Entry 25: Indispensable Allies
From the Vroflus Files – Posted on http://forum.transcendents.org –
As of a few days ago, I have joined the Rebel Alliance. One of my contacts is trying to organize a big Rebel group to raid something called the "Tie Base" or something like that (I think on Corillia). She says she needs at least 2 groups of 15 Rebels each to accomplish this task.
Is this something any of you would be interested in as a PA or individually? If so, let me know, and I will keep you in the loop on the where’s and when’s of this operation. I have virtually no experience with the faction wars, but from what I understand this will be a PvE situation, and we'd be up against a ton of Imperials including an AT-ST.
She (Alistea) came to me because she knew I'd be able to use my contact list, so I'm coming to you guys first. It'd be a good chance for the Rebels to network, so I hope some or even all of you can participate.
I don't have any details, but I'm sure this won't happen until some time next week, or maybe even the week after.
OK the raid is tentatively scheduled for approximately 10:00pm tomorrow night. This could change, and I promise to get a hold of one of you if that’s the case, but as of now these are the details I know:
Tuesday night 10:00pm Eastern Time
Rowah will this be good for you? I have roughly 30 people, we are looking to get between 50-100, so if you guys can spread the word, but at the same time keep it on the hush hush, we may be able to take over the Tie Base.
/tell Vroflus tonight with any questions, most details are not worked out because of the large involvement of people, and I am not the one who is running the raid, so I'll get you the info as I'm getting it.
OK guys everything is set to go. I scouted out the base last night, and this is what I saw. Approximately 10 Dark Troopers, 10 Storm Troopers, 10 random military personnel, and I even saw a few pilots. Outside the base, is a giant hulking AT-ST, armor 3. I have instructed everyone who wants to get involved to meet in the Corillian city of Bela Vistal at 9pm. At 10pm, we set out to strike the base. It's roughly a 6-minute walk. I'm not thrilled about meeting in a city, but I was there last night, and it's very very quiet over there. I doubt we'd draw much attention to ourselves because there is really no one paying attention. There is currently at least 4 PA's involved, plus random Rebels we have all been inviting. We should have about 40-50 people, and when you add pets and droids into the mix, we may have a very formidable group. If this is the case, I'm thinking that we can take the base, and the AT-ST. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be fun!
If in the strange circumstance I am not able to get online, contact Alistea in game and tell her you know me, she is the one actually leading the strike.
Hope to see you all tonight, let's send the Imperials a big message.
Random side note, a guy in my PA stole Max Rebo's Naglaron and put it in our PA hall! Talk about getting on Jabbas bad side!
There is a game plan this time, and lucky for me I'm taking orders not giving them. This mission is the brain child of Alistea, who has tried to tackle this base already, which led her to formulate the current plan. Last time, she and 10 other people had minimal success, which is why this raid will be much bigger.
The base has entrances on two sides, the north and south (keep in mind I don’t have a map in front of me). Walking from Bela Vistal, we will be approaching from the east, and the first thing we will see is the east wall of the base. On the other side of the base, beyond the west wall, is the AT-ST. Alistea’s plan is interesting. She thinks that we should split our combined forces in half. We should stay out of agro range of the AT-ST by hanging diagonally behind the NE & SE side of the base, in an attempt to pull the troopers out of the base and disrupt their ability to act as a whole unit. If we have enough people, we are hoping for at least 20 people and pets on each side. I am going to suggest gurrecks to anyone that has them, but I'm sure we're going to have our fair share of grauls and rancors involved, which will mean limited field of vision at times, and possible lag. Assuming this plan works, after we clear out the base of all hostiles, the groups will flank the AT-ST from both sides in an effort to bring it down.
This plan seems like a good way to go. I was at the base last night and I agree it seems to be a solid way to limit our vulnerability, but I've seen a Krayt Dragon go from being 80m away from me to appearing on my head DBing me in the blink of an eye, so who knows how this will all play out in the end as far as the game mechanics go.
As for the people involved, I openly admit I don’t know most of them. There are going to be a ton of Rebels, and I hope we are all on the same page. I will advise Alistea to assign certain leaders, and also advise that during the fight, they only should speak in caps to help coordinate the fight. As for who should be those few leaders, well that’s a good question. I personally would rather take orders then give them because I don’t know the first thing about a large scale, multigroup raid. As for who gets to loot what, I mean personally I'm more interested in sending a message to the Imperials on Eclipse then getting myself some skill tapes or a cool duster, so I'm hoping people don’t concentrate on ninjaing corpses and stick to the issue at hand.
If we bring down the Tie Base tonight, word will get out that the Rebels aren’t going to stand around and allow the Imp's to keep coming up behind us and trying to gank us while we're at mission terminals, or do anything else like that in general. This may send some of them into covert status, which will be a good way to limit their ability to disrupt the Rebels overall movement.
I just really hope that the Imp's haven’t been tipped off and are waiting for us somewhere around Bela Vistal. What would be good however, is if 2 or 3 of them happen to be going to the base for missions and we nail them on their way in or out, then word will spread pretty quick that Rebels are sticking together.
Tonight might go good or bad, but either way it sounds really fun. I just hope all the people who say they are going show up.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003, 1:47:17 AM (ScreenShot0564)
On Wednesday, August 6th, Alistea’s first major strike against the Empire was upon us. It was secretly planned for weeks ahead of time by Ali and the other major Rebel players, while the rest of us were on a need-to-know basis. The entire plan was mapped out by Ali and her contacts, and no detail was left to chance. There would be no obvious meet up in Coronet or Anchorhead this time. Our instructions were to sit and wait. Finally, a message from Ali came to my inbox, quickly explaining that I was to head to a smaller city on Corellia. As soon as I arrived, I headed to the top of a mountain that had the city in full view. The idea was not to be seen gathering in front of the starport, and also, to keep an eye on possible Imperial spies.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003, 1:55:14 AM (ScreenShot0565)
I did some light coordinating to help Ali out… I had my own Rebel contacts, so I made some posts on Rebel guild forums, and sent some /tells around, but in reality, Alistea did practically all of the work. This would be one of countless mass raids that she would put together under the <COL> banner. While Purgatori made sure the city itself was practically off the map all together, Ali made sure their name was very much in the view of the entire Empire and Rebellion. <COL> was constantly at the front of big missions like this, but very few people actually knew where they were based out of. As proud as I was to wear the <HHT> tag, I would much rather have merged and been wearing <COL> instead. <COL> meant something to many, and Ali’s very hard work, and ability to mobilize the entire Rebellion at times, kept it that way for quite some time. And so I stood there… high above Bela Vistal next to Ali… and I started to grasp the grandeur of her ideas. She had big plans, and I was very glad to be along for the ride.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003, 2:22:47 AM (ScreenShot0566)
The time had come, and we made our way from Bela Vistal to the Imperial base as a giant group. When we arrived, we spent one last minute getting coordinated. Pets were pulled, a good 20 droids were hovering about. We were ready to show the Empire that the Rebels were ready for war.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003, 2:25:52 AM (ScreenShot0567)
First the pets & droids spilled into the courtyard. They were quickly followed by the melee fighters, and finally, the ranged members made it through the gates. I absolutely never had seen that much concentrated destruction in SWG since I started playing. We dropped the entire place in about two minutes. AT-ST’s went down just as fast as Dark Troopers. The whole place was completely wiped out, and we took zero casualties. It was overkill for sure, but it did generate some hype. If the Rebels can get this many people together, what does that mean for the Imperials?
Wednesday, August 06, 2003, 2:30:15 AM (ScreenShot0572)
We had a good 40 people turn out, and some of them would go on to create key Rebel PA’s, Player Run Cities, and fight side by side for years to come. At the very bottom of the picture is Mila, the one-time Imperial that I sold that Frenzied Graul to. I always found it interesting, running into her there. It’s strange how some people switched factions, while others would not even talk to the other side. At any rate, it was the sign of things to come for Ali and the rest of <COL>. With Florian generating the credits, and Ali making the GCW plans, I’d say Purgatori got her money’s worth when she guilded them that night. I felt that I kept my promise, as Flo and Ali were obviously indispensable to Purg’s guild only a few days after they joined. I knew they would be a fantastic fit, and it seemed from my side that things were coming together nicely for everyone involved. As usual, I felt left out of the obvious good times that I perceived them as having.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003, 3:12:25 AM (ScreenShot0573)
Later that night, it was back to Dathomir with Ciale and Zox. We still needed to cap off a tiny bit of XP, I think I had a couple thousand to go for Master Pistols if I wasn’t Master yet, Zox was working on BH, and Ciale needed to finish up Master CH. By this time, we had a lot to talk about. Everyone was excited to see our faction rally the way it did earlier in the night. Still, the three of us noticed that the <COL> members were all going back to Purgatory to celebrate, and I’m sure we were invited… but I think by this time Zox and Ciale were both starting to feel like if we spent too much time there, we’d want to switch guilds… so I think we were kind of avoiding it a little bit. At the same time, an <HHT> hunt out on Dath was always a good time, so we made sure to get in as many as possible.
Friday, August 08, 2003, 10:13:00 PM (ScreenShot0580)
A couple days later, Ramp and I were running together from the outpost to our PA Hall. This might actually have been the day we finally guilded him… I think he was on vacation when we first placed the hall. It was on this run where I most likely found out how pissed off he was, but I kept it to myself and let him bring the subject up to the group himself. The PA Hall wasn’t far from the outpost, and when we arrived, the fireworks would continue to fly.
Friday, August 08, 2003, 10:22:05 PM (ScreenShot0581)
When we arrived, we headed to the basement where our “boardroom” was located. It was a chance to get everyone together and iron things out. Ramp was upset, there was constant talks of merging with <COL>, even if their PA didn’t know we wanted to as bad as some of us did… and then there was the Wookie fiasco…
Friday, August 08, 2003, 1029:53 PM (ScreenShot0584)
Dude, who even was this guy? To this day I don’t know where that guy came from, or how the hell he got guilded. I don’t even remember Ramp’s reaction, but I assume it was a giant “WTF!!!!!!!” All I know is I showed up, and there he was, this giant hulking furball stinking up the place. I *think* he may have been the BE that I was talking to in Coronet that time, which means he also may be the guy that created the PA Hall Kimo for Ciale… so maybe Ciale guilded him? I seriously don’t know, but it just illustrates the underlying dysfunction of <HHT>. Who would guild a stranger knowing Ramp had issues with even close friends joining? I bet it was friggin Kastore playing a joke on Rampage, he probably paid some Wookie to just show up and stand around without guild tag… just to see everyone’s reaction.
It was a circus, actually comedic when you look back at it. Instead of joining the guild that was right for me, I stuck to the plan, and joined the one that I was losing interest in fast, on a planet I was impartial to, that was destined to disintegrate considering that people will always leave the game… and if you don’t replace them, you will have no one left. I think that was the last time I ever saw Kastore, I’d be shocked to see him in any screenshots going forward. The active members soon became me, Ramp, Zox & Ciale, as even Junon became a casual player. As much as I loved my close pals, I really wanted to just roll the whole group over to <COL>, and at this point, everyone was on board but Ramp. It only took a few days before we would start to really feel the weight of our choice, and now we were stuck trying to make something work that was clearly uncomfortable for everyone. How long we could continue to go on like this was anyone’s guess.