within EVE. Join up today and give it a shot!

-Teya Ihara: El Tey, Director, Diplo, Terrible at EVE, Associate "Kink of the Garbage"

@rainvillain: Mech Commander 2 is *excellent*. One of my favorites.