{"id":4398,"date":"2012-10-10T18:49:22","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T18:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/random-average.com\/?p=4398"},"modified":"2012-10-10T19:04:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T19:04:50","slug":"life-in-eve-the-pants-on-head-offensive-eveonline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/2012\/10\/life-in-eve-the-pants-on-head-offensive-eveonline\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in Eve: the Pants-on-Head Offensive #eveonline"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I’ve been playing just as much as ever, and writing about the new stuff coming in the expansion, I haven’t felt compelled to write about actual events in game for a little while, simply because it’s been pretty typical and straightforward shenanigans: small gang stuff every few nights, random solo stuff the rest of the time. Faction Warfare is a very interesting and sometimes frustrating environment; on one hand I feel as though I’d get more out of it if I were connected to some of the big established groups, but on the other hand there’s direct evidence that Sturgeon’s Revelation<\/a> applies just as much to people as it does to anything else1<\/sup><\/strong>, and I’m not sure I need to expose myself to that any more than I already am.2<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n

Case in Point:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went on a small gang roam last night, run by one of the really good guys I’ve run into — someone who’s a real pleasure to fly with and who always seems to have a fun fleet idea to try out.<\/p>\n

Flying with him: a couple of his corp mates, and a cage of shit-flinging spider monkeys.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
WTF am I hearing?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, normally, it’s not that bad. The fleet members list was about the same as usual, but for whatever reason — full moon, hormone imbalance,\u00a0Ritalin\u00a0shortage — this ancillary group of pilots (from a corp unaffiliated with the FC) have been particularly sub-functional\u00a0lately.<\/p>\n

But I grit my teeth and bear it, because I want to try out this new idea the FC has.\u00a0The last few roams, he’s been asking for armor-tanked cruisers supported by a couple tech1 logistics ships (the exequror, which is currently a hairsbreadth above a joke setup, but receives a major facelift in a few months), and specifically asked if I could bring one of the support cruisers, which is a class of ship I’m well-skilled for and never really get a chance to fly.<\/p>\n

Anyway: the evening didn’t offer up a lot of viable opportunities. The nature of the ships we were flying (support cruisers with poor attributes, combat cruisers press-ganged into remote-repair setups) and our numbers (ranging from 6 to, at best, 10 or so) meant that our window of viable targets was a bit narrow — potential opponents either warped away before we could get there, or seriously outnumbered us.<\/p>\n

Still, we preserved, roaming around the war zone, looking for anything that would give us a good run.<\/p>\n

(Side note: the tunnel vision that overcomes “healers” in any group activity is just as present in EvE as it is in any other MMO, at least in my experience. I couldn’t name one system we flew through last night, aside from where we started and where we ended.)<\/p>\n

After a slow hour or so, people were justifiably itching for a fight, and everyone was pretty happy when a scout (one of our spider-monkeys) excitedly announced he had a war target tackled. The current fleet commander called for jump and we warped to the fight.<\/p>\n

Imagine my bemusement when the overview loaded, and all I saw were two different shades of purple on the list of nearby pilots: the purple of my fleetmates, and the purple of fellow members of my militia.<\/p>\n

The scout (also a militia member) was shooting one of the pilots in that second group.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
We're going to war!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apparently, the spider monkeys had had some kind of friendly fire incident a few days earlier, resulting in a pilot from some other militia corporation losing a ship. Reparations were made, but in the end, the two corps decided to use the in-game system to declare war on each other, thus making each other valid war targets.<\/p>\n

Let me repeat that (because I for damn sure needed it explained twice when I first heard it): faced with two different enemy militia to fight (whose pilot memberships collectively numbers a bit over fifteen thousand), these two groups within the same<\/em> militia decided to start shooting each other over a 10 second friendly fire incident, some name-calling, and the loss of a single frigate.<\/p>\n

I really don’t think that is how one successfully conducts a war.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Please note the remarkable lack of SHOOTING EACH OTHER in the above photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Faced with this situation, I did what I’m supposed to do in a support ship, surrounded by friendly pilots taking fire: I locked up every ally I could and started repping anyone getting shot.<\/p>\n

Yes, everyone.<\/p>\n

Yes, the “other guys” too.<\/p>\n

I figure we were already well into the realm of Pants-on-Head idiocy, so adding a little more ridiculous behavior could hardly hurt.3<\/strong><\/sup><\/p>\n

Eventually, someone decided to shoot me. I’m honestly not sure which side. Maybe both.<\/p>\n

Upside: I got a lot of good practice flying support, and the ship loss was amusingly cheap.<\/p>\n

And, not for nothing, having an excuse to drop fleet afterwards (when the FC called it a night) was something of a blessed release.<\/p>\n

\n

1<\/strong> – There’s also a disturbing trend wherein the forces behind Gabriel’s Greater Internet Dickwad Theory<\/a> manifest at such a high concentration in EvE that intelligent, well-spoken people who seem immune to this phenomena (while on Reddit, for example)\u00a0turn into mouth-breathing frat boys the moment they log into the game and join a fleet. I’m embarrassed on their behalf.<\/p>\n

2<\/strong> – One of the nice things about wormholes? You are generally insulated from the 90%, except in small doses. Call that a plus. In faction warfare, I keep my local channel set so I only see who’s in the system (not anything anyone’s actually saying), and make liberal use of the ‘block’ chat function make other channels marginally useful.<\/p>\n

3<\/strong> – It’s easy to poke fun, but you must be careful when casting stones; stuff easily as stupid happens with head-shaking frequency throughout the game. Usually, the result is a lot more costly (which either makes it more or less funny, depending on who you ask.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I’ve been playing just as much as ever, and writing about the new stuff coming in the expansion, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-4398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actual-play","category-mmos","tag-eve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4398"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4409,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398\/revisions\/4409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}