Heroes are a lie; the disenchantment of war

I stare out of the station we had wrested from the Amarr, trying to gaze through my gaunt reflection and find in the glistening stars beyond the reason I stood here in the first place.

It was eerily quiet after the cacophony of screams and trampling boots as our soldiers poured into the station and established control over the civilian population. They had had peace for only a meagre seven months, barely enough to repair the lives that had been overturn by the Amarr who took Huola from our hands in the neverending cycle of a war between immortals.

A slave girl, Matari and bone skinny, sobbed for us to save her Master. I wonder, sometimes, whether we are giving freedom, or forcing freedom, upon the people we fight for. I wonder, sometimes, whether we live on freedom, or we too, force-feed it into ourselves, as blindly and religiously as our sworn enemies consume their Scriptures.

What am I fighting for? My mere voice commands dozens of pilots, my hands guide weapons of mass destruction. My life is infinite (how long have I been alive already…?). Was power granted to me to simply be a monster that enjoys cruising through the wrecks that litter the aftermath of fleet battles? Surely not. Surely there’s something more, something beyond myself that I am contributing to.

And yet here I am, searching for answers amongst the stars and questioning the answers I’ve given myself previously.

Assessing the usefulness of capacitor batteries.

Something different today! I’m going to be taking a look at one of the… neglected, modules in EVE Online, the Capacitor Battery, poking around at why I think it isn’t used, and what could be done to make it more viable!

Shiny things! Oh, and the Oceanic Assault result.

I’ve been holding onto a PLEX for a while now, I think I got one from some event that I can’t remember now. I think EDU? Probably EDU.

Anyway, I sold it at 97x million today, because I’ve become too lazy to convert my LP.

I’m horrible.

But anyway, with the influx of fresh ISK, I made two major purchases that I’m super excited about.

Gunpowder treason and plot

Beneath this mask there is more than flesh, Mr. Creedy.

Beneath this mask there is an idea.

And ideas are bulletproof.

-V, V for Vendetta

The phrase ‘gunpowder plot’ got stuck in my head while plexing a few days ago and it took me a while to figure out how V for Vendetta and my faction warfare efforts were related.

Theomachy and Oceanic Assault 2015

The two players run events listed above are what I’ve gotten myself involved in so far this year, outside of FW. Let’s get into each of them.

The ability to regret nothing…

… doesn’t mean having to have everything.

Accepting imperfection might not be easy, but it’s necessary.

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?