The Shepherd

Sheep herder.
Sheep. Herd.
Shepherd.

Amazing how lazy the English language can be.

Today we got into a fight with remote repairing Tristans with armour logi support. We had more numbers and destroyers, so I was confident.

Some of my fleet, though, were not, and made their concerns apparent before the fight.

Well, we ended up winning, and that doubt initially was what made me think about today’s post.

Everything except the kitchen sink.

I never really got the story behind ‘kitchen sink’  fleets being fleets consisting of everything and anything. So I talked to my fleet about it one day, and well, one big idea was actually that, when packing up as much as you could to leave the home, you’d try to take everything except the kitchen sink. So in a kind of inverse way, a kitchen sink fleet therefore consists of “everything”.

I really liked that description. I was also taken aback. Because in my whole year and a half in EVE, I never asked for the true meaning of a kitchen sink, because I thought I knew it.

When I first heard it, I thought it was named so because a kitchen sink generally had all kinds of things in it. Pots to cutlery, vegetable peels to defrosting meat, etc. That made sense to me, at least. I enjoy making up stories to explain what I’m unsure of. It’s not a good idea sometimes though, because if I get away with the… Delusion… For too long, it becomes harder to accept reality.

Thinking of ways to think.

The Amarr have decided they’ve had enough. Where we were previously taken systems quite easily, it’s like we’re a bird that just dove into water.

They don’t have many systems left, and I must commend them on their fortitude, because they’ve been deplexing systems very consistently for the past week, and at T1 warzone control there’s not much LP to be had by doing it.

What I was worried about was that it would become a war of attrition, and there is a scary possibility that we’re falling in that direction. It’s scary because EVE is a game, and if people aren’t having fun, they won’t want to play. This goes for both sides. It sounds like an absolute grind for the Amarr to have to deplex for nearly no LP all day, and for us, it’s painful to keep running from fleets because the Amarr can simply bring more than what is necessary to fight us.

Divide and conquer – or not?

Fleets are wonderful things in EVE. When PvP players get together, fleets are formed, fun is had together, people share their losses and victories, bonds are made (or broken) in the fiery aftermath of a fierce fight.

Fleets highlight the social element of EVE, and brings out so many interesting interactions between FC and member, FC and FC, and between your squad members. From heated discussions over topics totally unrelated to EVE to the most coordinated target-calling, the spectrum of conversation on comms when you’re in a fleet is almost always unique.

Knowing this, having experienced it in my own fleets, and in nearly every fleet I’ve joined, would I willingly divide a fleet?

I return!

Exams are over! Back to the beloved blog… and dying a lot! WOO.

So, I have a month and a half where I can play EVE to my heart’s content… how should I go about this? 🙂

Fly with, not for.

Started musing after I stood down a roaming fleet earlier today. Specifically, about how I FCed differently to others. I’ve been actively seeking other FW FCs to fleet up with, and have over my EVE career so far been part of many different kinds of PvP experiences and encounters, with the sorely lacking exception probably being wormholes, and big null-sec fleet PvP. Oh, and high-sec PvP, but come on, we all know that’s just a game of “who has the most neutral logi available”.

Anyway, I think I have enough experience to safely compare myself to others, and the resounding difference was that other FCs, whilst they are as good as or better than me at handling fights once a fight broke out, they didn’t pick fights that I would have.

The calm before the storm

Another two hubs taken for the Minmatar, only lightly opposed by the Amarr.

Hmm.

What’s going on? I dare not hope the other side has given up, so I will assume once again they’re holding back for something big.

The question is: what?

Carnyx is here!

An interesting choice of name for this month’s patch. Wikipedia tells me a ‘carnyx’ is more or less a trumpet with an animal’s head as the bell; the part where the sound comes out.

Essentially, I suppose when you blow on it, it should look and sound as if the sound is coming out of the snarling face of some wild beast.

Wikipedia also suggests, more importantly, that these wind instruments were used to incite troops to battle.

And here we have a patch that is bringing sweeping changes to null-sec sovereignty as we know it. Connect the dots, and it seems like CCP are calling us to battle. Will the null-sec empires answer? Time will tell.

Tipping point

Four systems were taken from the Amarr by our fleets a day ago, a record since I rejoined. It’s brings much joy to see us able to do it, but also as we flip each system, I get more and more restless even though we appear to be doing very well.

Will the resistance against us grow? Some people think the Amarrians are letting us take their systems because they just don’t have numbers anymore. Well, I like to call myself an optimist, but when it comes to serious spaceship business, I will look at things in the worst possible light. Which in this case means they are letting us take systems because they want to crush us when we try take the important ones.

Hmm. Well that’s no good. What can we do NOW to work around this possible situation?