As a member of EVE University, arguably the oldest organization dedicated to teaching and learning in EVE, I have had the opportunity to experience many different sides of the game and come away from the year with fantastic experiences. A strong part of our corporate culture is maintaining an extensive library of public After Action Reports – or AARs, but after going through a number of them, I am here to share some of the most memorable stories of the year from my perspective.
If any of my stories take your interest, I encourage you to check us out! EVE Uni is unique in that it remains as it always has been: firmly neutral and open to anybody. If you were ever looking for any resources about EVE, you probably stumbled across our wiki, and our library of publicly available classes. We are organized in different campuses, each focused on specific areas of the game— the Highsec, Lowsec and Nullsec Campuses, the Wormhole Campus, the Amarr Mining Campus, as well as Project Solitude. Outside of these organizations, we also offer an Incursion community.
Highlights from 2017
Hole control
I want to kick off with an activity the Uni is not really known for: fights over structures, which is something we usually refrain from, as we value our neutrality. Our story begins with a corp declaring war on us. While we are routinely wardecced by quite a few highsec war corporations like PIRAT, and war is a constant to us, this opponent was different in that they had quite a few stationary assets that we could apply pressure to. We had the opportunity to fight a war on our terms. After some plotting and spying, our intel revealed that our adversaries had assets in two wormholes. One wormhole was picked out as the juicier target, as they had an Azbel as well as a dreadnought in the hole. We proceeded to insert a Caracal fleet, which had a lovely turnout of nearly 150 pilots. Our enemies seemed to think that just sitting in a wormhole would make them immune to the wrath of our Unistas, so they were a little bit ill-prepared.
Right at the start we bubble-wrapped the parking lot of their Moros, which seemed to not fear our fleet, as demonstrated by it departing the cuddly warmth of its POS-shield and flying right into our waiting arms. Our adversary tried to put some pressure on us after that, but our real enemy was the three-day-long structure grind that followed our successful lockdown of the wormhole. As you might imagine, if you know a bit about the nature of the good ol’ POSes, our Caracal fleet was less than optimal at chewing through all that HP. So our logistics team brought in some Oracles to bolster the forces. With laser-power now in our hands, we continued the bash of the POS and the Azbel in parallel. On the third day of a continuous operation we were finally rewarded with fireworks, first was the dreadnought parking lot, and after that our grand prize: the (laughably fit) Azbel. This extensive AAR by the illustrious Titus Tallang who headed up the operation has all the colorful details if you want to dive deeper.
Bombs away!
Next up is some BLOPs action, which we did quite a bit of in 2017. The fleet I want to talk about was a joint activity with BombersBar, which I actually had the pleasure to be part of, and stands out as my most enjoyable BLOPs fleet I have been on so far. Looking back at the AAR, I left a tad bit early after my trusty Hound got blown to bits by Goon titans with officer smartbombs, which was honestly one of my sweetest ways to die this year!
We had a fairly decent run up until then though. Our fleet picked up a Chimera and a bare-bones Rorqual after our first and second re-roll. We then proceeded to roll into Querious, and as we found two Rorquals in different systems right away, our FC devised a neat little ruse. We baited a super fleet on one of them, raced to the other, and started killing off Exhumers before focusing our attention on the Rorqual. But alas! A cyno was lit once again and the titans rolled in. At least we got a beautiful light-show! Our fleet wasn’t over after that little disaster, though! The hole rolling continued, and by the grace of Bob, the fleet found a jackpot waiting on the other side. The happy ending for all the pilots who had a longer breath then me was an 11b ISK Rorqual.
Adventures in Industry
I do not want to create the picture that our organization is centered around PvP though; EVE University is extremely diverse. We are active in every different kind of space, and offer a wide variety of activities, even mining—for those who are so inclined, we have a whole campus focused on it!
And so we come to our biggest event of 2017. With the introduction of the new moon mining mechanics, everybody naturally wanted to have a go at those gooey chunks of rock. After some ideas were tossed around, a considerable team of both the Amarr Mining Campus, the Nullsec Campus, as well as other Unistas was assembled. Even our benevolent overlady and CEO Laura Karpinski jumped in on it.
And so a well thought out and organized event was scheduled. Seven refineries were set up for our date with industrial destiny, and the humongous logistical enterprise leading up to such events was underway. Not only did our jump-freighters have to bring in an extensive assortment of combat ships to the Nullsec Campus, which they are quite used to, but they brought in a whole mining fleet as well. It did not end there, as additional Orcas had to be flown in and the main organiser of the event, Cryptic Sharvas, also staged a giveaway of 80 shiny ships! With the mining fleet well protected by a network of scouts and a dedicated defense fleet headed up by Yuri, 155 pilots had a lot of fun chewing on rocks and working together like a well-oiled machine for around seven hours straight! Even though the defense was tightly organised, the expectation was that we were all gonna die, but Yuri had the whole Uni pocket practically on lockdown. Only a few neutrals even tried sticking their nose into the pocket, and immediately got them bloodied. For all details on this extensive learning experience, please refer to the AAR in our forum.
Honoring our Graduates
I want to quickly talk about some notable people that left the Uni last year. As it is pretty much expected in the Uni, nobody will hold you back if you want to move on; our organization is focused on giving you the opportunity to grow and find your way in EVE. So I want to highlight a few people.
Yuri Levnik was an active FC and, as you can see in the last of the above AARs, definitely took on some interesting challenges. Kyle Hargrove again is an accomplished FC, and was very active in our Wormhole Campus. Regular readers of INN will recognise Jurius Doctor, as he is a contributor, as well as a great teacher and instructor. These are but a few of the many amazing people that moved on and are using the things they learned in the Uni to good effect.
In Closing
All in all, this was a very interesting experience for me, sifting through a good number of AARs and generally studying what happened during the last year in the Uni. Condensing a year of interesting reports and learning experiences down to something readable has been a fascinating challenge as well! I could have written about so many more AARs, but I think these three highlights offer something for nearly everybody. I hope some people out there can get a bit of enjoyment out of it as well, and maybe share experiences like this on behalf of their respective organizations.
