Ironfleet Towing And Salvage

Jim here. As a Minmatar with Caldari loyalties (well, not really; my only loyalty is to Ironfleet, but I live in Caldari space and consider it my home) I was amused this morning to see this thread in which various butthurt-sounding 0.0 alliance types scoffed at the Caldari militia for having tangled with the Red Alliance. Supposedly they are a bunch of nasty 0.0 types, but I never heard of them until militia FC Boromor pounded three of their carriers into space scrap. Anyway, the thread quickly filled with prophecies of doom to befall the Caldari militia, and especially with warnings that we need to quickly learn all the 0.0 politics so that we don’t “aggress” alliance operations by our very presence in “their” low-sec systems.

I don’t got much truck with politics, so I posted this:

Hi, I’m Jim Bridger. I’m an empire guy. I don’t know squat about alliance politics or “the rules”. Nor care.

After a few days in FW it’s clear to me that popular FW fleet commanders are going to wield the power (inside their area of operations) of old-fashioned barbarian kings. People like me will flock to their banners so long as they are winning and making the fleet operations fun. And we pretty much will follow them anywhere, and shoot at whatever they tell us, so long as it stays fun.

Last night FC Boromir (not sure about spelling so I gave him the heroic one) screwed up and told us all to jump through a gate that turned out to lead into Gallente highsec. We jumped. (This “we jumped” being the key information in this story.)

The FC cursed, apologized, organized our withdrawal under Gallente faction navy fire, stood at the gate tanking the Navy until he had all his peeps out that were getting out, and promised to take care of the (astonishingly few) casualties. He’s an instant legend for taking down the RA carriers, he will have a hundred-man blob to play with any night he cares to say “x up” in Nourv local. We, the newbs of the Caldari militia, will follow him anywhere and shoot what he tells us. We won’t care about the politics, because we’ve got nothing to lose and because it’s fun.

There will be other FCs like him. They will be accountable to no one but the people in their blob. Their power will ebb and flow, but the good ones will always have a fleet. And the more famous they are, the more expensive will be the ships people will be willing to risk under their command. I’ve been bringing T1 thrashers because that’s what I can afford to lose forever. But my effectiveness has been low. I’m starting to think, what can I bring that this FC needs and will use?

My advice for the alliance diplomats? Identify the popular FCs and bribe them, or reach an accomodation. Boromir would (I’m just guessing) love to have a thousand fitted t1 cruisers sitting in a hangar in Nourv — the alliance who delivered that would get a lot of consideration from him during FW operations, I’m guessing.

I was skeptical about FW, but the more I see of it, the more delighted I get. CCP has upset the applecart in lowsec, but done it in a way that leaves lots of room for delightful chaos, astonishing events, and epic fun.

The post got a couple of positive comments, but I was really surprised by the convo I got in game. A benefactor hailed me, complimented the post, asked a bit about my ship preferences and skills, then told me he was “cooking up” a large number of Thrashers for me, to be delivered tomorrow. He also deposited more than sufficient ISK into my wallet for me to fit them. So it looks like I won’t need to be scrounging the Ironfleet hangars quite so hard!

I thanked him nicely and promised to explode all of those thrashers in Caldari service. Which, I expect, I shall — although I did join three different fleets for sweeps through Gallente space today without losing a ship. No killmails either, but I did put carbonized lead into several expensive enemies, and earn some victory points in Minor Facilities also.

Jim Bridger here. By popular demand of the corp minions, Marlenus signed Ironfleet Towing And Salvage up for factional warfare, on the side of the Caldari (my CEO he may be, but he’s still a fascist bastard and slaver-lover, what can ya do?)

He’s not much inclined to play with the new FW stuff — not enough rewards, and he does too much hauling into all four empires to want perma faction loss — but he was willing, at least temporarily, to put the corp on a war footing and let slip the dogs of war (woof). He was even kind enough to stock the Ironfleet hangars with a bottomless pile of frigates and a round half-dozen Thrashers for me. There must be twenty sets of destroyer guns in cheap second-best-named flavors, and they’d all melt down trying to fire the enormous cans full of ammo he’s stockpiled. Turns out the Old Man is a paranoid sumbitch who doesn’t believe in shopping or hauling when there’s a war on, y’know? So, war material we got.

I myself have a ton of destroyer skills, but damn little actual PvP experience. So faction warfare seems like a nice cheap way to get some.

Logged in this morning, found myself at the edge of the war zone, checked my militia office, set my destination for a contested system. Off I went.

The militia chat was full of noise about a huge furball in Tama, but I was on the wrong side, with an enemy gate camp between me and the main fleet. So I went to this other contested system, or tried to.

Along the way, I found a contested system (one of ours) that had nobody in it but me, so I went to the beacon and captured it for the Caldari. Got some militia faction for my boring ten minutes of orbiting, and the system stopped being contested.

Found a nice wrecked Ferox (one of ours) with several thousand Tech II heavy missiles in it, and a best named warp disruptor; so I salvaged those, and docked them in the next system I came to that had a station.

Long story short, finally got to the system they said was contested back at the militia office. Their intel was old by the time I got there; it was firmly in Gallente hands and there were, oh, about a bazillion red stars in local chat. I therefore resolved to return whence I cameth.

Jumped through gate out of death stars central. While aligning for next warp, a red star in a newbie ship came warping in and stopped, 15km from gate. Bait, or noob?

Firing all guns!

Bait ship popped before all guns were activated. And then things went to shit.

I never really saw what hit me or where they came from; I think an enemy fleet must have followed me through the gate while I was sniffing the bait. All I know is, the sky filled with flashy reds and hungry drones, I exploded, my pod exploded, and it was all over. Free pwny ride for Mr. Bridger.

I just checked, there were ten different Gallente Federation scums in on my kill. But only six of them contributed to my pod-squishing.

It was overkill so bad it was funny, and fun as well. I never expected to survive; I don’t know what I’m doing in PvP, but I know enough to know that roaming around alone in a destroyer in lowsec is not survivable, even without hostile militia fleets setting traps. I just wanted to see the elephant. And boy, did I!

So I woke up in my clone bay … at the noob station of my birth, deep in (enemy) Minmitar space. Oops, should have moved the clone!

Go to undock. “It’s scum like you who’ve ruined your own lands, you’ll not ruin mine!” (Not a perfect quote, but you get the idea.) By the time I got control of my newbship after it squirted free of the station, it was being pounded by the Minnie faction navy. I went to kindergarten with those boys, but I guess they have their orders.

By the time my newbship made warp, I was into armor. From there it was a hot and hostile set of warps back to “friendly” territory, but nobody shot again before I could warp.

When I finally hit friendly territory, I did find an enemy newbship wreck and an enemy pod, drifting where the ship got blasted on jump-in. Was the pod pilot AFK? One way to find out!

Turns out a civilian gun only does two or three points of damage per shot, to a pod, and apparently the pod pilot was not far from his keyboard, because he warped out after about a dozen shots.

So now I’m back in the Ironfleet hangar, my clone is moved into the local clonevats, and I’m kicking the heat dissipation vanes on all these used Thrashers Marlenus bought, trying to decide which one gets blown up next.

Hi, this was posted yesterday in the official forums, but very oddly only in the Missions And Explorations channel — there were no patch notes or other public notices, meaning that if you are a salvager but not a mission runner, you might never have heard about it. Posted by GM Ytterbium:

Greetings,

This is caution for all players currently engaged in mission running activities. The wreck ownership mechanism has recently been changed, and as such will not belong to the character doing most damage to the NPC anymore, but to the pilot who first accepted the mission.

The EVE Online Customer Support Team advises extra wariness when doing missions in a fleet with members, as doing any kind of damage to a wreck not belonging to your corporation will result in CONCORD intervention. Since this remains within normal game-play, Game Masters will remain of little assistance regarding vessels lost in such a fashion.

Also, this change has nothing to do with salvaging rights themselves as they remain untouched. Players are still completely free to salvage other pilot wrecks at will, no matter if they belong to the same corporation or not and doing so is not considered as an exploit.

Many thanks for your understanding,

Best regards,
Senior GM Ytterbium
EVE Customer Support Team

If I’m understanding this properly, it protects mission runners from that certain form of interference where someone probes down their mission, then kills and loots the mission mobs — which can, in some missions, make the mission impossible to complete. It could still happen, now, but at least the mission runner would have shooty recourse.

It shouldn’t affect Ironfleet at all, as we have never done this — we almost never shoot at wrecks, so we don’t much care who owns them, and I don’t think we’ve ever tried to kill a mission-loot bearing mob before the mission runner does. It wouldn’t be against corporate policy — salvage is salvage, and sometimes you have to shoot it first so it doesn’t twitch while the salvagers are running — but for me personally, the difficulty seems to outweigh the profit, especially as the stuff is usually worthless to anybody but the mission runner. It would really need to be some carrot-juice drinking Enemy of Ironfleet before it would be worth the bother — and in that case, the wreck ownership won’t matter.

Of greatest interest to Ironfleet is the reiteration of CCP’s salvage policy:

“Players are still completely free to salvage other pilot wrecks at will, no matter if they belong to the same corporation or not and doing so is not considered as an exploit.”

I just posted this to Features And Ideas Discussion; please comment there, for the benefit of the Devs, if you have any substantive feedback on the idea.

As a salvager, it bothers me that I can see wrecks on the directional scanner that there’s no practical way to get to before they expire. That’s just wasted goodies.

We can’t currently probe for wrecks, presumably because it would tip the balance too much in the controversial matter of probing for mission runners. Like everybody, I have my opinions on where that balance should lie, but this suggestion is carefully crafted to avoid touching on that controversy.

A mission runner may, or may not, plan or desire to salvage his wrecks, or to have someone else do so.

But, once he leaves the mission space, he’s usually either coming right back with his salvage vessel, or he’s abandoning the wrecks — far more often the latter, in my experience.

So, why not add one or more probes that can probe for wrecks only, with the following very specific feature: scan signatures of any kind interfere with it, such that it cannot find any wrecks that are within, say, 10,000km of any ship. That would let dedicated salvagers probe down “abandoned” wrecks, without making mission runners any more or less vulnerable to probing. (You might need to adjust that distance to 20k km or 50k km to account for multi-pocket missions, if you need to guarantee the lack of impact on mission runners. Or you could just have wrecks in deadspace be “too hard to find” — they’ll still be findable if the mission runner turns in the mission without salvaging them.)

Whaddya think, a net benefit to the game without goring anybody’s ox?

During last winter’s war, I spend so much time in my Manticore stealth bombers that my pod goo was starting to smell like ass. It was bad.

But it was also great. I became convinced of what I had formerly suspected, which is that the stealth bomber is an awesome ship to use when you’re outnumbered and outgunned, but still want to take the fight to your enemy. The bomber is a relatively cheap ship that lets you be where you want to be even when surrounded by enemies, and lets you bring the pain to the place where it will hurt worst.

I also confirmed my then-suspicion that the conventional wisdom for bomber fitting was wrong, at least when you’re using them the way I like to use them. Everybody seems to want to fit sensor dampeners on them, then try to use the damps to stay alive at knife-fight ranges, in close to your enemy fighting at ranges where’s he’s comfortable and confident about killing you, and you have to prove he’s mistaken.

I say, screw that. Why not use the bomber’s strengths, which are range and damage? You won’t kill all that much working solo — face it, you won’t kill anybody who doesn’t screw up, fail to stay alert, or want to die — but screwups in EVE are not unheard of. And besides, there’s a lot of “win” to be had in denying the field of battle to your enemy. Making him flee can be a victory.

Anyway, I say all this by way of introduction to some posts I just found by Logan Galactor on the official forums. (post, post, post, post) Here’s the start of what he has to say, and I’m quoting it here because I think it’s an important strategic document on the use of my much-favored bombers:

Hey everyone. I’m pretty much an exclusive manticore pilot. All I’m ever doing is clearing belts out with them to mine in 0.0, or hunting enemy frigates. I’ve spent a LOT of time ****ing around with the EVE fitting tool, exploring every option of the versatile stealth bomber class (with the exception of the broken nemesis). I’ve come up with some unorthodox and hilarious setups that up the WTF factor of the manticore significantly when flown right. Thus, much to the pleasure of my 0.0 enemies I’m sure, I will submit to you my favorite working setups.

First off a bit of a side note. These setups are meant for surprise solo ganking of idiots, long-range support in fleet battles and stealth bomber ops in groups against victims or stationary targets. I don’t understand what else you would use a missile manticore for other than those things. You should not solo pvp a cruiser at 70km in a manticore. It is generally a bad idea. That being said, The setups hardly ever use a dampener as a countermeasure because they do not need one. You SHOULD NOT be taking on cruisers solo at less than 100 meters anyways unless you’re a real idiot, and if you’re taking them on in a decent group at range you will not be primary anyways so there is no real need for these taxing modules. You do not need a dampener on battleships because you will not be fighting them solo or you will not be their primary in a fleet battle. You do not need a dampener on interceptors because you will be killing them before they’re in weapon range and webbing them or escaping rather than trying to damp such a small range and a fast targetter and prevent the inevitable lock. The nerf to the dampeners in trinity made them less than half as effective as before, and you’ll notice this as you’re getting targeted and hit much faster at the sub-100km ranges you really shouldn’t be uncloaked at anyhow if the odds are against you.

In solo work, the enemy won’t die if he doesn’t want to or isn’t stupid, whether you’re at 20 or 200km. Cruise missiles are SLOW, and manticores can’t tank. In an ideal situation, you never have to target paint or sensor dampen much because you’re far over their range. In a situation that is not ideal, you’re warping away or sitting in a pod as soon as your cycle breaks because you pilot a glass-cannon of a ship. People who warp in at 40-80km using duel dampening setups and fail miserably and then complain that manticores suck have not adapted to the fact that sensor dampeners are pretty useless after the trinity patch; You have half the pre-trinity buffer range now, so this guide attempts to adapt and compensate.

If you’re loosing bombers at any point except for terribly-ranged warp-ins, warping into bubblecamps, or docking/undocking from stations, ur doing it wrong and should fly with a friendly veteran for a bit (not that I claim to be one!).

Also, no T2 launchers here. You can get a huge DPS bonus with cruise specialization V and T2 launchers based on rate of fire, but seeing that we’re mainly hunting frigates and doing general versatile work, I’m not going to include them in the setups because they are not practical to the midslot requirements and require a retarted amount of skill and fitting to do anything.

Lastly, people are going to say stuff like: Well that’s dumb, people are just going to escape or something like that. Well, that’s a given. Go fly a falcon or a curse or something. This is about instapopping*****y interceptor pilots and laying down serious damage while you laugh your ass off from 200km away. Naturally, the setups have some major tactical significance in certain areas, like protecting sniper battleships from a cruiser rush or ambushing in groups with aid of a tackle. But please don’t insult my setups if you’re not of the opinion that stealth bombers are the ultimate LULZcrafts of the EVE world, because that’s what these ships and setups are all about.

Needless to say, I agree, even though I don’t have a tiny fraction of the experience Logan sounds like he has. I’m posting his actual suggested fittings (with extensive commentary) after the jump, so I’ll be able to find them when I need them. Thanks, Logan!

(more…)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’m not a combat pilot.

If I’m in a fight, either (1) I screwed up and I’m trying to leave, or (2) I’m pretty sure I’m going to win, meaning, I’m pretty sure my ship can gank the other guy’s ship and be gone before the backup arrives. I’m not there for honor, glory, adrenaline, or “fair fights”. Either I think the guy’s ship will drop some salvage, or I think killing him will be to the political advantage of Ironfleet.

I like the way this EVE University director makes a similar point, howbeit he’s talking about having numbers on his side rather than (in my case) careful use of the rock-scissors-paper mechanics:

One war target took exception to my Scorpion, suggesting that I wasn’t playing “fairly”.

Let’s get this straight. The “fair” comes once a year, in the fall & features corny dogs & caramel apples. If I’m in a “fair” fight, then I’ve made a mistake. I want every engagement to be a 50 vs 1 insta-pop. CCP says that Eve features non-consensual combat. Fine. Those that would stoop to war dec’ing a training corp have no moral ground to cry for “fair” fights. They deliberately sought un-”fair” fights from the outset and cry out for “fair”-ness only when they are on the short end of the stick.

When you war dec the Uni, you must expect to fight overwhelming fleets of small ships piloted by the most bloodthirsty nOOb’s ever seen, backed by loads of electronic warfare and a few specialized big ships flown by the Uni’s most experienced pilots. Either that, or you must expect to stay docked.

Repeat after me, the fair comes once a year!

I spent much of yesterday visiting with an old and dear friend I’ve known since our college days. I played my first-ever game of Dungeons and Dragons with him, just to give you an idea, and we’ve enjoyed many of the same computer games over the years. He’s a responsible fellow these days, pursuing a respectable literary trade, and he takes care to avoid MMORPGs in the manner (he says) of an alcoholic who avoids taking his first drink of a promising new intoxicant.

So anyway, when he made inquiries about what I’ve been doing lately, the subject of Ironfleet and its recent EVE wars came up. And so I spent much time and enthusiasm (far more than was polite, I’m sure!) telling him all about it.

Today I get an email from him. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Sing, muse, of flaring wrath among the stars,
Hot passions in the dark and empty cold
Where vacuum waits with endless appetite
For any scrap that war will toss away.
In Ahynada Vryder’s Iteron died,
Flash-frozen wealth tumbling in stellar winds,
Its alloys scattered, its weapons free
For scavengers who scent the kill
And scan the dust for broken treasure.
Torpedo Ted had won a golden prize,
Had chased it from the Isaziwa belts
To Oiniken in his tiny Kestrel.
Rockets only, ancient rockets, fired
And fired again, as Torpedo Ted
Pursued his giant prey into Ahynada,
Rockets racing through the void, rockets piercing
Into the helpless, silent Iteron,
Which bleeds its oxygen into the night
Until the last triumphant, deadly flare
Seeds the void with blood-stained plunder.
Vryder lived to see the ship explode,
His tumbling pod a tiny hope of life
Against the infinite and empty night,
But he had mocked his enemies too much
And so the rockets came, and all was still.
Why came the Iteron to die
Unsuspecting in Ahynada?
Fleeing war, AC-ME sought to move
Away from Isaziwa, home to battle.
They packed their shining ships with wealth of worlds,
Marvels of design, improved with life after life
Of human genius, microscopic circuits
Wiser than prophets, and alloys stronger
Than ancient steel, and arms Hephaestos
Never saw as he shaped the mirror shield
Of all-conquering Achilles.
Ores too they brought, ready for the shaping
Into yet more marvels, and all they loaded
Into their ships and left for Rairomon,
Leaving Isaziwa a prey for war.
There lurked the patient Iron Fleet,
The shadow ships, that sought unguarded prizes,
Salvaging what others did not think was lost,
Jackal–like, who never challenged lions,
But whom the lions could not chase away.
There was wrathful Chebri, war’s beginner.
Unwitting tyrants are the worst of all,
For they will sacrifice not just themselves
But all around them. In righteous rage,
Believing they defend a universal law
That is nothing more than their own wills,
They bloodily impose their private dreams
Upon the world, and with the best intentions
They crush dissent for the cause of freedom.
The universe may freely give its wealth:
Its ores lie open, free to all who mine
The asteroids, but we are not so free.
Through years of guns and blood we carve out laws
To turn the open ore to private wealth.
But yet the best of human laws are gray.
If labor makes the right of ownership,
Does ore belong to those who carve it free
Or those who ship it home? The Iron Fleet
For years has wrenched a living from the void
Salvaging, and says that space-cold ore is free,
Unbound by mere intent of later claim.
Marlenus knows the letter of the law
And his Iron Fleet brings him wealth
And keeps the space-lanes clear of salvage.
But miners counting cans of wealth-to-be
When their haulers come, until the salvage
Claims their dreams and leaves their labor empty
Curse the Iron Fleet, and Chebri swore
That missiles should mend what law could not,
And AC-ME’s claim to private wealth extracted
From the public space should brook no rival.
There was no place for Iron Fleet in Chebri’s
Dreams, and so she armed for sudden war.
War she wanted, abrupt, bloody and bold,
Crisp combat and quick conquest, but
Space is too deep to force a single battle.
Though AC-ME and INDY besieged the Iron Fleet,
The ships slipped away, cloaked and concealed,
Lurking in the star-lanes silently,
Waiting for the moments the guard went down,
Then striking, turning, vanishing again.
Here Aeternus Kahn killed the Iron Mistress,
There Garrik lost a lonely mining barge,
As patient, silent war lurks in shadows,
Until in Ahynada the rockets rip open
Boastful Vryder’s dying Iteron.
Now come negotiations, and now comes peace,
If peace it is. Anger does not end,
When legal war is allowed to lapse,
The hope of wealth will lure ships back to Isaziwa,
To mine and salvage, to claim what is free.
The ore remains, unbleeding, while all around
The ships will fight and die and come again.
Marlenus and Torpedo Ted have won their names,
Vryder and Aeternus Kahn, and while this war
Is spoken of, the Kestrel’s kill is famous.
But in the cold infinity of space, more war
Will come, more names, more kills, more tumbling ruin.

You know you’re making progress in EVE when people pop up boasting of having killed you. People, I should be clear, who haven’t actually killed me.

I was checking Ironfleet.com’s incoming links when I found this forum discussion. A nice link to a recent blog post got this response:

hahah….bill….do you know that Marlenus guy?

i popped on of his ships a while ago when he was trying to jet can ‘salvage’ from my corps.

it was the single most enjoyable experience i have had in an mmo :smile:

Kitted up an osprey for ‘mining’….had only one mining laser, the rest was combat stuff….warp scramble and a silent targeter….it was awesome! he didnt see it coming

There’s only one problem with this story: it almost certainly didn’t happen. Nice story, though.

Memories can be bad, so it’s theoretically possible I’m mistaken, that I’ve forgotten something that happened when I was still a noob. I do remember losing a Badger Mark I to a mining barge this way, back in the day, when I first discovered that warp scramblers existed in the game. After that, I was careful; paranoid even. And I’m pretty sure it never happened again.

I’ve checked my killmails going back to 2006.05.29 — there’s been no ship loss as described during the last nineteen and a half months. So if it did happened, it happened when I was less than six weeks old.

(That date — when I was six weeks old — was the date I lost my first cruiser, got podded for the first time, and learned that saving killmails is important. My revenge on Swiftness and Omae Gaw’d hasn’t ripened … yet.)

So … killmail or shut the fuck up?

It’s not that I resent the story — as described, that’s an honorable way for a jetcan salvager to die. It’s just that I’m proud of never falling for that particular trick. You can count the number of lasers an Osprey is firing, and if they’ve only got one, that’s kind of a red flag. In my pre-Crane days, I always used lots of stabs in the low slots of my ore-hauling ships, and I learned to time the grab so that I was out before anybody could get a lock. I used to love hauling repeated loads out from under the guns of a mining battleship.

I’m pretty good at this.

I’ll warn you all in advance, this post isn’t particularly entertaining. You may just want to skip it.

This blog serves several purposes for Ironfleet. Entertainment of the audience is surely one of them, but it’s only one.

Obviously it’s useful to have a propaganda arm where we can spin the Ironfleet side of the story and control the dialog — I expect and assume that goal is obvious to everyone. I aim for truth, because truth is persuasive, but obviously it’s truth the way we see things — for objective reporting, buy a newspaper. (Er, on second thought, good luck with that.)

Another thing I use the blog for, is to serve as a prosthetic memory. Months later, these accounts help refresh my memory of personalities and events. That’s saved my butt several times now.

Related to that, the blog tends to fix ephemeral behavior in amber, preserving and displaying it for history. So much of what we do in EVE is fleeting, and gone as soon as the screen changes. When my enemies behave in ways that do them no credit, it strikes me as a worthy project to document that here, in their own words, where the search engines (and their next set of enemies) can find it forever. To me, someone who treasures words, that seems a far better revenge than blowing up yet another soon-forgotten virtual spaceship.

And that, my friends, is why I’m bothering to reproduce the evemails that follow. In them, Chebri seems almost to plead for trust, demanding that she be believed because (she says) her word is good. And then, in bitter irony of which she seems totally unaware, she tries to justify failing to extend that same courtesy to others (namely me and my corpmates). She knows she’s truthful so we should believe her, but if we tell the truth the way we understand it, she disagrees so we must be liars. It’s like she lives in a black and white world in which she, and only she, can know the one truth. She’s obviously never heard of the parable of the blind men and the elephant:

Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, ‘Come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind… and show them an elephant.’ ‘Very good, sire,’ replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, ‘Here is an elephant,’ and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back, tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.

“When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, ‘Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?’

“Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, ‘Sire, an elephant is like a pot.’ And the men who had observed the ear replied, ‘An elephant is like a winnowing basket.’ Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.

“Then they began to quarrel, shouting, ‘Yes it is!’ ‘No, it is not!’ ‘An elephant is not that!’ ‘Yes, it’s like that!’ and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.

Toward the end of the EVEmails that follow, the exchange bogs down in specifics, and gets very repetitive of the same factual disputes that have been hashed to death already in the comments on this blog. If you care enough and read that far (I don’t recommend it) you’ll see that Chebril still can’t seem to distinguish between facts (did an event happen?) and semantics (what the undisputed event should be called, how it should be characterized, what it should be named).

——————–
Marlenus,

Two weeks and neither of us has lost a ship to the other. Good match! I enjoyed the challenge.

Shame you involved ACME though. They really never knew about it until it was started. They did eve mail me intel from time to time but for the most part I used my own locate agents.

I enjoyed the creativity of your blog and ‘role play’ of your character which is what drew me to you. However, when it became apparent that you were blurring fact and fiction to the point that it affected other players, I lost respect for your writing.

ciao

Chebri

——————–
Hey, got your mail yesterday, but was just wondering whether all that past tense was intended to indicate that you were going to let the war lapse.

As for the rest, I’m not too concerned. Your respect for my literary talents isn’t exactly my top gaming priority, and your concern about ‘fiction” became hilarious to me when you kept labeling my honest opinions and intel estimates as lies and fiction. I DO thank you for the implied threat of a lawsuit, though — that was genuinely the most entertaining communication I’ve ever gotten in EVE.

See you in the spaceways, if one of us is unlucky –

Marlenus

——————–
Your twisted perception never ceases to amaze me. I say apple…you say orange and so it goes.

Chebri

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At least I can tell when I’m in Jita — TorpedoTed still swears he saw you in local, and I know the man personally, he’s very truthful.

– Marlenus

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I swear, on my great grandmother’s grave (very personal here) that I never jumped the gate into Jita. There are a lot of pilots in Jita and I can see someone getting confused between red stars and red skull n crossbones.

I have been completely honest with all players in game and I hate to be accused of having done something (like get backing from ACME, etc.) that I haven’t done. Every time I tried to get the facts straight talking to you you twisted my words. Frustrating.

And yeah I figure two weeks with no points on either side is a draw.

Chebri

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With an equal level of sincerity and honesty, and leaving all gaming posture aside, I tell you that (a) that’s what he told me, and (b) that’s what he believes. Of course, he could be mistaken.

When I first reported this, you IMMEDIATELY called it a lie. It wasn’t. It’s a true account of the data I have.

Don’t you see the irony in you expecting to be taken at your word, while shouting “LIAR’ at others?

You don’t seem to comprehend that other people see the world differently than you do. You don’t seem to understand that it’s possible for two people to look at the same data and reach different, HONESTLY different, conclusions.

I’ll send another email about the gaming matters. This is a different topic entirely.

– Marlenus

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On the contrary. I do know that two people can observe a scene and have two different perceptions of what happened. However, there are also facts to be considered that are not subject to perception.

Fact (game logs to support) I never jumped to Jita.
Fact (game logs to support) I never got funding or support otherwise from ACME
Fact (game mechanics) ore theft is theft – not salvage

You toss accusations around without bothering to address the facts. That’s what I don’t have an appreciation for. Add to that the perception that others have that you seem to enjoy making miner’s lives miserable by stealing from them and yeah…I think you’re a lousy person. You enjoy hurting others. I have no respect for that.

Chebri

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OK, back in gaming mode.

You do know I saw you fleeted up with Sparkiec the first day of our war, and you were using him as a warp-to at a non-standard place outside my station, right? That’s support. I saw it with my own eyes. That’s backing. For that reason alone — and it’s only one of my many examples — I simply don’t believe your claims to have been acting alone. I saw it with my own eyes. Why should I believe otherwise?

And that has colored my willingness to believe other things you’ve said.

Without any desire to give offense, the credibility you want to have with me, is not present.

As for the draw, I agree — I’ve made no effort to hunt you, and you have failed to catch me. I never wanted war with you, remember? You could cancel it any time.

– Marlenus

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As Cordus said on your blog, can you blame them for not being willing to provide information when you’ve stolen so much from their players? A few players helped from time to time. The CEO and directors had no idea what was going on until it had already happened. So you blame an entire alliance for the action of two players.

I don’t seek credibility with you. LOL I gave up on that. I was just trying to end the shooting amicably. I still have my credibility with people who matter.

Your war with ACME and their alliance is between you and them. I’ve no say in it as they’ve had no say in mine with you. I’ve asked the alliance leader if I was causing them problems and her reply was “do what you want – Ironfleet is just a blip on our screen.” LOL

Chebri

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all this and I’m still not clear — do you plan to end the shooting, or not?

– Marlenus

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Doesn’t really matter what I say at this point, does it? I mean, you’re just going to assume that the opposite is true. Assumptions can be such a bitch. I’ll just let the facts speak for themselves.

LOL

Chebri

There’s an old farmer’s saying that goes “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It just wastes your time, and annoys the pig.”

That’s how I feel about trying to talk about truth with Chebri. Note how it’s a “fact” if she saw it, but it’s a lie if me and mine saw it (TorpedoTed saw her face icon in Jita local. He just did.) She hates to be accused of doing something she says she hasn’t done (“like get backing from AC-ME”) but doesn’t mind accusing others of lying when they haven’t. Then when she admits she did do what she said she didn’t do (“A few players helped from time to time”) she tries to redefine “get backing” by saying “I never got funding”. Truth is a slippery thing indeed in her hands, and in classic human fashion she’s quick to accuse others of her own sins: “You toss accusations around without bothering to address the facts.”

Friends, I have addressed the facts. I have addressed them until I was blue in the face. I had to nail them down and chain them up, they were so tired of being addressed they were trying to sneak away for beer. (Yeah, they saw that’s where the audience went, and they were jealous.)

A waste of time for sure, and I apologize for boring you with it. But if this blog post saves just one person, ever, from making the mistake of trying to discuss truth with Chebri, it will have been worth my time.

And meanwhile, Chebri’s war is now in its third week. So what was all that “enjoyed the challenge” and “I figure [it's] a draw” and “I was just trying to end the shooting amicably” stuff for? Unless I’ve counted my dates wrong, she paid her war bill before we started talking last night. I guess it’s more truth, Chebri style.

An anonymous commenter suggested (albeit with a question mark and a smile) that for me, EVE is about “screwing with the community.” To be honest, I find that a bizarre proposition.

I don’t see what I do as screwing with anybody. Do we talk about pirates (who are a much rougher bunch doing a lot more damage than I ever have, while laughing at the misery they strew down their own wakes) as screwing with communities? Not really, they’re just considered a force of nature to be dealt with. People don’t like them, but their play choices are recognized as legitimate.

I know EVE’s not really a role-playing game, but people adopt minor roleplaying elements to enhance their enjoyment. And that’s the story of Ironfleet in a nutshell. When we started this game, folks were doing missions at the stargates and leaving vast “canstellations” of uncollected loot. Scooping that stuff up (often under the guns of the battleships that were still finishing the mission) was the funnest thing we found to do as complete noobs flying cheap frigates. Most of us have gone on to more normal professions, but I’m the die-hard hard core. I still enjoy prospecting for loose stuff, and then securing it and removing it. Flying exotically-fitted cargo ships, finding stuff that’s not nailed down, scooping stuff up (and dealing with all the fallout and consequences and diplomatic excitement that results) is still the most fun I’ve found in this game. There’s nothing in this game that compares, for me, with the satisfaction of finding a ton of unanchored Giant Secure Cans in a belt, coming out in my fully rigged and expanded Bustard, and scooping them ten at a time, peaceful as you please. If there’s a mining operation going on around me and a bunch of screaming people discovering for the first time that you have to anchor your giant secure cans to make them “secure”, that’s a bonus. But it’s not necessary to my fun, and it’s not why I do it. I do it because I want the cans, and whatever is in them. Taking them back to my hangar is how I, personally, feel I’m “winning at EVE”.

So, that’s what Ironfleet does. We’re not in it to mess with people, it’s just that sometimes people feel messed with because what we do is relatively rare and (at least the way we do it) unexpected.

The current war, like our previous ones, is just part of the process. We see the war fee against INDY as an investment in our future. People have to understand that they can’t get away with carrying on industrial operations normally, mining dumb fat and happy in unescorted mining barges, while spinning off a few combat pilots to “punish” Ironfleet while exposing no juicy assets to conflict.

On average I was pulling one shipload of ore out of an AC-ME mining operation every other day or so. It would have been much cheaper for them to have accepted the status quo, rather than sending Chebri after me. This war is intended to help them understand that, and it should accomplish that goal even if I don’t have a single combat success.