RvB Ganked is one of the premier public events in New Eden. “Ganked” was formed in July 2011 and has run over 100 successful events, including the recent Ganked 100: When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

Didn’t want that carrier anyways – Targan Yaken

A usual Ganked event has 150 to 200 pilots head out into the wild blue yonder every weekend, looking for others to kill or be killed by, while under the guidance of an FC (either myself or one of our regular guest FCs). Ganked 100 however, was envisaged to be very different. Rather than my fleet roaming EVE looking for fights, Ganked 100 invited any interested parties in EVE to bring the fights to us. As incentive, prizes were dangled before the masses: a small number of capital ships, as well as 40 billion ISK in prize donations from across the EVE community.

Had to get up at 6.30 am on a Sunday, convince the wife I wasn’t a complete lunatic, manage a 22 month year old from 7.30am while she fed the 4 week old, start fighting in between feeds, fits, waggro and getting ready for friends for lunch until about 10.30 am, when I could stay logged in no more… – Shaggy Vatuiel

Over a period of several months, Daneel Trevize and myself spent a considerable amount of time finding pilots willing to fly capitals for the event, capital builders to provide the caps, sub-capital pilots willing to support us in numerous roles, suppliers for combat boosters, and much more. Additionally, we looked at various game mechanics that would allow us to ensure high attendance for this event, without it being overrun by larger groups just out to curb stomp some “noobs with caps”. Especially noobs with the idea to run shield capitals rather than the armour capitals popular in EVE right now.

Over time all of these elements came together and I chose the system of Hysera for the main event.

Why Hysera?

Faction Warfare system

Close to Jita & RvB’s home systems

Two high sec connections with enough distance between them to make gate camps less viable for killing those reshipping

Well within titan bridge & jump range of many of the major low sec entities

Daneel then came into his own marshaling our capitals, arranging moves for them and generally getting them all together close to Hysera ready to jump in at the appointed hour, while I ramped up the publicity machine and made sure people knew this was going to happen with posts on Reddit & EVEO.

Finally, 18 January rolled round. And it was on.

Ganked started forming up at 18:00 EVE; a process that made me pull my hair out. Forming fleets for the 700+ people who wanted to fly with Ganked resulted in me continually jumping between them, ensuring wing & FC positions were filled, fleet messages were all set, and of course getting all the members on to the correct comms – all while simultaneously trying to focus on the final capital preparations. The ability to use saved fleet setups (as added to the game in Rubicon) was a big help, however there are still many limits with how the fleet management system works for public fleets – something I plan to address in a future article.

The start up was an as advertised total goat-fuck, with most of the earliest kills attributable to none of our fleets being able to tell who was hostile or who was in other fleets – Heid A-Salaami

Eventually, we reached a critical mass and the sub capitals moved into Hysera, while the Capitals readied to cyno in (after some hasty looking for a close cyno alt as Daneel and I had both assumed the other would be responsible for it). The sub capital fleets entered system and immediately started shooting Brave Newbies, EVE University & each other, until the cyno was lit and the 45 capitals we had gathered for Ganked 100 took the field.

The capitals moved onto the entry grid of a Small Novice Outpost, setting up a very impressive chain of remote reps and energy transfers, while the subcaps came in and continued to shoot whatever they wanted, although their appointed FCs did keep them from each others’ throats this time. It was around this point that the Low Sec Voltron came onto the grid – Voltron being made up of Shadow Cartel, Suddenly Spaceships, Snuff Box, and Dead Terrorists, who were running a large gang made up of 150+ Proteus and nearly 40 T2 logistics.

From here, the night gets a little blurry for me. I know that Ben Booley, our Dread FC, kept the caps focused on various targets; that I bounced between channels on comms ensuring the subcap FCs, Telemachus Rheade and LuckyCCS, knew what to shoot and why to shoot them; and arranged for a fourth fleet FC’d by Ceofore Aideron to come in on our side. We all prayed the numbers in local would plateau at a good place, allowing our ships to keep running smoothly and without any crashes occurring to ruin the night. Local stabilised at 1200, with a peak of 1500. Time dilation held at around 30% all evening, which was a great demonstration of how TiDi is supposed to work when compared to the events that happened in HED-GP the same day.

Slowly but surely the Low Sec Voltron wore down all the various subcap groups and several of the capitals, while all of the Ganked aligned groups fought EVE University, Brave Newbies, and a 200 man wormholer fleet that had suddenly appeared with battleships & Tornados. As the grid was slowly cleared, it became apparent that the fight was now solely between the repping power of the remaining 30+ capitals and the 150+ T3’s.

Things looked favourable for the capitals until Ben Booley lit an escape cyno and many of the remaining caps grabbed all the stabs they could, refitted to break points, and jumped out! This left an unlucky few to the mercy of Voltron. I made the call to bring the reshipped subcap groups back in to shoot my Chimera, as well as anyone else on grid, all in the name of going out with a bang. And what a bang it was; a bang so explosive that the killmail for my Chimera was lost in the ether, never to be seen again.

The system started to die down, the large organised groups drifted away, and the wreck field became home to a multitude of looters, who in turn became more wrecks as the Ganked after party got into full swing. The after party then moved along to HED-GP, to see if they had any booze left that we could kick back and celebrate with.

I am amazed at how big, messy yet glorious this fight was – Louis Robichaud

Overall, Ganked 100 was exactly what I had hoped it would be. A focus point for an evening of pure, unadulterated carnage involving many, many people in over 3 hours of death and destruction. Ganked 100 was an opportunity to show pilots another way to enjoy EVE, a chance to demonstrate that larger fights do not only happen in null, and of course throw a party.

The final tally was around 120 billion ISK destroyed spread over 1000 kills for the night. At one stage Ganked 100 topped HED-GP for kills per hour, something I had not thought possible when events down there started to unfold.

I would like to close with shout outs to Daneel Trevize for all the support & hard work he put in to Ganked 100, without him I doubt the event would have been the success it was; to RvB for letting me run Ganked over the past two and a half years, turning it from a small fledgling roam into the monster it is today; and last but not least to everyone who has been involved in Ganked, be it our regular pilots, the guest FCs, or even everyone we have fought. Thank you all. Here is to the next 100 events.