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A practical example of finding your own fun in EVE. The Battle of ED-L9T
PegasusJF
Member Posts: 268
I recently experienced what I consider to be one of the high points of my time in EVE, and I feel it is a prime example why this game has such a frevent community, and why many new players find their niche and come to love this game.
I would like to share with you, the general details of Firmus Ixion's (FIX, my alliance) defense of an new outpost in the ED-9LT system in the Querious region this past weekend.
First some background.
Outposts are mini stations, they are four types, and generally fulfill different roles. There is the Minmatar Service Outpost which is a refinery, the Ammar factory outpost, the Gallente Market/office outpost, and the caldari labratory outpost. There are exclusively erected in 0.0 (lawless) space and quite frankly have become integral to the alliances living there, since they fill holes in logistics and capabilites that the few scattered conquerable stations often do not. One alliance ,the Interstellar Starbase Syndicate (ISS) has even made a business in outposts, taking in money for shares in erecting outposts that are open to all in the last two neutral regions of 0.0 space. (Central Pure Blind and Eastern Catch)
Costing around 30 billion ISK, you put one up by first placing a foundation (or the "egg"), and filling it with the necessary materials for it to construct itself, and after the next downtime it is complete. During the egg period the outpost is vulnerable to attack and can be destroyed. It has happened before, the first time FIX tried to put up an egg in the ED system the egg was destroyed.
This time however, was far more intense.
We had the support of many friends, Mercenary Coalition, Storm Armada, BOB, and other Querious residents. Almost immeadiately, we fell under attack by a large force of the Against All Authorities Alliance. They brought in several carriers and dreadnoughts and many battleships.
The first hours of the battle where very intense, they broke through our defenses at the system's entrances and denyed us the ability to fill the egg by the downtime, prolonging it's construction for an entire day. Many times there were over 200 people in the system (the lag was pretty bad). The battle went back and forth many times. Battleships and frigates/cruisers supported by fighters from carriers (mostly it was FIX who relied on fighters, since we suffered far more battleship losses) swarmed back and forth at the egg and the gates. Many FIX and allied pilots who have been destroyed running in from the 9cg and Badivefi systems with new ships to rejoin the fight. But at a critical point of the battle, AAA managed to put 8 or 9 Dreadnoughts around the egg, went into seige mode (can't move by 10x damage and protection) and started to attack it.
For an hour and a half they attacked the egg, eventually taking it down to 40% structure. We raided their supporting battleships with frigates and cruisers with fighters almost constantly, whittling them down. We finally sent in our remaining battleships to attack the dreadnoughts, managing to kill one while taking several battleship losses (I lost 2 tempests, a dominix and a thorax during the battle).
After gathering reinforcements we went in a second time, and managed to take out a second dreadnought. The stress of the battle on the server even managed to crash the node, causing some confusion on both sides (lost fighters, and the battle damage on the egg was reset), but a quick response of a GM managed to set things straight.
At that point, they withdrew, and FIX and co. rested (the battle was already over 10 hours old), reequiped, restocked and refortified our gates with warp disruption bubbles. We waited for the inevitable second round, as there was still 12 hours left until the next downtime. Some of the pilots went to take naps (in a special AFK ish ts channel) with their ships safe in one of our Player Owned stations. But throughout this time, FIX still maintained a force of around 100 pilots in defense, ultimately peaking at about 160. We did not want this outpost to fail.
We were woken up by a loud cry of "wake up!" when our commanders surmised that the battle was about to start up again. This time, we had a large numerical advantage (150 to 50) in ED and the fighting was not as intense. Most of our action was done by frigates covering gates at recieved intel and randomly going to celestial objects looking for targets of oppourtunity (they managed to get several kills).
The highlight of this time was a covert ops, using scan probes, managed to bust a AAA deep safespot with 3 carriers. The entire fleet warped in and managed to kill all of them and that was pretty much the final turning point. We still skirmished with AAA until downtime finally arrived. The egg did not suffer any further attacks, and at this point some of us where playing for 30 hours and teamspeak was getting a little goofy.
The end result was this:
Ixion Reborn, our first outpost! (The ship in front is my Thorax, the Resolute)
AAA managed to take advantage of our sleepiness and euphoria of victory by swooping in and getting some more BS kills and another carrier (think he was afk). They managed to threaten a second one but we saved it by sending in our remaining forces.
Overall, the kills were pretty lopsided to AAA battleship wise, while we manged to kill 2 dreadnoughts and slightly more carriers.
But the greatest thing gained was the jubilation of victory and pride at our accomplishment (not in small part due to the efforts of our allies), and also the respect gained between FIX and AAA, which before were bitter enemies. Overall we had a pretty smack free battle.
I am so proud to be part of FIX.
I hope you found that story interesting. The reason I posted this was to show visitors to this forum how satisfying this game can be, and it is a practical example of "making your own fun". We were planning this for months, and to succeed after a prolonged struggle only sweetened its accomplishment.
It should also be noted that a lot of the fighting was done by frigates and cruisers, supported by fighters from our carriers. Ships and skills that could be trained up in a month at the very most. At the end of the battle the frigates were the only ships really moving around looking for targets while the cruisers and battleships waited in reserve. The point being is that newer players (theoretically even 3 day old players, but a lot of vets where flying frigs too) were a integral part of this fleet.
Anyway, thanks for reading.
God Bless
Creed Richards/PegasusJF
ps...The details, while I tried to be as accurate as possible as my memory allowed, may not be. :P
EDIT: Grammar and ps
EDIT2: More outpost info
Comments
Nice post!
Just to point out, the picture is showing an Outpost that's refenced in the detailed story. There's actually 2 ships in front of the outpost. You can see the primary ship near the bottom of the pic and in front of the outpost. This is an Amarr Archon Carrier. The Thorax is actually difficult to see since it appears to be overlayed on the outpost in this pic. The Thorax is a cruiser that's easy for new players to get into and is known as one of the best ships in EVE.
Yea Pegasus this exactly one of the things I like about
EvE Online.
You aint alone
Guides & Trials for EvE Online:
30 hours?!? Youch.
No thanks, I'll stick to WoW.
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Malvren - Legionnaire of Terminus
Lol its not like WoW with instanced zones.
To explain to those who dont understand what im getting at in WoW there are instanced zones and if you leave eveerything is reset. So he is thinking the outpost or whatever is in some sort of instanced zone i think.
Yeah, it was a long battle. Probably could have been done better in many ways. But it's one of the consequences of open PVP and the possibility of loss.
But, having successfully defended that egg makes the victory all the sweeter.
Its a caldari or minmar?
Defend it well, it costed alot of money and time :P
well done guys
....
Speechless, is what I am, after reading about that epic battle. That story right there is exactly what turned me onto this game, but unfortunatly that was something I never witnessed, and/or experianced. Eve was the very first MMO I had ever played, and contrary to popular belief, I found it very easy to get into. I played a character for a while, and after about a million skill points realized how crucial it was to plan, so I started fresh. Mission running and mining eventually lost its apeal after another million SP's on my new character, and I jumped on the WoW bandwagon. If I had experianced anything even remotely close to that story, I can easily say I would still be playing Eve today. But that, my friends, is even why I am posting, even why I am here on this sight. After a year of playing WoW, I have come to realize how empty, unfulfilling, and small that game actually is, and have my heart set on trying something new. That something new I am looking for just may be something "old", I would be a fool not to renew my Eve subcrition right now, after reading this great, great story.
Because that isn't the only step. The egg also has to be filled with a large volume of minerals and other construction parts to begin construction. A process that takes at least an hour.
OP
Great story. These things are only possible in true sandbox format.
I really want to get deeper into Eve. But right now most of my friends are in WoW, and I have been having a good time in that.
Damn, if I could only live 2 lives at once, I would be playing Eve and WoW at the same time.
Ive protected two eggs in my Eve life, one of which was in a situation like the OPs. I'll say that there is no greater feeling then when downtime comes and you have protected that egg with everything you've got. There is no sweeter feeling in Eve (except maybe hitting the T2 lottery).
and nice video btw, i like it alot.
keep up the good work
/Trustus
/Trustus
give it another try once the new xpac is released. They've boosted
starter characters to alleviate that issue. You will now be able to use
most common modules right of the bat and fly a decent frigate to boot.
You should find it a lot less difficult to start out and get to the fun
stuff.