Sunday, November 8, 2009

handling the galactic job search

"the natural ebb and flow of prons. We have ups and downs" - ten tron

in every pod pilot's career, you're going to change corporations and alliances. sometimes the shift is smooth and intuitive such as corp mergers or group migrations... but sometimes, you're out on your ass with just your wits, your personal belongings and a noob corp chat full or retards

finding myself in a situation much like this, i decided to put a little list together of things i found useful for anyone else that might be in this situation

1) plan for disaster
call it a backup plan, an emergency contingency plan, an overnight bag, whatever... but make it. if you rely on your current corp and their ops to make your isk or to provide you with any necessary resource (ammo, ships, ratting/mining areas, etc), set up your own private line. if that means stashing a ratting ship and a jump clone in a quiet region of low sec or npc 0.0 or leaving a mining rig in an empire system where you can mine alone in peace, do it. also keep on hand a healthy stack of whatever consumables such as ammo and drones that you might need to make cash. consider it your emergency life line to help get you on your feet in case you find yourself in a serious bind

2) stay professional
this is not always easy considering that this is a game we're playing, not real life. try to anyway. you never know when something retarded you've said or done will come back to bite you in the ass. case in point- in my interview for the bastards, one of the first things my RO brought up was a rather uninspired and offensive forum post i made back in march. how embarrassing! being courteous, attentive and demonstrating common sense can go a long way for your cause, though. also, remember to try and keep good relationships with former corporation and alliance mates. you never know who you might need to vouch for you or who might know of solid crews that are looking for people with your skill set

3) update your resume
when you apply for a new corp, they're going to want to know all about your character and abilities. for your own benefit, make a list of all of your experiences and skills in eve. if you're a pvp character, think about things you've done and ships you're trained or specialized in. probing, scouting, fleet commanding, tackling, logistics... knowing your strong points and communicating that to a potential recruiter is really important. also, it's a good idea to look at how you're going to show off your personal stats. first check your character's stats on battleclinic- if those are accurate, save the link to include with your application. if not, griefwatch killboards offer single user killboards for only 5m isk per month

4) find candidates
this really can be the hardest part. you don't just want to apply for the first corp that you see in the recruitment channel. do your homework. you want to find a corp that does exactly what you want to do. piracy? large scale combat? small gang combat? when you find a corp that claims to do what you're interested in, check them out. look at their killboards, look them up on the eve-o forums (eve-search makes this easiest). remember, you need to appraise an organization just as thoroughly as they should you. my personal theory is that you should try to join a crew that will teach you something, not a crew that you could train

5) be choosy
i can't stress this enough. the best analogy i can think of would be a romantic relationship. there are obviously more and less desirable partners based on your preferences. ideally, you don't want to commit to one that's willing to take just anyone... at least not for any length of time. on that same note, you don't want to have a one time thing with someone who's interested in a long term commitment. either situation has potential to make life difficult for you. keep this analogy in mind when you're looking at different corps and don't be afraid to say no to one that you don't think fits you

all that should help you find and apply for some great opportunities for fun in eve


Saturday, October 17, 2009

soft targets: i'm gonna gum you you death!

"battle badger standing by... where's my scimitar support?" - rustysherrif2

the life cycle of empire corporate combat is pretty predictable. the two sides talk a lot of shit to each other, they have a couple small skirmishes, eventually one of the small fights explodes into an all out brawl and the stronger organization becomes apparent. often after this has happened, the weaker of the two tries to prove their prowess and execute a stunning ambush once or twice and another major engagement comes to a head. regardless of who comes out victorious, both sides are fatigued by their losses and if they have any skill at all, can easily avoid further conflict until the aggressor bores of fruitless chases or runs out of the conviction to attempt raids on a target which blacked their eye sufficiently

a good example of the latter would be REIGN Alliance. REIGN is an empire alliance about 400 men strong. that many people clustered into secure space makes for generally poorly organized command structures and people eager to prove their bravery in fleet fights. these crews usually yield the most fun and fruitful combat environments

unfortunately, this was not the case

REIGN had a rather effective low skill combat doctrine, not unlike the one practiced by eve university. their combat fleets were comprised of the usual armor buffered, close range battleships with logistic support in low to mid numbers (3-8 ships). however, having the logistics on stand by allowed the battleships to use their high slots to fit cap war. also, unlike most combat forces that have the low skilled pilots fly tackle support for the fleet, REIGN trained all of their new pilots in electronic warfare. this meant that every time our fleets engaged, we were faced with more ECM ships (scorpions, griffins, blackbirds, falcons, rooks) than we had battleships in our fleet

in PRONS, we're used to fighting in situations where we're extremely outnumbered and coming out on top. in the REIGN campaign, we did just that... at first. following my war progression timeline, they should have gone into hiding and evasion mode
after the first large engagement
. however, they instead adjusted their strategy and added more logistics and e-war to offset our logistics and e-war... and their superior numbers proved too much to overcome

what you don't see in that fight is our 2 guardians, oneiros, two falcons, rook, and 4 remote repair dominixes that were all trying in vain to keep our high dps turret ships alive

even though we managed to do over 3 billion isk in damage to them (including a very strange and expensive curse), the 2 odd billion isk that we sustained in losses took its toll on our pilots and we dropped the war under the pretense that they were just "too much for us to handle"

on the opposite end of the spectrum, PRONS once again engaged in epic pitched battle against REPO

just like last time, we believe that they were hired on the cheap and sloppy due to some kind of connection to the junta. allow me to explain...

during our downtime between wars, we like to keep our skills sharp by probing out and terrorizing wormholes. unlike the bulk of our empire engagements which are focused against a single, specific target, these skirmishes are completely random against whoever happens to be in space in the wormhole we visit. in this particular tale, the unlucky wormhole denizens happened to be The ENTITY.

they were just sitting in their alliance POS in the J170409 wormhole, minding their own business when Ten Tron's neutral probing alt happened upon their operation. they greeted him with the typical "tough guy carebear" welcome- threatening his ship and his pod and setting a quite elaborate bubble/can/drone trap for his humble covert ops ship

of course, any time anyone is up for a fight, we here at project nemesis like to oblige them

after the dust had settled and their four battleships were sacked and looted, the smack talk commenced. to keep this short and to the point, Ten Tron announced (facetiously of course) that we were moving into their wormhole and waging a war against their alliance in order to procure a "rare resource" later to be identified as Havocium

this war followed the typical pattern for empire campaigns... except the large, deciding battle of the war was fought before the war declaration was even put up for a vote

seeing as they lacked the skill and manpower to fight a war machine as practiced as project nemesis, The ENTITY hired mercenaries... particularly our old friends at REPO. REPO's decision to take the contract on us after how poorly their last campaign went left many of us confused... until we saw Enigmatic Lunatic's employment history. this ENTITY security officer spent a month in the junta

funny how all of the pieces come together

anyway, since we had pretty much blacked the eyes of both of these organizations, we spent the better part of the wars' duration catching the odd hauler, chasing solo battlecruisers, and killing neutral remote repair alts

to be fair, the demonic empire, a newer REPO corporation, gave us (and won) the one head on battle of the war

hopefully they'll keep bringing it now that they're back on their own

Monday, October 5, 2009

what's the "show stopper"?

"write blog about shenanigans NAOW. Then about my beautiful eyes and firm buttocks" - weboide

i apologize for the lack of posting lately. my fight with the flu was long and gross, but i won in the end

now for our regularly scheduled eve updates...

PRONS is once again at war! in the world of high sec war decs and griefing, being memorable is never a good idea. unfortunately for zodicar, he must be lacking this particular piece of wisdom

we met zodicar way back when 5-20 first met the dark horses and prons. he was in terran alliance who was the first war dec that we shared in the formation of the WASTELAND alliance. he made a name for himself among our pilots for quickly docking or cloaking whenever one of our ships would enter local and promptly smacking us... all while divulging sensitive pieces of his real life data. particularly about his daughter

with that as the backdrop, i was out in my scimitar in piak visiting with md dawg and weboide when we saw our old pal zodicar sitting on the undock of the 3-19 station in a megathron. he was quite obviously baiting his wts (whoever they were) with a plate and sensor booster fit and failing at it miserably

so, feeling a bit mischeivous, i sent a private convo to his wt and told him to undock and aggress while the three of us remote repaired him. sure enough, as soon as the wt opened fire on zodicar, 6 of his corp mates lunged into system... even as we were laughing in local that we were repairing his war target!

clearly embarrassed, his corp mates unleashed some rage at us in local and pointed out the fact that prons was a "bunch of retards" and that our "(pvp skills are) lol". since that is taken as a challenge in the eve player versus player combat pilot world, we welcomed it and pushed the dec through that night

since it began, we've endured the typical empire war stages. first it was the station games. then it was the large, unorganized fleets charging into our home system and running once we showed the slightest amount of aggression. now we're on to hat trick fleets and hot drops

actually, that wasn't really a hot drop. we had been playing a little station game with zodicar for 30 or 40 minutes down in piak in a very random assortment of ships. once his fleet was in place, zodicar warped 600 off the station and waited for us to gank him, and gank him we did. unfortunately, we didn't have the manpower or the fleet cohesion to take on a drake/scimitar gang, so we podded back to uedama to change ships and regroup

however, there is nothing more frustrating than having eyes on an angry enemy fleet and lacking the manpower to fight it. we needed a hail mary and fast

scouts reported their fleet moving toward uedama as we shuffled ships and pods around system in front of their cloaked system scout. our carrier pilots quietly slipped out into kubinen and suited up into their dusty carriers leaving four of us in local in battleships. careful to be obvious and slow, we four bait battleships lumbered between the kubinen gate and the bottom station. as they piled in, we warped back to the kub gate with their forward scouts and the first two of their drakes in hot pursuit

without any scouting or intel, the wt fleet followed our battleships into kubinen, right as the carriers were in warp to the gate

the resulting chaos only yielded two kills, but we didn't lose double diamond's raven (it was scary close) and one of the kills was zodicar in his armageddon! the psychological blow was so great that their fleet completely scattered, running all different directions to their respective homes

they're probably done fighting now that we've put a little monetary and psyche hurt on them but so it goes with empire wars

o7 zodicar. project nemesis salutes you

and your daughter

Friday, September 18, 2009

showing us what the inside of our skulls look like

"please refresh my memory....did we dec privateers to actually kill shit....or to lose as many t2 ships as we can in the most failtastic way possible?" - pentinor

as of 9-12-2009, prons has been at war with the privateers. i think that Lies thought they would be a logical target to keep sharp on after we curbstomped repo. unfortunately, this has not been the case

instead of giving us little head on skirmishes, they're doing to us what we did to repo. hit and run guerrilla warfare taking out 1-3 ships at a time with overwhelming firepower then vanishing into the shadows

frankly, it's absolutely frustrating to be on the receiving end of such punishment

the losses we've taken at the hands of the privateers raise some obvious issues:

- we don't have the intelligence network necessary to fight guerrillas, even around our home systems. whenever we found ourselves in a trap, it was a complete surprise. that really shouldn't be the case
- our pilots are considerably overconfident in t2 hulls, resulting in rather large losses in rather embarrassing situations on the killboards
- when we start losing fights in embarrassing situations, pilots quit logging in, diminishing numbers leading us to lose even more fights

my hat's off to the privateers. before this war, i had no idea that they have such an effective organizational practice. basically, the executor corp provides and endless stream of wars while corporations come and go freely from the alliance to join in and step away from the carnage quite easily. this allows them an endlessly fresh band of guerrillas to unleash upon their targets who are typically 0.0 alliances and their squishy empire operations industrialists

while it can be argued that the privateers may have been a "bad war" to fight, i think the merits of showing us our weaknesses makes it one of the best wars... so long as we improve ourselves from it

Monday, September 14, 2009

the forums: popping your community bubble

"spigsnoggling, spafflewhacking bastards!" - infernal travesty

when it comes to any mmo, there are usually two distinct yet occasionally overlapping communities:

first is the community that any given player belongs to- his or her corporation, alliance and whatever friendlies he or she accumulates along the way. these relatively small collections of players form their own cultures, have their own relationships and operate in a fairly self contained manner. since trade and combat can be rather impersonal in eve, these communities are like tiny bubbles, isolated almost completely from each other by the vacuum of space

the might stay this way, if it wasn't for the forums

the forums are the second community in any mmo. they provide a means and location for these otherwise isolated communities to interact with each other in near (or not so near) real time. in theory, one could lead a happy, fun and complete game experience without ever visiting the forums... and many people do. however, those that choose to participate in the dialogue pass information and make and break friendships as well as reputations just by their contributions to the noise levels

my point in bring any of this junk up is simple: i've been reading the eve-o forum for pretty much the first time this week and whoa. i have learned a lot about the history of several organizations, game culture, and the doing and happenings of all sorts of eve celebrities... most of which i would have never heard of otherwise

at the end of the day, most mmo forums are full of garbage, ego stroking, propaganda campaigns and absolutely insane drivel in the form of "memes" which are usually just silly jokes that are made once and then repeated with impunity

i'm still trying to decide if i've been missing something by not reading and posting more, or if it's better for my psyche to have missed out on all the rabble

Sunday, September 13, 2009

kow killa: the legacy

"whoa. are these guys paying by the preposition?" - bryan havoc

few players in the game of eve have created as much legacy based on their legendary stupidity as kow killa. he is instantly trusting, mindnumbingly ignorant, and in possession of a comically over-inflated sense of competency. he gets taken advantage of and mocked ALL THE TIME, both in and out of game

our relationship with kow started some time back last year when a few guys in prons used their alts to convince kow and his "coalition" (there were two alliances involved in this scam) to give them their ships to move to 0.0. the details and amusing ventrilo recording from the revelation of this scam can be found in ten tron's video, the pod pilots' court

anyway, prons has made a pretty regular habit of checking up on him by dropping a war dec on whatever alliance he's in every so often. the results from last time were pretty stellar. the money that was destroyed in those bpos the rifter was carrying (yes, they were bpos) was enough to make it worth "checking up" on him again

within 8 hours of the new dec being announced, kow killa chose to disband his alliance and start trying to find another home in some other alliancesx for his corp, Three 6 MaFiA

as always, project nemesis wishes our friend kow the best of luck in his future endeavors and look forward to the prons rap that he has promised with excited anticipation

Saturday, September 12, 2009

late night memos and such

"at first i was like lol but then i didn't lol" - bromba

i'm out on assignment for RL work when i get a message from NoMo: the junta has given up fighting after a solid month of relentless pounding and it's time to find new targets... something with a little more bite this time

we talked briefly about a few possibilities and what they might bring to the table when lies had a "flash of brilliance". he joined the in-game mercenaries channel and threw down the gauntlet

i don't know the specifics but i imagine that his blood alcohol content combined with the boost to his epeen spanking repo provided spurred this brash decision. i'll admit, i'm pleased with both his technique and his results

the corp vote for the dec on a group called THE FINAL STAND is now up. honestly, i didn't know anything at all about these guys. from a first look at their killboard, i'll say they're pretty good. they have great numbers made from plenty of empire fighting along with a healthy sprinkle of 0.0 and low sec mixed in. quick intel shows that they enjoy their battleship fleets and took a righteous beating at the hands of eve university... not that losing to eve-uni is a bad thing, mind you. every high sec merc or griefer corp has to dec them and get their asses handed back to them at least once

while digging a little deeper for intel, the real treasure came to light in the form of forum posts

dear sweet baby jesus

NoMo went into this trying to find the "elite pvpers of high sec" and it certainly looks as though he found them

Friday, September 11, 2009

the warmup and first score

"you never know. some idiots are stupid" - major stallion

2009 started as a year for piracy in prons. the waste alliance was in full swing down in heimatar and metropolis low sec and life was good. unfortunately, summer time was not kind to our participation numbers. people quit logging in since they would rather spend their time on the beach oogling chicks (or dudes, as it may be) than in their basements being "antisocial losers"

with our diminished capacity, we decided that it might be time to return to high sec and regroup. now that it's september and the guys are getting back to school/sobering up/tending to their 2nd degree sunburns, they're starting to trickle back

we decided to brush the cobwebs off the old pewpew machinery by revisiting an old dec: the junta. the last time we fought the junta, they really stood out from all of our past war targets by actually undocking and fighting every single time a prons member showed up in local. this second time around, they didn't disappoint. bossdrum did a fantastic job with the video of this engagement

speaking of boss's video, you'll notice that we fought we fought a pair of small gangs at the beginning. that was REPO, renown high sec mercenaries. they were the second string of merc the junta hired to try and pry us off of their asses but to no avail. in the repo campaign we lost a navy mega, killed a navy mega, very nearly missed a chance to kill a bhaalgorn, frustrated their ecm pilots, killed a couple command ships and pretty much taught them how a guerrilla war is meant to be fought

o7 to repo and the junta for some great fights and for taking it on the chin like champs