Some of you probably don't me, I'm a small time reporter trying to make his way in a very big galaxy. The whole Salome has caused a lot of drama but let me try to put some rumours to rest. Below I have two interviews that I did with Ryan, a member of SDC. One was done a day or so before the event and the second one was done yesterday.
Hopefully the below will answer any quieres that you might have.
P.S. If any groups/pilots have a story they'd like published then feel free to drop me a message.
Interview 1 published on: 27/04/2017 - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/333475-GBC-Bacon-lt-3?p=5447492&viewfull=1#post5447492
So, Ryan of SDC, everyone knows the SDC to be the bad guys that are not necessarily bad guys. So, why be the good guy?
First off, I think that there is a lot of misinformation about our group that I would like to correct. We aren’t bad guys, but occasionally, we do “bad” things in the eyes of other pilots. It’s all a matter of perspective, though, isn’t it? We’re a group that does what we want to do in the way that we want to do it, and we don’t let “laws” and “social norms” get in the way of achieving our goals. Because of this treatment, we have a bit of a soft spot for people that are wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit, just as Salome was.
SDC don’t have the best reputation out there and on many news outlets, your pilots are usually condemned for what you do. How can the pilots protecting Salome really trust you?
Until recently, we were going to abstain from the entire event, but we discovered some information that motivated us to throw our hats in the ring. SDC obviously has some enemies in this game, and the ancient saying is that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and that’s essentially the situation we’re in right now. We don’t expect everyone involved with protecting Salome and the other VIPs to trust us fully, we have no delusions. All we ask is that we be put in a position by the Admirals to do what we do best: blow up ships faster than anyone else can do it.
Some pilots are dubious on your intentions about this. What would you say to them to calm their nerves?
Calm their nerves? A lot of these guys are seasoned fighters who know us very well and understand how we work. The other players will just have trust that the higher-ups understand the specific set of skills that we can provide. On top of that, we’re VERY interested in the information Salome is bringing back.
Salome and the other VIPs are not pilot hunters in any shape or form, nor do they have the engineering knowledge that SDC and other pilot hunter groups have; how much support have you been giving them and/or their contacts?
Knowledge is a wonderful thing, and I think most would agree that on the combat side of things, we understand the anatomy of a gank, which is what we’re trying to defend against. There is a very specific strategy that you have to employ, and we are VERY familiar with how to avoid ganks.
1 or 2 members were pinged with requests for advice on ship builds and overall strategy, so we all pretty much piled in and gave advice when asked. I was made a lieutenant in the fleet as a representative for SDC because of the level of help we were consistently providing. We gave specific builds and discussed winning tactics with the higher ups so that they could disseminate within their own groups, so anyone that has spent time in that chat can see us helping regularly.
Some say that if you pull this off, SDC will be immortalized as heroes forever. On the other hand, if it fails, you could be condemned for an eternity and accused of feeding information to the hunters that are after her. Does this put extra pressure on your pilots?
3 weeks ago, when we were holding internal discussions on the matter, this was brought up. All I can say is that our pilots are used to being distrusted and acting both independently and with a group in a high-pressure environment. Every battle we enter has a chance for death, though we nearly always come out on top.
The fact that this has far-reaching consequences doesn’t intimidate us, either. We have participated in many of the big events in this game on various sides depending on the specifics of the event. During the initial barnacle discovery, we were running security. Turns out, a lot of inexperienced pilots wanted to run out there and shoot at some unknown life form without having any information about it, and we thought that was incredibly short-sighted, so we gave warnings and destroyed any ships that did not turn around and leave immediately. You can never be too careful, you know?
What parting advice would you give pilots that want to participate in the event that may not be part of an organized group?
Having a specific group affiliation isn’t required at all. What is required is a fast ship and a willingness to throw yourself at what might essentially be an unwinnable battle in order to delay the attackers so Salome and the other VIPs can get out alive. Many pilots will die, but the end game is what really matters.
Interview 2 dated 03/05/2017[/U]
When people read my article they had some hope that what you had said true, that the group wanted to help Salome. We'll get to the why shortly but first thing is first. The fall out from the event has been beyond compare; there have numerous threats to the admirals of PAC blaming them for the actions of one individual. Any comment on this?
I think that a lot of the blame is misplaced, personally. The PAC Admirals had a very good plan, and they safely got 3 VIPs to their final location, which is not bad at all, considering the number of people that were out to kill them. Yeah, they could have been a little better organized, but a lot of them were not seasoned PvPers with great comms discipline and direction.
The strategy they used regarding SDC was also not really bad on their end. Despite the end result, we gave a TON of legitimate advice to the people that were coming and passed on good intel to the leaders about planned friend/foe groups that turned out to be correct. We were getting fed a ton of info from CoR and other groups from some well-placed spies, so we didn’t gain much intel directly from PAC.
I've been speaking to a lot of pilot hunters (pvpers) and a few of them are rather saddened by what happened. It's no secret that these pilots are ostracised by many pilots and factions within the galaxy. In fact, one pilot hunter had this to say: "We had one chance to show those carebears that we're not monsters. They liken us to rapists for living our life differently. Many of us hoped that if we could save her then they might hate us a little less. You only have to go to some websites out there and see the hate towards us, after this fiasco, they'll never let us have a say in anything."
How would you respond to your fellow pilot hunters that are worried about their reputation against them?
I think that only SDC’s reputation has really taken a hit here. If you’re a PvPer, most of the community doesn’t really care as long as you don’t shoot at them.
A lot of people felt that the official comms for PAC was elitest and many were turned away. Do you feel that this was the case?
I don’t, at all. A lot of people came to the PAC Discord wanting to get involved and help where they were needed, and they were given a specific set of builds and specific tasks suited to their skills. Unfortunately, many players think they are more skilled than they actually are, and wanted to bring fully fit combat ships so they could get kills and die in glorious battle. The fact is that 99% of those that wanted to bring combat ships had little-to-no PvP experience, making them worse than useless.
The main issue PAC had to face was the lack of a viable IFF system. How do you determine who is a threat if there are hundreds of players, all with weapons? You make sure that the people you don’t want fighting don’t have weapons so you can ignore them. Instead, we got a bunch of try-hards showing up in their NPC slayers that were dying left and right and occupying resources that couldn’t be spared.
What it really came down to was this: do you want to help the mission, or do you want to hurt it? Some players were put off by the idea that they weren’t going to be this pivotal person in the narrative because they were having delusions of grandeur. Sad to see, really.
And now to the big one...... Why help at all if the plan was to kill her anyway? There are conspiracies that your group were ordered to kill her regardless from someone very high up and that is why you only went for her?
We helped because we needed to build trust within PAC so we could hopefully gain some inside knowledge. Turned out that we didn’t really need it because of our spies, so instead we began to sow doubt and confusion. We needed the defense of Salome to be competent but not TOO competent because we still needed a window to get the kill. Worked out flawlessly on our end.
As for the conspiracy theories, they’re all rubbish. No one ordered us to do anything. We weren’t given inside info by Drew or FDev. We simply had a shot presented to us, and we took the shot. Other player groups had similar opportunities (Code and 13th), but they’re nowhere near as good as us, which is why we got the kill instead of them.
Will Harry Potter keep the reward or donate it? There was 5 million placed by the Empire and another 1 billion credits by one individual pilot.
Harry will be donating a significant portion of his reward to some newbies in a yet-to-be-announced event. Can’t give any more details on it.
Hopefully the below will answer any quieres that you might have.
P.S. If any groups/pilots have a story they'd like published then feel free to drop me a message.
Interview 1 published on: 27/04/2017 - https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/333475-GBC-Bacon-lt-3?p=5447492&viewfull=1#post5447492
So, Ryan of SDC, everyone knows the SDC to be the bad guys that are not necessarily bad guys. So, why be the good guy?
First off, I think that there is a lot of misinformation about our group that I would like to correct. We aren’t bad guys, but occasionally, we do “bad” things in the eyes of other pilots. It’s all a matter of perspective, though, isn’t it? We’re a group that does what we want to do in the way that we want to do it, and we don’t let “laws” and “social norms” get in the way of achieving our goals. Because of this treatment, we have a bit of a soft spot for people that are wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit, just as Salome was.
SDC don’t have the best reputation out there and on many news outlets, your pilots are usually condemned for what you do. How can the pilots protecting Salome really trust you?
Until recently, we were going to abstain from the entire event, but we discovered some information that motivated us to throw our hats in the ring. SDC obviously has some enemies in this game, and the ancient saying is that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and that’s essentially the situation we’re in right now. We don’t expect everyone involved with protecting Salome and the other VIPs to trust us fully, we have no delusions. All we ask is that we be put in a position by the Admirals to do what we do best: blow up ships faster than anyone else can do it.
Some pilots are dubious on your intentions about this. What would you say to them to calm their nerves?
Calm their nerves? A lot of these guys are seasoned fighters who know us very well and understand how we work. The other players will just have trust that the higher-ups understand the specific set of skills that we can provide. On top of that, we’re VERY interested in the information Salome is bringing back.
Salome and the other VIPs are not pilot hunters in any shape or form, nor do they have the engineering knowledge that SDC and other pilot hunter groups have; how much support have you been giving them and/or their contacts?
Knowledge is a wonderful thing, and I think most would agree that on the combat side of things, we understand the anatomy of a gank, which is what we’re trying to defend against. There is a very specific strategy that you have to employ, and we are VERY familiar with how to avoid ganks.
1 or 2 members were pinged with requests for advice on ship builds and overall strategy, so we all pretty much piled in and gave advice when asked. I was made a lieutenant in the fleet as a representative for SDC because of the level of help we were consistently providing. We gave specific builds and discussed winning tactics with the higher ups so that they could disseminate within their own groups, so anyone that has spent time in that chat can see us helping regularly.
Some say that if you pull this off, SDC will be immortalized as heroes forever. On the other hand, if it fails, you could be condemned for an eternity and accused of feeding information to the hunters that are after her. Does this put extra pressure on your pilots?
3 weeks ago, when we were holding internal discussions on the matter, this was brought up. All I can say is that our pilots are used to being distrusted and acting both independently and with a group in a high-pressure environment. Every battle we enter has a chance for death, though we nearly always come out on top.
The fact that this has far-reaching consequences doesn’t intimidate us, either. We have participated in many of the big events in this game on various sides depending on the specifics of the event. During the initial barnacle discovery, we were running security. Turns out, a lot of inexperienced pilots wanted to run out there and shoot at some unknown life form without having any information about it, and we thought that was incredibly short-sighted, so we gave warnings and destroyed any ships that did not turn around and leave immediately. You can never be too careful, you know?
What parting advice would you give pilots that want to participate in the event that may not be part of an organized group?
Having a specific group affiliation isn’t required at all. What is required is a fast ship and a willingness to throw yourself at what might essentially be an unwinnable battle in order to delay the attackers so Salome and the other VIPs can get out alive. Many pilots will die, but the end game is what really matters.
Interview 2 dated 03/05/2017[/U]
When people read my article they had some hope that what you had said true, that the group wanted to help Salome. We'll get to the why shortly but first thing is first. The fall out from the event has been beyond compare; there have numerous threats to the admirals of PAC blaming them for the actions of one individual. Any comment on this?
I think that a lot of the blame is misplaced, personally. The PAC Admirals had a very good plan, and they safely got 3 VIPs to their final location, which is not bad at all, considering the number of people that were out to kill them. Yeah, they could have been a little better organized, but a lot of them were not seasoned PvPers with great comms discipline and direction.
The strategy they used regarding SDC was also not really bad on their end. Despite the end result, we gave a TON of legitimate advice to the people that were coming and passed on good intel to the leaders about planned friend/foe groups that turned out to be correct. We were getting fed a ton of info from CoR and other groups from some well-placed spies, so we didn’t gain much intel directly from PAC.
I've been speaking to a lot of pilot hunters (pvpers) and a few of them are rather saddened by what happened. It's no secret that these pilots are ostracised by many pilots and factions within the galaxy. In fact, one pilot hunter had this to say: "We had one chance to show those carebears that we're not monsters. They liken us to rapists for living our life differently. Many of us hoped that if we could save her then they might hate us a little less. You only have to go to some websites out there and see the hate towards us, after this fiasco, they'll never let us have a say in anything."
How would you respond to your fellow pilot hunters that are worried about their reputation against them?
I think that only SDC’s reputation has really taken a hit here. If you’re a PvPer, most of the community doesn’t really care as long as you don’t shoot at them.
A lot of people felt that the official comms for PAC was elitest and many were turned away. Do you feel that this was the case?
I don’t, at all. A lot of people came to the PAC Discord wanting to get involved and help where they were needed, and they were given a specific set of builds and specific tasks suited to their skills. Unfortunately, many players think they are more skilled than they actually are, and wanted to bring fully fit combat ships so they could get kills and die in glorious battle. The fact is that 99% of those that wanted to bring combat ships had little-to-no PvP experience, making them worse than useless.
The main issue PAC had to face was the lack of a viable IFF system. How do you determine who is a threat if there are hundreds of players, all with weapons? You make sure that the people you don’t want fighting don’t have weapons so you can ignore them. Instead, we got a bunch of try-hards showing up in their NPC slayers that were dying left and right and occupying resources that couldn’t be spared.
What it really came down to was this: do you want to help the mission, or do you want to hurt it? Some players were put off by the idea that they weren’t going to be this pivotal person in the narrative because they were having delusions of grandeur. Sad to see, really.
And now to the big one...... Why help at all if the plan was to kill her anyway? There are conspiracies that your group were ordered to kill her regardless from someone very high up and that is why you only went for her?
We helped because we needed to build trust within PAC so we could hopefully gain some inside knowledge. Turned out that we didn’t really need it because of our spies, so instead we began to sow doubt and confusion. We needed the defense of Salome to be competent but not TOO competent because we still needed a window to get the kill. Worked out flawlessly on our end.
As for the conspiracy theories, they’re all rubbish. No one ordered us to do anything. We weren’t given inside info by Drew or FDev. We simply had a shot presented to us, and we took the shot. Other player groups had similar opportunities (Code and 13th), but they’re nowhere near as good as us, which is why we got the kill instead of them.
Will Harry Potter keep the reward or donate it? There was 5 million placed by the Empire and another 1 billion credits by one individual pilot.
Harry will be donating a significant portion of his reward to some newbies in a yet-to-be-announced event. Can’t give any more details on it.
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