
CZ Minutes: Good Fight, Good Night
On a good night, said fleet would undock, send out scouts and find several fleets moving around our area. Tracking enemy movements and quickly positioning ourselves to be in the right place at the right time while making FC jokes is half the fun, especially if CheesusCrust is online with our DANK soundboard. The fights are tight and we win by the skin of our teeth, thanks to skill and smart maneuvering and target calling, rather than superior numbers. We quickly transition from one fight to the next, adapting our doctrine and tactics on the fly. The perfect night ends with us docking up our ships (that are hopefully on fire) and chatting about the engagements we just had, mulling over the close calls, looking at particularly silly fits amongst the killmails, making fun of our enemies and each other. The next day, that massive piece from Apoth doesn’t seem too bad to edit, and sure, I can blue your alts and get the calendar in order with this week’s scheduled fleets. Mayrin: There’s a sort of running joke that a “good fight” is the one you win, but if there’s one thing that can make a night, it’s a good challenge. Now, there’s nothing wrong with an easy gank. From personal experience, it seems that most of the fights in EVE are of the one-side-getting-dumpstered flavor. An easy killmail is fun in the same way that a quick round of Bejeweled is fun; it’s a light snack. There’s some fights where you must make the decision to risk everything in order to win. And, win or lose, it’s the immense challenge of these kinds of fights that make them so satisfying. Any PVPer who has played long enough can think back to some time where, even if they didn’t succeed, had an enormous amount of fun in a tough battle. It’s the hope of finding one of those challenging fights that keeps me logged in and searching for something to tackle. Tarek: I totally agree with Mayrin’s statement. I can have an absolute blast losing a fight in a way that’s exciting, and winning too easily can sometimes be rather less interesting. Gin: It’s hard to point to one favorite EVEning (heh), but the ones I’ve enjoyed the most have involved getting to do everything PvP-related. Usually, they start when I get online before the rest of my corp is active, and I roam in a frig or dessie trying to net a few solo kills. There’s nothing quite like the rush of a good solo fight. They leave you breathless, shot with adrenaline, and yes, shaking. On my perfect day, I find something that I shouldn’t beat, or at least a fight with even odds, and prevail. By the time the rest of our corp logs on, it’s time for small gang in a nearby backwater that roaming fleets always miss, keeping the content limited to the locals who have the capability to bring good fights (and blingy ships) but lack the numbers for a blob. These are some of my favorite engagements as I get to play a much larger role than I would in a bigger fleet, get some of the rush of a solo fight and get to celebrate with friends afterwards. As we near late EUTZ, prime USTZ (around 2000-2100), the War Zone heats up. Ideally, reports and dscan links begin to flow into our intel channel about roaming gangs anywhere from 40-100 strong, and we have the numbers to reciprocate. On one of these days, I was fast-burning to what I thought was an Assault Frigate fleet several jumps south of my home. About the time I realized they were flying a bizarre (and therefore distinctly Galmil) concoction of faction cruisers, AHACS and a few neut geddons, I came upon a gang of pirate cruisers flying Legions with Guardian support.
“Can anyone get me eyes on anything!?!” our FC called over comms.
Apparently, they had formed to fight a fleet that had since vanished and were having no luck finding anything else. Like the angel on our corp logo, I was about to answer a bloody prayer. Once I made sure our scouts had gotten eyes on the targets, I hurried home to grab a VNI and returned just in time for the fight. It was one of those beautiful fleet battles that teetered on a knife’s edge for most of the engagement. After we disposed of a few Guardians and most of the enemy’s T3 DPS, they dropped a Naglfar on field, which we proceeded to put into half-armor before triage support arrived in the form of Archons. We left the field with surprisingly few losses and a few billion ISK in shiny ships on our killboards. So basically, I’m saying I enjoy it all. Whether I’m flying solo, small-gang or in a large fleet, I’m happy watching/making ships explode, and the best days are those in which I get a taste of everything.