Pepe-La Pew Pew. Interview with Skunkworks
Lately a group of griefers has brought new and profoundly chronic pain to the Incursion community. That group is Skunkworks, and to see their their killboard is an eye popping experience. Just in the last few weeks they have killed: 33x Machariels, 20x Nightmares, 2x Rattlesnakes, 6x Navy Ravens,4x Bhaalgorns,10x Scorpion Navy Issue and 20+ other BS. To compliment their battleship kills, they have also killed16x scimitars, 3x guardians and a whopping 48x basilisks not to mention the slough of command ships, and assorted others. Their not even two week old campaign has claimed 206 Kills worth 117 Billion ISK while suffering 4 losses costing a laughable .24 Bn. I got to see some them in action on a few different nights and see some of these kills go down in person and it looked incredible.
I recently got a chance to chat with some of them and they were happy to share some of their knowledge and their story with Eve News 24.While they did not lay everything on the table, they certainly shared enough to get the average Joe familiar with the basics. Thanks to Psychotic Monk and Odemis for their time.
EN24: When did you guys start ganking Incursion runners, and was there a breakthrough new method?
Psychotic Monk: We started bout ten days ago. Slimy (Worm) had made the method a couple weeks back and ganked a couple logi here and there. We started really going at it when some incursion bears decided to pool the money to hire mercs against us and ban us from all the incursion channels. We figured if we’re going to get prosecuted for something we may as well get our money’s worth out of it.
As for methods, I can say without much arrogance that we’re reasonably clever dudes and we know the agression mechanics about as well as anybody could, so we just looked at the ways we knew to get the rights to shoot people and picked the one we figured would have the most consistant success and get figured out by the fewest victims. We have some patented lines that work almost every time. It’s like a script for us.
EN24: How long have you guys been around?
Psychotic Monk: Skunkworks just turned six months old a couple days ago, but for the first couple months we were just three dudes who were sick of nullsec. So really, we’re only about four or so months old.
EN24: You have the incursion community second guessing their every step. Did you target them for any specific reason or is it just that Incursion runners are easier to get aggro from?
Psychotic Monk: Well, they did pay for a dec against us, and it seemed only fair to do to them what we would do to any war targets. That is, cause them a shitload of pain. It also turns out that it’s both shitloads of fun and pretty profitable.
EN24: Have the war decs had any noticeable impact on your success?
Psychotic Monk: The war decs havn’t been a bother to us at all. The actual in game corp doesn’t mean anything, so we just drop it whenever it’s convenient for us. Check my corp history for some examples. We also are drowning in alt corps.
Odemis: War decs are not a problem for us. We typically do what we want when we want regardless of how much isk people have thrown away to dec us. We’ll fight mercs only when we feel like it. We like to crash people’s clients when they try to open our corp history
EN24: Judging by the killboard, you have been killing almost exclusively shield fleets, is that just coincidence?
Psychotic Monk: We’ve killed some armor stuff here and there. There’s no arguing with nightmare kills, though.
EN24: I see that you have killed over 117 Billion ISK in kills last few weeks, and killed an astounding amount of loot that has dropped. What are you guys doing with your new-found ISK?
Odemis: Russian mail-order bride.
Psychotic Monk: Skunkworks is traditionally broke as fuck. We don’t mine or mission or any of that, so we’re going a little spend-happy. We’ve bought ourselves some really shiny toys to gank incursion bears and have enough to do real pvp when we eventually get bored of this.
En24: I recently read an official ISD article about you guys, and there are thousands of reads on the Eve-O forums about what you are doing. With all the publicity you are getting in the press and on the forums, are you concerned about someone replicating your methods?
Odemis: We want people to replicate our methods in all timezones. We want incursions to be dangerous no matter what time you log in. We also look forward to people using our methods to counter-gank us.
Psychotic Monk: Not really. I mean, we don’t want them published for the whole world to see so the bears can reverse engineer them, but we have no problem sharing them with like-minded assholes. And we do want more people doing this. And yeah, I’m waiting for counter-ganks.
EN24: Speaking of your methods, what can you share with us that you are doing to get this crazy amount of kills?
PSychotic Monk: It’s all basically understanding agression mechanics and social engineering. We’ve got it down pretty solid by now, but it’s all just decent application of pretty standard mechanics.
Odemis: Most carebears hear “”isk per hour”" and they go nuts.. it doesn’t matter what their brain tells them.
EN24: So- nuts and bolts-what would you tell someone to do to get into this profitable racket?
Psychotic Monk: Have a friend of yours flip your can and then get your victim to rep or cap transfer your friend and then you can shoot him.
Have a friend of yours flip your can and then get your victim to rep or cap transfer your friend and then you can shoot him. It’s as simple as that. We’ve made some solid scenarios and tricks to get them to fall for it, but mechanically, it’s just that.
Skunkworks Youtube videos found at the following:
www.youtube.com/user/EveSkunkworks#p/u
www.youtube.com/user/EveSkunkworks
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Make the highsec incursion runners work for their ISK. I support this incursion interdiction.
one thing you forgot to mention in your article is that the griefer looppole was plugged so they will not be able to duplicate these numbers… I petitioned the logistics aggression issue 6 months ago & its nice to see its been fixed 4 months after I stopped playing the game
I tried incursions recently for the first time.
I didn't make a dime. Some other fleet would warp in with shinier stuff immediately after us and blitz the site.
Maybe I just don't have the Carebear force anymore.
Should really give this a go though. Those mods can make BANK selling in jita (if you don't get ganked hauling your gank gains)
EVE politics must be very interesting for you if you keep up to date on EVEnews4 months after you stoped playing
Nothing great about bottom feeders whom are afraid of null so they grief carebears, nothing to see here move on…………..
Carebears earn ISK for little risk. It's fantastic someone is bringing the meaning of EVE Online to them.
Because earning isk in 0.0 is riskier right?
So being part of a napfest/coalition, having multiple intel channels, and not having a single neut in local while you run your 0.0 anomaliesis not safe, its very very risky right? fucking nullbears
and what ratting systems do not have 1 or more afk cloaky campers waiting to hotdrop.
Cynos cant be lit in high sec. high sec is safer than null Good job to those who find a way to cut the bears income in high sec
AFK…. waiting to hotdrop?…. i dont think you realize how retarded that is….
if theya re afk they are away from their keyboard therefore unable to scan or probe you, if they are waiting to hotdrop you then they are AT THEIR KEYBOARD and not AFK, dumbnut.
also, a 1 or 2 SB's cloaked up arent all that big of a risk if you are either active or have buddies within 2 jumps. but fo course you dont want people to know your botting your sites in null, so you dont want to call for help, you'd ratehr whine that the cloaky pilots are ruining your isk-faucet.
AFK cloaky means they sit online all day every day in your system.
Its not actually saying they are AFK. That comes from stupid idiots who say "he's probably AFK" and go out ratting then 10 minutes later are bawwwwwing on the teamspeak about getting ganked because he wasn't AFK.
inexperienced bandwagon bears are just as bad as idiot bears.
In my experience, Highsec are more dangerous than 0.0 :/
You've never left highsec, though.
oh snap, you managed a burn. ;
Your actually right, smart null sec. bear pretty much can't be killed, they just have way more intel telling them to safe up before the enemy even gets to thier system, this isn't even considering the ablity to drop drag bubles all over thier systems to mess up you warp ins.
shut the fuck up stop posting
Most of us In Skunkworks have done our hard time in 0.0. But to tell the truth if there was any actual substantual meaning to owning systems other than having your name on it it might be more interesting. I can easily say the anti incursion campaign was some of the most lulz I have had in my years of eve.
aye, i agree, i would take my corp to null, but SOV just seems like an excuse for a small penis right now, no point in it other than a "hurr durr i own more then you" bragfest, if they introduced emchanics to actually RUN your dominion like an empire, instead of running it like a Downtown LA thug turf, it would actually be reasonable to ahev order and infrastructure to give SOV meaning, but now its just pointless.
doing time = we once went into outer ring
Alright, so poetic is a dick.
In other news, what an awesome strategy…now go kill people who actually want to fight. Oh wait, trash fits that demolish carebears tend to suck at any real pvp because they rely on the carebear to not be fit for PvP.
In my experiance people like you hide behind a few hunred alaince members, and good FCs to make you look good. Caught on your own you have no pvp skils at all, so keep pressing F1, im sure those SBUs will shoot back some day.
They used to shoot back pre-dominion
POS defenses ftw
I'm not in an alliance. Hell im in an npc corp, I dont give much a damn for alliances or corps. Its all political bullshit, unless my friend specifically asked me to join a certain corp, I wont be joining one soon.
So yep, i hide behind members and have no pvp skills and have FC's to boost me. Caught me.
Idiot.
you got all that experiance from high sec? wow didn't know they had SBU's in high sec now
Was Tons of fun! Shame CCP made it imposible to repeat our amazing feat again.
I Highly recomend watching our first posted video on youtube for many laughs
[youtube CwA--gnZWDA&feature=channel_video_title www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwA--gnZWDA&feature=channel_video_title youtube]
CCP is catering too hard to the whining carebears that E-Uni churns out weekly.
Removal of suicide ganking insurance payouts, scamming in the recruitment channel banned (but thankfully unenforceable), criminal flag warning pop-up messages for remote repping/cap transfers.
A lot seems to be going their way lately, Hilmar must be really desperate for those subs.
Hate to say it kids, but not getting an aggression/flag notifier for RRing someone who has intentionally given pewpew rights to someone else sounds like a broken mechanic in the first place.
Changing the system so that it's not possible to transfer rights without the potential victim knowing is in fact the right thing to do, irrespective of how much everyone thinks it's 'pandering to the bears'. It was pretty broken in the first place, as demonstrated by this corps success.
I thought you came from eve-uni?
I was not turned to the darkside.
Seems like joining the uni is joining the darkside.
Burn your carebear card plox.
lol funny voice filter
G35 Squirrel headset voice modifier for the win….
This video is worth more than the entire story.
I hate to say that when I think of the squirrel voice filter. I laugh my butt off. That was funny stuff.
i was one of those basi's :*(
The logistics agression mechanic looppole was well known 6+ months ago and I seem to recall it was Suddenly Ninja that where the first to use it extensively… the reason why MANY more shield fleets then armor fleets have been hit is because the armor FC's are alot more fastidious ( often anal )about the ban lists. Also shield fleets I understand now outnumber armor since I was forced out of the game ( due to Incarna ) Also BTL was known to be lax when it came to recruiting out of the public Incursion channel ( don't know if that is still true ) There is a very simple way to turn off the Incursion ISK faucet's gushing but I'm not telling because I'm considering comming back to the game & TDF
I did a bit of googling/eve-searching to see if this was brought up on the forums as to why it appears BTL was being targeted and TDF wasn't. I came across this:
pastebin.com/uuJYLxnQ
Might explain why some armor stuff showed up earlier in their campaign and not so much in the later part.
Just a theory.
Gotta love the meta-game.
Ha that sounds like something I would have done if I was still playing Eve not Carmelos. If true its nice to see the armour/shield rivalry has heated up like that again. I was one of the armour FC's that was against the extended farming TBH. If true I'd give Carmelos a 10/10 for killing 2 birds with 1 stone: thinning the shield fleets & unintentionally forcing CCP to plug the logistics loophole. Heck with that logi loophole gone the need for the annoying Ban list is almost moot
7.FloppieTheBanjoClown > No we just drop corp whenever it suits us.
Translation: we run like pussies when a real fight comes at us
7.FloppieTheBanjoClown > No we just drop corp whenever it suits us.
Translation: we don't allow people to blob us in highsec, or use neut RR that outnumbers our fleet size to support their tradehub camping.
FTFY.
~Andrei.
i fail to see what being irish has anything to do with this story?
Nice ganks. Dosent prove anything , apart from your cunning which I admire.
Got to agree hisec way more dangerous for bears than nullsec, nullsec bears make a killing with little to no risk just by watching local. Remove local in nullsec make the game I treating again.
Zandramus
Obviously your not a carebear ….. let me guess … your a afk cloaky <checking killboard> confirmed
STFU
soo CCP u SUCK , making like lots of money in empire its like very TARD in my opinion , its like way more people in empire then in nullsec , and it should be really , empire should be for noobs , max lvl 3 missions and soo much less minerals in belts and ice …….
nice kills
you make just as much if you are running these in null or low herp derp
Actually thats wrong… you make ALOT MORE running Incursions in NULL or low & low's MOM has a chance to drop a revenant BPC
What next? How great the Orphanage is? Eve News fails again. Please stop the stupid shit about empire nubs that nobody cares about or has even heard of.
next thing my hurricane will have an axe and a shield :/
Because god forbid should you make a corporation for running incursions, and not accept anyone into fleet outside of your corporation.
Aggression mechanics are VERY fucking easy to avoid.
That being said. 500M/day from shooting drones is not uncommon in mother russia.
a a a AHAHAHAHAHAAH
Thats the grunten right there boys sign me up!
Haha brilliant!
While I don't generally endorse griefers and their shady ways, I'm glad you're bringing some of the risk back into the riskless isk faucet that is incursions
A fool and his money are soon parted, cheers for bringing back Darwinism into the game.
And yes there is a touch of schadenfreude that you detect here.
CCP IS MY SHEPARD THEY NO WHAT I WANT.. MORE KILLING AND LESS B*TCHING..and make it legal to kill all noobs that dont have at least a 2.0 security status in high security
tldr:
translation:
We are high sec pussies who can't/won't/dont' know how to have real fights so we gank other high sec pussies ….
lame shit, lame article.
DEATH TO HIGH SEC WHORES
assuming a plex price of 450 mil these guys did 3900$ dollars US to the community at large.
/yawn , get back to me when they can do more damage than my ex-girlfriend with a handful of car keys
assuming a plex price of 450 mil these guys did 3900$ dollars US to the community at large.
Good for them they having at having fun at this game. It only shows PVP in this game is so boring that a group of people need to resort to such tactics to even get kills or some action. War-decs against them pretty much bias. So nothing is stopping them. +1 for them. -1 for CCP. We all want more action.
leet PvP at its best…umm thats a joke btw.
Yes, because sitting in a fleet of 200 and pressing F1 when told is totally l33t too. At least what we did took brains to do.
Im not impressed at all. Why the hell is this even news? So a bunch of faggots get together and prey on the weak. So what? Come to Stain or Period Basis so we can have some real raping fun with you skunk pussies. Less red tape….more shooting. War dec all their alt corps. Grief them until they comeback to null where they can failscade again. On the other hand bears need to be griefed from time to time so they can learn to stop falling prey to no talent people who look for pve players for easy kils.
First off, your obviously jelly.
It's also funny that all these "leet null pvpers" have pretty big mouths when they have a fleet of 100+ dudes to hide behind. Enjoy living in null and accomplishing nothing. We'll continue to enjoy being on eve news and more famous than you.
I wish I was in null so I could become 30% better at pvp upon arrival.
ok so nulldwellers have no pvp skills according to you, but shooting pve ships through unknown aggression transferral isn't particularly leet pvp either. It's a nice loophole to use, which by now has been closed, but it doesn't show skill. dodging wardecs sounds like cowardice to me. at least that's what carebears get told when they do it, so I'd say the same goes for other highsec dwellers.
I'm not saying what we did was leet pvp and I'm not trying to defend it as such. I'm just tired of hearing "come to null for real pvp" when 90% of the time it comes from some scrub that just sits there and presses F1 and hides behind blues.
What we did requires knowledge of the game mechanics, and -that- is what we're proud of. This "loophole" would have been easily countered if the intended target had an idea of what was going on other than "I see red plus, I shoot red plus"
It should also be stated that I'm not saying null dwellers aren't good at pvp either. Highsec and nullsec are two completely different facets of the game and trying to compare the two is a waste of time. Highsec pvp, in my opinion, requires more knowledge/smarts to do well as you have achieve what you want while under a strict set of rules, whereas nullsec is about who has the bigger stick, more blues and more caps.
As for dodging wardecs, it's been said already: we fight who we want to fight. Why bother with the mercs that were hired when you can achieve your goals out of corp. It makes the other corp waste their isk and we get to continue to enjoy the game. If we want to fight, the corp is there for rejoining. Being a member of The Skunkworks is about a mindset and being a "chill bro"; not about the [SKNK.] ticker on the pilots name.
There's a whole lot more to Nullsec PvP than blobs, blues and caps. Try setting up a base of operations in somebody's (anybody's) back yard where you can shoot anybody and be shot by anybody. It's really quite liberating, and incredibly satisfying knowing that when you survive while making kills that you've done so without hiding behind some game enforced rules.
Then again, I enjoy the Big Game Hunter style gameplay, so Empire just doesn't have targets I consider worthy to have as trophies.
so pvp to you is just knowing game mechanics?
+1 because it's clever, even though it's at my expense and portrays your car as having one hell of a paint job…
~Andrei.
That or his gf is a rugged sob with that handful of keys.
3900$ is quite impressive to say the least.
Logi hi 5, yo!
~Andrei.
Ha now that the the logi loophole has been plugged I see greifers are trying to use Blackbird jamming logi's as a griefing method by suicide ganking TBH though I doubt it is going to work because a) its defendable with ECCM b) the security hits will only allow a limited number of ganks then they'll have to bring sec status up or about a week of retrainning the biomassed throw away alts.
I did get a laugh out of the GM in the forums that was baited into defending suicide gankers by griefers pretending to be carebears wanting Blackbirds to be nerfed in Incursions.
I would laugh at the griefers tears if the new Blackbird jam tactic was nerfed to stop once their ship died… tracking links, remote ECM, target painters, remote repairs, remote sensor boosting, and even sensor damping all stop working when the ship performing the action warps out or is destroyed. Only jamming persists after the ship has warped off or is destroyed.
I seem to recall the Niarja NPC's jamming dies when they die
Is that an exploit or bug?
This sounds more like … impotence … if you can't (lol) get a kill then you have to do something else to get one … I wonder what they can do with a girl …
LOL, Psychotic Monk I remember your crew of losers and your 2 corp alliance. "Doing Hard Time in 0.0"? 2 systems out from the NPC stations in the Outer Ring is not Hard Time, If I remember correctly we chased you out of that system you set up a POS in with 2 stealth bombers. Say hello to Val for us LOL.
LOL there was nothing 23/7 about it, we just had an alt logged in cloked by the tower. We popped your ship because we were given a tip off….
erm 'social engineering' lol thats abit of a streach isnt it? ,. playing on peoples trust isnt what i would call social engineering.
Its like a bin/trash man saying hes a 'waste location engineer',. your making yourself out to be somwhat smarter than you are
but please dont see thing as a negitive veiw,. i like ganking miner/misher etc,.all fun
however there is one point to put out,. using alt corp to avoid wars where you would'nt be govened by aggression mechanics and could fight freely, but then going to soo much trouble to get what is essentally an 'easy kill' seem abit lame.
personally i wouldnt move to avoid dec,.. shit it just more stuf to kill
Null sec whores whine about how the Incursions is causing inflation is beggining to rival the bitching about cloaky AFKer's! waaaaah hisec bears are not being tricked into SOV space & I can't BLOB them.
The only REAL inflation is happening is with PLEX ( and maybe BHAALs ) there are 2 MAJOR OTHER REASONS FOR THIS INFLATION that FAR outstrips Incusion ISK
TBH now HiSec has a single competitor to TECH moons, T2 & WH T3 materials that barely approaches thier profitablitiy the amount of NULL&WH sec tears about it is hilarious CRY ME A RIVER LONG LIVE HI SEC (: UNTIL i GET BORED OF IT THEN SWITCH MY GAMING STYLE TO MORE pVp THEN I'LL BITCH TOO XP
HI SEC INCURSION WHORE PIMP FITS RULE ( damn time to go to liquor store I'm 2 short of a 12 pack