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Saturday, February 11, 2012

Secrets of "The Blob"

A lot of times, E-UNI gets charged with doing nothing but "blobbing".  I thought I'd take a second to talk about this criticism.

First, I've noticed that the definition of "a blob" depends on who is doing the talking.  A 20 person gang considers the 25 person gang "a blob" (if they lose to it.  If they win, they won in "the face of superior numbers"), while the solo guy considers 5 a blob.  For now, we'll just go with the definition of "more people than I have."  Tied into this concept is the idea that people should bring just enough ships to fight their target, and no more.  However, this isn't always that easy. First off, it would assume that you know what you'll be fighting when you start forming your gang, and most of ours are just the "roam till you find something" sort of gang.  Second, if you did know what you'll be fighting ahead of time, its probably a strategic target, and why wouldn't you bring enough forces to improve your chances to win? Lastly, it comes from a perspective of goodfights, and that definition tends to change depending on the playstyle of the person saying it.

However, these arguments neglect the main contributing factor to our "blobs"; simple fact that we're a large corporation.  When someone makes an "x up for fleet" type comment in corp chat, they could easily be swarmed by 20-50 x's. Other times, it might only be 5-10.  Those FCs usually take everyone.  They don't tell people who are interested in pvp to sit this one out, they say "sure, join the pew-pew".


Now, would I prefer to see more focused small-gangs? Yes.  There is definitely a place for more selective types of gangs, and there should be more in the Uni. They are a great way to teach some different tactics and approaches to pvp.  However, we will (and should) always have open regular open pvp fleets where we take all comers.  This is the best way for our new players to go out, shoot at an enemy, maybe tackle a gate (oops), and discover the wonders of blowing someone up or being blown up.

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