Interview: Ugly Eric

Thank you for doing this interview! My first question is… Why did you name your toon Ugly Eric? lol.

No worries. So, why am I Ugly Eric? I used to play FPS games (mostly Day of Defeat) before Eve. And because I kind of sucked at that, I started to play as Eric Clapton, not only because he is a kind of a guitar hero to me, but also because he is so horrible on some songs AND he is called slowhand, so it fitted my bad FPS gaming quite well. When I later started EvE a buddy of mine told, that at least some MMO’s have declined clear celebrity names. So I sat down a while thinking, and then came up with Ugly Eric. Before I started and was creating my character, I thought this actually was an rpg :p

How long have you been playing EVE?

About 7½ years now, with no more than 3-4 one month breaks.

Have you always flown in null sec, or have you tried other parts of the game? (if you’ve tried other parts, discuss that a bit)

No. I as many others started in high-sec. I ran missions with a RL buddy of mine for about a month. After that we started to try PvP in low-sec. Few days later we moved to low-sec. Few months later I ended up in The Polaris Syndicate alliance, who lived in ROIR-Y at the time. However, The Polaris Syndicate (a 100% Finnish alliance) ended up in coma, I ended up leading it, so we moved to low-sec to regroup. About a year later we moved the alliance to 0.0 and been in 0.0 ever since.

How much of that time has been within Triumvirate? And, what other alliances have you been a part of?

About a year and a half now in TRI. Prior to that I have been in (backwards chronological order):
– Bearf0rce one
– Game Over
– Confederation of xxpizzaxx
– Nulli Secunda
– Ewoks
– The Polaris Syndicate

Discuss some of your most memorable moments within Triumvirate, and outside of Triumvirate.

I’m going to start with TRI memory. It was the very moment I realized that is a good place to be at.

I was with my corp on a hac roam in deklein. TRI lived in x-7omu at the time. All of the sudden Starfleetcommander jumps on our corp comms and asks for a titan, as he knew I had one. At that moment I thought I was going to be a bridge and said ‘sure, lemme dock and log it in’. There I am logging the titan in and SFC asks me to fit DD on it. Well, a DD I fit and am ready to jump for a DD. When the cyno goes up and I see the location (VFK-IV) I had a half a second hesitation.

However I did jump. Cyno was on station at pretty much 0km. I DD the aggroing carrier, but due the cyno location CFC were able to undock a sabre, put a bubble and dock back up. I overload my MWD and align to deep safe. During all the about 3 minutes I was bubbled not a single person said anything of the cyno, but focused on killing dictors and few lads bumping me out of bubbles. When I eventually got to warp, local had spiked with about 100. I land to my deep safe and immediately align out to a random moon. As soon as I see the first probe on my dscan I warp again not to give out the deep safe. When I land to the random moon, a AF is sitting at 0 of me and immediately start to yell to local my location. I then proceed to warp again and once I land my DD timer was done and I could jump out to safety. When my titan was inside forcefield the pilot lighting the cyno got so much shit on him. But the point was, that when a situation was on, everyone focused on that.

Outside TRI? I think is the old Polaris Syndicate fights. Maybe some Great Wildlands times, when we had a fully Finnish 40 man armor BS fleet with triage support dunkin bads on a pos-fight and when our both triages got neuted really bad I called in for our both super carriers to jump in and save the Triages with cap transfers 🙂

From your perspective, what are the strengths and weaknesses of Triumvirate?

I think our biggest strength is the combination of high SP, not poor players, and better than average rl skill at playing this game. This allows us to have stuff like rattlesnake fleets and Machariel fleets and dunk other ppl with more numbers in same doctrines.

Weaknesses are 2. We are lazy as fuck, so we never have enough scouts and cynos, etc and this alliance is probably the slowest forming up alliance I have ever been in.

How long have you been an FC? How did you get started FCing?

I been FC’ng from my first pvp experience. It all started as a accident maybe. Me and a RL pal of mine were first time trying pvp, we knew absolutely nothing of it and went with rifters to low-sec. My rl Buddy just started to ask “what we gonna do now, where we going, shall I aggro etc” and I started to answer. Then another buddy joined, then a corpie. All of the sudden I had 10 guys on my roams. A little bit later I had 20. Some bit later I had 50. Then I had 200. So it just started 🙂

What advice would you have for a new FC?

Start small, try everything, learn by experience, not by advice 🙂 If you make a decision, keep it, at least for a while. Most important thing is to call a primary fast. It gives you time to think on strategy, alignments, positioning and better primaries. Don’t be afraid to lose. Don’t apologize too much, don’t be sorry too much. If you fuck up, say it to the guys. “Sorry, I fucked up, my bad”. They respect that. ALWAYS after fight have few trusty lads to talk with of what went good, what went bad etc.

What is your favorite fleet comp to FC?

It has to be my pure sex fleet comp. Formerly it was shield arty machs and anti-tackle and healthy amount of support. Something like 10 machs, 3 huginns, 3 damp/point lachesis, 3 scimis, 3 orthrus, 3 sabres, 3 ceppies. Every man has a role, every role must be executed to perfection. If they execute their roles, it can take up to 10 times more enemies.

Are you looking forward to ‘fozzi-sov’? How do you think it will impact the alliance?

I am very much. I think we will be one of the alliances capable to adopt to that fast and effective. We got enough FC’s to make it possible to fight 5 different fights simultaneously. However, our numbers are going to be an issue. On a good day we will be able to field 5×25 lads. But then again, I wouldn’t take it any other way.

How long have you been CEO of ‘Fistful of Finns’?

From the day it was born and theoretically before. FISTN was formed from the ruins of The Polaris Syndicate alliance, that I was CEO of, and my old corp Hyvat Pahat ja Eric, where I was CEO too.

Tell us a bit about your corporation, and what you look for in a potential recruit.

FISTN is not a corp. FISTN is lifestyle. Chill corp with only one rule. RL is always more important than game. We play lot of other games together, and we meet 2 times a year. Once in winter time in Finland for a weekend and once on summer time in Estonia for a prolonged weekend. FISTN will never die as a group of players. If EvE dies, FISTN will move on to some other game.

For a recruit, they need to speak clearly Finnish, need to be able to keep himself in ISK and able to withstand and partake in our humor.

If someone wants to join your corp, what is the process?

They convo me. I talk a bunch on convo, then we talk an hour or so on comms. After that, I’m pretty much able to tell weather the recruit is going to be a FISTN or not.

What is your most embarrassing killmail/story?

Probably the one that never generated a kill mail. I lost a Rapier to a Scimitar. T’was some Hydra dude with scimmy in a bubble. I warp my rapier there to kill him. However he was a pvp fit scimmy, so in scram + web I was and taking dmg. However, as I was dying kind of slow, I decided not to risk my pod and ejected at like 20% hull. When I ejected, my skills ceased to affect the ship and it’s hull % went to 0 and the ship popped. No kill mail generated.

Please link any blogs, kill boards, or videos that you’d like to share.

Has to be big mikers nano battleships.

Favorite:

EVE Related Celebrity: err.. Shadoo is a cool dude
Ways to make isk: Used to be multiboxing hsec incursions alone. Havent made isk since the ISBoxer nerf.
Ammo: Republic Fleet EMP
Ship: Nano Bhaalgorn (the ship big miker flies in the latest Ferocious video was mine, till I donated it to Big Miker)
Corpse: erittainvarma’s corpse
Star System: x-7omu
Drink: Beer
Food: free lunch has always been my favorite food.
Song To Fly To: My doomsday song! 

Thank you for the interview!

Your welcome.

A Ton of Fun in Etherium Reach

Because I literally log in one minute too late for the good fights, I’m going to post yet another Garst battle report, to keep you guys updated!

*****

The last 72 hours have been a ton of fun in Etherium and a standout among the rather constant back and forth fights over the last few weeks. You can read about the past couple days in the battle reports above.

24MAY15 Order of Battle in the East

TRI is one of the minority of pvp alliances creating original pvp content and its no wonder that etherium reach has transformed from a barren wasteland at the start of 2015 into a lively battleground for fleet pvp and roamers. TRI’s model of creating our own wars is in stark contrast to many of the groups in EVE that blue up a portion of land and go AFK until they can find someone else’s fight to vulture. A good example is Co2 and even Razor coming today to help S2N against TRI. Naturally PL is still playing the ‘honorable third party’ propaganda angle but shows up daily to our fights since their contract purging Nulli ended.

XIX continues to hire more groups to fight TRI while retreating to geminate. This includes someone new using the name Mercenary Coalition (fighting SOLAR in kalevala and losing 30 man ishtar gangs/caps) and drone region renter militia that still haven’t figured out RMT slumlords like XIX couldnt care less about them and will abandon them come fozzie sov.Some of the evicted renters from Etherium Reach have started to work with Advent of Fate alliance who currently deployed to the vital chokepoint station of I6- in Cache to attack IRC. Separately the Oasa/Perrigan/Malpais renters still loyal to the old guard work together to fight against SOLAR and occasionally TRI or IRC.

Stainwagon deployed to Akora in the Forge but hasnt interacted much with our fights in the last few days.

S2N remains active in Uemon and assisted XIX in retaking some lowsec R32s that TRI has held, as expected, one of the few things XIX has (temporarily) reclaimed since the start of the war. S2N has slowly grinded down the entry constellations in etherium but TRI continues to defend our station in 8KE next to LXQ and O-LJ against near daily attack.

In short we are surrounded by enemies in every direction and loving it

23MAY

After some back and forth battles all morning, TRI moved an ishtar fleet to LXQ to camp paala gate to stop nulli from reshipping while our dreads bashed O-LJ SBUs. Nulli formed an even larger Ishtar fleet and jumped into us, making it past our camp and burningg after our dreads in O-L 3j away by gate while we tried to interdict them, skirmishing a few times. We ran out of drones and logi and had to go grab more while they tackled our dreads. The SOLAR cerb tasked with clearing the sabre bubbling our dreads went AWOL for about 10 mins so we hectically rushed after Nulli after looting our drones to try and bust them out. Our dreads startbursted and we came on grid in O-l after Nulli while we only had a phoenix and revelation still tackled of the original 8. We warped in on the opposite side and attempted to clear dictors, but the process was too slow and the phoenix died heroically. We managed to kill enough tackle that the 2 S2N onyx’s failed to coordinate their points and the last revelation zoidberged out against all odds. Very stressful and fun fight for both sides. GF!

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=106647

TRI attempted to grab a hel + support fleet shooting POCOs in wicked creek, but ended up only snagging a few carriers with an instalock setup that kept blapping our sabres lol

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=106726

Advent dropped a staging tower/bait pos in IRC home system of QRH. IRC attacked it with dreads and domis, but was counter dropped by ~30 Advent using 2 triage carriers + nightmare/rattlesnakes, welping the domis. TRI rageformed Ishtars but could only pull 30+ in time, bridging in to the fight as the domis finished dying. By this point a S2N 30+ Ishtar gang had joined with Advent to kill IRC and we bridged into system at a ping over the pos, warping down to primary dictors to give IRC a fighting chance to extract. After killing tackle TRI focused on S2N Ishtars, killing many before they warped. We remained on field but struggled to killed any Advent with our numbers due to the superb work of their two triage pilots who regularly pulled back ships from armor or structure, including S2N ishtars after they merged fleets and warped back in.

IRC struggled to reship and regroup properly, losing half a dozen dreads peicemeal before finally we were able to coordinate their DPS onto the triage carriers holding the field. As both chimeras died TRI finally forced the faction bs inside the POS and killed the S2N ishtar fleet almost to a man. A very fun fight was had and props again to the Advent triage pilots for a job well done although they should have bumped them into the shields or extracted.

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=106895

24MAY

TRI formed a rattlesnake fleet upon seeing reports of over 100+ Nulli, 120 CO2, 50 advent, and 100 XIX all working together to attack IRC’s home system and bait us into a fight. We ended up attempting to fight the Co2 fleet separate from the rest but bailed at the last minute to a POS since there was no reason to feed kills to 80 v 450 hostiles over no timer “just for fun”. While the enemy sat around bored on titans winging in public chats that we should come fight (aka feed), we held our planned alliance meeting and simply titan bridged home ignoring their trap. GG

An hour later TRI has a R64 coming out of RF. Nulli undocked a mere 50 ishtars + 30 bombers and made aggressive moves on our 100 man rattlesnake fleet, obviously baity since their fleet comp never stood a chance. 15 Nulli supers logged on and then off again in LXQ so we declined to take the fight, moving towards the expected scouted PL 100 t3 fleet sitting on a titan. We hoped to fight PL and get them out of the way before returning to Nulli and fighting them separately. Sadly our POS died but we were able to control the positioning, negating the S2N bombers and forcing the ishtars to jump into us as the PL landed at range and burned towards us. SOLAR supported with a 30 man ishtar gang at range and our TRI bomber FC got IRC/TCF/NOVA into a bomber wing in support.

I fucked up the jump distance (5.1ly RIP) for our triage carriers so we were forced to fight for most the battle without our planned logi, losing about 10 snakes before forcing the Pl T3s off the field by killing their logi and starting on their T3s. Had our triage come in from the start, im p. confident we would have saved 95% of the ships we lost as Pl+S2N would have been unable to break us without their own caps, safely tucked away in curse many midpoints away. As it ended we pushed the PL ishtars into retreat and cleaned up the ishtars.

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=107071

We moved onto a titan and bridged to O-L where nulli had reshipped into new ishtars and received reinforcements from the imperium again, this time in 40 RZR cerbs. The hostiles were shooting the final timer on our IHUB but just as we loaded grid our blue bomber wing scored an awesome run and killed half the ishtars. We cleaned up the rest and RZR left without even trying to fight (wise decision). We repped the system and reinforced a few POS including the new tower on the R64 we lost.

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=107130

Meanwhile SOLAR moved to kalevala to destroy a MC/renter fleet shooting their station.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=29036048

Another Post By Garst

(Another post by my CEO, Garst Tyrell, originally posted on FailHeap)

 

Another busy day of fights…

Advent of Fate alliance is a small XXDeath pet that lives in Geminate and conducts mostly independent ops, but shows up to coalition fleets against TRI/SOLAR when it suits them. Recently they have been picking on IRC even to the point of dropping a bait pos and dropping SBUs in IRC’s home system of QRH in the spire. Previously we had hotdropped a small slowcat chimera fleet to crush their last attempt with a nightmare/rattlesnake fleet a couple weeks ago to assist IRC. They returned today with an ishtar fleet as SBUS were about to online.

Right before I came home from TRI brought an ishtar fleet to the IRC home system to help out which ended up in a battle of TRI vs ADVENT + S2N assisting in ishtars. I cant give specifics from the battle but I know TRI came out ahead on ships/isk eff but had to bail after losing our drones. We sped home to reship and I took over the fleet as ADVENT chilled in QRH harassing IRC and waiting for the SBUs to tick over. S2N’s remaining 40 man ishtar gang burned home 1j past our home system and was somehow surprised by TRI undocking rattlesnakes and trapping them with wall bubbles, killing another 10-15 or so of their cruisers on the way out. TCF/NOVA assisted with a smal ishtar gang that attempted to interdict them on the other side of the gate we bubbled them, but our snakes were too far off gate to pursue and we let them go.

Getting new intel from Supertwinky that ADVENT had deployed 2 hels + 1 wyvern with their 30 man ishtar gang to shoot the station in QRH while we interdicted nulli, we rageburned to a titan in range and jumped onto the hel as he came out of warp from his safepos to the station. Cynoing at 0 we continued to bridge dreads and reinforcements in while using our snakes to kill or force the ADVENT ishtar fleet to pull range. The other two supers warped out safely to the pos as they were far from the initial cyno on the hel. TCF/NOVA bridged in with us and added a bit of ishtar gang dps to help kill small stuff to make sure we could maintain tackle on the hel. It died and ADVENT possed up as we killed the SBUs for IRC and gave some bonus reps to their station.

The battle report is jumbled from multiple fights: http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=106418

We moved home and stood down, before reforming ishtars to attempt to third party a Dead terrorists ( ) vs XIX fight over a timer in geminate. We arrived late to the party but killed the XIX fc and a few of his mates while they shot SBUs to remind them that hey, TRI is still here whether or not you choose to keep ignoring us.

A few other aborted fleet fights later we finished the eu tz by killing 3 troll SBUs dropped by nulli after they rage logged in uemon from losing another ishtar fleet to us. The war has its ups and downs but the last 48 hours is certainly been a good one for TRI

Whats Going On In Tri…

My CEO wrote this and originally posted it on Failheap.

 

What a bloody evening

S2N undocked a rattlesnake fleet with 35 snakes/10 logi + 6 triage chimmys + dreads and support and destroyed the TRI IHUB in 8ke- while we prepared to fight them. Staging on a titan nearby, TRI bridged a 80 man T3 AHAC gang with 30 solar in supporting ishtars (they didnt have armor ships rdy) into 8ke at a ping over nulli, who were busy sitting on the station bubbling themselves waiting for the timer to become vulnerable 20 mins later. Warping down we began to burn into position get within scram range of the enemy fleet, under the unbonused tracking of the snake sentry drones.

Naturally 6 triage chimeras + 10 scimitars to rep 300k EHP rattlesnakes vs 500dps ahacs is a bit of a logi overblob, which is why we were pleasantly surprised to find Nulli had no answer when we were forced to drop 7 dreads and start burning carriers. They rushed 2 moros through a cyno to fight back, but these promptly died. With SOLAR sitting at range killing tackle and light support like S2N scimitars, TRI successfully cleared the field of all enemy caps for the loss of 3 dreads. We began to kill rattlesnakes with no logi support but a PL blob was reported 2j away, so both sides began to focus on disengaging. As TRI ahacs moved behind the station and slowed down PL with dictor bubbles, we lost scrams and many rattlesnakes MJD’d away and POS’d up. TRI docked right as PL came into local to kill a straggler from each side. This is the second time a PL third party has saved a S2N snake fleet from obliteration through unfortunate timing. GF.

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=106157

After PL left TRI caught a few more rattlesnakes going home and we used our supers to clear the SBUs. TRI camped the LXQ -> paala chokepoint in T3s to prevent S2N from returning with their new ishtar fleet.

Nulli took the fight and jumped into us, losing the engagement.

http://kb.triumvirate-alliance.net/?…&kll_id=106204

Eventually TRI moved over to O-L in order to clear the S2N SBUs there with dreads, which we successfully accomplished without incident. Unfortunately Nulli reshipped ishtars, jumped on a titan in lxq, and bridged onto our cyno beacon where a triage pos repper and a reinforcement dread were moving without support. With no ability to leave our caps unsupported on the field, both caps died to Nulli.

After O-L TRI returned to 8ke to kill the new SBUs anchored by nulli during the previous fight, which resulted in two more fights with the nuli ishtar fleet returning from the cyno beacon gank. Both ended in decisive defeats for S2N. The system was saved and repped.

The war in etherium reach is violently contested on most timers between S2N and TRI, with occasional help from SOLAR and pretty much constant interference from PL who show up and help one side or the other (or neither) depending on the whims of the FC. Stainwagon got bored grinding POS and deployed to akora to shoot everyone, mainly Nulli. XIX is almost completely MIA leaving nulli to do all their pvp for them. I guess they are back to AFK RMT empiring while we are distracted. They usually do a weekend warrior cta fleet and leave us to clean up the timers over the week.