Vengeance

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  • Full Name: Vengeance
  • Short Name: VGN
  • Public IRC Channel: #vgn
  • Alliance motto: Better to die on your feet than live on your knees
  • Website: the ACIS
  • IRC server: irc.vgn.lihas.de
http://vgn.lihas.de/logos/vgn/217.64.124.14/Images/VGN_Galaxy.jpg


The Original Vengeance

The original Vengeance was a cluster community from round 3, c123a. Over time it became a small, yet closeknit and active alliance, untill it joined BlackDeath in round 6. Several of the members in VGN were also members in BD, for example _are_, who was HC in both, which made the merger smooth and easy.

The Beginning

Vengeance as an alliance was founded in the confusion following the sudden end of round 8. BlackDeath and Ultra Violence, two smallish alliances, who dated back from respectivly round 2 and round 1, had been working close together during the round, under the tag VD (Violent Death). When the round suddenly ended, people started leaving the game, never to be seen again. The two alliances realised they could not continue with the constant decline in members, and decided to merge the two memberbases.

This created the new alliance we all know and love (well, I do, anyway) and after a quick election amongst all the members, the name Vengeance was picked. To guess who voted for Vengeance as a name, check the above section ;-)

Vengeance's founding announcement

Round 9: Redemption

In round 9, the HC was build up by _are_ (former BD), Starlock (former UV), helloraj (former UV), Gayle (former UV) and JUDO. During the round, DukePaul (former BD) was promoted to HC aswell.

Gayle's end-of-round thread says the following:

Well what can I say, an interesting experience to say the least! The first few weeks were hell on Earth for us in VGN, some of us (my gal included) were up in the top 50 and many in the top 100 after several weeks of play but that soon came to a crashing end once 'large scale' attacks started. I have never seen so many defence calls flashing up in the channel, those of you who've seen our defence planner know what a fabulous tool it is (_are_ really outdid himself with that part of the webby) but having 20-30 uncovered defence calls listed in the channel every 10 minutes can get you down quite quickly. We were getting hit seven ways fron Sunday and it was all but impossible to get any sort of defence from anywhere, PMing everyone in channel only to find that everyone online either had incoming or was idling drove me to the point of despair. I even got to the point where I applied to another alliance because all I could see was VGN falling to pieces around me and nothing seemed to help. Starlock and _are_ held it together though, they never gave up and I'm more than a little proud to have them as HC, they kept it together when almost everyone else had given up completely and that helped us stick with it 'just a bit longer'. That was the way to deal with the early part of round 9 we discovered, 'just a bit longer' and things will change.

And change they did, allying with VOM seemed suicidal to many of us but in fact it was the perfect move for VGN/VORTEX. It kept a large part of the universe off our backs and when the WE/ET split came about not long after the defence bot was abruptly silent for the first time in weeks. Not only did we have less incomings but we had almost NO incomings for 2 straight days! Was this a sign of things to come? Indeed it was, we now had chance to grow for the first time since tick 200 and grow we did. Nothing like the scale WE/ET were at but we grew enough to have useful fleets and (moderately) respectable roid scores. Once we got back into things it was all so different, the 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough' attitude that was prevalent in UV (and presumably BD) resurfaced and people were defending attacks left, right, and centre. We had normal incomings now rather than the ridiculous amounts earlier in the round and we covered almost every single last one of them!

50:7:8 (Spoonman) had incomings (up to 100 mil attackers ffs) daily for weeks yet we covered him every time. Sometimes he had outside help but the core defence came from VGN and it rocked .

Our attacks sucked all round, not due to lack of trying as Soron did a great job putting them together but due to lack of people joining them. Whether this was down to a 'defensive' attitude brought on by the early part of the round (I know I kept my ratio ridiculously low to avoid being targetted again) or what I don't know but it did mean even The Slain ( UV R7 and later VGN R8/9 attack squad noted for utterly destroying our targets, if they didn't hit the most owned list we were gutted) were struggling to cover a galaxy some times.

So, did we have any top 100 players? Nope.

Did we manage some good attacks? Yes but not as many as we normally do, to be expected with the way the round went really.

Did our defence rock as much as always? Definitely, we frustrated many a large attack and took great delight in it every time

Did we have fun? After the initial despair we most certainly did, thanks have to go to _are_, Starlock, Soron, and the rest of the command team for this. Technically I'm still part of that team but after a few weeks BCing at the start of the round I can't honestly say I did anything so I won't take any of the credit away from those who so greatly deserve it.

I'm going to abuse this thread by also adding thanks to my galmates here for a great round (my first ever private one). Special thanks to Frozenblade (GC) and Badmotor (MoC) for organising our political situation and running the most amazing cross defences you ever saw, and also to Shy for the great night watchman job he did It was great to be with you and awe inspiring to watch guys

Round 9.5: Resurrection

Gayle's end-of-round thread says the following:

Well after the honest but not exactly boastworthy summary of last round this round has been quite different.

Without the blocks destroying everythig in sight we had a much better start for Round 9.5, as usual I made a complete mess of my own start (ordering reflecs in the first dozen ticks is a BAD thing :/) but many in VGN got off to excellent beginnings. Soron as attack HC got the ball rolling nice and early with the roidings, there were a few complaints about being a little 'optimistic' when picking target gals for a day or two but things soon settled into a nice routine with the usual suspects turning up for their attacks night after night after night. For most of the round Soron was pretty much on his own with organising the attacks but his dedication meant he still churned at least one out every day. Later in the round he was joined by AngelSeven who picked up the reins when Soron wasn't around, as one of those who hardly ever missed an attack he was the ideal choice. We didn't participate in many of the huge battles around the universe (we were there for a few but not many) but we certainly stole a lot of roids this round

Moving on to defence, this has always been our strong point and this round we surpassed ourselves. The defence was stunning to say the least, defence calls were many times covered in a matter of minutes no matter how big the incoming. To my knowledge not one attack reported to us at ETA 8/9 went uncovered and the only ones we ever really worried about were the in para LDK Xan attacks but we still managed to cover most of those. As a whole 90% of all attacks on VGN planets were fully covered, of the remaining 10% maybe half were covered enough to force a recall (or looked like they were ) so approx 5-7 out of every 100 attacks reported to us was undefended. I don't know how that stacks up against other alliances but I for one am damn proud of all the VGN members who contributed to that statistic. Thanks to the stunning defence system designed and coded by _are_ we normally run without a DC, the members can see what's going on at a glance and send their fleet where it does the most good. Sometimes this leads to a little overdefending but a number of people have landed in the face of our defence so sending them home with their ass in a sling is worth a few extra ships . For his constant contribution to defence and his assistance co-ordinating things when it got a little to hectic for some Xavier has been promoted to the command team, despite only joining us this round he well and truly deserves it

With the free round our recruitment team under DukePaul were worked to death, many people sent their unallied galmates our way (a nice vote of confidence) and we took many of them in, some of them were inactive fairly quickly but many of them blossomed and helped make our round what it was. The closed system of most larger alliances amazes me, you're missing out on so much new talent but I shouldn't complain about that as it means more of them for us . It's not an exageration to say that without them we could never have managed what we did.

So, where did we end up? Our top planet belonged to our attack HC, Soron and once again shows his position is justified. Starlock was second with 20 million and whole that may seem like a big jump we had a lot of members clumping up around that mark and down. No-one in the VGN top 50 had less than 6.5 million by the end of the round and as over half our members were new/returning players I think that's pretty good. We're not a bunch of leet players but we certainly have a lot of people who are able to play the game to a pretty good level and know what they're doing. Our final tag ranking on pilkara of 7th (robbed of 6th by a last tick detagging :/) shows just how far we've come this round compared to the last couple.

Where now? Well we'll be here for R10 that's a certainty. Many of our new members are staying with us and the majority of the old core will be there as always. Starlock will be leading us into the new era of PA with his usual blend of bad spelling and excellent judgement and we'll be right there with him

On a sad note, I have to mention the (well deserved) retirement of _are_, website coder extraordinaire. Our site may not be the prettiest around but by God it's functionality is superb. I'm supposed to be taking over the development of the website (_are_ will remain as host and server admin) and no doubt that will mean a few changes but the base I have to work from is second to none thanks to _are_ and all his work. I know I speak for all of VGN when I say we wouldn't be where we are without you, thank you so much for all your work and I hope you enjoy your free time

To end it all, my thanks and the thanks of the entire command team (both new and old) go to each and every single one of the VGN members, you've helped make us an alliance people respect, I can't mention everyone who's made a difference or this post will be even longer than it already is but you know who you are. Let's really show em what we can do next round and carry on the success! Our motto says it all, it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

See you all on the battlefield.

Gayle

Round 10: Genesis

someone add something constructive

Round 10.5: The Awakening

get something here too

Round 11: A Legend Reborn

During round 10.5, several members had stopped playing, and VGN realised it could not continue. Therefore, VGN played as a part of ROCK in round 11.

ROCK's good-bye-thread after the round

Round 12: The Edge of Darkness

Round 12: The return of Vengeance.

During round 11 VGN operated under ROCK's tag, but were not entirely happy with how things worked out. So the call went out, and we decided we would play if we managed to bring in 30 of the members to play. This was no problem at all, at the start of the round we had around 75 VGN members ready, and as usual we recruited a few new ones - mostly on vouch, but also a few noobs (Would like to point out Iron, 20:6:8, this is the first PA round he has ever played, and he ended on a nice 290th or so).

The HC of round 12 consisted of _are_, Starlock, Ladybug, darts, WesseH, GlowDog and DukePaul. When darts got promoted to work, VGN had to balance it by demoting him in VGN, and promoting RobTD to take his place. Later during the round Sjimmy was also promoted to the HC.

As is known by now, we worked with MISTU all round, and had a NAP with ROCK (DeadlRock later). During the early round, we did not participate in the attacks on Absolute (atleast, I think we didn't, might be wrong ), as I personally felt it was a wrong thing to do. Absolute was new as an alliance, but getting constantly attacked made sure that they never got to build a stable community and become a lasting alliance. We were generally minding our own business, and hitting naughty galaxies.

Then came the time when we lost 31:2:1 (Bee). The story here is a bit confused, depending on who you listen to, but bottom line is that the HC agreed to trust Bee to rejoin VGN after the 72 ticks were over. This didn't happen, and he joined LCH. Partially therefore (also because LCH was very hostile), we gathered other alliances to attack LCH (as they were #1), but the others didn't seem too interested in attacking them (felt it was unfair to gang up so many on one alliance, had more pressing enemies etc etc), so after about a week we were halved in number of alliances attacking LCH, and we felt we couldn't contiune with it - especially as LCH focused on us for a day or two. So, we had a talk with LCH, and decided on a gentelmens agreement on avoiding each other, and instead to focus on 1up. By now, the round had come to the point where only it was only two possible winners - 1up or LCH. And, faced with two evils, we felt that LCH was the lesser one.

The rest of the round, we attacked with the MISTU/LCH/HR/Angels/VsN group on 1up and ND, but as we all know, we didn't have much of an impact

Round 13: The Illusion Of Truth

After round 12, in which a lot of old players returned, and with good results, it was time for round 13. Things were not going very smoothly during this round: several of the old players, after having put all their spirit back in Planetarion for one more round, had to spend more time on their real life again. Also, because of the good results in round 12, a lot of new players joined VGN. Some of these were excellent players, who became a true part of VGN fast. Others, were not.

During the round, it became clear that VGN no longer was a smooth, good oiled machine: we dropped ranks in the universe quite fast, people lost the fun in the game and started to become inactive. At the end of the round, a group of people stayed behind, but it is hard to call these people one group. It merely existed out of inactives, and a small bunch of people who still made VGN what it really is: a close family.

Things had to change for Round 14.

Round 14: An Empty Throne

In the preparation for round 14, quite radical changes happened in VGN, in order to get back on track. One of the major changes had to do with the change of playing in PA. VGN always was a very defense-based alliance, with covering over 95% of the incomings. However, in the "new pa style", attack (and getting xp) was all that mattered. Players, and thus alliances, had to change to attacking instead of defending. For many of the (old and playing for many rounds) members, this was a hard shift.

Another change was that VGN had grown rather big: it always had been a quite small, close family, where everybody did their thing and everything went smoothly. There was hardly need to kick members, because every member really was part of the alliance. After round 13 though, it became clear that this had changed as well. A lot of inactives were kicked, and the round was started with a small, but tight, group of players. The main focus for this round was to get back on track, and more important, to let this group become an even closer group of friends again, like a family.

The efforts proved themselves: throughout the round, VGN slowly but steady climbed the ranks in the universe. In the final rankings, VGN ended 7th, with just 53 members. The alliances above us, had all a lot more members, with a minimum of 22 more. The 6th ranked alliance was just 2 mill above us, so if the round would have taken 1 more day... :-D VGN also had the highest average score of all the "non-hardcore" alliances. VGN was totally alone in round 14, having no naps, allies, fence-sitting, or what else.

Round 14 was a great round again, a round in which VGN got back on track and created a base for even more. Let's prepare for Round 15!

This info is the cat's pjaamas!

Round 16: The End Of An Era

Round survived

Round 17 - The Shadows of Time

Round survived

Round 18 - The Endless Fight

Round survived

Round 19 - Endless Nights

Round survived

Round 20 - Orbital Shift

Spot #1 for most of the round and then bashed to shreds, still: Round survived

Round 21 - The Price of Victory

For not winning last round everyone went after us, what's wrong here, after all it has not been VGN winning the past round. Nonetheless: Round survived

Round 22 - Shards of Infinity

Round survived and round won.