Red vs Blue. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

So, when shooting asteroids, checking market margins or shooting little red crosses gets to boring, I turn to RvB.  RvB (Red vs Blue), for those who may not know, are two corporations locked in eternal war over a few systems, currently close to Jita.
The premise is that you join up and you will have instant combat all the time, largely concentrated to a small number of systems to keep the intensity high. 
Red and Blue HQ are separated by a few jumps to have some systems were station games are less prevalent and to allow some gatecamping and mobile action.  RvB will probably give you whatever type of combat you desire on a regular basis, with a few exceptions.

There are a few rules to keep drama and chaos down and from what I've seen so far these rules are enforced by both corporations.
NO Podding allowed, you are under no circumstances allowed to pod fellow RvB members, third party war targets are fair game though.  From what I know, podding without having a darn good excuse for it, will get you booted from RvB.
No ECM, all other types of E-War are allowed, but no jammers.  The idea is on fun fights and jammers aren't.

The following is my experience and opinion only, your mileage may vary.

The Good.

Instant fights, all the time, you undock and there are people to fight.  There's a fleet up nearly 23/7 that you can join for PvP, or you can go out solo and look for fights as it suits you.

You WILL get used to loss, which is rather essential in EVE, RvB will teach you to fly things you can afford fast, because you will loose the stuff you undock in.

Feet first PvP lessons.  There's no easing into things in RvB, you go from peaceful carebear to frothing maniac the moment you join.  You will learn things fast or you won't have any fun at all.

Great community, I've met very few idiots in RvB, the people on both sides are fun loving little hellraisers who will gladly share their knowledge with you.  Questions are answered, fits are critiqued and shared, and the FC's are extraordinary patient with people/newbies in fleets.

Regular events that you can take part in, everything from local brawls to low sec/null sec roams.  The people running the whole thing are simply fantastic at creating content for their members and I can't thank them enough for the time and effort they put in.

Very laid back and relaxed community, no API keys required, registrations everywhere, jabber, IRC etc.
You join, signing up for the forum is recommended, but not required as I've understood it, and use EVE voice in fleets.  It can't really get simpler for anyone who wants to PvP without the politics and all the other things that come with it.  Out of Game voice comms are used for some events I believe, but all of these are 100% optional.

The Bad.

Not really a whole lot here, and keep in mind that this is purely my own opinion on the matter.

You can get poor fast unless you have money on the side or fly expensive stuff you can't replace.  Don't fly what you can't afford to loose.  I believe RvB has replacement programs with some conditions, but I've not used them, so my knowledge on the matter is limited.

Some fights are pre arranged and will seem rather "artificial", if I can use that word about blowing up spaceships in a video game.  If you're looking for a totally immersive war experience there are some fights that will disappoint you.  These fights are there to create content and explosions for whoever wants to participate though, so one really can't complain about them.  You are also free to ignore such fights as you please.

I don't really have any bad experiences from RvB myself, it's mostly what you make of it yourself, and not joining up with the wrong expectations.

The Ugly.

Nothing to really say here.
One would expect a community such as RvB to be full of trolling idiots, and I'm sure there are some, but I've not really met any of them.  The people are great, the organizers are fantastic and there's action all the time.
The quality of the community is probably down to leadership actually doing their job to provide quality content for everyone, and again, I can't thank them enough for it.

So, you want to be a 1337 PvP'er, tired of being the constant carebear, maybe you just wanna learn how to bite back in case of wardecs, Join RvB.  Stick an alt in there like I've done, I can almost guarantee you'll have fun and after a few days it's not so threatening to have people chasing you all the time.
Fly cheap frigates and get a feel for things, be the aggressor on a killboard for a change and have some good times with the rest.

There's not point, no endgame, no lines on the map, no motivation to fight other then the fight itself.
In RvB, we just wanna watch the universe burn.
And kill smurfs.
The more smurfs, the better.

Fly like you stole it.

Nerfing the Drake?

There's been rumors lately about some incoming nerfs for the Drake battlecruiser, pride of the Caldari Navy and cherished favourite of newbies and missionrunners everywhere.
Personally, I don't fly the Drake to often, Evoran has one Drake in his hangar set up for the occasional combat site or mission, the one time a year he does that stuff.  Evv flies armor, armor all the way, he's trained for Gallente and Amarrian ships and shield tanks are'nt really their natural element.  I have trained some shield skills on him recently though, but mostly just for the buffertanked speed/shield extender ships, and mostly just for the shield extenders themselves.  There should be no need to state that Evv does not fly shield tanked ships very often.
I do have some experience flying a drake, and my impression is as follows, massive and impressive tank, not quite so impressive DPS and it handles like a beached whale.  The Drake is in short a massive brick, and quite an impressive looking brick at that.  I do understand the appeal it has to missionrunners as it seems to be a very AFK friendly ship with a big tank, it's also quite an impressive ship considering that it does not take to long to train for.

Recently though, word has come in from the lawless regions of null security space that the Drake has become a very popular addition to alliance fleets.  So popular in fact that CCP is looking at nerfing it.
There are different reasons for the nerf, but the biggest one at the moment seems to be lag, or rather the fact that a hundred Drakes all firing missiles at once starts to create quite a bit of lag.
The popularity of the Drake in null seems to be much the same as in high sec, big tank, easy to get into, cheap and very replaceable, and excellent counter to armor HAC's.  Seems the the change of the old doomsday had some "unforseen" effects on warfare allowing for bigger fleets of smaller craft, along with the changes to the scanning system making it very easy to get hits on BS sniper fleets, the BS fleets are all but extinct it seems.  Armor tanked HAC's with logi and CS support tore things apart in nullsec for quite some time and then people started countering it with Drakes.  Why Drakes one might ask?  they are  a good counter to the AHAC's, they have huge buffers making it easy for Logi pilots to keep up, they have great alpha strike damage in a fleet of them, the missiles have great range and an easier time of hitting AHAC's then BS turrets have and they're cheap.  You can probably loose about four Drakes for every Zealot isk wise and in a war of atrition that accounts for quite an advantage.  You can also commit more pilots to a fight since you can get fresher pilots willing to loose a BC in your fleets.

Now, I'm not a fan of nerfing ships, people have invested time, money and practice in flying these things (whatever ships is the current big thing).  I think it's a little "cheap" to take this away from them and it's not like the Drake trains are some invulnerable death machine that can't be stopped.  This is EVE, adapt or die.

There are several ways, I've heard, of countering these Drake fleets.  Snipe BS does a great job of stopping them, disciplined AHAC gangs, Zealots in particular also rips through them in a lot of cases.  The point is that they're not invulnerable, instead of nerfing I think we should just sit back and wait for the mastermind FC's to come up with an effective counter to the whole problem.  I would certainly not be happy if a ship I've trained for, bought and fitted got nerfed because something that happened in a particular theater of war.
Either way, all you Caldari mission runners, now's your time to shine in the lawless lands of 0.0.  You're beloved Drake is no longer scorned and primaried by friendly FC's, imortality awaits you, take it.

Fly safe.

War, again!! We killed someone though.

War has again been declared on the corpopration.
This time we decided to fight or at least try to fight off the Decc. I don't claim to be a very seasoned PvP'er, because I'm really not, but I know how to lock and shoot.

We had wartargets docked in Dodixie and several of us set up outside the station.  We waited around for a bit wondering if there was going to be any fighting, when suddenly 3 Battleships undocked.  We were a little surprised at first and our own force consisted mostly of BC's and cruisers, some Ewar and Logistics.  Scorpion, Apoc and Mael drifted down the undock pipe and we opened fire on the Apoc.  I know, Scorp should be primary, but hindsight is 20/20 and I was only jammed once from the Scorp.  Whether down to Scorp pilot or our own Blackbird I don't know.

Apoc was however steadily going down, but as he dipped into low armor he started suddenly shooting back up.  Neutral Guardian had undocked and started repping him.  I don't know if they used the neutral repper or if they just wanted someone to agress them randomly, but the guardian was fired upon and a Machariel undocked right behind it.  At that point we did'nt stand much of a chance.  The Mach chewed through my Prophecy rather quickly and he pounded the rest shortly thereafter.
We did kill the Apoc though, before the Mach could pop our small fleet.

I'm not sure if the Mach pilot was working with our wardecc'ers or not, as I said, the corp could just be looking for people agressing.  The Mach pilot did score a killmail on our WT's Mael which is why I'm wondering what actually happened.

Regardless, we learned a lesson and had a good fight, we also got a bit of PvP experience under our belt.
While we did loose most of our fleet to that Mach pilot we did bring down a WT Apoc so we did'nt exactly consider it a complete loss.  Fleet chat was full of reflection after the fight and very little resignation, instead of bad moods, whining and accusations we were examining the fight and what we'd done.  I don't think any of us have a lot of experience with PvP, but I'm still proud to fly with my corp and of their attitude after the fight.

Where did all the belts go?

A long time ago, in a galaxy.......
Well, not that long really although i don't quite remember when this change went through right now.  There was a very real risk of warping to an asteroid belt and finding it empty.  You could find entire systems empty, only a few rocks left here and there, this was before the increase in high sec belt re spawn.
Miners rejoiced all over New Eden I guess, there would hardly be any competition over resources now, or rather competition didn't matter anymore.  There are many great and positive things about this, but I can't help thinking that it takes some things away from "us" as well.
Now, being a miner, and industrialist and a carebear, I should be happy about the change and not think thoughts like this at all, but where's the competition gone with this change?

There is no point in looking for "good" systems now, pockets hidden away from the pipes with good belts, private systems you spent days looking for.  These days you can just pick any old system with lots of belts, don't matter how many people mine there, the belts are back tomorrow anyway.
There are no empire wars fought over resources now, if an industrial corp is getting dec'ed these days it's most likely 100% "griefing".  That is a valid reason and tactic in it's own way, but it's a shame that we don't get the occasional war fought over actual resources and "mining rights", perhaps on somewhat more equal terms then the grief wars.

As stated above, I'm not much of a fighter, so me wanting a war might sound a little odd.  I would however be much more inclined to fighting with whatever I had against another industrial focused corporation to increase future profits or to protect a valuable system.  In the same way I'd also be more inclined to spend money on mercenaries to further the same goals.
Now, one can say that you can have all this, everything mentioned above, just move to 0.0.
I don't want to move to 0.0 right now, I like my empire life as it is at this time, I'd just like it to be a little more dynamic then it is right now.
The occasional fight over something that mattered to me would be a lot more fun then getting dec'ed by someone you can hardly fight, seeing as I have nothing to gain from fighting either there's little reason to undock at all.
Maybe we would get more "carebears" strapping guns on their ships if there were more reasons for doing it.

This could just be and most likely is wishful thinking, chances are that the state of affairs would be the same as it is now.  Stay docked, no reason to fight anyway.
Speaking from a personal point of view though, I'd be much more inclined to training for a little combat and even fighting a bit if I knew a tasty system with lots of belts where on the line.  Throwing those nasty strip miners out of my system so I could strip mine it instead would be a nice motivator.
Maybe Tyrannis and PI will bring something like this in, I'm not sure quite how the planets will work, if there's limited resources and if they're worth fighting for.
I would certainly find it more interesting if small wars broke out between industrial corporations/their Merc's for control over particularly valuable planets in a system.
It would certainly create a better contract base for High sec mercenary work as well.

War, again!!

Well, as I write this the corp/alliance I joined is heading into it's second war declaration within a month, 12 hours from now I will be flying red again.
Not much to do I guess, after all I did join a bigger outfit to get more activity, careful what you wish for I guess.
I don't terribly mind flying under a war decc, I got my routines for it now, the do's and don'ts, it's mostly the inconvenience of it all.

Ceasing all normal operations, reverting to cheaper ships, mostly focusing on station trading instead of mining and hauling.  I'll be the first to admit, I don't undock a lot during a war, I feel I have little to contribute with my combat skills so I stay docked.  I guess that denying the enemy the entertainment of cheap, free kills from me is a little contribution in itself.  Should I log on and find a CTA being issued I'll grab what I can and help out to the best of my ability though, gotta give something back to the people around you after all.
Fortunately I'm set up with most of what I need for the impending war and I have some experience in avoiding bad situations, I just hope I can stick by it yet again.

Probably gonna be a quiet week for me coming up then, some asset management, should give me time to do some market research again too, find me some new stuff to trade in and supplement my current list.

Undock only if you must.
Fly cheap and light, don't haul big stuff.
If it smells like a trap, it is.

I'll come out on the other side of this one as well, after all, this is EVE.

Rifter Drifter » Blog Archive » ECM For Dummies

Rifter Drifter » Blog Archive » ECM For Dummies

This isn't normally something I'd be interested in, but you never know when you can contribute a small measure to a wardecc.
This is by far the "best" ECM for dummies guide I've seen around, big thanks to Rifter Drifter for bringing this one up.
Enjoy the read.