The Dark Arts: The Way of the Space Ninja

For any of you that are following the story of the Revolutionary Front, we have been focused increasingly on high security space for the interesting gameplay potential that it presents, as well as the isk that is to be made there. It's also a great place to train the newbros, with a wide variety of soft targets ripe for the plucking and a gentle learning curve.

"If the opponent feels no pain you may be forced to break bones..."

Many of our newest members had persisted in running low level missions and even (shudder) mining to make their iskies, so in an effort to both improve their income and break them of the carebear mentality I have been encouraging them to take up the Way of the Space Ninja. This is to say, haunting highsec mission hubs and scanning down bears running level 4s, then loot and/or salvage their wrecks, and if they should be so foolish as to aggress us, returning with a combat ship to hold them ransom or gank them. These pursuits require minimal skills, are fantastic ways for new players to become proficient with d-scan and combat probing, and are quite good income. A week old player who is running level 2 missions might be making 1-2 million isk per hour. When he takes up ninja-ing he can drastically improve that with a small investment in isk and SP.

Preparations
A would-be ninja would be well advised to have some skills trained and ships ready before he goes to work. There are three basic ship types that he will be primarily concerned with as a solo ninja - the prober, the looter, and the tackler. You will find some discussion of these and sample fits below.

Prober
You will need a ship capable of fitting an expanded probe launcher, with Sisters Combat Scanner Probes, and Gravity Capacitor Upgrade rigs. I also like to put a cloaking device of some kind on mine, so that I can hang around in space probing people down when I have a suspect flag without worrying that somebody will hunt me down and pop me. You can fit the low and midslots how you like. You might want a codebreaker or an analyzer in case you have the opportunity to raid an exploration site, or you may want to fit a tank of some sort. The ideal ship for this is a Covert ops frigate, but today I'm talking about basics for newbies, so any T1 exploration frigate will be just fine. Here is an example:


[Probe, anal]
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Prototype Cloaking Device I
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
[empty rig slot]

Looter/Salvager
The main thing here is to have a ship that is cheap, light and fast, with a reasonable cargohold. You will get shot at in this ship, so being able to maneuver on a hostile grid and get away without being killed is your top priority. The Vigil is a fine and classic option for this, but most any fast T1 frigate will do. You should have Salvagers in the highslots, Salvage Tackle and/or Cargohold Optimization rigs, and Expanded Cargoholds in the lowslots. I always recommend that the midslots carry a Passive Targeter and a Ship Scanner, because any time that you are in close contact with a mission runner you should be checking to see if he fits expensive modules that might make him a suitable target for ganking. You also want to dual prop with an MWD and an AB, as maximizing your ability to maneuver on grid is key to your survival and success. Here is a sample looting Vigil:


[Vigil, Thief]
Expanded Cargohold I
Damage Control I

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Experimental 1MN Afterburner I
Passive Targeter I
Ship Scanner I
[empty med slot]

Salvager I
Salvager I

Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Cargohold Optimization I
Small Cargohold Optimization I

Tackler
The third ship that you want to have staged and ready is a tackle frigate. This is to take advantage of those times that the bear decides to shoot at you. As a very new player, you probably can't take the bear out solo if he is in a battleship and you are in a frigate, but you can come back and warp scramble him, and prevent him from leaving. Once he is in this position, he is in your power. He may have drones that can hurt you, so you want to shoot these down first, but after that it is unlikely that he can track you with his BS sized guns, so just orbit him close and keep him pinned down. Then, see if you can get him to pay you ransom to let him leave. If there are still rats on grid shooting at him, they will be making him sweat as well, and may even kill him while you hold point, enabling you to to loot his wreck. As your skills improve, it can be worthwhile to do this with an ECM ship, just to prevent him from targeting the rats and allow them to do the damage for you. Here is a basic ninja tackle fit:


[Slasher, ninja tackle]
Damage Control I
Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Medium Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Tracking Speed Disruption Script
Limited 1MN Afterburner I

125mm Light Gallium Machine Gun, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
125mm Light Gallium Machine Gun, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
125mm Light Gallium Machine Gun, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
E5 Prototype Energy Vampire

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

Skills
Yow will need some basic skills to be able to probe effectively. The minimum that I would suggest would be the following:

• Astrometrics 4 - will allow you to launch 7 probes, a nice number to use.
• Astrometric Pinpointing 3 - Gives your probes greater accuracy.
• Astrometric Rangefinding 4 - Improves probe strength.
• Astrometric Acquisition 3 - Allows you to probe faster.

In addition, you will obviously want your basic skills to fit all of your ships and modules. You will need to be able to operate a MWD, AB, etc. If you want to salvage you will need to train Salvaging to 3 or 4 as well.

Location
Find yourself a mission hub (Google is your friend). Go and check it out. you want to see at least 60-70 people in local at any given time to make sure you will have plenty of targets to choose from. Check the surrounding systems out too, missions tend be one jump away quite often. Ideally you want to have 2-3 contiguous systems with plenty of mission runners hanging around.

Once you have identified your hunting grounds, stage your ships. You will want to keep a looter and a tackler in each of your systems ready to go. Make sure that they are fitted and insured. Usually one prober is enough to work with, but if you are working several different mission clusters you may want to keep a prober in each one and jumpclone between them. The idea is that you go out in your prober and scan down the bears, and if the system is quiet you move on to the next one, and you always have a looter and tackler handy to take advantage of whatever you may find.

Finding those Fucking Bears
Here is the hard part. Not that hard actually, but it does take a bit of practice to get good at it. You know there are bears about, but they are off in their unaligned mission pockets, so what to do? You need to locate them.

D-scan
The directional scanner is your handiest tool. Best to get comfortable with this now, because it will serve you well wherever you go in EVE. I'm not going to do a complete tutorial on d-scan here. (Try Youtube). Where ninjas are concerned with d-scan is using it to locate a mission pocket which contains both a mission runner, typically in a Battleship or a T3, and large wrecks. Noctes (Noctises) are also telltale clues. Once you have located your mission bear's general location with d-scan, it is time to drop your probes.

Combat Probes
If you are a new player, and you have never done your exploration tutorial missions, go and do them now. That will give you the basic idea of how to probe things down. The concept is the same if you are using Core Probes to find exploration sites or Combat Probes to find ships. You have already located the general area of your Bear, so narrow down the range to 2 AU or so, spread the probes out, and drop them in his general area on the map. If you don't find his ship siganature, widen the range and try again. Once you have the signature, narrow down the range and location until you have him at 100%. Then save the location.

This video explains combat probing technique far better than I can. It was made for the context of wormhole scouting, but is equally applicable for the ninja. If anything it is easier for us, because our targets are not concerned about being probed down, and usually oblivious to d-scan.

I have Him! WTF I do now?
If you are probing in a Covops, go and scout out the mission to see what is there. If you are in a T1 prober, don't worry about it. Dock up and switch to your Looter. Undock and warp to the bookmark you saved for the Bear. You may find a variety of things there - wrecks, Bears in Battleships/T3s, Noctes, red crosses, acceleration gates.

The most important things for you to do are to activate your damage control and keep moving at all times. Your looter is a dual prop ship, so when you are alone on grid or nobody is targeting you, you can use your MWD to flit around quickly. If the grid is more busy or hostile, switch to you AB so you will be harder to hit.

Now you are here, you have the choice to loot or salvage. Salvage is way less valuable, but you can do it without getting flagged as a suspect, so the bear can't shoot you without getting CONCORDed. However, this is boring, so go for the loot. Either way, go for the large wrecks.

Sometimes, you land in the mission and find the Bear or his friend cleaning up the wrecks in his Noctis. Do not be deterred by this! One of my corpies said it best:

"I write today to give you a tip about a certain ship which is close to the mission bear's heart : the Noctis. It is a ship dedicated to making looting and salvaging easy and fast for the bear - the bear just parks this beast somewhere central on the wreck field, and tractors the wrecks in from up to 70+km away, looting and salvaging them as they get close. many a bear has told stories in local about how the noctis is the ultimate ninja cock block - the ninja flies around and tries to salvage and loot wrecks, and as the ninja approaches a wreck, it is snatched away from them by the mighty noctis. then, the bears laugh heartily and toast each other with white wine spritzers sprinkled with ninja tears.

cool story bro.

Unfortunately for the bear, the noctis can be the well-trained and equipped ninja's best friend. Yes, if you try to grab wrecks in a field being worked by a noctis, it can be quite frustrating - the whole wreck field is in motion, and the bear always knows which wreck you're going for. However, that's obviously not how we roll. The smart ninja orbits the usually stationary Noctis at 1000m. As the bear pulls the wrecks in, the ninja just loots and salvages them as they come in range. Because you are orbiting at 1000, you are often in range if the wreck before the bear is, and can do a loot all and salvage by getting the jump on him. You need salvaging V, tech 2 salvagers (at least 2 or 3) and a couple salvage tackle rigs to pull this off (you basically have to get it in one cycle), but it is a sweet trick. it pretty much requires you to loot all, and be quick on the draw, but hey, we're ninjas, right?

Now the advantage is turned on its head - the bear doesn't know which wreck you're going for until you fire up your salvagers, and if you're running 2 or 3 at a time, you've got a great chance of grabbing just about everything. In this respect, you can think of the Noctis and the bear sitting in it as your personal wreck retriever - if the bear has a noctis, now you have a noctis too! as you can imagine, when the bear realizes that his rather pricey ship which was supposed to make looting and salvaging a breeze has turned into an 80mil isk way to fuck himself over, he can get a bit salty - so leave some extra cargo space for the tears. also, it is customary, but not required, to tip your mission bear for this service."
                                                                                               - Geyene

Holeysheeet! He's shooting at me! What do I do now, Bot?
Your first concern, should the bear decide to start shooting, is to save yourself. Keep your transversal up by making sure you are flying at an angle to you. In your frigate you are pretty hard to hit, so don't panic. Best to GTFO by warping off. Once you have gotten away safely, have a good hearty laugh, because that bear may have just made the worst mistake of his EVE career.

Never fuck with a ninja.

You now have a limited engagement timer, that allows you to legally attack the Bear without feeling the wrath of CONCORD for the next 2 minutes. This gives you enough time for you to batphone your friends, get into a combat ship, and go attack the bear. At the basic level this is the tackler we discussed above. At more advanced levels, you may be getting into a cruiser or battlecruiser, or any ship that can has the DPS to take him out, and calling your friends to assist with Logi support.

Go back in your combat ship, tackle the poor foolish scrub, and demand your ransom. He'll either pay you or he won't. Then, should you choose to do so and have the DPS to pull it off, wreck him and loot/salvage his ship. Even if you don't have enough DPS, don't be afraid to just hold him there and make him pay for you to let him go, or let the NPCs finish him off. A two day old noob in a tackle frigate can realistically get hundreds of millions of isk in ransoms or loot doing this, and you risk nothing but a 1 million isk tackle frigate - so be bold, be ruthless, and make things happen.

The ISK
As with most forms of piracy, ninja-ing can be a bit hit-or-miss, but usually provides a fairly steady moderate income with the potential for jackpot ransoms or loot. A good mission pocket can get you easily 20-30 million in NPC loot drops for 30 minutes or so of work. The key is consistently finding good missions, and for that it is best to be mobile. If one mission hub is slow or dried up, move on to another. In this way you can usually haul in between 20-40 million isk/hour with only a couple of days investment in SP and a few million in ships. Compare this to a new player with equivalent skills running Level 2 missions making maybe like 2 million isk/hour.
                                                                         

The Dark Arts: Stalking the Mission Runner

Disclaimer - I make no claim to be an authority on this or any subject, rather I'm just a noob-at-heart documenting my experimentation with the Dark Arts of EVE Online and inviting you to share my journey. Commentary and advice will be appreciated.

So, since my last post I have created my alliance, built my corp a bit more, and had some successful PvP ops. Most of this has been funded from my own wallet up to this point, and the well is beginning to run dry. Reluctant to resort to carebearism, I've decided lately to go full pirate for awhile in an effort to raise some isk the fun way. This will probably be the first of a series of articles exploring my efforts and lessons learned.

The Target: Mission Runners

You all have seen these guys in local if you have spent any time in highsec. They have 5.0 security status and fly around solo in battleships, often blinged out with faction modules, and without any kind of point to trap you. Most of these people are completely antisocial, will not reply if you address them in local, and are never on comms with anybody. Even if they have corp-mates in local, they may not be in contact with them in any practical way. Obviously these fellows are juicy targets. Even if they won't pay ransom they may very well drop loot that more than pays for your ammo, to say the least. The trouble is - they hide behind the shield of CONCORD much of the time and have enough EHP that suicide ganking is a costly endeavor.

Habitat of the Mission Runner

Minor mission hubs with adjacent lowsec systems

The average mission runner lives in deep highsec. They can be located easily by using Dotlan. Choose a highsec region and filter the map to NPC kills. Large numbers of NPC kills in highsec usually come from either mission runners, and to a lesser extent from ice miners. When you locate a system with high numbers of NPC kills, click on it and on neighboring systems to figure out where the Level 4 Security Agents are located. To a lesser extent you may be interested in Level 3 agents if you are targeting battlecruisers. The ideal hunting grounds for you as a pirate will not be the biggest and best mission hubs, where there is more competition, but rather those a bit off the beaten path with moderate levels of activity and adjacent lowsec systems. Check the lowsec systems for both NPC kills and Ship/Pod kills. The higher the ratio of NPC kills to ship/pod kills the better.

Highsec Tactics
There are several tactics that I have heard of. In highsec systems you have basically three options.

1. Wardec mission running corporations. Ultimately this may be the most profitable but requires a significant investment in time and patience to pull it off.
2. Suicide ganks. Unfortunately, mission boats often have a significant tank. This may be profitable if you have staked out a target and ship scanned him, so that you know that he is carrying expensive faction or officer modules. The technique is simple - scan him down, plug his fit into EFT to figure out what kind of tank he has, assemble a fleet that has the DPS to take him out before CONCORD arrives, locate him in a sensitive position (like in the mission pocket), gank him and have a friend loot the field. Divide the spoils. I haven't tried this with mission runners yet, but it is an undeniably effective tactic when you know that the loot is likely to be worth the expense.
3. Bait the mission runner to attack you first. I've attempted this a few times without success, but I have heard of it being done. The idea is to scan down a battleship signature with combat scanner probes, get in a combat ship and warp into his mission pocket, then loot one of his wrecks so that you go flashy, and perhaps taunt him in local or a private convo to get him to shoot you. Then defeat him in combat, ask for a ransom and/or blow him up, loot the field and run away.

Lowsec Hunting
This has been my most successful tactic. Basically, you need to find a good lowsec system. Ideally it has no stations, nobody lives there, it isn't connected to the wider network of lowsec systems and there is no piracy activity there to speak of. And it is adjacent to a highsec system where a significant number of people run level 3 and 4 security missions.

The Mission runner may look ferocious,
but is a docile and foolish beast.

Once you have found a good system, get yourself a scanning alt. Mine flies a Probe with a Prototype Cloaking Device and combat scanner probes. Put him in your lowsec system, park his ship about 100km from the entry gate and cloak up. Then alt tab over to your main character and go about your business, just make sure that you and any friends who might want to come along stay within a jump or two of your hunting grounds. Form a fleet with anyone who is available to come and make your scanner alt the FC.

Once you are set up like this, just be patient. I keep the sound on for my alt so I can hear the gate flash if anybody jumps into my lowsec system. Eventually, a mission runner will show up, thinking he is safe to run his mission.

When he does, observe his ship type and the direction that he warps off heading to his mission pocket, Then quickly get your probes out and alert your fleet to get ready to jump in. Probe him down as quickly as you can and get your probes back in. I've found that most mission runners are blissfully unaware that there is such a thing as d-scan, so your probes probably won't alert them to danger. Sometimes they do, and he runs  away, and you just have to wait for the next one.

Once you have the signature, jump in with your fleet, have your alt fleet warp everybody to the mission runner and do your thing. I like to do this in cheap T1 frigates with lots of ammo in the cargohold. Get in close so that his guns can't track you, warp scramble him and shoot down his drones, then turn your guns on him and chew down his tank. Extract ransom and/or loot and run away.

Oh my, the tears...
The best part of all this is the reaction of the mission runners themselves. This is the main reason why I like to use T1 frigates for this, apart from their disposable nature and low cost. When you warp in on a battleship or battlecruiser and take him down with a handful of frigates (or even just one), it takes some time to get it done while you converse with your victim. These are long minutes of quality gameplay. The reaction typically starts alon g the lines of "WTF haha frigs," progresses to "F%#@ off kids," then transitions to "Please I don't have isk for ransom," and then to "HELP ANYBODY THEY"RE KILLING ME!" This is hilarious good fun for almost everybody involved. Mission runners almost never carry smartbombs, neuts, or points, so if you kill their drones quickly there is little to nothing that they can do to a frigate but watch you buzz around them like flies as you whittle their tank away. This also means that week old noobs can participate in this form of piracy almost as well as older characters.

The ISK
So far the isk hasn't been great. I'm still working out what the best value is for a ransom. My first battleships I've been asking for 200 million and then negotiating down as far as 125, but nobody has been paying. I think maybe I'll have to shoot lower, like 75-100 million. With BCs I've been asking 50 mil, but that's probably too much as well. The loot that I have been harvesting has been fair, 10 mil per wreck or so, but not enough to give decent isk/hour. I have hopes that I'll get a good jackpot officer drop or something, but it seems like setting relatively low ransoms is the best way to maximize profit. Perhaps I should leave it unsaid, but you will make more isk if you accept a ransom and blow the fellow up anyway (not that I would ever do such a thing, of course).

Good luck and fly dangerously.

WTF kind of alliance is ...

Join our aliiance.

So I haven't been entirely satisfied with the rate at which the movement has been growing. We have steadily grown up to about 16 members or so in a month of recruiting. This isn't bad for a start, but some are more active than others, and there are several timezones involved. The bottom line is that the local PvP activity is fairly intense, and where we are not an elite crew by any measure, if we are going to win many real victories we are going to need numbers on our side. Not huge mega-blob numbers necessarily  but I'd like to get to the point where I can call for a fleet and get 10 people or so to show up. That is the point at which I think the quality of gameplay will take a serious turn for the better for our little group.

It seems like the best way to get there is to be a part of an alliance. Since we started becoming active in Curse, I have been approached by several small alliances who have shown some interest in having the Revolutionary Front become a member corporation. I have been tempted to accept some of these offers in the interest of rapidly improving our opportunities for fleet action. The downside is that joining somebody else's alliance means sacrificing our own vision and our own autonomy to help somebody else achieve their goals. Sure, it would be the easiest path to EVE success, but I have never been good at doing things the easy way, when I can do them the right way.

Failscade Inevitable?

So I've decided to take the step of forming my own alliance. Then I'm going to see if I can attract some more small corporations who share my own views of the game to join. Essentially, rather than recruiting people one at a time, I'll be recruiting in fives and tens and fifteens. I'm not sure how well this will work out, but I think it is worth a shot. I'm thinking along the lines of going after the kinds of groups who don't really know what they are doing and lacking direction and purpose, then get them roaming with our fleets and suck them into the fold. Even week old corporations full of noobs who think they want to do industrial things may be fine, as I have found that if you give a new player a taste of blood and a sense that he is part of a movement he will quickly grow to understand what EVE is really all about.

Of course, this is all in the planning stages. The first thing I need to decide is what the new alliance will be called and what its ticker will be. The obvious thing would be to call it some variation of Revolutionary Front. Something like United Revolutionary Front or New Eden Revolutionary Front (NERF), or something related like Anarchists Union or Revolutionary Council. I can think of a hundred possible names like that, but I wasn't convinced that I had the most creative and memorable ideas. So I put it out there on several EVE forums that I was looking for suggestions for an alliance name, and hinted that there would probably be fabulous prizes if somebody gave me a name that I end up using. Here is some of what they came up with

Fluffed Sheep Alliance logo

Suggestions

Space Nerds in Revolt

Fluffed Sheep (BAAA.)

Sheep Fluffers (wtf?)

HELLO MY NAME IS (HELLO.)

Failscade Inevitable (FAIL. - you're going on the list, LanFear TyRaX)

Test Alliance Do Not Ignore

MARX (both alliance name and ticker)

REAL alliance please notice

Space intentionally left ganked

Twisted Technetium

Insert Alliance Name Here

Failboat Roamers

Old Hands Always Impress (OHAI)

Spaceship Hating Internet Thugs (SHIT)

Autocannons Anonymous

Singularity Solidarity Party

No Name Nullsec Nomads (NNNN)

Yeah, I'm definitely not satisfied yet. I need a name that will simultaneously terrify my enemies, be hilariously funny, and be instantly memorable for everyone that sees it. Bonus points if it also ties into the Revolutionary theme somehow. I invite you, internet people, to come up with something better.

Early Roams - Kamikaze Death

For the last two weeks I have been holding scheduled fleet ops on Friday evenings. So far the turnout has been pretty small (2-3 players) although the guys have been going out on casual, unscheduled roams every day of the week and getting fights as well. Because most of the guys are very new and have very low SP, I cooked up the most simple doctrine I could come up with, cheaply fit kamikaze-style frigates that can move fast, take out solo targets up to BCs, and suicidally pick a higher value target out of a fleet and attack it, relying on tank, low sig radius, and tank to survive just long enough to take it out. I've used these sorts of fleets to great effect in other corps, when I have had 5-10 members join in.

Unfortunately, so far we haven't had enough participation to really pull it off. With only 2 or 3 guys, and me the only one with any SP, we just haven't been able to be successful. I am going to keep taking these out, however, as I continue to recruit, as I suspect if we can just get a few more guys we will be pretty well off. I think I'll start encouraging the use of T1 fit destroyers to increase our DPS on the field with the crew we have. Here is a brief after action report on our first two scheduled ops.

Week 1 - Party-Pooped by Lame Falcon Pilot
For our first scheduled op we got 3 pilots to show up, 2 pretty new guys and myself. We got into our frigates and set out from our HQ looking for something to kill. A few jumps away we passed through HLW, a system where Northern Coalition. has set up camp, and played some cat and mouse games while they tried to catch us. They failed, and we decided to move on and look for less blobby targets.

A couple of jumps later we were sitting on a gate, with one other pilot in system, evidently in something cloaky, as we were unable to locate him on d-scan. That assumption was about to be proved correct. As we orbited the gate, a Dramiel jumped into us. He was from a different alliance than the other guy in system, so I crossed my fingers that they weren't related and ordered the attack. A dram seemed like a perfect target for our pretty green crew of 2 Merlins and a Rifter.

Scram, webs, and guns were fired up and cycling, the Dram was stuck in blaster range and going down fast when another white box popped up on the overview, and quickly became a yellow, then a red box. The other guy in local turned out to be flying a Falcon, who decloaked on top of us, jammed us, and took us out as the Dramiel escaped in low structure.

Week 2 - Hawk on Bubble
This week's scheduled roam took us out of Curse, into the Great Wildlands, and into Scalding Pass. There were only 2 of us available at the scheduled time, a few more had said they could come later, but I decided the two of us could head out anyway, and then maybe do another roam when more people were available. I was flying a Breacher, a newly rebalanced ship that I was playing with. My comrade was in a Rifter.

Anyway, we spent a little time in Scalding Pass dodging some alliance war-type blobs, while we poked around looking for targets and generally making a loop back around to Curse. Some more guys logged on and said they wanted to join us, so we began making best speed back to our home system. On the way back, a poorly planned warp landed us in a bubble and right on top of a solo Hawk. This was the kind of fight I would have loved to take with 2 more guys with us, but with just the 2 of us prospects were bleak.

I gave my comrade notice that we were pretty much fucked and might as well go down in a blaze of glory, then overheated everything and engaged. We managed to dig pretty deep in his shields, but the end result was pretty much a foregone conclusion. Assault frigs tear through T1 frigs as a general rule. My fleetmate managed to get his pod out, but I was stuck in the bubble and got an express ride home.

Opening Chapter - Curse

A few weeks have gone by since I declared war on the universe, so I thought I'd fill you in on how things have been developing. After creating the corporation Revolutionary Front, I had my combat alt Kalim Dabo scout around in NPC nullsec for a suitable home for us. It was a bit of a toss-up between Syndicate and Curse as a region. The recent departure of Agony Unleashed and Rote Kappelle have left something of a power gap in Syndicate lately, with a lot of smaller alliances moving in to fill the void, and tactically significant stations temporarily vacant. Curse, by comparison, has been pretty hot, with the usual smaller alliances there and recent deployments by significant nullsec players like -A- and NC.

In the end I decided on LJ-YSW in Curse as a home base. It is a relatively quiet system with cloning facilities pinched in between systems held by Flying Dangerous. and DarkSide. (I refuse to put a period after my corp name on general principles.)

Having decided on a base, I started recruitment efforts. Pretty soon we had our first member, a guy named Durzo, who came right out to LJ and within hours had scored the first kill for the Revolution. It was some poor jackoff in a Velator, passing through the system. A fitting way to begin a new killboard, with the rookie ships. Actually, when he scored the kill I didn't yet have a killboard set up, so that was my next project.

We recruited a half-dozen or so foolish guinea pigs  brave souls within the first couple of days, then I was unexpectedly cut off from internet service for about a week and a half due to a move in real life, and they were left to their own devices. When I returned, I found that they had recruited a few more comrades who were waiting for me to approve their apps. Among them was DT, a veteran player and an old pro PvPer with almost 2000 kills to his name. Very soon our killboard started looking much less bleak.

Once I was again able to log in regularly, we began to recruit some more new guys. We lost a few to attrition, but that is to be expected, as we don't yet have much in the way of resources or support fro our new members. We are making fast progress, though. We now have a killboard, forums, voice comms (Ventrilo), a limited ship replacement program, and regularly scheduled fleet ops. As we build our numbers, more good things will come.

Day 1 of the Revolution

I started playing EVE in the spring of 2011. It was the first MMO I ever played, and sucked me in like no video game ever has. Initially I was overwhelmed a bit by the enormity and complexity of the game. I tried my hand at mining, hauling, exploration, and other pursuits in high security space, never really finding my niche. I was can-flipped in a belt in my noob-system and tried to come back and kill the offender, and got my first harsh dose of PvP when he handily popped my failfit Thrasher with his Punisher.

In those early days I joined EVE University, and slowly began to make a little sense of the mad sandbox. It all washed over me, month by month. The great empires carving up nullsec between themselves, blueing everyone who poses a threat to themselves, and destroying their smaller, weaker rivals. The market-hub griefers who terrorize new players, then dock up and hide at the first sign of danger to themselves. The cowards who hide in highsec behind the shield of CONCORD, and try to convice you that nullsec, lowsec, and wormholes are deathtraps where only evil people live, and only foolish people visit.

Each day that I roamed the stars of New Eden, the hate grew a little more inside of me. This galaxy was is in need of change. Not CCP driven change to the game content, but player-driven change. A new force needs to be established. But how? And who will drive this change? I thought that surely it would be beyond any one player at this stage in the evolution of the game to step up and significantly disrupt the status quo. I struggled with the question of whether I would even want to take up the challenge. Wouldn't I rather just spend all my days in EVE minding my own business, roaming around looking for fights? The nay-sayers had even affected me, after every lesson I had learned in my time here. Lesson #1 that every new player in EVE should be taught is that anyone who says,"You can't..." or "You shouldn't..." is either a coward or an idiot.

I felt that I needed to learn more before I made my move. So I created a legion of alts and sent them to many different corners of New Eden, to gather information and learn the game. I still have more to learn about many things, I still don't really know what I am doing, but the shadow of a plan has begun to form in my mind. I expect it to take years and years to get where I want to be, to where the entire universe has been converted to yellow triangles, and I fly alone through the ashes until CCP declares EVE is irrevocably broken and destroyed, and Haedonism Bot is the winner.

So today, I have hoisted the flag of war. I, Haedonism Bot, am the one and only member of the new Revolutionary Front. Soon I will invite some of my alts in to lead fleets and help with early logistics. First order of business - get friends. If I am going to stand any chance of being successful, I will need to recruit a large number of people. My thinking is to open recruiting wide, lure some of my friends from other corporations in to form an inner circle, and use a massive propaganda campaign to attract members new and old. At first I expect to take almost anyone who wants to join, train the new guys to PvP, and separate the wheat from the chaff as we go along. The main priority is just to get a large number of bodies in spaceships, and get them out there killing people for the glory of the revolution.