History of TDZK: 2.1

[Andrew_tM]

One of the side-projects I've been meaning to work on for a while is a summarised history of TDZK. I'm finally getting this under way, and intend to expand this to cover most of the 2.x series.

History of TDZK: 2.0
History of TDZK: 2.1 (You are Here)
History of TDZK: 2.2
History of TDZK: 2.3
History of TDZK: 2.4
History of TDZK: 2.5
History of TDZK: 2.6
History of TDZK: 2.7
History of TDZK: 2.8

This is mostly from memory, with the aid of any notes I've found of my own. While I have tried to present a neutral and balanced portrayal as possible, I'm sure people will disagree with my assessments in ... well, many places!

_________________________________________________________________

2.1

Political Backdrop: The main starting powers were the same ones that finished the previous round - KAOS, HOLY, Phoenix, Shinsen Gumi, Lords of Fear. Newer alliances such as Galactic Corsairs and Silver Horde were again going to be present for the new round. In addition to these, Shadow Knights started the round under the new tag of Fury and Survival of the Fittest (SoF) rebranded themselves to Sigma Tau Sigma (STS). The Wheeled Warriors retired at the end of 2.0 and many of the former members joined two new alliances, Aerodyne and Clan Mibu (predominately the former).

Gameplay Changes: There were multiple changes from 2.0 but most concerned small balancing changes. Planet building experience was reduced to a nominal amount, ships looted to a station were ejected into space at a refresh and planetary income was significantly reduced. Port capacities were increased from 20,000 to 50,000 (allowing trading up to 24k goods and down to 26k goods), meaning trading incomes gained a significant boost. Auras were more clearly explained, meaning there was no repeat of the raids seen during 2.0 with negative damage auras (which didn't affect planets or ports) and positive drone auras (which did).

Early Round: The early round was marked with a 'race to 50'. The split level curve introduced in 2.0 was better understood, as were the benefits of levels, and the dividing mark at 50 became a clear target. While there were some initial raids and some shipped earlier, 50 would be the minimum benchmark for hunter levels. Some alliances did get a running start - including Silver Horde (SH), who had three wings for the new round and began raiding in Nexus early. STS were making the most of their rebirth and raided ports alongside Iron Ring (IR). This alliance was short-lived as IR attacked STS once the raids were complete.

Northern Pacts & the Cryptos Umbrella: In the north, alliances began to find their homes early on. The new Fury settled in Dathkara (23) while Galactic Corsairs (GC) became their neighbours in Imrasael (22) alongside some smaller alliances - these two formed an early pact. The other northern branch became the big power settlement, as Phoenix again claimed Chronos (13), Silver Horde sat in Cryos (25) once more and Aerodyne gradually wrested Tyranis (24) from control of SAS and Clan Mibu - the latter alliance mostly joining Aerodyne over time. These three alliances were all allied, along with HOLY who again settled in Meras (11). SH also maintained a strong grip over the Cryptos (26) nebula, allowing allies to trade there. Platinum (reformed from IR), SAS and Imperials were among the main alliances to benefit from this. Later in the round the new Polish alliance of Zachonny Prestowicacz (ZP) would also be found there.

Sparring in the South: Major powers settled in the south included Shinsen Gumi (SG) in Mazanrea (32), Lords of Fear in 35k and Elanna (21), with KAOS in Peridon (33) and Perapin (31), STS in Darimar (28) and Armada Lusitana in Cerilis (34). Initial confrontations were minimal as systems were typically claimed on an exclusive basis (as opposed to the previous round) and a greater range of pacts meant that alliances were more likely to keep friends at home and find enemies abroad. The earliest southern battles were the product of an increasing rivalry between KAOS and SG hunters, one that would run and run.

Fury & GC vs STS, EV & Renegades: The first major war of the round started when STS raided in Dathkara alongside new allies Elan Vitel (EV) and Renegades (R) against Fury, attacking their planets. One of the smaller alliances in Imrasael, Destinatus Antiquitous, had also mostly formed into Renegades and taken their planet with them. GC and Fury responded with raids against ports in STS territory in the south, but a series of server issues (these coincided with raids by this pair throughout the round) meant these became comical events more than raids. A later group of raids reclaimed the Fury planets in 23k and the additional planets in Imrasael, restoring the status quo and the war ended soon after.

Tyranis Maintenance - Aerodyne Raid: The background noise of the round was created by the twin wings of Aerodyne Siege Corporation and Aerodyne Siege Syndicate with their daily raids throughout Tyranis. Sleeping on their heavily fortified planets, they kept the port levels low with daily raiding, removing safe docking from any potential enemy, giving better trading refreshes and making a significant cash windfall from the raids too. Their raid team used initiative to create a carefully balanced squad firing in a specified order to take down the ports efficiently and at minimal cost. By the end of the round their combined raid tally across both wings would amount to just shy of 7,500.

"No Matter How Good You Are Online" - SH Set The Raiding Bar: The greater cash available through the enhanced trading meant that there was more money available for ships, particularly raiders. These higher level ships meant that the bigger ports were raided more often, together with better informed raid teams now using damage, drone, accuracy and repair auras as a matter of course. Higher levelled raiders meant that they were on a closer par to the ports and less prone to accuracy issues. While over the course of the round 10-12 alliances proved themselves capable of raiding the maximum level ports, the raiding bar was set by SH, with an entire raid wing who raided the high level ports frequently, particularly targeting unwanted presences in Cryptos. The definitive line on SH's raid was from KAOS' JaiMaster, who frequently hunted the nebula only to find himself raided out the next day; his comment that "No matter how good you are online, if you annoy half of Poland you wake up in a pod" summed it up.

Providing the Target - The Collapse of KAOS: While most of the server increasingly became pacted in an intricate web of relationships, KAOS still had relatively few allies. Despite the sparring with SG, KAOS decided to provoke probably the most powerful force in the game by covering the SH homeland with aggressive drones. SH responded immediately, raiding two smaller KAOS planets in Magmus (16) - amusingly one of them yielded yet again an offline JaiMaster. A bigger follow-up raid was planned for later that week, as SH headed south alongside Aerodyne and claimed the four biggest KAOS planets. At the same time, Shinsen Gumi took a further two KAOS planets. Over the following week the remaining significant KAOS ships were raided out of ports by SH and the final planets claimed by SG. Faced with multiple opponents, KAOS cast around belatedly for allies and found only those pacted with SH. With little help, a huge level and cash disadvantage and fresh forces allied to all their major opponents, KAOS collapsed into inactivity and simply played out the remainder of the round.

Target This - Druuge Crimson Corporation: As KAOS collapsed, some smaller alliances formed from the remaining actives. While some of these were mostly in jest and simply a way of preserving a home, DCC was not. With a total of three members, they took significant payments for hunting down the highest level traders. Wonks was responsible for the biggest scalps, among his pods both Pitchoun and Grunvald Jeriko of GC. However, the highest profile target was BrunoX of Armada Lusitana. Trading in a safe system with multiple drones over his route, a cleverly laid trap allowed Wonks to pod the then level 96 trader. At the end of the round it became clear that the majority of Wonks' kills had been paid for by JUDGE, the Phoenix trader who ended the round first for experience.

Late Round Lull: With the major fireworks of the KAOS collapse passing, the round descended into a lull of minimal activity interspersed with hunter battles, standard raiding and the occasional jump. Jumps began to take on greater significant as more regular action slowed. As was typical in the later round scenario, new alliances rose up and others fell away - some of the new faces would be repeated presences in later rounds. These late starters included Unbroken Fellowship and twin alliance Hakai Ouchu, and newer Polish faces Imperial Klingon Fleet and Zachonny Prestowicacz. Star Wolves formed from some members who had left GC.

Beginning of the Saga - SH vs FURY: Towards the end of the round a conflict was becoming increasingly likely between Fury and Silver Horde. As the only major active power not pacted to Silver Horde, a fight was in some ways inevitable. Tensions rose over a drawn-out period of confrontation, with GC - allied to both - desparately trying to intervene. Eventually a pretext was found and war was declared, both SH and Aerodyne declaring on Fury. After a period of awkward deliberation GC opted to remain neutral and side with neither (amusingly, both accused them of siding with the other and offering safety hidden on their planets). Fury cast around for new allies and paired up with former enemies STS.

While Fury fled for the relative security of the southern systems, SH and ASX took their planets in Dathkara. Other Fury ships in the area were raided out and killed. A counterattack followed, as Fury and STS launched raids against their home planets, prompting a guessing game - would the most ships be found on the SH planets, the Aerodyne planets, or the neutral planets of Phoenix between the two? The attack was launched against the SH planets in Cryos. Lower levelled and with lesser cash reserves, Fury were resorting to frenzied improvisation and economies in their effort to take the planets. Their efforts were in vain as the Artur-led Kamikaze Squadron - an alliance of low-levelled pilots allied to SH - suicided repeatedly into the major stations, preventing Fury from reshipping or reloading. Investigation found that these pilots were all multies, and Artur was banned for over a year.

Nominally the war was won by SH, as Fury and STS couldn't respond. The conflict ended in recriminations and pointed fingers. However, Fury also won a lot of respect from their persistent if fruitless battle against the odds, particularly from their new allies in STS. Many of the faces in STS would become core Fury members in future rounds, in no small part because of this. Ironically, the chief victim of the war was neither of the parties involved but instead GC, whose neutrality had left them frozen out. They lapsed into inactivity, lost their main planet to an attack from HOLY and Phoenix, and fragmented into separate alliances as the round ended.

Individual Achievements: The round was noted for several individual achievements. In the kills category, louisn of STS set a new bar with 582 kills. The greater part of this achievement was that almost single-handedly he made the case for the Quelaar (8) system to be changed from a nebula for the 2.2 round. BrunoX did end the round with an odd combination of nearly-achievements courtesy of the varying level curves in different rounds - the second-highest ever level achieved, but a greater experience than the higher ever level and the second-highest ever experience, but a greater level than the highest ever experience. In non-traditional achievements, Wonks' efforts in target hunting set an impressive marker. The stand-out tallies of the round though were from the raid rankings, as the core participants of the Aerodyne system maintenance dominated the entire top ten. Most of these rankings would stand until 2.6 and the top three would never be beaten. Zodiac's mark of 1,149 raids would stand as an all-time high, the only raider ever to top the thousand mark.

Tactical Notes: The round was very closely based on 2.0 and most tactics followed the same lines - besides the increasing dependency on levels. The main improvement was in raid teams, where greater money allowed standardised raiders capable of hitting level 50s efficiently. These huge bubbles had a mix of shields and armour to balance the twin issues of EMP and drones. Compared to the ports, planets were weak and easily captured when attacked. Raid teams were better prepared and auras were now a standard component of these. While all alliances toyed with the idea of a raid team combining high levels and speed for initiative with an armourbubble, only Aerodyne managed to put it into practice - and their expensive raid team lost two raiders to a freak first shot on only the second port attempted. Warbirds followed a very similar approach to those of 2.0, with a reliance on traditional weaponry (particularly proximity-warhead boosted rocket bombs). There was a greater prevelence of EMP-based warships, although piracy was rarely a pursued choice.

Round Summary: The 2.1 round was the first round of 'professional' squads fully aware of the mechanics, marked in particular by SH's raid squad. Most alliances were able to raid the biggest ports and planets were straightforward to take. The round was plagued by the 'arms race' of high levels, resulting in long periods of trading - but did allow this round to be unusually decisive in 'won' wars. Intra-alliance relations became increasingly complex with networks of treaties and huge coalitions on an unparalleled scale. This made finding targets and opponents frustrating and challenging for those who participated, while leaving those who turned their back on this approach isolated and vulnerable - and those who tried to straddle the balance ended up with both problems.

Postscript to the Round: The final act of 2.1 did not really occur during the round, but a few weeks afterwards. Malhavoc had stepped down as leader of Fury and left the game at the round change, handing over the reins to second-in-command Solace. A little way into 2.2 Korvan revealed on the forums that he had discovered that Malhavoc was none other than Jerle, playing in disguise. Aelanna had also played in SK in 2.0 under the pseudonym of Ciralin. The original purpose had been to see how the game actually worked as a player, but the controversy generated by this started immediately and would run and run.

[Andrew_tM]

As a note, this is when I expect people to start disagreeing with what I've written. Which is fine, as long as they can provide me more information so what I have is accurate. I also have a big, nagging feeling that I've forgotten another major war somewhere but can't for the life of me figure out what it is.

[Alucard]

zzzz wake me up when you get to 2.4

[Iccyh]

A few points I briefly made on IRC:

K/SG had been going on before K vs. SH/ASx. STS supported K in that, we allied with Fury 'cause we could see the writing on the wall and knew that we were next on the list for SH or ASx since we weren't pacted to them and we were closer to K than others. SH had been raiding us out already, so we figured it was time to make it official.

I also made some points about the meta-game and mechanics.

1. The average EXP per player was likely higher in 2.1 than in any round ever in TDZK. This was driven by the realization that the level equation gave a HUGE advantage to higher levelled players across the board. It was to the point that in the more elite alliances, people wouldn't bother to reship until they'd hit something like level 65. This situation is what gave rise to DCC and what made players like Jai actually worrisome. Target hunting, or hunting levellers, was incredibly effective as a war-tactic in 2.1 since by killing levellers you could effectively keep them from reshipping into warbirds. While target hunting occurred in rounds other than 2.1, it was mainly for the ego of the individual hunter rather than because it was a useful tactic.

2. 2.1 was the dawn of EMP. EMP weapons were changed to automatically drain power as well as do EMP damage. They went from effectively useless in 2.0 to exceedingly useful in 2.1. Keep in mind that wraith was always the most popular race and that at the time, conventional wisdom was still that every single warbird built should have scanners and cloak as well as SSJD (nevermind that cloak was solid neg-align and so a pos-aligned wraith could access high-align weapons without having to align down for cloak). Wraith bubbles were very common, and they just got eaten alive by EMP.

3. While SH may have had the most effective raid team in the game, it was ASx that forced that the mechanics for raiding be changed entirely in 2.2. High-speed initiative raiders would have been entirely game-breaking and had those raiders of ASx' not died on the second port they hit, the biggest thing we'd all remember from 2.1 was how ASx raided out everyone who wasn't allied to them, and how there was nothing that could be done.

One other thing I'll mention is that as a leader in STS at the time who was allied to Fury, and given that much of STS went to Fury later on:

2.1 led very directly to what happened in 2.6. Both alliances gained a huge amount of experience from what happened in the round, and the main lesson that was taken away was that raid teams win wars. We lost to SH 'cause they could raid, and we couldn't. But, Fury learned that they could do it, and that there were ways to get things done even if they weren't pretty.

Case in point:
While AtM talks about the raids where Artur used his multies to shut down our raids on SH's planets (where moose triple-triggered, we lost our entire raid team, and were reimbursed) the raid I remember the most was actually the subsequent op that we ran. In the first op, STS had actually provided the majority of the raid team since we had more Zalluns at 50, as Fury had been roughed up for the better part of the round, having already been on the receiving end of a number of SH raids while we'd fared somewhat better so far. In the second op, while we provided a number of raiders, it was a mixed team where Fury actually provided the majority of the raiders.

The op was a complete disaster. JustofSpades was STS' raid leader and he just couldn't manage to handle what was going on, he had a lot of trouble getting things running smoothy, and when there were problems he had a tendency to blow up and blame Fury rather than calming down and making things work. On the other hand, Fury's raid leader that day was Nightmyre. As someone watching the op who'd just started that round and who had no real knowledge of raiding (but who knew ton about organizing already) I remember first thinking that the op was a total disaster, as we were running it. Having to use suiciders to clear drones on the level 50 ports was really ugly and inefficient, the triggers were really slow, reloads were slow, and we ended up losing raiders more than once due to errors.

However, every single time there was an issue, Nightmyre, despite his low levels, would redesign his ship, reship, come back, and the raids would continue. When JoS got pissed off, gave up and left, 'myre literally drained the op forward through sheer force of will and made it successful simply by refusing to give up. He knew we could do it, so we did it.

Now, a lot of the leaders in STS, Baron Troskey included, look at that op and thought it meant we'd made a mistake in allying with Fury since these guys didn't know what they were doing. Yes, our own raid team was rainbowssss, but the Fury way of doing things was just so horribly ugly that it bordered on amateur. This wasn't the alliance that we wanted to be playing with, we wanted to be allied with people like K who had big-time experience and who knew what they were doing. Indeed, this is exactly what happened in 2.2 (K allied with STS).

The lesson I took away from that op, though, was that Fury was an exceptional group of people who would fight tooth and nail as a group and who would pretty much never roll over and die. Alliances tend to live and die by their leaders, and I knew that so long as 'myre was there, Fury was going to succeed.

In 2.2, 'myre was highly active and Fury succeeded. In 2.2, Baron Troskey went inactive and STS floundered.

I know this is last bit is really quite a personal tale about the round and those two alliances (Fury and STS), but I'll happily tell that particular story basically any time I get an opportunity 'cause 'myre was and is just that awesome.

<3 'myre.

[Iccyh]

One more personal note:

I was personally very lucky to play with the people I did in 2.1. I was just starting the game, but I got a lot of help from a lot of awesome people in STS who were more than happy to put up with someone who knew how to follow directions and who wanted to learn. We hunted almost strictly in groups and had a ton of success jumping campers, though we tended to lose quite a lot in solo situations since our designs were honestly not that good. My own design was horrible, but I still managed to get over 50 kills from group-hunting and from raid ejectees before I ever ventured out on my own.

When DCC was formed, I have no idea how, but I ended up invited. I went, and I learned from Wonks how to target hunt, and learned design from Postie. I can hardly imagine that I could have managed to run into a better set of people to teach me the game.

And then, back in STS, we end up allied with Fury.

I had so much fun in 2.1. My first round. Thanks everyone who made it as awesome as it was.

<3

[zer0das]

It was as pretty good summary, but there are a few notable things missing or slightly off, which you probably couldn't know given some of it wasn't general knowledge.

What precipitated a lot of the bad blood between SH and Fury (at least according to them) was an incident in which Zztraider and I jumped a couple TPx raiders and a SH escort in Chronos (13k). There was one Silver Horde hunter who would hunt our traders in our system quite extensively- we eventually got rid of him, but he was quite the nuisance. After that, SH and Fury came to an agreement- where we wouldn't target each other in 23k, 25k, and 26k and we were free to trade in the nebula (those may not be the exact particulars, but that was gist of it). ID, HOLY, TPx, and to a lesser extent SAS still hunted our traders in 26k. So given the chance to blow up a couple of TPx raiders, we jumped on the opportunity. A few days later Silver Horde showed up in our system with a squad of hunters and camped the station and then the node. We scrambled all of our hunters and were about to jump them, when they withdrew- GC had managed to get them back down, apparently.

At this point, something more official was drawn up after some talks, and we both pretty much ignored each other- Renegades/EV and STS raided our planets shortly thereafter, and then the whole KAOS/SH thing happened, so we ignored each other completely. At this point STS approached us about allying, but we initially rebuffed them. Baron Troskey warned us if we didn't act now, then after KAOS was gone, we would be the next one's in Silver Horde's sights. At the time, we all scoffed and were like "ha, yeah right buddy." I think Myre was the only one who even took it remotely seriously.

Eventually KAOS was routed, and SH returned to the north. During the downtime, we had been working on a little side project (after we had retaken 23k)- leveling initiative raiders. ASx was not the only ones pursuing them... I believe KAOS may have also been pursuing them, before their little misadventure (I don't know if this was our working assumption, or if we actually knew they were).

SH had started to coincidentally raid our people out around this time. We had a few initiative raiders shipped, but they raided us out enough to keep us on our toes. The hope was to ship up initiative raiders and to trash SH in short order- but they raided out one of our initiative raiders, slowing us down even more. We had been delaying action due to the need to seek out allies, but also to get our initiative raiders operational. While we really wanted to initiative raid, at some point I threw out the idea that maybe it just wasn't feasible to do that given our resources and current situation- SH was raiding us out in our system, and we just had to do something. So we sold them off and then started getting to work.

Skipping to the end, I think SH is largely responsible for forging who we were as an alliance- we had the knowledge, etc. We didn't have the experience, the fire, or the passion yet. Getting backed into a corner really brought out the best in us. Rereading the old logs, Myre didn't want to do anything rash at all- and then a few weeks later he's suiciding himself repeatedly to raid planets. At the end of 2.1, we were all a bit pissed off and wanting blood, and we knew our time would come when the levels would be wiped out and we would get our revenge because we would be on equal footing, there would be no diplomacy to hide behind, and we knew we had it in us to come out on top.

[zer0das]

Also, while there was a lot of information, it wasn't quite as much in future rounds. The lack of any real simulators (unless ASx had some inbuilt ones? I suspect not) were probably a large reason why ASx's raiders went boom. I was pretty familiar with the statistics behind the whole thing, and the problem with our models were they didn't account for a poor gun distribution that well. Or if enough of initiative raiders weapons missed on the drones (very improbable I know, but it could happen). I was very concerned that even if we got our initiative raiders shipped, one of them would blow up relatively quickly, and all that work would be for nothing. Which is partially why I suggested we scrap the idea and start fighting, instead of pursuing some phantom that would never materialize. We had other things to deal with granted...

But even with simulators, ridiculous spreads happen every now and then- we probably lost dozens of raiders over the rounds to shots that had a one in a million probability of happening. Granted, with initiative raiders it would be only the first shot that would be very dangerous- however, I think the risk was severely underestimated (people tended to underestimate how often raiders would get blown up even with simulators). But getting working initiative raiders was the equivalent of getting 500 nukes at once.

[zmaniacz]

God you guys give 2.1 KAOS way too much credit. We were arrogant and incompetent. I can't believe wet ricked STS into an alliance later on. Baba's decision making was compromised at best due to his insane personal life and no one else had the will to step up and lead. We also didn't have anyone willing to work on design. Ship designs weren't based on your fancy pants 'math', it was guys guessing and being listened to because they got some kills in a previous round. I still cringe when I think about it. We got exactly what we deserved.

[JSG]

completely unrelated but, Fury sucks. just saying.

[Steve McQueen]

I think the Spheres are worth a mention, since they started the round pretty much entirely owning 36k planetwise, and allied with Aerodyne (who might have had one of those rocks now that I think it over). And then imploded, reformed, and imploded again. LoF owned the sector by round's end, though.

Other event of note: Fury was planning to flatten every station that sold useful weapons, then drone it and raid out anyone who tried to ship. I posit if this was successful, it would've made the game really fucking boring.

Also, while there was a lot of information, it wasn't quite as much in future rounds. The lack of any real simulators (unless ASx had some inbuilt ones? I suspect not) were probably a large reason why ASx's raiders went boom.

To my knowledge, LoF and ID/IG had workable simulators at that time, though I didn't get to play with either myself until much later. Not that that would've helped Aerodyne much, but eh. :p

[Solace]

Other event of note: Fury was planning to flatten every station that sold useful weapons, then drone it and raid out anyone who tried to ship. I posit if this was successful, it would've made the game really fucking boring.

Where did you hear that? I don't think anything like that was actually planned or seriously considered, but I vaguely recall something along those lines coming up in one of the many idle "it would be really evil if we _______" discussions on IRC. We had a lot of those discussions over the years.

[Andrew_tM]

I think the Spheres are worth a mention, since they started the round pretty much entirely owning 36k planetwise, and allied with Aerodyne (who might have had one of those rocks now that I think it over). And then imploded, reformed, and imploded again. LoF owned the sector by round's end, though.

There were lots of alliances I'd have liked to mention more, if I'm honest. 2.1 was a really multi-sided round with so many different people involved at any one time. For example, I don't think I say a single word on House Harkonnen, who had an awesome round. I barely touch on LoF, who had an efficient round.

I tried to keep it to the main stories and leave it at that - people have done exactly what I expected by elaborating on it here!

Also, I had a nagging feeling that LoF didn't own any of the 36k planets. The Curse of Sarenn was fairly legendary, noone who owned a planet in it survived the round. Telos, Wheelies, Eternal Saga were residents in 2.0 - in 2.1 I remember the Gumis, the Spheres (and later Random Encounter) and possibly one of the two newer alliances, HO or IKF, who based themselves there having one - and all followed the same theme. LoF didn't have any Sarenn planets until 2.2 when it was 27k and the curse was semi-neutralised (although they did shed some wings).

[Steve McQueen]

I can personally vouch that LoF owned 36180 prior to and up until round's end.

@Solace, I recall it being more serious than a random bull session (people were tweaking ships and discussing it for a week or so, by my reckoning), but it didn't go very far in any case.

[Solace]

@Solace, I recall it being more serious than a random bull session (people were tweaking ships and discussing it for a week or so, by my reckoning), but it didn't go very far in any case.

Interesting. Were you in Fury? I don't recognize your name, but my memory for these things is pretty fuzzy.

[Steve McQueen]

Yes I was, and I never used this name

[Solace]

Care to enlighten us? :P

Edit: Nevermind, no need.

[foamy]

God you guys give 2.1 KAOS way too much credit. We were arrogant and incompetent. I can't believe wet ricked STS into an alliance later on. Baba's decision making was compromised at best due to his insane personal life and no one else had the will to step up and lead. We also didn't have anyone willing to work on design. Ship designs weren't based on your fancy pants 'math', it was guys guessing and being listened to because they got some kills in a previous round. I still cringe when I think about it. We got exactly what we deserved.

Reason STS allied with you was pretty much because BT and Baba were on decent terms ever since 1.0, when we were SoF and K sold us one of the Nexus planets. I imagine it was fairly small beans for you guys, but having a Nexus planet shifted us from a bunch of dudes harassed on the periphery of things to being able to plan proper ops and conduct jumps and hunting in two of the most active areas of the map, Nexus and Pleoria. It was one of the biggest moments in SoF's history.

I will cop to advising against allying with K, though. :p However, SoF/STS's leadership structure was rather thin on the ground. There was BT, and that was about it for much of our existence. Talent was so scarce that for a good chunk of 2.0 I was the tagholder for the second wing, and I did about as good a job with THAT as you might expect.

Without the active, committed leadership core that an alliance like FURY had, if BT wanted us to do something, nobody would really gainsay him. Worked fine as long as BT was active and on top of things, but rather bit us on the ass later.

2.0 was kinda neat because, if I recall right, I ran into Andrew ingame for the first time back then. Bastard had a faster connection'n I did and kept robbing all the ports I wanted to trade...

So I started adding drone hangars to my frigate and aggied up the system we were in. :p

[Iccyh]

I wanted us to ally with Fury in 2.2 and even had preliminary talks with 'myre about renewing the alliance from the previous round, but BT was having none of it: he really liked K.

Also, I'm sure FOAM-E already knows this, but he's outlined why I left/didn't return to STS. BT being the main leader who everyone relied on with so few others having the ability, experience, and time meant that if I'd gone back, I'd have likely ended up running the whole show and that wasn't what I wanted. Props to AKULA for stepping up and giving it a go.

[JDizzle]

i remember this s h i t, i traded in a system called mazenrae or something on my aussie dial up connection 2-3 sec page loads. eventually got to top EXP with about 2 kill attempts by Wonks on my stock freighter, think i was so high leveled nothing could hit me lol. Then spheres/random encounter disbanded and i joined KAOS just in time to see it get owned. then i went on holiday and hid inside a real life friend's planet down in sarenn while anti-kaos alliances combed/raided entire systems for kaos members, should of looked in your team mate's planet down the bottom there hehe
eventually got bored and let myself get pirated

good memories

[iYRe]

couple of things missing here..

SG / GTG(FX) actually did the raiding on KAOS - SH provided one squad of support and the occasional RC - they had no alliance with us other than an unofficial NAP for the purpose of taking out K. They then "accidentally" podded a few of us too.

SH raided the first lvl 50 port with a gazillion raiders. We we actually about to raid when they started, however, we had only 5 lvl 50+ init zallun raiders, untested, and didnt until a day or so later. These designs were created by MasterChief (from Aerodyne - which they went on to use themselves), Pers and Theo (theodolyte I think his name was) from GTG. This allowed us to raid with 1 RC (aqualish) and use the rest of our active players as escorts. It also enabled us to raid VERY quickly.

I cant remember the reasons we didnt raid at the same time as SH, probably just because we hadnt really tested the designs.

Also, I paid WONKS to kill Bruno from AL - and his trap was set by using Pers from FX - who cleared out brunox's aggies from his planet, and allowed wonks to take out bruno while he was resetting them.

We also went on to take all AL's planets, and it turns out their leader (camoes or something) ened up being banned - he had access to more than 60 accounts, and was using them to build/restore/restock/protect his planets.

We had 2 russians who worked in an office together and occasionally one would trigger raids and the other repair. They were able to do everything verbally since they were sitting next to each other and were on a massively fast connection. It was eerie to refresh and see planet stats dropping and no one saying anything...

I should point out that one night we took out something like 6 or 8 K planets (and various others). I was co-ordinating around 120 players at once.. It was probably the most fun I ever had apart from camping with K in later rounds.

[Andrew_tM]

I'd be interested in precisely which of the raids on KAOS were done by SH, and which were done by SG/GTG/FX. I must confess to having entirely forgotten the GTG/FX contribution to these raids and to this war as a whole, there were simply so many alliances that round that some slipped my mind.

The main reason for this is that I was IS for three raids led by SH/ASx against the KAOS planets (there was a small GC squad in support). I know that SG (and clearly GTG/FX) raided at the same time - that may be what we're talking about?

[iYRe]

to be honest, I dont really recall them doing any major raids. I suspect they might have done one either just before or just after we did the major raidage, where we took 6-8 planets. I'm sure someone else might be able to confirm it.

I just recall it being a major because we had to have people swapping alliances and trying to co-ordinate unallied squads and so forth. SH only came along in the end because we needed a little extra fighter cover, which we needed even more after they podded some of our ships as we got IS. Silly noobs

I just cant recall too much detail. It was along long time ago.

[foamy]

We also went on to take all AL's planets, and it turns out their leader (camoes or something) ened up being banned - he had access to more than 60 accounts, and was using them to build/restore/restock/protect his planets.

I remember that. I always followed AL in the news after 2.0. See, the system I droned up trying to annoy Andrew? AL traded there.

And I had all those drone hangars just lying around...

[iYRe]

We also went on to take all AL's planets, and it turns out their leader (camoes or something) ened up being banned - he had access to more than 60 accounts, and was using them to build/restore/restock/protect his planets.

I remember that. I always followed AL in the news after 2.0. See, the system I droned up trying to annoy Andrew? AL traded there.

And I had all those drone hangars just lying around...

yes, I recall us both giving AL a bit of schtick

[Steve McQueen]

Then spheres/random encounter disbanded and i joined KAOS just in time to see it get owned. then i went on holiday and hid inside a real life friend's planet down in sarenn while anti-kaos alliances combed/raided entire systems for kaos members, should of looked in your team mate's planet down the bottom there hehe

This right here may be my fondest memory of those days. "Eh, it's just JD parking there, let him be" x100