Friday, February 3, 2012

gunpoint diplomacy: an evolving paradigm

if you want to it to be more of a test the best option would be to have a smaller fleet considering that when we blow the horn of gondor we outnumber them comfortably. - Arasul

when i left something rotten [5-20] last march, i joined a gunpoint diplomacy [ransm] that was like 5 dudes, a pirate princess and a bunch of hurricanes. it was pretty much a continuation of the small gang piracy that i had always done in 5-20. probing, ganking, skirmishing, robbing, thieving, ransoming... it was all in a days work

the thing is, when you have a good thing going, it rarely stays the same. it usually either starts growing or fizzles out. for us in gunpoint, we were a part of an amazing community, had some great fc talent and plenty of targets to fire upon. more and more people joined and our tactics evolved. first we started adding scimitars to our little marauding gangs. shield bc/scimi gangs became a common sight in the heath

it wasn't long after this when gloriouse~ CEO sard caid introduced us to the loki links. a small campaign of scrapping with 0.0 bears in derelik showed us the amazing things that the drake could do with a booster loki. after kiting and brawling down TONS of unsuspecting targets in situations where we were outnumbered, link lokis became the rule of the day

this shift led us a whole new direction. once we had practiced exploiting speed and range thanks to the loki links, things started to change. many more gunpoint suddenly had loki link alts. snakes sets were being purchased. our drakes were now unstoppable!

problem with drakes though is while they have amazing range, good ehp and a great assortment of mid slots for more tank or webs, they lack heavily in the dps department. heavy missile launchers just weren't intended to be the weapon of choice for the discerning pirate. what could possibly fill this niche in the way that the 425mm autocannon hurricane once had?

enter machariel

the mach, while expensive, brought long range autocannon punishment to the already well established base of amazing speed and good ehp. they also brought with them another unexpected boon: artillery. gunpoint soon started refitting the autocannon machariels with 1400mm artillery. now they simply alpha'd ships to their doom

this era brought about some of gunpoint's most expensive lossmails. feeling invulnerable in these ludicrously fast battleships with dreadnought-esque alpha strikes led some members (lol me~) to make poor choices and engage things that they should not, ending in lossmails

this hasn't stopped us yet though, far from it. in fact, i would say that we're now emboldened to try more new things and share our results with the whole of eve

gunpoint's latest experiment is another pioneering move by our grandiose~ CEO sard caid: his livestream

if you follow @SardCaid on twitter, you'll see when he starts streaming (usually around 7pm PST) and you can tune in to see what he's up to. he typically takes out a solo or small gang incursion into one of the nullsec regions around us where he tries valiantly to get a brawl from the locals who are often tuned into his stream. lately even he has been streaming our mid-sized gang work, sharing our gang's perspective with the people we are engaging

while it might not always (read: never) work in our favor, it's incredibly fun and it's all very heroic~

it's exciting for me as a player to watch the organization that i'm so fond of grow and evolve as an entity as well as grow the molden heath community that i have loved for so long. as much as i hope that its spirit never changes, it's exciting to see what new and rad things come of this dynamic group of individuals