GankerBumping Too Renamed

Popular belief is that Gorila Vengaza has gone rogue, trading his honor for a position amongst CODE.  Why would he do that?  Just to be on the side with greater numbers?  The odds were always against him?

I would like to remind everyone of an old poem from the Lays of Ancient Rome.  Death may not mean much in a universe of clones, but this poem, Horatius, still holds a heavy weight to those standing tall against difficult odds:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.

I have attempted to contact Gorila to verify that he didn't just have his account stolen, but so far I have not been able to get a response.  I have to assume that his turning to CODE is true.

As such, I don't suppose we will see Gorila ever update his Gankerbumping blog again.  I came to the name GankerBumping myself, a fairly obvious play on the CODE. blog Minerbumping, but Gorila had that taken, so I opted for GankerBumping Too.  Well, now that name no longer makes much sense.  So I am hereby claiming the name Ganker Bumping for myself.

I may be somewhat businesslike in my blog entries, lacking the comical flair Gorila had, but what I do have is honor and a loyalty to my brethren in the Anti-ganking community.  I will never turn against you.  I will always stand up for courtesy and respect amongst players, particularly in high-security space.  I will stand up against what some have come to know as the "Ganker", someone who attempts to attack defenseless players, who derives pleasure from "tear collecting", and who lacks a proper respect for others in the community.  I am and always will be, Ganker Bumping.

Gorila Vengaza: Ramifications

For those of you who do not already know, on the evening of 12/23/2014 (US time), the Anti-ganking and Gank-intel channels were taken over by CODE. using the account of Gorila Vengaza who had moderator access to the channels.  It was fairly obvious it was done from his account based on some of the things that were said in the channel, such as this:

[ 2014.12.24 06:03:42 ] Gorila Vengaza > Kill: Krauss Koskanaiken (Mackinaw) OOPZ
 
What's not as clear is what happened behind the screen of the Gorila Vengaza account.  But none of the possibilities are innocent, and all of them paint CODE. in an even worse light than has ever been the case before.  I will summarize the various possibilities below.  I also submitted a ticket to CCP asking them if they would restore the channels back to one of the other original moderators.  I felt that was a reasonable request without knowing more.  But the AG community may end up just having to start new channels.

So what are the possible options of what happened?

1. Gorila switched sides.
2. Gorila is a double agent.
• Gorila was a double agent from the start and never really on the AG side.
• Gorila is a double agent for the AG side.
3. Gorila's account was hacked/stolen by members of CODE.

Gorila Switched Sides

It's possible Gorila simply switched sides.  He has always held CODE. in higher regard than many others in the AG community.  He has frequently stated how he believes in game activity does not reflect on people in real life, and he is quick to pick fights with those on the AG side who he feels are too obnoxious (for example, Veers and the Ganking Is Bullying crowd).

What would surprise me about this possibility is that Gorila would allow events to unfold as they did, with the takeover of the AG channels in particular.  These are legacy channels joined by hundreds of people.  To do this would be shockingly dishonorable towards the Eve community as a whole.  I've never been one to jump on the ban badwagon, but if this is what happened, a suspension of even a ban of his account would be reasonable for what amounts to vandalism against Eve.  If control of the channels was promptly and voluntarily returned to other original channel moderators, then a warning might would be sufficient.

Gorila is a Double Agent

This possibility can go one of two ways.  The more likely being that Gorila was never really on the AG side and served as a double agent for CODE.  What seems unlikely about this is a long history of kills against CODE.  If this is what happened, much like the Gorila switching sides scenario, I believe their is reasonable cause for CCP to temporarily suspend or even permanently ban his account for the same reasons as in the Gorila switching sides scenario (again lessened to as little as a warning if control was returned promptly and voluntarily).

Other interesting possibility, although probably the least likely of them all, is that Gorila has faked switching sides, and is actually beginning a campaign to infiltrate CODE. in an attempt to do serious internal damage to them once granted authority within their ranks.  However, once again the case for vandalism may still apply.  If this were proven to be true, it might not warrant as serious a reprimand.

Either way, and beyond this situation, I don't know why anyone ever willingly becomes a double agent.  The problem with being a double agent is that no one is on your side.  You can't trust your enemy you are infiltrating, and those who you intend to serve can't trust you.  Simply put, once double agent activity becomes highly suspected, you lose all credibility.  No one can trust anything you say ever again.  Credibility is one of the few things that matter in this world, be it in game or in real life, and it's reckless to throw it away.  What would we be able to believe that has been said by Gorila?  Everything he has ever said in the past suddenly becomes suspect. 

Gorila's Account Was Hacked

This possibility is arguably the most damning to CODE.  At first, I thought this is what had happened, but based on other people I have talked to so far, it's starting to look as though this is not what actually happened.  Still, I can't be sure yet.  If this is to have happened, it would likely mean a violation of the Eula and worse. 

How would they attack his account?  It would most likely be from collecting information from him and having either guessed his password based on knowledge of him or possibly even Gorila giving his account password to someone he thought he could trust.  When you think about what events transpired over the past year, you think about points where Gorila may have been more vulnerable to someone violating his trust.  You think of the loss of his spouse, and how he said some of the CODE. people were very compassionate towards him in those difficult times.  You start to think CODE. may have used that event to leverage information out of him.  The picture gets real ugly real quick.  If this were the case, it could mean real life crimes being committed.  It could mean political fallout, not just in game, but in real life.  It could mean national news stories.  It could mean the suspension or ban of possibly every CODE. affiliated account there is.

Fallout

Whatever the case, it reflects poorly on CODE.  And I mean, even more poorly than is usually the case.  And in all but the last case, it reflects poorly on Gorila Vengaza as well.  There will likely be fallout from this, and not in CODE's favor.  For the first time since I started playing Eve almost 10 months ago, I feel CODE. has finally crossed a line they should not have crossed. 

As Gorila himself has said repeatedly in the past "I have always believed that how you play a game has NOTHING to do with who you are in RL".  I accepted this as possible in the past, but suddenly it is brought into question.  It doesn't matter which of the possibilities are actually the truth.  These events have transcended CODE. role playing as bad guys into actually being bad guys.

I hope these events finally push others of honor and respect to finally stop standing on the side lines and stand up against CODE. and those who would support them.  Everything from attacking them in game to getting their accounts banned suddenly seems reasonable.  Whatever happens, the days ahead will heavily impact Eve history and where it goes from here.

Anti-ganking Channel Update

It appears as though, through whatever means, the Anti-ganking channel has now been reclaimed by rightful moderators.   As for the disposition of Gorila Vengaza, the general consensus so far appears to be option 1 above, that he simply threw his honor in the trash and switched sides.

Eve Anti-ganking Channel Hacked

I'll comment more on this later, but for now just a quick word of warning. The Anti-ganking and Gank-intel channels in Eve were taken over by CODE. this evening. It appears as this was done using the account of Gorila Vengaza. There is some debate over whether Gorila went evil or if his account was hacked, but either way, I recommend immediately revoking any authority you may have granted to Gorila Vengaza until the situation is sorted out. When the channel gets fixed or replaced, I will make a post about it here on my blog for anyone that needs to know.

 - Scott Bacon

Ship Scanning Tool

One of the things I do not like doing in Eve is examining the fit of another ship using ship scanners.  I hate trying to keep track of how many of each slot type the ship being scanned has and what fittings I know about after repeated scans.  At first I tried tracking the fittings using a piece of paper and writing down what I had scanned so far.  Not content with that approach, I have now developed a simple Ship Scanning Tool that can handle much of the drudgery.  To keep it simple and portable, I wrote it using just HTML and Javascript.  The first iteration of it is below.  It should be pretty easy to copy it out if you want, run it offline, and modify it to your hearts content.  Feel free to try it out and provide feedback.

Ships and equipment can be preloaded into the Javascript, but for now I haven't included many ships or equipment.  However, if you don't want to run your own copy and load more data into the source, you don't have to.  For the ships, you can select Custom and use the drop downs to select how many high, medium, low, and rig slots it should have.  For equipment, any equipment not preloaded that gets scanned will be placed into an Unknown Slot group, and there are buttons for the user to set what slot each item in that group should belong to.  This will be remembered until the page is reloaded.

To use this tool, select the ship type you will be scanning, scan the ship in Eve, copy the scanned components from the Eve scan window and paste it into the text area, then press the Parse button.  Keep doing that until you have enough of the ship fitting as you think you need.  If you want to load the fitting into something like EFT to look at the EHP or whatever, press the Show Fitting XML button, and it will place the fitting XML into the text area.  Copy the contents to a text file with an xml extension, place it in the default Eve fittings folder on your hard drive, and you can load the fitting into EFT from there.

Press the Clear button before scanning a new ship to clear out the scanned items.

Select Ship Being Scanned

Custom Highs 012345678 Mids 012345678 Lows 012345678 Rigs 0123

Input/Output - Paste Ship Scan Here

Ship Fitting

CODE. Fails Again

Last night CODE. was attempting to gank in Uedama.  They failed to gank a freighter and were reduced to only attacking Orcas.  By the time I got there, they had already given up for the night.  The only killmails of interest were the ones someone posted showing CODE. pilots killing each other.

I used a clone jump to get there.  With CODE. having already dissolved by the time I got in the system, I instead spent my time setting up more jump clones and getting more AG ships in place.  Though I am starting to wonder whether or not I will really need them.

CODE. is closer to irrelevance than they would like to have you think.  Just the threat of a fair fight causes them to chicken out, tuck their tails between their legs, and go into full coward mode.  We only need look at their lack of appearance in the last Alliance Tournament for proof of that.

Anti-Gank: Uedama, 12/18/2014

CODE. was active again in Uedama, and there were a lot of cases this time where the battle took place somewhere other than next to a gate.  I believe there were a lot of cases where freighter pilots logged off and had their ship warp off to a random location in the system.  For cases like this, you need someone in the Anti-Gank (AG) fleet equipped with combat scanners and some scanning skill.

You will have an idea that the freighter warped off when the pilot logged if you see a freighter warp away from a bumper with a heading that appears somewhat random.  You may also notice Wolf, if he is there, just sit there and do nothing.  You may also notice some combat scanners show up on DScan.  You might also see a CODE. member say something in local that will tip you off, like claiming the AG forces are about to fail.  When it is suspected this has happened, someone in the fleet needs to immediately begin scanning for a freighter in the system.  Once found, they need to fly there and then have the rest of the AG fleet fly to them once there.

AG forces were light this day and no one in my group was equipped with combat scanners.  I did have a combat scanner equipped ship in the system, and I switched to it a couple of times when this situation appeared to arise, but unfortunately I was too slow to find the freighters in time.  I will be working on improving my response time on this in the future.

Regardless of it being a difficult night for my particular AG group, and flying remote repair for awhile as well, I still have a few of KMs to share:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/43188403/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43188399/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/43187878/

'Tis The Season

Holiday activities are not allowing me much time to put into Eve lately.  Just a few missions here and there.  On a positive note, CODE activity seems to have died down as well.

I'm not sure what to think of the newest release yet.  I know I don't like the removal of color from the icons.  I definitely do like the change in ship/pixel rendering.  I don't think it was necessary to remove clones; they really just needed an optional warning prompt whenever leaving a station without a sufficiently upgraded clone.  But I can understand where they are going with it.  The rest of the changes I don't yet have any thoughts on.

At any rate, I am still around and looking forward to playing more again when the holiday rush dies down.  To those of you who I have worked with in the past and mentioned this to -- remember you can page me out of game if you want me to log in for any reason.  You may find it especially handy during the holidays when I might go a week or more without checking in.

Until next time, fly safe!