Header art by AnuranonthecoucH
The Tournament
April 14 and 15 marks the dates for the inaugural Imperium FC tournament. 8 teams led by 8 different FC’s will compete for love and admiration as well as bragging rights around Delve. Familiar faces to anyone in the Imperium will lead teams of random participants into battle against one another. The concept is simple – each FC will receive 5 billion isk. They will then design a doctrine to be bought within this budget, with only two restrictions: no capitals, and you must have exactly 50 ships in your fleet. The thing that makes this blue shoot different in my eyes is that exact fact; usually teams are trained and practice endlessly in their doctrine. This tournament will be different, and it will test the skill of the FC both as a theorycrafter and on the grid, as there are no training times and you are stuck with whoever you get. Teams will be filled at random by an audience waiting in a GSF mumble channel, so the FC really will be working within their own usual restrictions. Here at INN, we assume this means nobody will ever be held down by tackle.
Rules For The Brawl:
The fight will take place on one grid, you can warp but may not leave grid.
To discourage some of the underhandedness that caused other blue shoots to cause issues before, each opposing FC will be given the enemy main doctrine ship 10 minutes before the fight. Spying is disallowed.
The fights will be arranged so that you have one every 20 to 30 minutes. INN will stream it with a 10 minute delay, and they will have a live command comms stream which should be a really cool stream for viewers.
The first 4 matches will take place on Saturday. The final 4 on Sunday. This would mean the top 4 teams would need to import 2 fleets (3rd place will be determined between the two losers). You may change your fleet for the next days fight.
We will have a jabber channel for isk betting, maybe even an oddsmaker.
No caps allowed. There are no other ship restrictions.
Fleets will start in one spot on grid 50km away from each other.
You may FC in a language other than English if you can secure 50 people who speak it.
All ships must fit an “All 5s” character on PYFA. If a member doesn’t have all the skills to fly the ship they may run EG and EE implants (powergrid and CPU) to allow them to run it. Mindlinks are allowed. No other implants are allowed. No drugs.
You will contract your entire fleet to a judge who will run an evepraisal on it to determine if you spent too much.
You must field 50 members.
Cloaking is allowed for strategic purposes but not to delay/draw the fight.
Members may keep ships that lived but may not use them on another fleet in the tournament.
The match is over when one fleet has the final ship destroyed.
The FCs and Initial Lineup:
Asher Elias vs Wyld
Quing Fei vs Paarthurnax GreyBeard
Mike Flood vs Ediroll
Tigran Legheart vs Charlie Knight
The first set of matches will commence at 2000 UTC on April 14, so come on down to twitch.tv/imperiumnews and bet on your favorite FC. I hope to see many participants waiting in the channel for their chance to fight. I’m Johnny Crowe for INN and all I have to say is, what no Havish? Look forward to seeing you all at the tournament!